the committee meeting. Gresham again!

"Loring, I don't think I can wait till June first to get after the
scalps of Gresham and Collaton," he declared as he prepared to go out.
"I want to soak them now."

James Jameson-Guff, so christened by his wife, but more familiarly
known among his associates as Jim Guff, received Johnny with a frown
when he understood his errand.

"You're too late," he told Johnny. "We've turned the option over to our
wives to do with as they pleased. We're to have a swell yacht club out
there now. I think that's a graft, too!"

"If you get stung again, Mr. Guff, let me know," offered Johnny, "and
I'll have you a bona fide apartment-house proposition in short order."

"Nyagh!" observed Mr. Guff.

Johnny dutifully reported to his score keeper the result of his errand
and, that evening, to explain it more fully he went out to her house;
but he found Gresham there and nobody had a very good time.

On the following morning he saw in the papers that the Royal Yacht
Club, a new organization, the moving spirit of which was one Michael T.
O'Shaunessy, was to have magnificent headquarters on Riverside
Drive--and he immediately went to see Mr. Guff. Mike O'Shaunessy was a
notorious proprietor of road houses and "clubs" of shady reputation,
and there was no question as to what sort of place the Royal Yacht Club
would be.

Mr. Guff was furious about it.

"I knew it," he said. "The women have just telephoned me an
authorization to send for this Jacobs blackguard and buy back the
option."

"Jacobs?" inquired Johnny, "Not Abraham Jacobs?"

"That's the one," corroborated Guff. "Why, do you know him?"

"He is a professional stinger," Johnny admitted. "He stung me, and
Collaton helped."

"I've no doubt of it," responded Guff. "It was a put-up job in the
first place. By the way, Gamble, you used to be in partnership with
Collaton yourself."

"That's true enough," admitted Johnny. "Possibly I'd better give you
some references."

"Give them to the women," retorted Guff.

An hour later Johnny telephoned Guff.

"Did you repurchase the option from Jacobs?" he inquired.

"Yes!" snapped Guff, and hung up.

The facts that the De Luxe Apartments Company was hot after the
property and that he himself was now four hours behind his schedule,
with nothing in sight, drove Johnny on, in spite of his dismal
forebodings.

Mrs. Guff he found to be a hugely globular lady, with a globular nose,
the lines on