Pentecost nodded slightly. “But not as you play it, my friend,” he said. * * * * * Harker was a successful fake promoter. Anything was grist for his mill that was slick enough in operation to catch the public fancy or timely enough to ride on the crest of a craze. Cheap novelties in medicine, food, housekeeping utensils, electric refrigerating and washing machines, oil-burning heaters,—anything attractive enough to sell stock on—that was the sole requirement. The organization of promoting companies—vast newspaper advertisements for a few days—window displays when it was an operating device of some kind; and after the crop from stock sales had been skillfully gathered in, came the little matter of the company paying for the patent or a factory site or whatever it was, and of course it took all the money realized on stock sales to do this; and as Harker was the man who happened to own the patent or factory site, he was naturally the person who sold it to the company, and there he was. But he wasn’t there for long. That was the chief inconvenience connected with this simple method of relieving the “one-born-every-minute” crowd of their superfluous capital. It compelled the practitioner to travel for his health after every operation. Often, too, he had to change his name as well as the climate, and to make some drastic alteration in what might be referred to as his identity. The reward, though, was frequently of large proportions, which it happened to be in the case I’m speaking of. And the vulture Pentecost, soaring above the vast and darkened stretches of crookdom, got the odor of tainted money and began circling nearer and nearer and eventually sunk his talons into Mr. Harker and found that he was good. Also that his game was well enough—indeed might be quite a big one if properly run—the effective method of playing it flashing instantly through his mind. He observed, too, that Harker was a skillful operator; also a good looker as a figurehead for an important and high-class concern. He had planned for some time to have an office to work from. So it came to be a partnership. No papers of course—just understood. Harker was to run his line of work in the office of the firm—after that work had been put on Pentecost’s basis. Pentecost would have the partnership and the office to give him solidity and standing in his own line of nefarious and frequently hazardous undertakings. He could, without trouble, pick up many things in Harker’s way and turn them over to him; and Harker could give him assistance in his own affairs, should he require it. They would divide at fifty-fifty.