s."

"Then you didn't get your man?"

"It was a woman. The fifth applicant. Got a pin about you?"

Bertram took a pearl from his scarf.

"That's good. It will make nice, bold, inevitable sort of letters. Come
over here to this desk."

For a few moments he worked at a sheet of, paper with the pin, then
threw it down in disgust.

"This sort of thing requires practice," he muttered. "Here, Bert, you're
cleverer with your fingers than I. You take it, and I'll dictate."

Between them, after several failures, they produced a fair copy of the
following:

"Mr. Alden Honeywell will choose between making explanation to the
post-office authorities or calling at 3:30 P. m. to-morrow on A. Jones,
Ad-Visor, Astor Court Temple."

This Average Jones enclosed in an envelope which he addressed in
writing to Alden Honeywell, Esq., 550 West Seventy-fourth Street, City,
afterward pin-pricking the letters in outline. "Just for moral effect,"
he explained. "In part this ought to give him a taste of the trouble he
made for poor Robinson. You'll be there to-morrow, Bert?"

"Watch me!" replied that gentleman with unwonted emphasis. "But will
Alden Honeywell, Esquire?"

"Surely. Also Mr. William H. Robinson, of the Caronia. Note that 'of the
Caronia.' It's significant."

At three-thirty the following afternoon three men were waiting in
Average Jones' inner office. Average Jones sat at his desk sedulously
polishing his left-hand fore-knuckle with the tennis callous of his
right palm. Bertram lounged gracefully in the big chair. Mr. Robinson
fidgeted. There was an atmosphere of tension in the room. At three-forty
there came a tap-tapping across the floor of the outer room, and a knock
at the door brought them all to their feet. Average Jones threw the door
open, took the man who stood outside by the arm, and pushing a chair
toward him, seated him in it.

The new-comer was an elderly man dressed with sober elegance. In his
scarf was a scarab of great value; on his left hand a superb signet
ring. He carried a heavy, gold-mounted stick. His face was curiously
divided against itself. The fine calm forehead and the deep setting of
the widely separate eyes gave an impression of intellectual power and
balance. But the lower part of the face was mere wreckage; the chin
quivering and fallen, from self-indulgence, the fine lines of the nose
coarsened by the spreading nostrils; the mouth showing both the soft
contours of sensuality and the ha