Wilkinson sat up with eager interest. "Why half? Why not both halves?" he inquired. The other man spread his hands before him in a gesture as well recognized among elder peoples as it is to-day. "Naturally I would expect half for originating the scheme, drawing up the schedule in its proper form, securing the lowest rate, and placing the line with the various companies. You couldn't do those things, you know; it takes knowledge of the business." His visitor once more sat back in his chair. "And all I have to do is to get Uncle John to take out an insurance policy on his trolley cars! A mere nothing! I'm astonished that you offer me so much as half--for so simple an office. Really, Benny, you are losing your faculties. I can almost see them evaporating. Yes, the time will come when some one of our mutual friends, driving past the Meadow Creek Paresis Club, where Dr. McMullen receives certain amiable but not entirely responsible persons, will behold you hanging cheerily by one hand from the pergola roof with a vacuous smile on your twitching lips, and will say to me sadly: 'Charlie, you knew him, didn't you, in the old days, when his mind was as keen and bright as an editor's knife?' And with chastened melancholy I will respond: 'Yes, George, it is true. And moreover I was with him on the day when his mind commenced to give way. The day he offered me a full half of the spoils of my own--what do you call it?--oh, yes, arbalest.'" Cole laughed, and not altogether pleasantly. "Well, if you can get John M. to carry insurance, I'll see that you are not disappointed in the terms of our agreement." "Do you know, Benny, somehow I'd rather have it in writing. Suppose we say one third to you and two thirds to me. After all, I need the money, you see, and you don't." "Aren't we counting our chickens a good while before they have emerged from the incubator?" the other suggested. "Very likely," Wilkinson readily agreed. "But I find that if I ever indulge in that diverting form of mathematics it has to be before the hatching. The little yellow rascals never stay around long enough afterward to permit themselves to be counted." Bennington Cole slowly picked up a pen and drew toward him a sheet of paper; more slowly still he wrote what he described as a gentleman's agreement between Charles Wilkinson and himself. That young man sat back and studied the face of his associate with shrewd, half-shut eyes. Presently Cole stopped writing. "I fancy this will serve," he said. "Read the Machiavellian document," demanded Wilkinson, placidly. And Cole read.