ake up there. I've been trying to beat it into
you all night. We haven't lost a cent. The pool went through like a
charm. Drake fooled the whole bunch!"

"What--what do you mean?" said DeLancy, staring up.

"The running down was only the first step; the real game was to buy up
the control. All our selling short was just bluff, charged up to the
expense account and nothing else."

"All bluff," repeated Fred in a daze. "I don't seem to understand. I
can't get it."

"Well, get this then--feast your eyes on it," said Bojo, sitting beside
him, his arm about his shoulder and the check held before his eyes.
"That's profit--my part out of ten millions Drake cleaned up by selling
out to the Gunther crowd. Listen." He repeated in detail the story of
the night, adding: "Now do you see it? Every cent we lost bearing the
stock goes to expenses--that's understood."

"You mean--" DeLancy rose, steadied himself, and lurched against a
chair. "You mean what I lost--what I--"

"What you've lost and Louise's losses, too," said Bojo quickly--"every
cent is paid by the pool. There wasn't the slightest question about
that!"

"Is that the truth?"

"Yes."

Fred's sunken eyes rested on Bojo's an interminable moment, and the
agony written on that fevered face steeled Crocker in his resolve.
Presently DeLancy, as though convinced, turned away.

"Good Lord, I thought I was done for!" he said in a whisper. His lip
trembled, he caught at his throat, and the next moment his racked body
was shaken with convulsive sobs.

"Let yourself go, Fred; it's all right--everything's all right," said
Bojo hastily. He left the den, nodding to Granning, and went to his
bedroom. His bag was still on the bed, where he had thrown it unopened.
He took out his clothes mechanically, feeling the weariness of the
wasted night, and suddenly on the top of a folded jacket he found a
card, in Patsie's writing; a few words only, timidly offered.

"I hope, oh, I do hope everything will come all right," and below these
two lines that started reveries in his eyes, the signature was not
Patsie, but Drina.

When he came into the den again after a hasty toilet, DeLancy had got
hold of himself again.

"Better, old boy?" said Bojo, pulling his ear.

"If you knew--if you knew what I'd been through," said Fred with a quick
breath.

"I know," said Bojo, shuddering instinctively. "Now let's get to
business. You'll feel a lot better when you tidy up your bank account.