lacked in its personnel for the moment a person of address to undertake
the steering and the convincing--to worm a way into the good graces of
the prospective quarry; to find out approximately about how much in
dollars and cents he might reasonably be expected to yield, and then to
stand by in the pose of a pretended fellow investor and fellow loser,
while the cleaning up of the plunger was done by the competent but
crude-mannered Messrs. Sigmund and Alfred Gulwing and their associates.
For the important role of the convincer Marr was suited above all
others. It was represented to him that he could slip back to town and,
all the while keeping well under cover, rib up the customer to go, as
the trade term has it, and then withdraw again to the Dominion. A price
was fixed, based on a sliding scale, and Marr returned to New York.

Three days from the day he reached town the Westerner, whose name was
Hartridge, lunched with him as his guest at the Roychester, a small,
discreetly run hotel in Forty-sixth Street. After luncheon they sat down
in the lobby for a smoke. For good and sufficient reasons Marr preferred
as quiet a spot and as secluded a one as the lobby of the hotel might
offer. He found it where a small red-leather sofa built for two stood in
a sort of recess formed on one side by a jog in the wall and on the
other side by the switchboard and the two booths which constituted the
Roychester's public telephone equipment. To call the guest rooms one
made use of an instrument on the clerk's desk, farther over to the left.

To this retreat Marr guided the big Oregonian. From it he had a fairly
complete view of the lobby. This was essential since presently, if
things went well or if they did not go well, he must privily give a
designated signal for the benefit of a Gulwing underling, a lesser
member of the mob, who was already on hand, standing off and on in the
offing. Sitting there Marr was well protected from the view of persons
passing through, bound to or from the grill room, the desk or the
elevators. This also was as it should be. Better still, he was
practically out of sight of those who might approach the telephone
operator to enlist her services in securing outside calls. The
outjutting furniture of her desk and the flanks of the nearermost pay
booth hid him from them; only the top of the young woman's head was
visible as she sat ten feet away, facing her perforated board.

The voices of her patrons came to hi