e was ripe, would tell them of their shrewdness, confess a
liking, almost an admiration for them--and let them in on the ground
floor.

There were the many who could not be touched personally and, for these,
Blake prepared the literature and laid his schemes for real newspaper
publicity. Submitting them to Keith, the latter approved. Mrs. Keith was
to look Molly up at her school, take her into the Keith home on
vacations, introduce her into the social whirl. The right newspapermen
would see her, meet her, get the story from Blake of her romantic
childhood, with photographs of the Western Heiress in the Park on
Horseback. There would be drawings by staff artists of the way she and
her father appeared wandering through the desert, discovering the
claims, her father's grave, anything to round out the human interest.
Moreover, she could be introduced to the right people, that was Mrs.
Keith's end of it.

Then would come the prospectuses with these extracts of the best
paragraphs, tied up with views of Casey Town, with engineers' reports,
with semi-scientific stuff about sylvanite, a masterpiece of romance and
fiction, peppered with fact. The whole to be titled _White Gold_.

Advertisements, headed _White Gold_, offering the shares. Personal
letters to those on the carefully selected lists of _Preferred
Investors_. Offices of the Casey Town Mining Company with alluring
specimens behind glass cases, with models of mining machinery and of
sections of mines, framed maps and drawings, blue-prints, a chunk of
sylvanite ore in a railed-off enclosure with the legend of its marvelous
value. Many, most, of these lures, had done service in previous
enticements of Keith, but they still held good. They were a good deal
like the fake mermaids, the skulls and odds and ends in the window of a
palmist, all bait, of better quality, more deftly arranged and
displayed, part of the fakir's kit, bait for goldfish. Also brass rails,
fine rugs, mahogany furniture, a ticker, busy and pretty stenographers.

Blake submitted his clever campaign, worthy of better things, and Keith
approved of it. That the partners of the Three Star as fifty-one per
cent, owners, or Molly Casey herself with them, should be consulted or
informed, never entered his head.

Of course there was always a chance of the investors realizing heavily
if Casey Town turned up big production. Keith hoped it would. Provided
he made all the money he wanted, he was always willing t