g as if I built her. Besides, you've no idea what pickings
there are about a wreck--copper, lead, rigging, anchors, chains, even
the crockery, Loudon!"

"You seem to me to forget one trifle," said I. "Before you pick that
wreck, you've got to buy her, and how much will she cost?"

"One hundred dollars," replied Jim, with the promptitude of an
automaton.

"How on earth do you guess that?" I cried.

"I don't guess; I know it," answered the Commercial Force. "My dear boy,
I may be a galoot about literature, but you'll always be an outsider in
business. How do you suppose I bought the James L. Moody for two hundred
and fifty, her boats alone worth four times the money? Because my name
stood first in the list. Well it stands there again; I have the naming
of the figure, and I name a small one because of the distance: but it
wouldn't matter what I named; that would be the price."

"It sounds mysterious enough," said I. "Is this public auction
conducted in a subterranean vault? Could a plain citizen--myself, for
instance--come and see?"

"O, everything's open and above board!" he cried indignantly. "Anybody
can come, only nobody bids against us; and if he did, he would get
frozen out. It's been tried before now, and once was enough. We hold
the plant; we've got the connection; we can afford to go higher than
any outsider; there's two million dollars in the ring; and we stick at
nothing. Or suppose anybody did buy over our head--I tell you, Loudon,
he would think this town gone crazy; he could no more get business
through on the city front than I can dance; schooners, divers, men--all
he wanted--the prices would fly right up and strike him."

"But how did you get in?" I asked. "You were once an outsider like your
neighbours, I suppose?"

"I took hold of that thing, Loudon, and just studied it up," he replied.
"It took my fancy; it was so romantic, and then I saw there was boodle
in the thing; and I figured on the business till no man alive could give
me points. Nobody knew I had an eye on wrecks till one fine morning I
dropped in upon Douglas B. Longhurst in his den, gave him all the facts
and figures, and put it to him straight: 'Do you want me in this ring?
or shall I start another?' He took half an hour, and when I came back,
'Pink,' says he, 'I've put your name on.' The first time I came to the
top, it was that Moody racket; now it's the Flying Scud."

Whereupon Pinkerton, looking at his watch, uttered an exclamat