ice, fat and
flippant, from our noon grub, we met an easy-looking fellow, with a
bright eye and a pipe in his mouth, coming out. We found Atterbury
looking like he'd been caught a mile from home in a wet shower.

"Know that man?" he asked us.

We said we didn't.

"I don't either," says Atterbury, wiping off his head; "but I'll bet
enough Gold Bonds to paper a cell in the Tombs that he's a newspaper
reporter."

"What did he want?" asks Buck.

"Information," says our president. "Said he was thinking of buying
some stock. He asked me about nine hundred questions, and every one
of 'em hit some sore place in the business. I know he's on a paper.
You can't fool me. You see a man about half shabby, with an eye like
a gimlet, smoking cut plug, with dandruff on his coat collar, and
knowing more than J. P. Morgan and Shakespeare put together--if that
ain't a reporter I never saw one. I was afraid of this. I don't mind
detectives and post-office inspectors--I talk to 'em eight minutes and
then sell 'em stock--but them reporters take the starch out of my
collar. Boys, I recommend that we declare a dividend and fade away.
The signs point that way."

Me and Buck talked to Atterbury and got him to stop sweating and stand
still. That fellow didn't look like a reporter to us. Reporters always
pull out a pencil and tablet on you, and tell you a story you've
heard, and strikes you for the drinks. But Atterbury was shaky and
nervous all day.

The next day me and Buck comes down from the hotel about ten-thirty.
On the way we buys the papers, and the first thing we see is a column
on the front page about our little imposition. It was a shame the way
that reporter intimated that we were no blood relatives of the late
George W. Childs. He tells all about the scheme as he sees it, in a
rich, racy kind of a guying style that might amuse most anybody except
a stockholder. Yes, Atterbury was right; it behooveth the gaily clad
treasurer and the pearly pated president and the rugged vice-president
of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company to go away real
sudden and quick that their days might be longer upon the land.

Me and Buck hurries down to the office. We finds on the stairs and in
the hall a crowd of people trying to squeeze into our office, which is
already jammed full inside to the railing. They've nearly all got
Golconda stock and Gold Bonds in their hands. Me and Buck judged
they'd been reading the papers, too.

We stop