ne' or `A Neapolitan
Fisher Lad' instead of `Lachrymae,' but they always have `A
Reading from Homer.' When you opened the door, a moment ago, I had
a very strong impression that something extraordinary would some
time happen to me in this room."

"Well," suggested Corliss, "you refused a drink in it."

"Even more wonderful than that," said Ray, glancing about the
place curiously. "It may be a sense of something painful that
already has happened here--perhaps long ago, before your
occupancy. It has a pathos."

"Most hotel rooms have had something happen in them," said Corliss
lightly. "I believe the managers usually change the door numbers
if what happens is especially unpleasant. Probably they change
some of the rugs, also."

"I feel----" Ray paused, frowning. "I feel as if some one had
killed himself here."

"Then no doubt some of the rugs _have_ been changed."

"No doubt." The caller laughed and waved his hand in dismissal of
the topic. "Well, Mr. Corliss," he went on, shifting to a brisker
tone, "I have come to make my fortune, too. You are Midas. Am I of
sufficient importance to be touched?"

Valentine Corliss gave him sidelong an almost imperceptibly brief
glance of sharpest scrutiny--it was like the wink of a camera
shutter--but laughed in the same instant. "Which way do you mean
that?"

"You have been quick," returned the visitor, repaying that glance
with equal swiftness, "to seize upon the American idiom. I mean:
How small a contribution would you be willing to receive toward
your support!"

Corliss did not glance again at Ray; instead, he looked interested
in the smoke of his cigar. "`Contribution,'" he repeated, with no
inflection whatever. "`Toward my support.'"

"I mean, of course, how small an investment in your oil company."

"Oh, anything, anything," returned the promoter, with quick
amiability. "We need to sell all the stock we can."

"All the money you can get?"

"Precisely. It's really a colossal proposition, Mr. Vilas."
Corliss spoke with brisk enthusiasm. "It's a perfectly certain
enormous profit upon everything that goes in. Prince Moliterno
cables me later investigations show that the oil-field is more
than twice as large as we thought when I left Naples. He's on the
ground now, buying up what he can, secretly."

"I had an impression from Richard Lindley that the secret had been
discovered."

"Oh, yes; but only by a few, and those are trying to keep it quiet
from the others,