pose
it was worth the trouble and expense, they wouldn't sell. The bigger the
price they were offered, the more mulish they would be about holding.
That's always the way with them. But even if they did all sell, their
five thousand would be a mere drop in the bucket. There would be over
twenty thousand others to be accounted for. That would be quite enough
for my purposes. Oh, I figured all that out very carefully. My own first
notion was to have the dummies apply for the whole hundred thousand, and
even a little over. Then, you see, we might have allotted everything
to the dummies, and sent back the money and applications of the genuine
ones. But that would have been rather hard to manage with the Board. The
Markiss would have said that the returns ought to be made pro rata--that
is, giving everybody a part of what they applied for--and that would
have mixed everything up. And then, too, if anybody suspected
anything, why the Stock Exchange Committee would refuse us a special
settlement--and, of course, without that the whole transaction is
moonshine. It was far too risky, and we didn't send back a penny."

"It's all pretty risky, I should think," she declared as she rose. "I
should think you'd lie awake more than ever now--now that you've built
your hopes so high and it'd be so awful to have them come to nothing."

He smilingly shook his head. "No, it can no more fail than that gas
can fail to burn when you put a light to it. It's all absolute. My
half-million is as right as if it were lying to my credit in the Bank of
England. Oh, that reminds me," he went on in a slightly altered
tone--"it's damned comical, but I've got to ask you for a little money.
I've only got about seven pounds at my bank, and just at the minute it
would give me away fearfully to let Semple know I was hard up. Of course
he'd let me have anything I wanted--but, you can see--I don't like to
ask him just at the moment."

She hesitated visibly, and scanned his face with a wistful gaze. "You're
quite sure, Joel?"--she began--"and you haven't told me--how long will
it be before you come into some of this money?"

"Well,"--he in turn paused over his words--"well, I suppose that by next
week things will be in such shape that my bank will see I'm good for an
overdraft. Oh heavens, yes! there'll be a hundred ways of touching some
ready. But if you've got twenty or thirty pounds handy just now--I tell
you what I'll do, Lou. I'll give you a three months