“I knew it, and I smoked on him. I hung over the table and puffed it in his face. He tried to duck out of it, and I followed him around. It done me good. I couldn’t spit on the little tightwad. “‘Now, look here, Mr. Westridge,’ I says, ‘don’t you get a wrong notion in your head; I’m not a-goin’ to let you take any risk on this. I’m a-goin’ to take the risk; there ain’t none, in fact; the stuff’s got to bounce back. It’ll go to the sky when the steel bunch get all they can grab of it. But whatever risk there may be,’ I sputtered it out on him, ‘is _mine_. I’ll put up the backing an’ you get me the money by to-morrow at noon.’ I was nearly across the table, an’ I didn’t wait for him to cut in with a question. I took a big envelope out of my pocket and flashed the stuff on him. He came up with a chirp. “‘My word!’ he says, ‘where did you get this?’ “‘Well,’ I answered, ‘London’s a big selling point with us—you can’t trade with the English and not take their stuff, can you? The Johnny whose name’s on that stuff put it up with me—same as I’m putting it up with you. There’s fourteen of them. Ain’t they good for fifty thousand?’” “He spread the certificates out on the table and run his fingers over them. It was old-fashioned love-touchin’. “‘Oh!’ his voice flickered up, ‘beyond question.’ “‘Done!’ I says. ‘Keep it until I come back with your money—an’ get me the cash before noon to-morrow.’ “‘Don’t you want a memorandum?’ he says. “I waved my hand, careless, like it was nothin’. “‘That’s all right,’ I says; ‘I don’t want any promises about that, but there is a thing that I do want a promise about.’ “I threw my cigar in the fireplace and set down. “‘I want you to promise me that you won’t ever say anything to Carrots about this, nor to anybody; it’s between us—she’s a high-strung youngster,’ I added; ‘this thing’s got to be buried with us, no matter what happens. Is it a trade?’ “We shook hands on it and I got out. “Before twelve the next day he sent me a draft on New York for the money—an’ I’d won a lap.” The afternoon sun lay on the terrace of the gray stone house, where the big creature, dead to the middle, talked from his chair, clearing the mystery that had covered his disappearance from the world. It was an extraordinary story, and I wished to get it, in detail, precisely clear. “It was fiction,” I asked, “this explanation to Westridge?” He looked at me in a sort of wonder. “Sure,” he said. “I made it up.” “There wasn’t any of it true?” “Not a word,” he answered. “Don’t you understand? This was a little game that me and God Almighty was settin’ up on the side.” “You knew nothing of the girl’s affairs?” The thing seemed incredible to me. “That’s right,” he replied, “not a thing, except that her father, a lawyer in the South, was dead, and the small coin was beginning to mean something—an’ of course the little game of this Westridge person—it was a blind pool; nobody in on it but God Almighty.” I could not forbear a comment.