"How about some food?" I demanded. "You said something about a steak back at the office and all you've given me is Scotch and razor-blades. You get on with your cooking and let me try to fix my hand." I went into the bathroom, located some mercurochrome and a box of band aids. Once the flow of blood had slacked, I managed to incapacitate myself sufficiently for the purpose of forging Winnie Tompkins' signature. "Say, Winnie!" Arthurjean suddenly appeared at the bathroom door, with an aroma of steak behind her. "I've just figured out something. If you aren't Winnie but a ringer from the Aleutians, it's not decent for you to see me in my pyjamas. We're strangers!" "Oh, keep 'em on till after dinner," I said. "I won't stand on ceremony. I'm hungry." She laughed. "You sure can make like Winnie," she admired. "Jesus, the steak's burning!" CHAPTER 9 "Say, old man, what happened to your hand?" Graham Wasson, plump, dark and fortyish, but very clean-cut and with a Dewey dab on his upper lip, was my questioner. He sat across the glass-topped desk in my Wall Street Office, while Arthurjean Briggs typed demurely in the adjoining office. "Changing razor-blades," I confessed. "The damn thing slipped and before I knew it I made a grab for it. Lucky it didn't go deep. Hence the surgical gauze and the lousy signature. Do you think you can get my check cleared through the bank or should I write Winnie 'X' Tompkins, his mark?" Wasson chuckled like a well-fed broker. "We'll get enough witnesses to your John Hancock to make it legal," he promised. "Now what you've got to do is to ease old lady Fynch into the trustee's delight and take a gander at her former investments. I've brought the list with me. As you know, she insisted that you okay the deal." I glanced at the typed list. "This stuff looks pretty good to me, Graham," I said. "Detroit Edison's safe as the Washington Monument, A.T.&T. is solid, and G.E. ought to do all right with this new electronic stuff." "And how!" My partner agreed. "Boy! what a windfall! Stuff like that is scarcer than hen's teeth on the open market. With close to a million bucks to turn over, we ought to do pretty well on this. Here's what we're buying for her." Wasson passed me a slip of paper. "The trustee's delight," he said. "G-Bonds. You buy 'em, we should worry. No money back for ten years. Morgenthau's dream-child." The slip was attached to a printed Treasury form. "See here," I pointed out. "These damn bonds depreciate 2.2% a year for the first five years and then start climbing up the ladder again, and they're non-transferable." "That's it, Winnie. The trustee's delight," Wasson agreed. "They pay 2-1/2% a year if you hold them but if you try to sell them within five years the discount means you only get about .03% on your money. Once a trustee has put you aboard this roller-coaster, he can't conscientiously advise you to get out." "Who dreamed up that swindle?"