"Vell," said Heinzman, "ven you put it on the market, come and see me."
He nodded paternally at Orde, beaming through his thick spectacles.

That evening, well after six, Orde returned to the hotel. After
freshening up in the marbled and boarded washroom, he hunted up Newmark.

"Well, Joe," said he, "I'm as hungry as a bear. Come on, eat, and I'll
tell you all about it."

They deposited their hats on the racks and pushed open the swinging
screen doors that led into the dining-room. There they were taken
in charge by a marvellously haughty and redundant head-waitress, who
signalled them to follow down through ranks of small tables watched
by more stately damsels. Newmark, reserved and precise, irreproachably
correct in his neat gray, seemed enveloped in an aloofness as
impenetrable as that of the head-waitress herself. Orde, however, was as
breezy as ever. He hastened his stride to overtake the head-waitress.

"Annie, be good!" he said in his jolly way. "We've got business to talk.
Put us somewhere alone."

Newmark nodded approval, and thrust his hand in his pocket. But Annie
looked up into Orde's frank, laughing face, and her lips curved ever so
faintly in the condescension of a smile.

"Sure, sorr," said she, in a most unexpected brogue.

"Well, I've got 'em all," said Orde, as soon as the waitress had gone
with the order. "But the best stroke of business you'd never guess. I
roped in Heinzman."

"Good!" approved Newmark briefly.

"It was really pretty decent of the little Dutchman. He agreed to let us
put up our stock as security. Of course, that security is good only if
we win out; and if we win out, why, then he'll get his logs, so he won't
have any use for security. So it's just one way of beating the devil
around the bush. He evidently wanted to give us the business, but
he hated like the devil to pass up his rules--you know how those old
shellbacks are."

"H'm, yes," said Newmark.

The waitress sailed in through a violently kicked swinging door, bearing
aloft a tin tray heaped perilously. She slanted around a corner in
graceful opposition to the centrifugal, brought the tray to port on a
sort of landing stage by a pillar, and began energetically to distribute
small "iron-ware" dishes, each containing a dab of something. When the
clash of arrival had died, Orde went on:

"I got into your department a little, too."

"How's that?" asked Newmark, spearing a baked potato. "Heinzman said
he'd buy som