id coldly, waving him out of the room.
"What do you want with me, Weiss?"

"A few minutes' sensible talk," Weiss answered. "It will do you no harm
to listen to us. Send your servant away and give us a quarter of
an hour."

Phineas Duge hesitated, but only for a moment. These men had come
openly, and they were known to be his enemies. It was not possible that
they intended to use any violence. He turned to the butler, who stood
behind his chair.

"Place chairs for these gentlemen," he ordered, "and leave the room."

They sat on his left-hand side, Phineas Duge pushed the decanter of
Burgundy toward them, and the cigars. Then he leaned back in his chair
and waited.

"Duge, we ought to have come to you before," Weiss began. "We are
playing a child's game, all of us."

"Whatever the game may be," Duge answered, "it is not I who invented
it."

"We grant that to start with," Weiss answered. "We were in the wrong.
You have done a little better than hold your own against us. We are
several millions of dollars the poorer and you the richer for our split.
Let it go at that. We have other things to think about just now besides
this juggling with markets. I take it that we are none of us
particularly anxious to learn what the interior of a police court
looks like."

Phineas Duge made no motion of assent or dissent.

"You refer," he said, "to the action against the Trusts which the
President is supposed to be supporting so vigorously?"

Weiss nodded.

"The thing's further advanced than we were any of us inclined to
believe," he answered. "Every one of us is interested in this, you more
than any of us. If Harrison's Bill passes the Senate, we are liable to
imprisonment at any moment. We are up against it hard, Duge, and we
can't face it as we ought while we're squabbling amongst ourselves like
a set of children."

"You propose then," Phineas Duge said slowly, "to close our accounts on
a mutual basis?"

"Precisely!" Weiss answered. "You have had the best of it, and it might
be our turn to-morrow, so you can well afford to do this. We want to
rest on our oars for a time, while we look round and face this
new danger."

"Very well," Phineas Duge said, "I agree. We will meet at your office
to-morrow and bring our brokers. I am quite willing to end this fight.
It was not I who began it."

Higgins drew a little breath of relief. He was perhaps the poorest of
the group, and it was his stock which Duge had been handling