"Yes, but I do, though," said the other. "That's the precise meaning of this pious pilgrimage at this ungodly hour. I want to find out where you keep that worm. Yesterday afternoon, at the Hurds', you had an idea. You know you did--you can't conceal it from my piercing sense of penetration. And your idea had the ring of real currency when you accidentally dropped it. So I'm here to collaborate, that's all." Mr. Osgood's junior partner looked around at the clerks, who hastily resumed their interrupted duties. "Come in here," he said to the visitor, and he led his guest into an inner office next to Mr. Osgood's own, and closed the door behind him. "I _did_ have an idea," he conceded, as he motioned Wilkinson to a seat, "and it was an idea that had several things to recommend it. But it was a business proposition, and if you will pardon my saying so, Charlie, you are not the kind of a collaborator I would choose, if I were doing the choosing." "But you're not, my boy," replied the other, unabashed. "I'm doing the choosing, myself, and I choose you. Your idea was palpably based on separating my barnacled connection from some of the ghastly pile of glittering gold that he has taken, five cents at a time, from the widows, orphans, blind, halt, and lame who patronize his trolley lines. Elucidate forthwith, Benny--in the vernacular, unbelt. I am listening." Cole was reflecting. No one knew better than he how little regard John M. Hurd really felt for this mercurial youth. Yet Mr. Hurd had resisted with entire success all other means of approach. After all, family connections counted for something, even with the retentive old trolley magnate. So when at last he spoke, it was with the determination to show a part of his hand, at least, to Wilkinson. "Mr. Hurd is President of the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company," he began. His visitor smiled affably. "There is a popular impression to that effect," he admitted. "Silas Osgood and Company and--" he paused a moment--"Bennington Cole are in the fire insurance business. The Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company carries no fire insurance on any of its properties. Well," he said sharply, "do you begin to see how you come into this?" "See what?" asked Wilkinson, blankly. "The insurable value of the various properties of the company must amount to six or eight million dollars. The average rate on those properties would probably be about seventy-five cents per hundred dollars a year for insurance. That would make a premium of say fifty thousand dollars per annum. The commission to the insurance broker who handled that line--who could secure it and control it--would be ten per cent of fifty thousand, or five thousand dollars. Half that amount--I am doing these sums for you so that you can catch the idea--would be twenty-five hundred--without any risk to yourself and every year of your life. Do you think the game worth a try?"