xamine the
safe."

"Alone without a safe feller you couldn't do nothing," Borrochson
declared, "but if you mean that I shouldn't be there to see the whole
thing, I tell you now the deal is off."

"Don't you trust me?" Wolfson asked, in accents of hurt astonishment.

"Sure I trust you," Borrochson said; "but if you should find it a big
diamond, we will say, for instance, in that safe, where would I come
in?"

"You think I would steal the diamond and tell you nothing, and then
refuse to take the safe?" Wolfson asked.

"I don't think nothing," Borrochson replied stubbornly, and lapsed into
silence.

Here was a deadlock that bade fair to break up the deal.

"Take a chance on me, Borrochson," Wolfson said at last.

"Why should I take a chance on you, Wolfson," Borrochson replied, "when
we can both take a chance on the safe? If you don't want to take it, I
will take it. You don't got to buy the safe, Wolfson, if you don't want
to."

For five minutes more Wolfson pondered and at length he surrendered.

"All right," he said. "I'll make you this proposition: If I find it
anything in the safe I will pay you six hundred, and if I don't find it
nothing in the safe, I will pay you one hundred dollars for the
privilege of looking. I'm willing to take a chance, too."

"That ain't no chance what you take it," Borrochson cried. "That's a
dead-sure certainty."

"Why is it a certainty, Borrochson?" Wolfson retorted. "If I don't find
nothing in the safe you can keep it, and then you got it one hundred
dollars from me; and when Rubin comes into the store you could sell him
the safe for five hundred dollars, anyway. So which whatever way you
look at it, Borrochson, you get six hundred dollars for the safe."

Borrochson frowned in deep consideration of the plan.

"I tell you what it is, Wolfson," he said at last, "and this is my last
word, so sure as you stand there. If you don't want to consider it, the
deal is off. Pay me two hundred dollars now in advance and four hundred
dollars additional when you find it something in the safe. That is all
there is to it."

Wolfson looked hard at Borrochson, but there was a glitter of finality
in the jeweller's eyes that clinched things.

"And you and the safe feller can look at the safe alone," Borrochson
concluded.

"I'm satisfied," Wolfson said finally, and drew a checkbook from his
waistcoat-pocket.

Borrochson raised his hand solemnly.

"Either cash _oder_ nothing," was his