shorts shall be the veriest gamblers, of course,
and they will get no more than they deserve."

"And one other thing, Mr. Harnish," Guggenhammer said, "if you exceed
your available cash, or the amount you care to invest in the venture,
don't fail immediately to call on us. Remember, we are behind you."

"Yes, we are behind you," Dowsett repeated.

Nathaniel Letton nodded his head in affirmation.

"Now about that double dividend on the eighteenth--" John Dowsett drew
a slip of paper from his note-book and adjusted his glasses.

"Let me show you the figures. Here, you see..."

And thereupon he entered into a long technical and historical
explanation of the earnings and dividends of Ward Valley from the day
of its organization.

The whole conference lasted not more than an hour, during which time
Daylight lived at the topmost of the highest peak of life that he had
ever scaled. These men were big players. They were powers. True, as
he knew himself, they were not the real inner circle. They did not
rank with the Morgans and Harrimans. And yet they were in touch with
those giants and were themselves lesser giants. He was pleased, too,
with their attitude toward him. They met him deferentially, but not
patronizingly. It was the deference of equality, and Daylight could
not escape the subtle flattery of it; for he was fully aware that in
experience as well as wealth they were far and away beyond him.

"We'll shake up the speculating crowd," Leon Guggenhammer proclaimed
jubilantly, as they rose to go. "And you are the man to do it, Mr.
Harnish. They are bound to think you are on your own, and their shears
are all sharpened for the trimming of newcomers like you."

"They will certainly be misled," Letton agreed, his eerie gray eyes
blazing out from the voluminous folds of the huge Mueller with which he
was swathing his neck to the ears. "Their minds run in ruts. It is
the unexpected that upsets their stereotyped calculations--any new
combination, any strange factor, any fresh variant. And you will be
all that to them, Mr. Harnish. And I repeat, they are gamblers, and
they will deserve all that befalls them. They clog and cumber all
legitimate enterprise. You have no idea of the trouble they cause men
like us--sometimes, by their gambling tactics, upsetting the soundest
plans, even overturning the stablest institutions."

Dowsett and young Guggenhammer went away in one motor-car, and Letton
by himsel