erry Dooley's alert countenance. Jerry crooked a finger at him and
Matt strolled over to the desk.

"I've been watching you milling the idea round in your head," said
Jerry. "I saw you reject it. You're crazy! It can be done."

"How?" Matt queried eagerly.

"Go get an option on her for the lowest price you can get--then form a
syndicate and sell her to them at a higher price; or, if you don't want
to do that, form your syndicate to buy her at the option price, and if
you work it right you can get the job of managing owner. I want to tell
you that two and one-half per cent. commission on her freight earnings
would make a nice income."

"I wonder whom I could get into the syndicate?" Matt queried.

Jerry scratched his head.

"Well," he suggested, "you're mighty close to old Cappy Ricks. If you
could hook him for a piece of her, the rest would be easy. Any shipping
man on the Street will follow where Cappy Ricks leads. I'd try Pollard
& Reilly; Redell, of the West Coast Trading Company; Jack Haviland,
the ship chandler; Charley Beyers, the ship's grocer and butcher; A. B.
Cahill & Co., the coal dealers; Pete Hansen, of the Bulkhead Hotel down
on the Embarcadero--he's always got a couple of thousand dollars to
put into a clean-cut shipping enterprise. Then there's Rickey, the
ship-builder, and--yes, even Alcott, the crimp, will take a piece of
her. I'd look in on Louis Wiley, the chronometer man, and Cox, the
coppersmith--why I'd take in every firm and individual who might hope
to get business out of the ship; and, you bet, I'd sell 'em all a little
block of stock in the S. S. Narcissus Company."

"It might be done," Matt answered evasively. "I'll think it over."

He did think it over very seriously the greater portion of that night.
As a result, instead of going to his office next morning he went to
Mission Street bulkhead and engaged a launch, and forty minutes later,
in response to his hail, the aged watchman aboard the Narcissus came to
the rail and asked him what he wanted.

"I want to come aboard!" Matt shouted.

"Got a permit from the office?"

"No."

"Orders are to allow nobody aboard without a permit."

"How do you like the color of this permit?" Matt called back, and waved
a greenback.

The answer came in the shape of a Jacob's ladder promptly tossed
overside and Matt Peasley mounted the towering hulk of the Narcissus.

"What do you want?" the watchman again demanded as he pouched the bill
Matt