be handled."

It was duly signed and duly witnessed by the aged and anemic cashier of
the Osgood office, and Mr. Wilkinson placed it carefully in his
pocketbook. Then he rose with alacrity.

"I'm sure you'll pardon my insistence on this little technicality," he
said smoothly; "but you business men, you professional men, are so
shrewd, so very alert and quick of mind, that a comparative novice like
myself is mere wax in your strong, deft fingers. . . . And now to
cipher out some way to secure the golden apple which hangs so close to
hand, yet so very dragon-guarded."

"That's your work," rejoined Cole. "I won't attempt to offer
suggestions. Nearly every insurance broker in Boston has at one time
or another had a go at John M. Hurd. Boring him to death has been
unsuccessfully tried several times, but as you are in the family, you
may of course have superior facilities to any of your predecessors.
Blackmail might accomplish something. But really I can't help you any,
Charlie. If I had any plan, I'd deserve to hang from your friend's
pergola roof for giving it to you instead of using it myself. I guess
this is where you begin to do a little hard thinking."

"What marvelous incisiveness you possess, Benny," his friend commented.
"It is an uplift to hear you. But you see thinking is quite in my
line. Any one who has had to think as hard as I how to keep the lean
white wolf of the Green Mountains--or vice versa--from my shifting
doorstep, certainly need not tremble before the necessity of thought.
But I have learned this--when I want to get something I don't know how
to get, I invariably regard it the height of sapience to go and ask
some one who does know how. In this case I can ask without going, for
the very man is here at hand."

"I've already told you that I can assist you no further," said Cole.
"I've given you the idea. You'll have to do the rest, yourself."

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of you," Wilkinson rejoined coolly. "I meant a
man of perhaps not better, but certainly rather broader, experience. I
shall go for advice to Mr. Silas Osgood."

And he opened the door and disappeared through it before Cole could
voice a protest. He would have much preferred that the senior partner
know nothing of the scheme unless it should take concrete form by its
success. If Wilkinson by any chance should secure the traction
company's insurance, the business should properly be handled by the
firm of Silas Osgood an