choes.

"They sure play an almighty big game down here," was his conclusion,
accompanied by a corresponding elation that it was just precisely that
almighty big game in which he was about to be invited to play a hand.
For the moment he poignantly regretted that rumor was not true, and
that his eleven millions were not in reality thirty millions. Well,
that much he would be frank about; he would let them know exactly how
many stacks of chips he could buy.

Leon Guggenhammer was young and fat. Not a day more than thirty, his
face, save for the adumbrated puff sacks under the eyes, was as smooth
and lineless as a boy's. He, too, gave the impression of cleanness.
He showed in the pink of health; his unblemished, smooth-shaven skin
shouted advertisement of his splendid physical condition. In the face
of that perfect skin, his very fatness and mature, rotund paunch could
be nothing other than normal. He was constituted to be prone to
fatness, that was all.

The talk soon centred down to business, though Guggenhammer had first
to say his say about the forthcoming international yacht race and about
his own palatial steam yacht, the Electra, whose recent engines were
already antiquated. Dowsett broached the plan, aided by an occasional
remark from the other two, while Daylight asked questions. Whatever
the proposition was, he was going into it with his eyes open. And they
filled his eyes with the practical vision of what they had in mind.

"They will never dream you are with us," Guggenhammer interjected, as
the outlining of the matter drew to a close, his handsome Jewish eyes
flashing enthusiastically. "They'll think you are raiding on your own
in proper buccaneer style."

"Of course, you understand, Mr. Harnish, the absolute need for keeping
our alliance in the dark," Nathaniel Letton warned gravely.

Daylight nodded his head. "And you also understand," Letton went on,
"that the result can only be productive of good. The thing is
legitimate and right, and the only ones who may be hurt are the stock
gamblers themselves. It is not an attempt to smash the market. As you
see yourself, you are to bull the market. The honest investor will be
the gainer."

"Yes, that's the very thing," Dowsett said. "The commercial need for
copper is continually increasing. Ward Valley Copper, and all that it
stands for,--practically one-quarter of the world's supply, as I have
shown you,--is a big thing, how big, even we can