outcome of similar situations
in financial circles, but that did not help me. I remembered a play I
had seen, "The Henrietta" was its name. In that play, a young man with
more money than brains had saved the day for his father, a Wall Street
magnate, by buying a certain stock in large quantities at a critical
time. He arrived at his decision to buy, rather than sell, by tossing a
coin. The father had declared that his son had hit upon the real secret
of success in stock speculation. Possibly the old gentleman was right,
but I could not make my decision in that way. No, whatever I did must
have some reason to back it. Was there no situation, outside of Wall
Street, which offered a parallel? After all, what was the situation?
Some one wished to buy a certain thing, and some one else wished to
buy it also. Neither party wanted the other to get it. There had been a
general game of bluff and then . . . Humph! Why, in a way, it was like
the original bidding for the Shore Lane land.

It was like it, and yet it was not. I owned the land and Colton wanted
to buy it; so also did Jed Dean. Each side had made bids and had been
refused. Then the bidders had, professedly, stood pat, but, in reality,
they had not. Jed had told me, in his latest interview, that he
would have paid almost anything for that land, if he had had to. And
Colton--Colton had invented the Bay Shore Development Company. That
company had fooled Elnathan Mullet and other property holders. It had
fooled Captain Jed. It had come very near to fooling me. If Mabel Colton
had not given me the hint I might have been tricked into selling. Then
Colton would have won, have won on a "bluff." A good bluff did sometimes
win. I wondered . . .

I was still pacing the floor when Miss Colton returned to the library.
She was trying hard to appear calm, but I could see that she was greatly
agitated.

"What is it?" I asked. "Is he--"

"He is not as well just now. I--I must not leave him--or Mother. But I
came back for a moment, as I told you I would. Is there anything new?"

"No. Davis has repeated his declaration to do nothing without orders
from your father."

She nodded. "Very well," she said, "then it is over. We are
beaten--Father is beaten for the first time. It makes little difference,
I suppose. If he--if he is taken from us, nothing else matters. But
I hoped you . . . never mind. I thank you, Mr. Paine. You would have
helped him if you could, I know."

Somehow thi