s, what we shall do about it?' He pointed an
accusing finger at the Farrel from Washington. 'You were not
authorized to exist; properly we should retransmit you, and without
reassembling you would simply cease to be.'

"The man addressed looked terrified. 'It would be murder!' he
protested.

"'Would it?' Drayle inquired of me.

"I told him that it could not be proved inasmuch as there would be no
_corpus delicti_ and hence nothing on which to base a charge.

"But the Washington Farrel seemed to have more than an academic
interest in the question and grew obstinate.

"'Nothing doing!' he announced emphatically. 'Here I am and here I
stay. I started from this place this morning and now I'm back, and as
for that big ape over there I don't know nothing about him--except
he'll be dead damn soon if he don't keep away from my wife.'

* * * * *

"The other Drayle-made man leaped up at this, and again I expected
violence. But Buchannon flung himself between, and they subsided,
muttering.

"'Very well, then,' Drayle continued, when the room was quiet, 'here
is another solution. We can, as you realize, duplicate Mrs. Farrel,
and I will double your present possessions.'

"This time it was Mrs. Farrel who was dissatisfied. 'You ain't
talking to me,' she informed Drayle. 'Me stand naked in front of all
them lamps and get turned into smoke? Not me!' A smile spread over her
face and her eyes twinkled with deviltry. 'I didn't never think I'd be
in one of them triangles like in the movies, and with my own husbands,
but seein' I am, I'm all for keeping them both. Then I might know
where one of them was some of the time.'

"But neither of the men took to this idea and the problem appeared
increasingly complex. I proposed that the survivor be determined by
lot, but this suggestion won no support from anyone. Again the two men
spoke at the same instant and in the same words. It was like a
carefully rehearsed chorus. 'I know my rights, and I ain't going to be
gypped out of them!'

"It was at this point that Drayle attempted bribery. He offered fifty
thousand dollars to the man who would abandon Mrs. Farrel. But this
scheme fell through because both men sought the opportunity and Mrs.
Farrel objected volubly.

"So in the end Drayle promised each of them the same amount as a price
for silence and left the matter of their relationships to their own
settlement.

* * * *