ws grew uncomfortably nervous.

"Did you ever hear of the third degree?" he inquired. "Well, I'm going
to put you through it."

"The third degree?" faltered Gresham. "I don't quite understand what
you mean."

"You don't?" replied Johnny. "It begins this way"--and the watchful
Loring suddenly hung on Johnny's arm with his full weight.

"Don't!" implored Loring.

"I'm going to smash his head in!" husked Johnny, quivering with an
anger to which he had not given way for years.

"Wait a minute!" pleaded Loring, pulling on him with all his strength.
"Wait, I say! I want to help you, but you're in wrong. Listen to
me"--and he drew his reluctant client away from the table. "I've no
objections to your thrashing Gresham and I'd like to be your proxy, but
you'd better put it off. If you compel Gresham by force to sign these
bonds he can repudiate that action under protection of the court and it
will work against you."

Johnny Gamble controlled himself with an effort.

"They're my bonds," he persisted with his thoughts, however, more on
Constance than on business. "He'll sign them or I'll smash him."

Gresham, speaking above his panic of physical cowardice with a
tremulous effort, interpolated himself into the argument.

"I'll sign," he promised with stiff lips, and tried to write his name
on the cover of a magazine. The scrawl was so undecipherable that he
rose from the table and walked up and down the room in acute distress,
holding his right hand at the wrist and limbering it. "If I sign," he
presently bargained as he came to the table, "I must be promised
freedom from the distaste of a personal encounter."

Loring hastily complied, and Johnny, after having been prodded into a
recognition of the true situation, agreed with a disgusted snarl.

Gresham, with nerves much restored and a smile beginning to appear upon
his now oily features, carefully assigned each bond, and then, secure
in Johnny's promise, which he accepted at the par value all men gave
it, stood up and shook his finger warningly.

"A signature obtained under coercion is not worth the ink it took to
scrawl it," he triumphantly declared, having taken his cue from Loring.
"Any court in America will set aside this action."

"I know it," Johnny unexpectedly coincided. "I'm going to give you a
chance at it," and grabbing his telephone he called up Central Police
and asked for an officer to be sent to his rooms.

"Now, Loring, you disappear," directed Jo