"Hullo! Brixton talking. That you, Jim?"

"No, Pete! Jim's out. This is Ralston."

"Well,--I guess you'll do. Say!--what's the matter with that outfit of yours, anyway?"

"Don't know, Peter. Tell me, and I'll try to fix it."

"Oh, no, you won't! But why the devil don't you fellows buy some real-estate once in a while?"

"What have you got, Pete? Any snaps?"

"Come off the perch, Phil! You know what I'm gettin' at. Are you fellows trying to create a slump or some such d.a.m.ned thing?"

"No,--certainly not! That would be poor business for a real-estate agent."

"Well,--why the devil are you the bear in every transaction you put through? It didn't used to be that way. Every broker in town's been buying from you fellows all this year."

"Somebody's got to sell, if there's to be any buying. Now,--don't get rattled, Pete. It is up to you. Sell if you want to. n.o.body will stop you."

Peter Brixton's voice grew more conciliatory.

"What do you fellows know, anyway? You might let me in on it. We've done lots of business together."

"We don't know a thing, Peter; just surmise. And everyone knows it, for we haven't hidden anything."

"That there's going to be a tightening up for a while?"

"Yes!"

"That it is coming soon?"

"No!"

"What then?"

"That it has come."

Peter laughed a little hilariously, then his laugh ended with a touch of nervousness.

"Say!--is that straight goods, Phil?"

"Just our private opinion, Pete!"

"Well,--I think you're about two years out in your guess, but I'm going to try a little selling just to be in the fashion. Thanks, old man!"

"You'd better hurry up then, Peter."

Phil had hardly hung up the receiver, when Jim rushed in, his rugged face full of excitement.

"Read that!" he shouted, thrusting a cablegram under Phil's nose. "By gad!--but we've been lucky; every client of ours has had a chance to sell. If he wouldn't do it, he has only himself to blame now."

The message was in code, with the interpretation scrawled underneath by Jim. It was from Jim's father's firm, Langford & Macdonald of Edinburgh.

"Extend no more loans in behalf this firm meantime. Informed Canadian Banks about to cease practice of extending credit on security of realty purchases. Letter follows."

Phil rose slowly and extended his hand to his partner.

"Jim, you're a wonder--a blooming wizard."

Jim grinned, but he was well pleased.

"If it hadn't been for your opinion, rammed well down my throat morning, noon and night, I guess the Langford-Ralston Financial Corporation would not be quite so well thought of after this comes out, as it will be in the light of the quiet but persistent advice it has given its clients. And to think of it--your father wires as if he were the absolute and only detector of this information, while it was your letter of six months ago that set him on the hunt for it and started him on his conservatism regarding loans in general."

Jim laughed.

"That's just my old dad's way, Phil. He knows who put him on to it and what's more, he knows we know. You never heard of a Scots business man admitting that his son knew anything he didn't--at least, admitting it to his son.

"How much money have we in the bank?"

Phil beckoned the accountant, who brought the desired information.

"Two hundred and fifty thousand, six hundred and twenty dollars."

"Great Scotland Yard! And all straight commissions on realty and loans. Isn't it a corker though, how it grows?

"Well,--it represents a turn-over of over six million dollars one way and another. That's something any two-year-old firm might be proud of."

"And two years ago I was----You know what, Jim!"

"And two years ago I was Captain Mayne Plunkett of dime novel repute--or disrepute--with glazed pants and a celluloid collar."

"And Aunt Christina of 'Love Notes' fame," Phil reminded.

Jim put up his hand. "Hush! Let the dead bury their dead.

"But it beats the Dutch all the same how offers keep coming in on a man when he doesn't require them; yet, when he's nearly down and out, he can't even get a political speech to report."

"That's simple enough too, Jim. You know the reason; you have preached it in this business long enough.

"Think failure and you bring every brooding failure carrion-crow in the Universe to roost on the top rail of your iron bedstead. Think success, look success, live success,--and success walks in at your front door, while everyone helps you along the same way with each thought he gives your apparent success, even if his thought be simply one of envy."

"Yes!--and as you are aware, my one object in life when I was slightly younger was to be a successful novelist. But no publisher would look at me. Then I got my nose in on this penny-a-line Deadwood d.i.c.k stuff--which I shall never despise, for many a square meal I have had to fill a round hole off the fifty dollars a book they netted me.

"To-day I have a letter from the publishers of these same paper 'Horribles,' enclosing six of my poor, starved, mental offsprings.

They are the pick of fifty which they say I have written."

Jim took off his hat and pa.s.sed his fingers through his hair.

"Lord! I didn't know, Phil,--honest to goodness!--I didn't know I had written so many.