spend a
good deal of my time in Wichita Falls. I hoped I'd find you here, for
this morning I heard you describe your invention and--admiration
overcame me. I felt constrained to congratulate you upon your
scientific attainments. Marvelous, my dear Doctor! Or is it Professor
Mallow?" The speaker laughed heartily. "Won't you introduce me to
these--let us say magnetic forces of nature that you have discovered?"
He indicated the two partners.

"What do you want?" Mallow barked.

"Momentary agitation has robbed our Professor of his habitual
politeness--a not unusual phenomenon of the preoccupied scientific
mind." These words were directed at McWade and Stoner. "My name is
Gray. Perhaps Doctor Mallow has made mention of me."

"So you're the lad that threw pepper in his eyes?" Brick Stoner stared
at the newcomer with undisguised interest. He rose, as did McWade.
"I'll say we've heard of you. Your name's getting as common as
safety-razor blades. You've been cleaning up, haven't you?"

"Um-m, moderately." Calvin Gray shook hands with the promoters, then to
the agitated Mallow, who still peered at him apprehensively, he said:
"Come, come! Let down your hammer! Uncoil!"

"Listen, you!" the other burst forth. "I beat that thing out. I'm clean
and I don't intend to go back. You're a strong guy and you got a bunch
of kale, and you're a getter, but the taller they come the harder they
fall. You can be had." The speaker was desperate; his face was flushed
with anger, the tone of his voice was defiant and threatening.

Gray helped himself to a chair, crossed his legs, and lit a cigar.
McWade and Stoner neither moved nor spoke.

"My dear Mallow, you wrong me." In the newcomer's voice there was no
longer any mockery. "I gave you credit for more intelligence. We played
our little farce and it is done--the episode is closed, so far as I am
concerned. I supposed you understood that much. I helped you and I came
here to enlist your help."

"You helped _me_?" Mallow showed his teeth in a snarl.

"Precisely. Think a moment. Was it not odd that I failed to appear
against you? That the case was never pressed, the prosecution dropped?"

"I s'pose you were afraid to go through. Thought I'd get you."

Gray shook his head impatiently. "Afraid? Of you? Oh, Mallow! Had I
feared your majestic wrath, do you think I would have arranged for that
doctor to see you every day? And paid his bill? Who, pray, sent in
those good things for you to ea