he gentlemen could not think of that. It was preposterous. They would
not consider any other than a cash offer to begin with, nor less than
twenty-five hundred to end with.

"Very well, then," said J. Rufus; "I can do without your list," which
was no matter for wonder, since he had a duplicate of it in his desk
at that very moment.

* * * * *

Henry Smalzer was the first man on that defunct building and loan
company list, and him Wallingford went to see. He found Mr. Smalzer in
a little shoe repair shop, with a shoe upturned on his knee and held
firmly in place by a strap passing under his foot. Mr. Smalzer had
centrifugal whiskers, and long habit of looking up without rising from
his work had given his eyes a coldly suspicious look. Moreover,
socialistic argument, in red type, was hung violently upon the walls,
and Mr. Wallingford, being a close student of the psychological moment
and man, merely had a loose shoe-button tightened.

The next man on the list was a barber with his hair parted in the
middle and hand-curled in front. In the shop was no literature but the
Police Gazette, and in the showcase were six brands of stogies and one
brand of five-cent cigars. Here Mr. Wallingford merely purchased a
shave, reflecting that he could put a good germicide on his face when
he returned to the hotel.

He began to grow impatient when he found that his third man kept a
haberdashery, but, nevertheless, he went in. A clerk of the pale-eyed,
lavender-tie type was gracing the front counter, but in the rear, at a
little standing desk behind a neat railing, stood one who was
unmistakably the proprietor, though he wore a derby hat cocked on his
head and a big cigar cocked in the opposite corner of his mouth.
Tossed on the back part of the desk was a race-track badge, and the
man was studying a form sheet!

"Mr. Merrill, I believe," said Wallingford confidently approaching
that gentleman and carelessly laying his left hand--the one with the
three-carat diamond upon the third finger--negligently upon the rail.

Mr. Merrill's keen, dark-gray eyes rested first upon that three-carat
ring, then upon the three-carat stone in Mr. Wallingford's carmine
cravat, then upon Mr. Wallingford's jovial countenance with the
multiplicity of smile wrinkles about the eyes, and Mr. Merrill himself
smiled involuntarily.

"The same," he admitted.

"Mr. Merrill," propounded Wallingford, "how would you like to borrow