immediately
after, and I may have been mistaken and imagined the whole thing."

"But it works in," Hilliard commented. "If the driver saw what you were
looking at and your expression, he would naturally guess what you had
noticed, and he would warn his boss that you had tumbled to it. The
manager would look surprised and annoyed for a moment, then he would
see he must divert your suspicion, and talk to you as if nothing had
happened."

"Quite. That's just what I thought. But again, I may have been
mistaken."

They continued discussing the matter for some time longer, and then
the conversation turned into other channels. Finally the clocks chiming
midnight aroused Merriman, and he got up and said he must be going.

Three days later he had a note from Hilliard.

"Come in tonight about ten if you are doing nothing," it read. "I have a
scheme on, and I hope you'll join in with me. Tell you when I see you."

It happened that Merriman was not engaged that evening, and shortly
after ten the two men were occupying the same arm-chairs at the same
open window, their glasses within easy reach and their cigars well under
way.

"And what is your great idea?" Merriman asked when they had conversed
for a few moments. "If it's as good as your cigars, I'm on."

Hilliard moved nervously, as if he found a difficulty in replying.
Merriman could see that he was excited, and his own interest quickened.

"It's about that tale of yours," Hilliard said at length. "I've been
thinking it over."

He paused as if in doubt. Merriman felt like Alice when she had heard
the mock-turtle's story, but he waited in silence, and presently
Hilliard went on.

"You told it with a certain amount of hesitation," he said. "You
suggested you might be mistaken in thinking there was anything in it.
Now I'm going to make a SUGGESTION with even more hesitation, for it's
ten times wilder than yours, and there is simply nothing to back it up.
But here goes all the same."

His indecision had passed now, and he went on fluently and with a
certain excitement.

"Here you have a trade with something fishy about it. Perhaps you think
that's putting it too strongly; if so, let us say there is something
peculiar about it; something, at all events, to call one's attention to
it, as being in some way out of the common. And when we do think about
it, what's the first thing we discover?"

Hilliard looked inquiringly at his friend. The latter sat listening
careful