evices, Watson could hold back the collapse of the Mongolia Mine until
after October 19. By straining his credit to the utmost--liquidating
everything--he himself could raise a trifle more than seventy thousand
dollars. He hesitated no longer. Methodically, he apportioned out the
seventy thousand dollars among a dozen brokers, who to-morrow should
buy for him, on a ten point margin, L.D. and M. stock at fifty to
fifty-three.

This done, Bulger locked up the papers again, telephoned for a cab, and
proceeded to his club, where he dined with his customary hilarity and
good humor.

XI

THROUGH THE WALL-PAPER

"You've got to do it!" said Rosalie Le Grange; "no half-way business. I
could show better reasons than I'm tellin'."

Blake paused in his slow walk beside her.

"What reasons?" he asked.

"Now listen to the man!" exclaimed Rosalie. "And ain't it man for you!
Right off, first meeting, I told you enough to put me in jail and now
you won't trust me!"

Blake seemed to see the logic of what she said.

"I have cause to trust you," he said, "and I hope you don't think that
I am afraid of the personal danger. It's just that you're asking me to
do something which--will, which people like me don't do."

"So anxious to be a gentleman that you forgit to be a man!" remarked
Rosalie with asperity. "Now you listen to me. I've told you that she's
held two materializing seances for Robert H. Norcross, haven't I? I've
told you it is crooked materialization--even if there was such a thing
as real cabinet spooks, which there ain't--because I found the ceiling
trap an' the apparatus long ago. And if Mrs. Markham is playin' fake
materializing with old Norcross as a dope, what does it come to?
Obtainin' money, an' big money, under false pretenses! That's enough to
put her behind the bars. So what risk do you take even if you _are_
caught? She'll be more anxious than you to keep it away from the papers
and the police. And Norcross! He'll break his collar-bone to shut it
up!"

Half persuaded, he clutched at his sense of honor.

"But it's a sneaking trick--Annette would call it that."

"Yes, an' ain't it a sneakin' trick to hire a housekeeper to be a spy?"
Rosalie hurled back. "Seems to me you draw a fine line between doin'
your own dirty work an' havin' it done!"

At this plain statement of the case, Blake smiled for the first time
that morning.

"I suppose you're right," he said. "A good officer never sends a man