“Do you want _me_ to write the story?” interrupted Parkhurst, coldly. It was his way of showing his city editor his place. “Coal-Oil Johnny up to date! Don't fall for any press agent--” Parkhurst forgot the excuse he was going to make. His limp vanished. The story promised well. He hastened to the Brabant and saw the room clerk, Stewart, who had tipped off the city editor. “Yes; he is in,” said Stewart. “But if you think it is another case of Coal-Oil Johnny you've got another guess coming. Not that he is a tightwad; he is liberal enough with his nuggets, the bell-hops say. But he is no fool. And yet--think of it!--he takes into Seattle with him from Nome eight or ten millions of gold-dust! There he hires a special train to bring him and his gold-dust to New York. He arrives at the Grand Central in the early morning. They hustle round and find seven trucks to carry the boxes of gold-dust for him. He follows in a taxicab. He comes straight to this hotel--” Stewart here swelled up his chest. It made the reporter say, amiably: “It was considered a good hotel once; but news travels slowly in the frozen North.” “He comes up here, registers, and then expects me to let him take the whole fifteen tons of gold up to his room. What do you know about that? Well, then he wanted to hire a whole floor so as to distribute the weight. But you know it is a highly concentrated weight. No floor would stand it. Gold is the heaviest thing there is.” “It is,” agreed Parkhurst, hastily. “It is, dear friend. That's why I never carry more than a couple of tooth-fillings with me, and--” “Let me tell you,” cut in Stewart, full of his story. “So, being Sunday and no banks open, we arranged for him to keep the gold-dust down-stairs in the engine-room. And it is there now, a hundred and fifty boxes, worth, he says, about eight million--” “Lead me to it before you hand in your bill,” entreated the reporter. “There are eight Old Sleuths, with sixteen automatic pistols, on the job of keeping hungry newspaper men from the nice little paper-weights, Jimmy,” said Stewart. “I am so kind to Mr. Jerningham myself that I think he will remember me in one of those wills you fellows are always writing about--don't you know? How a fabulous fortune is left to the polite hotel clerk who was so nice to the stranger in the spring of eighteen seventy-four?” “What's the full name?” asked the reporter. “There it is!” and Stewart pointed to the autograph in the hotel register. “Alfred Jerningham. Nome and New York. Suite G.” There followed the names of the eight bullion guards and his two personal servants. “Looks like a school-boy's writing.” “He is about forty,” said the clerk. “Then it means he probably stopped writing for publication when he was about fourteen. That is the immature chirography of a man who is more at home with a pick than with a pen. And, furthermore--” “Here he comes,” interjected Stewart. “I'll introduce you.”