it,"
accused the older man. "When will you stop mixing women with business?"

Paul was silent. Indeed there was nothing that he could say.

"And now look at this note," pursued Balcom, in growing rage. "It brings
things to a head. What can we do?"

He thrust the note at Paul, who read it. Balcom himself reread it,
crumpled it in anger, tore it, and threw the pieces in violence on the
floor.

This time it was to be Paul who was to formulate a plan. It was of such
a dark and criminal nature that even Herbert Balcom, hardened as he was
himself, was for the moment appalled at his son's temerity. But as he
listened to Paul's words they fascinated him and he leaned forward the
better to take in the scheme.

As Paul and his father planned, it seemed that here was power unlimited,
wealth beyond all counting and without the possibility of discovery.
For, like most men of his caliber, the approbation of the community was
dear to Balcom.

"Good, Paul!" approved Balcom. "Go to it at once."

Paul looked keenly at his father.

"Haven't you anything to add?"

"No, I have nothing to advise. The scheme is perfect, and as you
conceived it you can also execute it. The best of luck to you, my boy."

A few moments later Paul went out, his dark face beaming at being
reinstated in his father's good graces. He was full of his plan.

Down in one of the city's worst sections and near the river-front there
stood an old ramshackle building. Why it had not been condemned by the
building inspectors was a mystery. But it stood in all its squalid
ugliness. The door and the windows were locked and shuttered. One could
see at a glance that the building had been long unused.

There was an alley strewn with tin cans and other refuse leading to the
back of the house, and it was down a flight of broken brick steps that
Old Meg, the fortune-teller, had her den where through the superstitions
of those inhabiting the neighborhood she managed to eke out a miserable
existence. The interior of the den was unspeakably filthy. The furniture
consisted of a broken-down couch, a chest of drawers in a like
condition, a card-table, a few kitchen chairs, and some boxes. Most of
the panes in the windows had been broken and the empty spaces had been
covered with old newspapers. Consequently, a candle thrust into an old
wine-bottle supplied the only real light.

At the table, idly shuffling a pack of grimy cards, sat Old Meg, a
horrible old hag, wrinkled in