ame all right; the kind that
would stick to a guy when he was broke, in jail and had the smallpox.
That's your steady, ain't it, Bobby?"

Coming from any one else this query might have seemed a trifle blunt,
but Bobby understood precisely how Mr. Bates meant it, and was
gratified.

"She's the real girl," he admitted.

"I'm for her," stoutly asserted Mr. Bates, as he extracted a huge wad
of crumpled bills from his trousers pocket. "Any old time she wants
anybody strangled or stabbed and you ain't handy, she can call on your
friend Biff. Here's your split of last month's pickings at the gym.
One hundred and eighty-one large, juicy simoleons; count 'em, one
hundred and eighty-one!" And he threw the money on the desk.

"Everything paid?" asked Bobby.

"Here's the receipts," and from inside his vest Mr. Bates produced
them. "Ground rent, light, heat, payroll, advertising, my own little
old weekly envelope and everything; and I got one-eighty-one in my
other kick for my share."

"Very well," said Bobby; "you just put this money of mine into a fund
to buy further equipments when we need them."

"Nit and nix; also no!" declared Mr. Bates emphatically. "This time
the bet goes as she lays. You take a real money drag-down from now
on."

"Mr. Johnson," called Bobby through the open door, "please take charge
of this one hundred and eighty-one dollars, and open a separate
account for my investment in the Bates Athletic Hall. It might be,
Biff," he continued, turning to Mr. Bates, "that yours would turn out
to be the only safe business venture I ever made."

"It ain't no millionaire stunt, but it sure does pay a steady divvy,"
Mr. Bates assured him. "I see a man outside scraping the real-estate
sign off the door. Is he going to paint a new one?"

"I don't know," said Bobby, frowning. "I shall, of course, get into
something very shortly, but I've not settled on anything as yet. The
best thing that has turned up so far is an interest in the Brightlight
Electric Company offered me to-day by Frank L. Sharpe."

"What!" shrieked Biff in a high falsetto, and slapped himself smartly
on the wrist. "Has he been here? I thought it seemed kind of close.
Give me a cigarette till I fumigate."

"What's the matter with the Brightlight Electric Company?" demanded
Bobby.

"Nothing. It's a cinch so far as I know. But Sharpe! Why, say, Bobby,
all the words I'd want to use to tell you about him have been left out
of the dictionary so the