dly, as a man
might call whose hurried anxiety to get an important number made him
careless of the pitch of his voice: "Worth 10,000! Worth 10,000!"

He feared to look toward the door--yet. For the moment he must seem
concerned only with the hasty business of telephoning.

Annoyed by his shouting, the girl raised her head and stared at him as
he came toward her.

"What's the excitement?" she demanded.

With enhanced vehemence he answered, putting on the key words all the
emphasis he dared employ:

"I should think anybody in hearing could understand what I said and what
I meant--_Worth 10,000_!"

He was alongside her now; he could risk a glance toward the door. He
looked, and his heart rejoiced inside of him, for the messenger had
swung about, as had half a dozen others, all arrested by the harshness
of his words--and the messenger was staring at him. Marr gave the
correct signal--with quick well-simulated nervousness drew a loose match
from his waistcoat pocket, struck it, applied it to his cigar, then
flipped the still burning match halfway across the floor. No need for
him again to look--he knew the artifice had succeeded.

"Here's your number," said the affronted young woman. With a vicious
little slam she stuck a metal plug into its proper hole.

Marr had not the least idea what concern or what individual owned Worth
10,000 for a telephone number. Nor did it concern him now. Even so, he
must of course carry out the pretense which so well had served him in
the emergency. He entered the booth, leaving the door open for
Hartridge's benefit.

"Hello, hello!" he called into the transmitter. "This is V. C. Markham
speaking. I want to speak to"--he uttered the first name which popped
into his mind--"to George Spillane. Want to order some tickets for a
show to-night." He paused a moment for the sake of the verities; then,
paying no heed to the confused rejoinder coming to him from the other
end of the wire, and improvising to round out his play, went on: "What's
that?... Not there? Oh, very well! I'll call him later.... No, never
mind, Spillane's the man I want. I'll call again."

He hung up the receiver. Out of the tail of his eye as he hung it up he
saw Sig Gulwing just entering the hotel, in proper disguise for the
character of the district telegraph manager with a grudge against pool
rooms and a plan for making enough at one coup to enable him to quit his
present job; the job was mythical, and the grudge, to