o continue?" demanded Mershone, showing
a touch of anger for the first time.

"Depends on yourself, Mr. Mershone; I'm no judge, myself. I'm so
young--and inexperienced."

"Who is your employer?"

"Oh, I'm just sent out by an agency."

"Is it a big paying proposition?" asked Charlie, eyeing the diffident
youth beside him critically, as if to judge his true caliber.

"Not very big. You see, if I'd been a better detective you'd never have
spotted me so quickly."

"I suppose money counts with you, though, as it does with everyone else
in the world?"

"Of course, sir. Every business is undertaken to make money."

Mershone drew his chair a little nearer.

"I need a clever detective myself," he announced, confidentially. "I'm
anxious to discover what enemy is persecuting me in this way. Would
it--er--be impossible for me to employ _you_ to--er--look after my
interests?"

Fogerty was very serious.

"You see, sir," he responded, "if I quit this job they may not give me
another. In order to be a successful detective one must keep in the good
graces of the agencies."

"That's easy enough," asserted Mershone. "You may pretend to keep this
job, but go home and take life easy. I'll send you a daily statement of
what I've been doing, and you can fix up a report to your superior from
that. In addition to this you can put in a few hours each day trying to
find out who is annoying me in this rascally manner, and for this
service I'll pay you five times the agency price. How does that
proposition strike you, Mr.--"

"Riordan. Me name's Riordan," said Fogerty, with a smile. "No, Mr.
Mershone," shaking his head gravely, "I can't see my way to favor you.
It's an easy job now, and I'm afraid to take chances with a harder one."

Something in the tone nettled Mershone.

"But the pay," he suggested.

"Oh, the pay. If I'm a detective fifty years, I'll make an easy two
thousand a year. That's a round hundred thousand. Can you pay me that
much to risk my future career as a detective?"

Mershone bit his lip. This fellow was not so simple, after all, boyish
as he seemed. And, worse than all, he had a suspicion the youngster was
baiting him, and secretly laughing at his offers of bribery.

"They will take you off the job, now that I have discovered your
identity," he asserted, with malicious satisfaction.

"Oh, no," answered Fogerty; "they won't do that. This little interview
merely simplifies matters. You see, sir, I'm an exp