"Leave your chicken-curses and come to the point," urged the junior member of the firm impatiently. "It is no news to me that your brain is diseased and your heart rotten. What is it you want me to do? Calm yourself, you white-livered maniac. I gather that I am in some way to meddle with this mine. If I but had your head for my very own along with the sand in my craw, I'd tell you to go to hell. Having only brains enough to know what I am, I'm cursed by having to depend upon you. Name your corpse! Come through!" "You shut your foul mouth and listen. You throw me off." "Give me a cigar, then. Thanks. I await your pleasure." "Zurich warned me that Stanley's partner, this old man Johnson, had gone East and would in all probability come here to bring proposals from Stan. He came yesterday, bearing a letter of introduction from Stan. The fear that I would not close with his proposition had the poor old gentleman on needles and pins. But I fell in with his offer. I won his confidence and within the hour he had turned himself wrong side out. He made me a map, which shows me how to find the mine. He thinks I am to go to Arizona with him in a week--poor idiot! Instead, you are to get him into jail at once." "How?" "The simplest and most direct way possible. You have that Poole tribe under your thumb, have you not?" "Bootlegging, chicken-stealing, sneak-thieving, arson, and perjury. And they are ripe for any deviltry, without compulsion. All I need to do is to show them a piece of money and give instructions." "Get the two biggest ones, then--Amos and Seth. Have them pick a fight with the man Johnson and swear him into jail. They needn't hurt him much and they needn't bother about provocation. All they need to do is to contrive to get him in some quiet spot, beat him up decently, and swear that Johnson started the row without warning; that they never saw him before, and that they think he was drunk. Manage so that Johnson sees the inside of the jail by to-morrow at luncheon-time, or just after, at worst; then you and I will take the afternoon train for Arizona--with my map. I have just returned from informing my beloved uncle of Stanley's ignominious situation, and I told him I could go to the rescue at once, for the sake of the family honor. I thought the old fool would throw a fit, he was so enraged. So, good-bye to Nephew Stanley!" "Look here, Mr. Oscar; that's no good, you know," remonstrated Pelman. "What's the good of throwing Johnson into jail for five or ten days--or perhaps only a fine? He may even have letters from Stan to some one else in Vesper, some one influential; he may beat the case. He'll be out there in no time, making you trouble. That old goat looks as if he might butt." Mitchell smiled.