te the screen that
ambushed the washing apparatus. "I don't remember any securities," he
remarked as he applied a match to the off end of a particularly green
and vicious-looking stogy.

"Why, of course you do, Mr. Tutt!" insisted Miss Wiggin. "Don't you
remember those great piles of bonds and stocks that Doctor Barrows left
here with you to keep for him?"

"Oh, those!" Mr. Tutt smiled inscrutably. "Mr. Barrows is not a
physician," he corrected her, running his eye over the General Sessions
calendar. "He's only a 'doc'--that is to say, one who doctors. You know
you can doctor a lot of things besides the human anatomy. No, I guess
they're not listed on the Stock Exchange or anywhere else."

"Well, here's a schedule I made of them--Miss Sondheim typed it--and
their total face value is seventeen million eight hundred thousand
dollars. I tried to find out all I could, but none of the firms on Wall
Street had ever heard of any of them--excepting of one that was traded
in on the curb up to within a few weeks. There's Great Lakes and
Canadian Southern Railway Company," she went on, "Chicago Water Front
and Terminal Company, Great Geyser Texan Petroleum and Llano Estacado
Land Company--dozens and dozens of them, and not one has an office or,
so far as I can find out, any tangible existence--but the one I spoke
of."

"Which is this great exception?" queried Mr. Tutt absently as he
searched through the _Law Journal_ for the case he was going to try that
afternoon. "You said one of them had been dealt in on the curb? You
astonish me!"

"It's got a funny name," she answered. "It almost sounds as if they
meant it for a joke--Horse's Neck Extension."

"I guess they meant it for a joke all right--on the public," chuckled
her employer. "How many shares are there?"

"A hundred thousand," she answered.

"Jumping Jehoshaphat!" ejaculated Mr. Tutt. "How on earth did old Doc
manage to get hold of them?"

"It sold for only ten cents a share!" replied Miss Wiggin. "That would
mean ten thousand dollars--"

"If Doc paid for it," supplemented Mr. Tutt. "Which he probably didn't.
What's it selling for now?"

"It isn't selling at all."

Mr. Tutt pressed the button that summoned Willie.

"When you haven't anything better to do," he said to her, "why don't you
go round and see what has become of--of--Horse's Neck Extension?"

"I will," assented Miss Wiggin. "It makes me feel rich just to talk
about such things. I just love it."