ded to have
him arrested on an old charge and "sent over." They were very severe
and heartless about Mr. Phelps, but they did not want his money. They
would not touch it! Wallingford could have it all with the exception
of the two hundred and fifty dollars he would have to pay to the
experienced plain-clothes-man impersonator whom Larry, having a wide
acquaintance, would secure.

Mr. Wallingford understood perfectly. He appreciated thoroughly the
motives that actuated Mr. Larry Teller and his friends, and those
motives did them credit. He counted himself, moreover, highly
fortunate in being on hand to take advantage of the situation. Still
moreover, after the trick was turned he would stand a fine dinner for
the entire crowd, including Mr. Pickins, to whom Mr. Teller would
kindly convey his, Mr. Wallingford's, respects.

Accepting this commission with some inward resentment but outward
pleasure, Mr. Teller suggested that the game be played off that very
afternoon. Mr. Wallingford was very sorry. That afternoon and evening
he had business of grave importance. To-morrow evening, however, say
at about nine o'clock, he would be on hand with the five thousand, in
bills of convenient denomination. Mr. Teller might call for him at the
hotel and escort him to the room, although, from having had the
location previously pointed out to him, Mr. Wallingford was quite sure
he could find Mr. Teller's apartment, where the contest was to take
place. Left alone, Mr. Wallingford, in the exuberance of his youth,
lay back in his big chair and spent five solid minutes in chuckling
self-congratulation, to the great mystification of the incoming Mr.
Daw, whom J. Rufus would not quite trust with his reason for mirth.
Feeling the need of really human companionship at this juncture, young
Wallingford called up his convivial friend from Georgia and they went
out to spend another busy and pleasant afternoon and evening, amid a
rapidly widening circle of friends whom these two enterprising and
jovial gentlemen had already managed to attach to them. With an eye to
business, however, Wallingford carefully timed their wanderings so
that he should return, alone, on foot, to his own hotel a trifle after
midnight.

As Mr. Teller and Mr. Wallingford, on the following evening at a few
minutes before nine, turned into the house on Forty-second Street,
they observed a sturdy figure helping a very much inebriated man up
the stone steps just before them, b