the corners. He was
puzzled. What did the young fellow mean?

"Don't, eh?" he said, groping in his mind for a solution.

"No. You forgot to send me that promised form of agreement, didn't you?
Thought you'd fooled me, perhaps. Well, I wouldn't be so foolish as to
expect anything in the way of fair and honorable dealing when I contract
to do up a mining swindler for the benefit of the only meaner creature
on God's earth--a patent medicine poisoner. So I took precautions."

"Say, be careful of what you say, young man," blustered the quack.

"I am--quite particular. And, before you leave, wouldn't you like to
hear about the five thousand dollars I got for my little job?"

Doctor Hoff blinked rapidly.

"What didje say?" he finally inquired.

"Five--er--thousand--er--dollars."

"You got it?"

"In the bank."

"Where dje get it?"

"From you, through your son's check, duly certified."

Doctor Hoff blinked more rapidly and moistened his lips with an
effortful tongue.

"H-h-how dje work it?" he asked in a die-away voice.

"By a forced sale of water rights to the North Pinto Gold Mining
Company, dissolved, in which Mr. Roderick Hoff was vice-president and
silent partner," replied Average Jones with an amiable smile, as he
opened the door significantly.

CHAPTER IV. THE MERCY SIGN-ONE

"Want a job, Average?"

Bertram, his elegance undimmed by the first really trying weather of the
early summer, drifted to the coolest spot in the Ad-Visor's sanctum and
spread his languid length along a wicker settee.

"Give a man breathing space, can't you?" returned Average Jones. "This
is hotter than Baja California."

"Why, I assumed that your quest of the quack's scion would have trained
you down fit for anything."

"Haven't even caught up with the clippings that Simpson floods me with,
since I came back," confessed the other. "What have you got up your
faultlessly creased sleeve? It's got to be something different to rouse
me from a well-earned lethargy."

"Because a man buncoes a loving father out of five thousand dollars,"
Average Jones snorted gently, "is no reason why he should unanimously
elect himself a life member of the Sons of Idleness,"' murmured Bertram.

He cast an eye around the uniquely decorated walls, upon which hung,
here, the shrieking prospectus of a mythical gold-mine; there a small
but venomous political placard, and on all sides examples of the
uncouth or unusual in paid print; exploita