ethods of the gas
companies, the book-agents, and the riggers of the stock-market. Give me
Wall Street and you take Dick Turpin and all his crew. But what has set your
mind to working on the Dick Turpin end of it anyhow? Thinking of going in
for that sort of thing yourself?"

"M-m-m yes," replied Holmes, hesitatingly. "I am. Not that I pine to become
one of the Broom Squires myself, but because I--well, I may be forced into
it."

"Take my advice, Raffles," I interrupted, earnestly. "Let fire-arms and
highways alone. There's too much of battle, murder, and sudden death in
loaded guns, and surplus of publicity in street work."

"You mustn't take me so literally, Jenkins," he retorted. "I'm not going to
follow precisely in the steps of Turpin, but a hold-up on the public highway
seems to be the only way out of a problem which I have been employed to
settle. Do you know young Billington Rand?"

"By sight," said I, with a laugh. "And by reputation. You're not going to
hold him up, are you?" I added, contemptuously.

"Why not?" said Holmes.

"It's like breaking into an empty house in search of antique furniture," I
explained. "Common report has it that Billington Rand has already been
skinned by about every skinning agency in town. He's posted at all his
clubs. Every gambler in town, professional as well as social, has his
I.O.U.'s for bridge, poker, and faro debts. Everybody knows it except those
fatuous people down in the Kenesaw National Bank, where he's employed, and
the Fidelity Company that's on his bond. He wouldn't last five minutes in
either place if his uncle wasn't a director in both concerns."

"I see that you have a pretty fair idea of Billington Rand's financial
condition," said Holmes.

"It's rather common talk in the clubs, so why shouldn't I?" I put in.
"Holding him up would be at most an act of petit larceny, if you measure a
crime by what you get out of it. It's a great shame, though, for at heart
Rand is one of the best fellows in the world. He's a man who has all the
modern false notions of what a fellow ought to do to keep up what he calls
his end. He plays cards and sustains ruinous losses because he thinks he
won't be considered a good-fellow if he stays out. He plays bridge with
ladies and pays up when he loses and doesn't collect when he wins. Win or
lose he's doomed to be on the wrong side of the market just because of those
very qualities that make him a lovable person--kind to everybody bu