is hands.

"It's that or the revolver," said Tinker sweetly.

The financier clutched at his hair and raved: fear and avarice,
conflicting, tore at his vitals. He owed his millions to no genuine
force of character, but to luck, industry, and dishonesty. In this
great crisis of his life he was helpless. Tinker, trained from
babyhood by his wise father to study his fellow creatures, understood
something of this, and began to goad him to the effort.

"It's a lot of money to lose," said he thoughtfully.

"The sweat of my brow! The sweat of my brow!" groaned the financier,
who had really made it by the nimbleness of his tongue.

"And it seems a pity to blow your brains out, which hurts a good deal,
before you've tried every chance," said Tinker.

The financier groaned.

"At any rate, if we did come a cropper, you'd be no worse off."

"Ah!" cried the financier, stopping short. "Why shouldn't I wake Herr
Schlugst, and get him to take me?"

"Because he won't," said Tinker quietly. "He told me that nothing
would induce him to try a flight in the night. He's all right in the
daytime, but the darkness funks him. Foreigners are like that; they'll
go to a certain point all right, but there they stop. That's what I've
noticed. I notice these things, you know." He spoke indulgently.

It never occurred to the financier to doubt him; he was already a
little under the influence of the cooler head. He walked up and down a
little longer; and Tinker said no more. He had been taught to leave
people to themselves when he saw them beginning to come to his way of
thinking.

At last, with a horrible grimace which showed the depth of his agony,
the financier cried, "I'll come! I'll come! I'll trust my life--oh,
my precious life--to you. After all, you rescued the Kernaby child;
and you had to fight to do it! I'll risk it! Oh, my money! My money!"

"Very good," said Tinker. "I'll come for you at half-past twelve. Put
on your warmest great-coat. It'll be cold." And he slipped gently out
of the room.

Five minutes later the distracted financier rang his bell, and ordered
a bottle of 1820 liqueur brandy. It was the best thing he could have
done: a private detective, who was sitting on guard in a room lower
down the corridor to see that he did not go downstairs again, believed
him to have thrown up the sponge, and to be drowning his sorrow, and
allowed himself to become immersed in the current number of the _Famil