"Given the proper opportunity--" "Hold on," Duncan interrupted. "I know just what you're going to say, and it's all very fine, and I'm proud that you want to say it of me. But you're dead wrong, Harry. The truth is I haven't got it in me--the capacity to succeed. Just as much as you love work, I hate it. I ought to know, for I've had a good, hard try at it--several tries, in fact. And you know what they came to." "But if you persist in this way, Nat,--don't you know what it means?" "None better. It means going back to what you helped me out of--the life that nearly killed me." "And you'd rather--" "I'd rather that a thousand years before I'd sponge on you another day.... But, on the level, I'd as lieve try the East River or turn on the gas.... What's the use? That's the way I feel." "That's fool talk. Brace up and be a man. All you need is a way to earn money." "No," Duncan insisted firmly: "get it. I'll never be able to earn it--that's a cinch." Kellogg laughed a little mirthlessly, absorbed in revolving something which had popped into his head within the last few moments. "There are ways to get it," he admitted abstractedly, "if you're not too particular." "I'm not. I only wish I understood the burglar business." This time Kellogg laughed outright. He sat up with a new spirit in his manner. "You mean you'd steal to get money?" "Oh, well ..." Duncan smiled a trace sheepishly. "I can't think of anything hardly I wouldn't do to get it." "Very well, my son. Now attend to uncle." Kellogg leaned across the table, fixing him with an enthusiastic eye. "Here, have a smoke. I'm going to demonstrate high finance to your debased intelligence." He thrust the cigarette case over to Duncan, who helped himself mechanically, his gaze held in wonder to Kellogg's face. "Fire when ready," he assented. "I know a way," said Kellogg slowly, "by which, if you'll discard a scruple or two, you can be worth a million dollars--or thereabouts--within a year." Duncan held a lighted match until it singed his fingertips, the while he stared agape. "Say that again," he requested mildly. "You can be worth a million in a year." "Ah!" Duncan nodded slowly and comprehendingly. He turned aside in his chair and raked a second match across the sole of his shoe. "Let him rave," he observed enigmatically, and began to smoke. "No, I'm not dippy; and I'm perfectly serious." "Of course. But what'd they do to me if I were caught?" "This is not a joke; the proposition's perfectly legal; it's being done right along." "And I could do it, Harry?" "A man of your calibre couldn't fail." "Would you mind ringing for Robbins?" Duncan asked abruptly. "Certainly." Kellogg pressed a button at his elbow. "What d'you want?" "A straight-jacket and a doctor to tell which one of us needs it." Kellogg, chagrined as he always was if joked with when expounding one of his schemes, broke into a laugh that lasted until Robbins appeared. "You rang, sir?"