decorated with the name and style of the bogus company on a transfer. For ordinary sale, bicycles of the 'trade' description are bought--so much a hundred from the factors, and put your own name on 'em. They come cheap, and they sell at a good price--the profit pays all expenses and perhaps a bit over; and by the time they all break down the company will be successfully floated, the money--the capital--will be divided, the moving spirit and his confederates will have disappeared, and the guinea-pigs will be left to stand the racket--if there is a racket. And the moving spirit will remain unsuspected, a man of account in the trade all the time! Admirable! All the work to be done at the 'works' is the sticking on of labels and a bit of enamelling. Excellent, all round! Isn't that about the size of your operations?" "Well, yes," Mallows answered, a little reluctantly, but with something of modest pride in his manner, "that was the notion, since you speak so plainly." "And it shall be the notion. All--everything--shall be as you have planned it, with one exception, which is this. The moving spirit shall divide his plunder with me." "_You?_ But--but--why, I gave you a hundred just now!" "Dear, dear! Why will you harp so much on that vulgar little hundred? That's settled and done with. That's our little personal bargain in the matter of the lamentable accident with the chair. We are now talking of bigger business--not hundreds, but thousands, and not one of them, but a lot. Come now, a mind like yours should be wide enough to admit of a broad and large view of things. If I refrain from exposing this charming scheme of yours I shall be promoting a piece of scandalous robbery. Very well then, I want my promotion money, in the regular way. Can I shut my eyes and allow a piece of iniquity like this to go on unchecked, without getting anything by way of damages for myself? Perish the thought! When all expenses are paid, and the confederates are sent off with as little as they will take, you and I will divide fairly, Mr. Mallows, respectable brothers in rascality. Mind, I might say we'd divide to begin with, and leave you to pay expenses, but I am always fair to a partner in anything of this sort. I shall just want a little guarantee, you know--it's safest in such matters as these; say a bill at six months for ten thousand pounds--which is very low. When a satisfactory division is made you shall have the bill back. Come--I have a bill-stamp ready, being so much convinced of your reasonableness as to buy it this morning, though it cost five pounds." "But that's nonsense--you're trying to impose. I'll give you anything reasonable--half is out of the question. What, after all the trouble and worry and risk that I've had----" "Which would suffice for no more than to put you in gaol if I held up my finger!" "But hang it, be reasonable! You're a mighty clever man, and you've got me on the hip, as I admit. Say ten per cent."