. He was thinking, thinking hard. And his thought was mostly of
the man whose shaking hand betrayed him. Suddenly an explosive movement
brought his clenched fist down on the table with a thud.

"Hell!" he cried, in a fury of impatience. "What's the use? The danger
sign's hoisted. I know it. You know it. Nisson knows it. Well? Say,
Hellbeam's been in Quebec a score of times since--since--. That don't
worry a thing. No. He's got big finance in the Skandinavia bunch in
Quebec. We know all about that. It's Idepski. Idepski ain't visiting the
packet office for his health. He ain't figgerin' on a joy trip up the
Labrador coast. No. That's the signal, sure. Idepski at the packet
office. Their darn mud-scow mostly runs here, to Sachigo, and there
ain't a thing along the way to interest Idepski--but Sachigo. We'll be
getting word from Charlie Nisson in some hurry."

"Yes, we'll get it in a hurry."

Standing nodded. He was transparently perturbed. Bat watched him
closely. Then, in a moment, his mind was made up.

"See right here, Les," he cried, in a tone he vainly endeavoured to
restrain. "I've figgered right along this thing would need to happen
sometime. You can't beat a feller like Hellbeam all the time and leave
him without a kick. It don't need me to tell you that. But I want to get
a square eye on the whole darn game. Maybe you don't get all you did to
that guy when you cleaned him out of ten million dollars on Wall Street
seven years ago.

"Say, you were a mathematical professor at a Scottish University before
you reckoned to buck the game on Wall Street, weren't you?" he went on,
more moderately. He forced a grin into eyes that were scarcely
accustomed. "One of those guys who mostly make two and two into four,
and by no sort of imagination can cypher 'em into five. I know. You
figgered out that Persian Oil gamble to suit yourself, and forgot to
figger that Hellbeam was at the other end of it. No. The other feller
don't cut any ice with you while you're playing around with figgers.
It's only afterwards you find that figgers ain't the whole game, and
wrostling ten million dollars out of one of the biggest railroad kings
and bank presidents in America has something to it liable to hand you
nightmare. Well, you got that nightmare. So did I. You've had it for
most the whole of the last seven years. But it ain't a nightmare now.
It's dead real, which is only a way of sayin' Hellbeam's set his dogs on
a hot trail, and we'r