ted a newspaper clipping. "We can't afford luxuries,
Simpson."

The confidential clerk rubbed his high, pale forehead indeterminately.
"But five thousand dollars, Mr. Jones," he protested.

"Would pay a year's office rent, you're thinking. True. Nevertheless I
can't see the missing Mr. Hoff as a sound professional proposition."

"So you think it would be impossible to find him?"

"Now, why should I think any such absurd thing? I think, if you choose,
that he wouldn't be worth the amount, when found, to lose."

"The ad says different, Sir." Simpson raised the paper and read:

"FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS--The aforesaid sum
will be paid without question to anyone
furnishing information which leads to the
discovery of Roderick Hoff, twenty-four years
old, who left his home in Toledo, 0., on
April 12. Communicate with Dr. Conrad Hoff,
Toledo.

"Surely Doctor Hoff is good for the amount."

"Oh, he's good for millions, thanks to his much advertised quack
'Catarrh-Killer.' The point is, from what I can discover, Mr. Roderick
Hoff isn't worth retrieving at any price above one dime."

"Was the information about him that you wished, in the telegram?" asked
the confidential clerk.

"Yes; all I wanted. Thanks for looking after it. Have the Toledo
reporter, who sent it, forward his bill. And if the old inventor who's
been haunted by disembodied voices comes again, bring him to me."

"Yes, sir," said Simpson, going out.

Left to himself, Average Jones again ran over the dispatches, conveying
the information as to the lost Toledo youth. They had given a fairly
complete sketch of young Hoff's life and character. At twenty-four,
it appeared, Roderick Hoff had achieved a career. Emerging, by the
propulsive method, from college, in the first term of his freshman year,
he had taken a post-graduate course in the cigarette ward of a
polite retreat for nervous wrecks. He had subsequently endured two
breach-of-promise suits, had broken the state automobile record for
number of speed violation arrests, had been buncoed, badgered, paneled,
blackmailed and short-carded out of sums varying between one hundred
and ten thousand dollars; and now, in the year of grace, 19--, was the
horror of the pulpit and the delight of the press of the city which he
called his home. For the rest, he was a large, mild, good-humored, pulpy
individual, with a fixed delusion that the human organism can absorb a
quart of alc