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And at that Hartridge, to Marr’s most sincere discomfiture, shook his head.

“I’ll tell you how it is with me,” said Hartridge. “These broker fellows downtown have been touchin’ me up purty hard. I guess this here New York game ain’t exactly my game. I’m aimin’ to close up what little deals I’ve still got on here and beat it back to God’s country while I’ve still got a shirt on my back. I’m much obliged to you, Markham, for wantin’ to take me into your scheme. It sounds good the way you tell it, but it seems like ever’thing round this burg sounds good till you test it out–and so I guess you better count me out and find yourself a partner somewheres else.”

There was definiteness in his refusal; the shake of his head emphasized it too. Marr’s role should have been the persuasive, the insistent, the argumentative, the cajoling; but Marr was distinctly out of temper.

Here he had ventured into danger to play for a fat purse and all he would get for his trouble and his pains and the risk he had run would be just those things–pains and trouble and risk–these, and nothing more nourishing.

“Oh, very well then, Hartridge,” he said angrily, “if you haven’t any confidence in me–if you can’t see that this is a play that naturally can’t go wrong–why, we’ll let it drop.”

“Oh, I’ve got confidence in you–” began Hartridge, but Marr, no patience left in him, cut him short.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” he snapped. “Forget it! Let’s talk about the weather.”

He lifted his straw hat as though to ease its pressure upon his head and then settled it well down over his eyes. This was the sign to the Gulwings’ messenger, watching him covertly from behind a newspaper over on the far side of the lobby, that the plan had failed. The signal he had so confidently expected to give–a trick of relighting his cigar and flipping the match into the air–would have conveyed to the watcher the information that all augured well. The latter’s job then would have been to get up from his chair and step outside and bear the word to Sig Gulwing, who, letter-perfect in the part of the conspiring telegraph manager, would promptly enter and present himself to Marr, and by Marr be introduced to the Westerner. The hat-shifting device had been devised in the remote contingency of failure on Marr’s part to win over the chosen victim. Plainly the collapse of the plot had been totally unexpected by the messenger. Over his paper he stared at Marr until Marr repeated the gesture. Then, fully convinced now that there had been no mistake, the messenger arose and headed for the door, the whole thing–signaling, duplicated signaling and all–having taken very much less time for its action than has here been required to describe it.

The signal bearer had taken perhaps five steps when Hartridge spoke words which instantly filled Marr with regret that he had been so impetuously prompt to take a no for a no.

“Say, hold your hosses, Markham,” said Hartridge contritely. “Don’t be in such a hurry! Come to think about it, I might go so far as to risk altogether as much, say, as eight or ten thousand dollars in this scheme of yours–I don’t want to be a piker.”

In the hundredth part of a second Marr’s mind reacted; his brain was galvanized into speedy action. Ten thousand wasn’t very much–not nearly so much as he had counted on–still, ten thousand dollars was ten thousand dollars; besides, if the Gulwings did their work cannily the ten thousand ought to be merely a starter, an initiation fee, really, for the victim. Once he was enmeshed, trust Sig and Alf to trim him to his underwear; the machinery of the wire-tapping game was geared for just that.

He must stop the departing messenger then, must make him understand that the wrong sign had been given and that the fish was nibbling the bait. Yet the messenger’s back was to them; ten steps, fifteen steps more, and he would be out of the door.