damned prohibittery law; he growin' rich in
Careyville, an' me!"

His voice rose to a shriek and he stamped his foot in rage.

"Hold your noise, Wyker!" Champers growled. "Don't you know who's on the
other side of that partition?"

"I built that partition mineself. It's von dead noise-breaker," Wyker
began. But Champers broke in:

"It's your turn, Smith."

Dr. Carey had described Smith once as rather small, with close-set dark
eyes and a stiff, half-paralyzed right arm and wrist, a man who wrote in a
cramped left-handed style. There was a crooked little scar cutting across
his forehead now above the left eye that promised to stay there for life.
He had a way of evading a direct gaze, suggesting timidity. And when Hans
Wyker had threatened to kill John Jacobs he shivered a little, and for the
instant a gray pallor crept across his face, unnoted by his companions.

"We propose to start a town in the Grass River country that will kill
Careyville. We two put up the capital. You do the buying and selling.
We'll handle real estate lively for a few months. We'll advertise till we
fill the place with buyers, and we'll make our pile right there and
then--and it's all to be done by Darley Champers & Co. We two are not to
be in the open in the game at all."

Thomas Smith spoke deliberately. There seemed to be none of Champers'
bluster nor Wyker's malice in the third part of the company, or else he
was better schooled in self-control.

"You have it exactly," Champers declared. "The first thing is to take in
fellows like Jim Shirley and Cyrus Bennington and Todd Stewart, and
Aydelot, if we can."

"Yes, if we can, but we can't," Thomas Smith insisted.

"And having got the land, with or without their knowing why, we boom her
to destruction. But to be fair, now, why do you want to keep yourself in
hiding, and who's the fellow you want to kill?" Darley Champers said with
a laugh.

"I may as well let you know now why I can't be known in this," Thomas
Smith said smoothly, even if the same gray hue did flit like a shadow a
second time across his countenance--a thing that did not escape the shrewd
eye of Darley Champers this time.

"Wyker is pitted against Jacobs. You are after Asher Aydelot's scalp, if
you can get it. I must get Jim Shirley, fair or foul."

Smith's low voice was full of menace, boding more trouble to his man than
the bluster and threat of the other two could compass.

"I paid you well, Darley Champers, fo