ered Gamble.

"All right," returned Courtney, smiling. "We'll shake hands on it in
the good old-fashioned way." And they did so, under Colonel Bouncer's
earnestly interested approval.

"Tell him your troubles," urged the colonel. "If it were my case, Ben,
I'd be yelling for help as long as I had breath in my body."

"It's very simple," explained Courtney. "I imagined that a big hotel at
the new terminal station would be the best investment in New York. I
spoke to a number of my financially active friends about it and they
were enthusiastic. I had verbal promises in one day's work of all the
money necessary to finance the thing. I found that the big vacant plot
across from the station was held at a prohibitive price. Mallard & Tyne
had, with a great deal of labor, collected the selling option on the
adjoining block, fronting the terminal. They held it at two and a
quarter millions. My friends, at an infernal luncheon, authorized me,
quite orally, indeed, to secure the cheaper site without a moment's
delay, especially since it was rumored that Morton Washer was
contemplating the erection of a hotel upon that very spot."

"I see the finish," laughed Johnny. "Mad with fear, you dashed right
down there and broke yourself! Then Union Pacific fell off an eighth;
they killed an insurrecto in Mexico; the third secretary of a
second-rate life-insurance company died and Wall Street put crape on
the door. All your friends got cold feet and it was the other fellow
who had urged you to buy that property. The colonel says you dropped a
hundred and twenty-five thousand. That's a stiff option. Can't you get
any of it back?"

"Get it back!" groaned Courtney. "They're after the balance. It wasn't
an option--it was a contract. If I don't pay the remainder at the end
of the ninety days they'll sue me; and I have several million dollars'
worth of property that I can't hide."

Gamble shrugged his shoulders resignedly.

"Your only chance is to build or sell," he decided. "It's your
property, all right. Have you offered it?"

"Old Mort Washer wants it--confound him! I've discovered that the day
after I bought this ground he told my friends that he intended to buy
the big piece and build in competition; and they ran like your
horse--Angora--last Saturday, Gamble. Now Washer offers to buy this
ground for two and an eighth millions--just the amount for which I will
be sued."

"Leaving you to try to forget the hundred and twenty-five tho