ripostes_ were fast and furious.

Finally the soiled placer presented a binder which called for five
thousand dollars to cover Jacob Warbalowsky on his stock of artificial
flowers and feathers while contained on the fourth loft of a six-story
factory building which Mr. Cuyler knew to be of cheap and light
construction, dirty and hazardous throughout, and each floor but one of
which was tenanted by a concern whose name indicated that its
pyromorality, so to speak, was to say the least questionable. Mr. Cuyler
quite distinctly recalled, scanning the names of the tenants in the card
cabinet which gave the occupation and tariff rate of each, that a few
years before, the concern on the third floor, having manufactured a stock
of raincoats which it found impossible to sell, had been strongly
suspected of disposing of its goods to the fire insurance companies
instead of to the retail trade by the simple expedient of the double gas
jet. This popular device was as follows. The proprietor, who was
detained at his office after his employees had gone home, would, when he
himself departed, leave two gas jets turned on, one at each end of the
factory, one burning (as usual) and the other unlit. Long enough
afterward so as to establish an alibi and remove all suspicion from
himself, the escaping gas would meet the flame, and there would be an
explosion and a fire which usually resulted in the desired destruction of
the useless but fully insured merchandise. The cause of the fire could
almost always be traced to a leaky gas jet, for which, of course, the
assured was not responsible.

Mr. Cuyler, regarding the names of the tenants, noticed that the top
floor was occupied by a maker of automobile accessories, named Pendleton.
He turned cheerfully back to the placer.

"Phil, I'd like to help you out," he said, "but I can't write anything in
that building. I know it's hard to get. Why, my brother-in-law's
factory is on the top floor, and only last Sunday, when I saw him up at
the house, he asked me if I wasn't going to loosen up and put the
Guardian on for a small line. His broker can't get anywhere near enough
to cover him. And I had to tell him nay, nay. You couldn't really
expect me to do something for you, Phil, that I couldn't do for one of my
own family."

The soiled placer removed a cigarette butt from his mouth, and threw it
on the floor with a gesture of extreme impatience.

"Your brother-in-law like hell!" he remar