y story, and it will pay you to do a
week of listening in the next five minutes. Awhile ago an eminent
scientist, unknown to me or to my partner, Mr. Stoner, came into our
office, which is at your backs, one flight up, second door to the
right, and showed us an electrical device he has been working on for
the last eight years. He claimed he had it perfected and that it would
indicate the presence of oil on the same principle that one mineral
attracts another. 'Oil is a mineral,' said he, 'and I think I've got
its magnetic complement. I believe my invention will work.'

"'I'll bet a thousand dollars it won't,' I told him. But what do you
think that pilgrim did? He took me up. Then he bet Stoner another
thousand that I'd made a bad bet." McWade grinned in sympathy with the
general amusement. "We arranged a thorough test. We took him,
blindfolded, through the field, and, believe me or not, he called the
turn on forty-three wells straight and never missed it once. Call it a
miracle if you choose, but it cost Brick and me two thousand iron men,
and I've got ten thousand more that says he can do the trick for you.
I'll let a committee of responsible citizens take a dozen five-gallon
cans and fill one with oil and the rest with water and set them in a
row behind a brick wall. My ten, or any part of it, says his electric
wiggle stick will point to the one with the oil. What do you say to
that? Here's a chance for a quick clean-up. Who cares to take me on?"

From the edge of the crowd Gray watched the effect of this offer.
Divining rods, he well knew, were as old as the oil industry, but he
was surprised to see that fully half of this audience appeared to put
faith in the claim, and the other half were not entirely skeptical. A
man at his side began reciting an experience of his own.

McWade now introduced the miracle worker himself, and Gray rose on
tiptoe to see him. A moment, then he smiled widely, for the eminent
scientist was none other than Mr. Mallow--Mallow, a bit pallid and
pasty, as if from confinement, and with eyes hidden behind dark
goggles. With a show of some embarrassment, the inventor displayed his
tester, a sufficiently impressive device with rubber handles and a
resistance coil attached to a dry battery, which he carried in his
pocket.

Gray looked on as the comedy was played out. It transpired that
Professor Mallow had tested, among other properties, the newest
McWade-Stoner lease, a company to drill whic