a figure, passed it to Lydia, and she coolly wrote a total, underscoring
it heavily.

"That is the amount," she said.

Quarrier looked at the pad which she had tossed upon the desk. Then he
slowly wetted his pen with ink, and, laying the loose cheque flat, began
to fill it in. Afterward he dried it, and, reading it carefully, pushed
it aside and rose.

"It wouldn't be advisable for you to stop payment, you know," observed
Mortimer insolently, lying back in his chair and stretching his legs.

"I know," said Quarrier, pausing to turn on them a deathly stare. Then
he went away. After awhile they heard the door close. But there was
no sound from the electric hansom, and Mortimer rose and walked to the
window.

"He's gone," he said.

Lydia stood at the desk, examining the cheque.

"We ought to afford a decent touring-car now," she suggested--"like that
yellow and black Serin-Chanteur car of Mr. Plank's."

CHAPTER XIII THE SELLING PRICE

The heat, which had been severe in June, driving the last fashionable
loiterer into the country, continued fiercely throughout July. August
was stifling; the chestnut leaves in the parks curled up and grew
brittle; the elms were blotched; brown stretches scarred the lawns; the
blazing colour of the geranium beds seemed to intensify the heat, like a
bed of living coals.

Nobody who was anybody remained in town--except some wealthy business
men and their million odd employes; but the million, being nobodies,
didn't count.

Nobody came into town; that is to say that a million odd strangers came
as usual, swelling the sweltering, resident population sufficiently to
animate the main commercial thoroughfares morning and evening, but they
didn't count; the money they spent was, however, very carefully counted.

The fashionable columns of the newspapers informed the fashionable
ex-urbanated that the city was empty--though the East Side reeked like
a cattle-pen, and another million or two gasped on the hot, tin roofs
under the stars, or buried their dirty faces in the parched park grass.

What the press meant to say was that the wealthy section of the city
within the shadow of St. Patrick's twin white spires and north of
Fifty-ninth Street was as empty and silent as an abandoned gold-mine.
Which was true. Miles of elaborate, untenanted dwellings glimmered blank
under the moon and stood tomb-like in barren magnificence against the
blazing blue of noon. Miles of plate-glass windows