e without passion and with a coldblooded insistence not lost
on Burlingame. Taking down a calendar from the wall, he laid it beside
the paper on the table before the too eager lawyer. "Examine the dates,"
he said. "At twelve o'clock tonight Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, Baxter,
& Simmons are free to act, if the money is not at the disposal of the
syndicate by then; but till then my option is indefeasible. Does that
meet the case or not?"

"It meets the case," said Burlingame in a morose voice, rising. "If
you can produce the money before the stroke of midnight, why can't you
produce it now? What's the use of bluffing! It can't do any good in the
end. Your credit--"

"My credit has been stopped by your friends," interrupted Crozier, "but
my resources are current."

"Midnight is not far off," viciously remarked Burlingame as he made for
the door.

Crozier intercepted him. "One word with you on another business before
you go," he said. "The tar-and-feathers for which Mrs. Tynan asks will
be yours at any moment I raise my hand in Askatoon. There are enough
women alone who would do it."

"Talk of that after midnight," sneered Burlingame desperately as the
door was opened for him by Crozier. "Better not go out by the front
gate," remarked Crozier scornfully. "Mrs. Tynan is a woman of her word,
and the hose is handy."

A moment later, with contemptuous satisfaction, he saw Burlingame climb
the picket-fence at the side of the house.

Turning back into the room, he threw up his arms.
"Midnight--midnight--my God, where am I to get the money! I must--I must
have it... It's the only way back."

Sitting down at the table, he dropped his head into his hands and shut
his eyes in utter dejection. "Mona--by Heaven, no, I'll never take it
from her!" he said once, and clenched his hands at his temples and sat
on and on unmoving.

CHAPTER XVII. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT?

For a full half-hour Crozier sat buried in dark reflection, then he
slowly raised his head, and for a minute looked round dazedly. His
absorption had been so great that for a moment he was like one who had
awakened upon unfamiliar things. As when in a dream of the night the
history of years will flash past like a ray of light, so for the bad
half-hour in which Crozier had given himself up to despair, his mind had
travelled through an incongruous series of incidents of his past life,
and had also revealed pictures of solution after solution of his present