his cash and decided that another week
could be managed. Then--exit.

After the next Sunday services, owing to an eight that looked like a
three, he was short five hundred dollars in the item of interest.

Explanations led to retreat, and Honey Tone retreated to a hotel in San
Francisco. His flight therefrom was interrupted by a delegation from a
mob which visited him on the following night. He beat the delegation
out of the lobby of the hotel because, in the emergency, his feet acted
more quickly than his head. He went away from there leading his flock.

Mentally he shipped his remains to his next of kin four times in the
next fifty yards. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the gleam of a
piece of light-coloured steel swung by a dark-coloured investor who
craved to collect his investment, plus interest, one way or another.

Honey Tone's racing legs, impelled by an acute ambition, functioned
successfully in their owner's single endeavour to lead the flying wedge
of razor-bearing blood hunters by at least two jumps more than a
slashin' reach. The fugitive turned into Mission Street; and here in
the long stretch the saddle-coloured financier saw a chance to do some
thinking. Galloping was his main business just then, but he carried a
side line of quick thoughts.

With members of his own race Honey Tone asked no greater odds in the
money game than those which served from the theory that mind was
superior to matter. But in this, too, time was the essence. Just then
he needed time. Ten minutes were worth a million dollars and lots of
other important things like health and strength and blood. Time was
that without which the best laid plans died in the egg.

For the next five blocks, running something less than a mile a minute,
the uplifter's brain functioned with the cunning which enables the
fragrant fox to overcome the handicap with which nature has equipped
him, when the hounds begin the cross country obesity cure. During this
time a plan had flowered in Honey Tone's brain whereby victory might be
snatched from what had looked like a total loss of all the blood that
would run out of where a razor had nestled.

In a shadowed area midway between two street lights Honey Tone stopped.
He stopped abruptly, like a golf ball hitting the north side of
Gibraltar. He bounced back, absorbing his momentum in a twisting motion
which left him squarely facing the oncoming pack. Now it was, or never!

When they were upon him h