rather curious terms," groaned Anthony. "One might call it
an armed truce, I suppose. He seemed to be willing to let matters rest
as they were, and he has done just that ever since; but he told me in so
many words that if ever I tried to break into his particular market, if
ever, for any cause, I offended him in any way, he'd sail in and
advertise me out of business."

"Can he do it?"

"He can do it," Anthony said, with pained conviction. "He can do it,
because he's able to spend a million where I spend ten thousand, and
once he starts Fry's Imperial Liniment is as dead as Julius Caesar. And
when he learns about this thing----"

"He--he might never learn," Johnson Boller said, without even trying to
be convincing.

Anthony laughed forlornly.

"Hell learn; I'm done for!" said he. "It's as good as done and over with
now, Johnson. Almost every cent I have in the world is invested in the
firm, you know, and once that goes to pieces I--why, great Heaven,
Johnson! I'll have to get out and work for a living!"

Johnson Boller, for a little, said nothing at all. Coming from another
man, he would have fancied the statements largely exaggeration and
imagination; coming from Anthony he knew that they were mostly solid
truth.

"Well, I told you in the first place that kid meant trouble," he
muttered.

"You have a prophetic soul!" Anthony sighed.

"Trouble isn't the word!" Mr. Boller mused further. "If you tell the
truth, according to your figuring, the old gentleman will ruin you--but
that doesn't matter much, because when you've told the truth it's a dead
sure thing Vining will let the daylight through you, so that you'll have
no need for money anyway. And if you go on trying to keep it all dark
and succeed in doing it, that Hitchin idiot will have us both jailed for
murder--_and we'll have to produce a David Prentiss before we get out_!"

Anthony, gazing fixedly at him, felt hope that hardly dared to be
creeping into his eyes.

"Johnson, could we get hold of a boy somewhere and bribe him?" he asked.

"To do what?"

"To go into a police court and swear that he was David Prentiss and that
he came here last night and left again about half-past twelve," said the
model citizen, without even reflecting that it involved perjury. "If we
could manage that it might be best of all to let Hitchin go ahead."

"Stick you and me in jail?" Johnson Boller asked harshly.

"Better that than risk----"

"I don't see it!" the less