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ADVICE UPON ADVERTISING IN ALL FORMS
Consultation Free. Step In

"Consultation free!" repeated the educator with virulence. "A trap!
A manifest pitfall! I don't know why Mr. Bertram should have sent me
hither. The enterprise is patently quack," he asseverated in a rising
voice.

Upon the word a young man opened the door and, emerging, received the
accusation full in the face. The young man smiled.

"Quack, I said," repeated the exasperated mentor, "and I repeat it.
Quack!"

"If you're suffering from the delusion that you're a duck," observed the
young man mildly, "you'll find a taxidermist on the top floor."

The caller turned purple. "If you are Mr. Jones, of the Cosmic Club--"

"I am."

"--there are certain things which Mr. Bertram must explain."

"Yes; Bertram said that you were coming, but I'd almost given you up.
Come in."

"Into a--a den where free advice is offered? Of all the patent and
infernal rascalities, sir, the offer of free advice--"

"There, there," soothed the younger man. "I know all about the free
swindles. This isn't one of them. It's just a fad of mine."

He led the perturbed scholar inside and got him settled in a chair.
"Now, go ahead. Show me the advertisement and tell me how much you
lost."

"I've lost my assistant. There is no advertisement about it. What I came
for is advice. But upon seeing your tricky door-plate--"

"Oh, that's merely to encourage the timorous. Who is this assistant?"

"Harvey Craig, a youth, hardly more than a boy, for whom I feel a
certain responsibility, as his deceased parents left him in my care."

"Yes," said Jones as the professor paused.

"He has disappeared."

"When?"

"Permanently, since ten days ago."

"Permanently?"

"Up to that time he had absented himself without reporting to me for
only three or four days at a time."

"He lived with you?"

"No. He had been aiding me in certain investigations at my laboratory."

"In what line?"

"Metallurgy."

"When did he stop?"

"About four weeks ago."

"Did he give any reason?"

"He requested indefinite leave. Work had been offered him, he hinted, at
a very high rate of remuneration."

"You don't know by whom?"

"No, I know nothing whatever about it."

"Have you any definite suspicions as to his absence?"

"I gravely fear that the boy has made away with himself."

"Why so?"

"After his first absence I called to see him at his room. He had
obviously under