e the poor darn gophers huntin' our holes right up
here on the Labrador coast.

"Oh, yes. I know what you'd say. You've said it all before. Hellbeam
hasn't a kick comin'. You were both operators on Wall Street. You were
both playing the financial game as all the world knows it. You beat him
on a straight financial fight. It was just a matter of the figgers which
it's your job to play around with.

"Now I'm just going to say the thing that's in my mind," he went on, his
tone changing again to something clumsily persuasive. "You can take it
easy from me. You see, you picked me up when I was down and out. You
passed me a hand when there wasn't a hope left me but a stretch of
penitentiary. I fought that darn lumber-jack to a finish, which is
mostly my way in things. And it was plumb bad luck that he went out by
accident. Well, it don't matter. It was you who got me clear away when
they'd got the penitentiary gates wide open waiting for me, and it's a
thing I can't never forget. I'm out for you all the time, and I want you
to know it when I'm telling you the things in my mind. Hellbeam's got a
mighty big kick coming. It's the biggest kick any feller of his sort can
have. He's the money power of Sweden. He's one of the big money powers
of the States. He lives for money and the power it hands him. Well? This
is how I figger. Just how you played him up I can't say. But it's his
job to juggle around with figgers same as it's yours, and if you beat
him out of ten million dollars you must have played a slicker hand than
him. All of which says you must have got more to windward of the law
than him--and he knows it. Why, it's easy. The feller who has the money
power to hold the crown jewels of Sweden from falling into the hands of
yahoo politicians out to grab the things they haven't the brains to come
by honestly, is mostly powerful enough to buy up the justice he needs,
or any other old thing. Hellbeam means to get his hands on you. He's
going to get you across the darn American border. And when he's got you
there he's going to send you down, by hook or crook, to the worst hell
an American penitentiary can show you. It's seven years since you hurt
him. But that ain't a circumstance. If it takes him seventy-seven he'll
never quit your trail."

Bat paused, and, for a moment, turned from the wide black eyes he had
held seemingly fascinated while he was talking. It almost seemed that
the emotions stirring in his broad bosom were too