other people's game,"
commented Wannop, with a chuckle.

"It would be, in the meanwhile," said Stirling. "Well, you won't let
your sales--if you make any--get out of hand. You'll have to put on
one or two smart men, and cover or sell at a lower price through
different ones when it appears advisable. I shall naturally lose a
little on every deal of that kind, but the only real trouble will be
when you quietly gather in as much as possible of the stock the other
people are offering. It will have to be done without raising
suspicions, and before their broker can report and ask for
instructions."

Wannop struck the table. "There's some hazard in it--but it's a great
idea," he said. "They'll club the Grenfell Consols down quite flat."

"Until settling day. Then, when the other people have to deliver, they
can't get the stock. We'll shove the prices up on them to anything we
like."

Wannop gazed at him in exultation, but presently he asked a
disconnected question.

"Why are you doing all this?"

"For money, for one thing," said Stirling, with a little flush in his
face. "For another, because I've been sweated and bluffed and bullied
by people of the kind you're up against, and now I feel it's 'most a
duty to strike back." He clenched a big, hard hand. "I've watched my
wife scrubbing and baking and patching my clothes in the old black
days when I lived in a three-roomed shack because I was bluffed out of
half my earnings by people who sent their daughters to Europe every
year. I've nothing to say against legitimate dealing, but it's another
thing when these soft-handed, over-fed-men suck the blood out of every
minor industry and make their pile by the grinding down of a host of
struggling toilers. By next settling day one or two of them are going
to feel my hand."

He reached out for his hat, rather red in face.

"If I've any other reasons, they don't concern you," he added in a
different tone. "All I expect from you is to do your part judiciously,
and, as a matter of fact, it will have to be done that way."

He went out, and left Wannop sitting with the light of a somewhat grim
satisfaction in his eyes.

In the meanwhile, Weston went moodily back to his hotel, and spent an
unpleasant hour or two before he proceeded irresolutely toward
Stirling's house. He realized that this was in some respects most
unwise of him, but he was going away on the morrow and he felt that he
could not go without a word with Ida.

S