ay?"

Bentley informed her, and told her, too, that he would be with her as
soon as he possibly could. Taking the usual masculine advantage he
decided to tell her now what he wouldn't have had the heart to tell
her to her face, that he was planning a rather desperate stunt to
reach Barter, and would consequently be away from her for an
indefinite period.

"But I'll see you first?" she said after a long hesitation. Bentley
could hear her voice tremble, though he knew she was fighting
desperately to keep him from noting the catch in her voice.

"Yes, nothing will happen until--well, not until I've seen you
again."

Just as Bentley hung up the receiver the extra was being cried. Some
two hours had now elapsed since Balisle had been taken away, and now
the newsboys were shouting the headlines.

"Extra! Extra! All about the big Wall Street crash! Hervey fortune
entirely swept away!"

- - -

Bentley sent an office boy out for the paper and spread it out on the
desk to digest it as quickly as possible.

"One million shares of Hervey Incorporated," read the black words in a
box on the first page--a story in mourning, "were dumped on the market
at eleven o'clock this morning. Four men seem to have been behind the
queer coup. One of them had a power of attorney from Harold Hervey
himself, and he had the shares to sell. So many shares were dumped
that the bottom fell out of the stock. Others holding the Hervey
shares, fearful that they would get nothing at all, also began to
dump, and every share thus dumped was bought up quickly by three other
men about whom nobody knew anything, except that they paid with cash.
The strangest thing about it all was that the three men who bought
Hervey Incorporated, seemed to be dumb-mutes, for they didn't say
anything. They acted through a broker, and indicated their purchases
with their fingers in the conventional manner and tendered cards as
identification! They were Harry Stanley, Clarence Morton, and Willard
Cleve--addresses unknown, history unknown.

"Nothing, in fact, is known about any of the three or the little
white-haired, apple-cheeked man who sold so heavily in Hervey
Incorporated. That the three mutes did not buy the shares sold by the
little white-haired man would seem to indicate that all four of them
worked together ... but it is only a supposition as they were not seen
together and apparently did not know one another. But the three mutes
constantly ate w