assented Hagan with readiness, "and it's going to be less so
before I finish. How do you expect to rid yourself of the Van Styne? By
selling it, at a profit, to somebody else that'll go on getting rich on
other Minnie Rays? And when you've done that are you going to carry the
same policy of high-minded reform through the rest of your property in
New York find Boston? I've got a list of the lot."

"I'm through answering questions," asserted Tollman with finality.
"You've made your bluff and it has failed."

"Just as you say." The detective rose and stretched himself luxuriously.
"By the way as I came in, I passed your wife on the porch, and I
happened to notice that Mr. Farquaharson was visiting you."

Eben Tollman had started toward the door, but this remark gave him
pause.

"He didn't recognize me of course," mused Mr. Hagan, "but then in a way
we are old acquaintances, I suppose--I shadowed that bird some time."

"What do you mean?"

Mr. Hagan's manner underwent an abrupt transformation. He wheeled and
faced his host with a dangerous glint in his eye.

"This is what I mean! You called me a blackmailer and a scoundrel just
now. Sure I'm a crook! We're both of us crooks, but I admit it and you
don't. So to my thinking, I'm honester than you. I came to you first.
Next I'm going to Stuart Farquaharson out there and to your wife.... Mr.
Farquaharson might be interested to know that you hired me once to try
to frame him. Your wife might be interested to know that you hired me to
send her those scandal magazines that roasted him. They both might be
interested to know where you got your money from. Now it's just a
question of who I do business with, but before I leave here I do
business with _somebody_."

As Mr. Hagan declared himself his lower jaw came more protuberantly
forward and his eyes blazed with an increasing truculence. And in the
exact degree of his growing aggression, Mr. Tollman quailed and became
clammily moist of brow.

"Perhaps, Mr. Hagan," he tentatively suggested, "you had better sit
down again. Possibly we aren't quite through yet after all."

The detective reseated himself and his composure returned.

"Frankness is always best," he vouchsafed complacently. "I thought when
we once came to understand each other, we'd get along."

* * * * *

While Eben Tollman was entertaining his unwelcome guest in the study his
wife and Stuart Farquaharson were having tea on the