He was smoking his after-dinner cigar in the lobby of the hotel and trying as he might to orient himself when Blashfield Hunnicott drifted in.  Kent gave the sometime local attorney a cigar, made room for him on the plush-covered settee, and proceeded to pump him dry of Gaston news.  Summed up, the inquiries pointed themselves thus:  was there any basis for the Gaston revival other than the lately changed attitude of the railroad?  In other words, if the cut rates should be withdrawn and the railroad activities cease, would there not be a second and still more disastrous collapse of the Gaston bubble?

Pressed hardly, Hunnicott admitted the probability; given another turn, the screw of inquiry squeezed out an admission of the fact, slurred over by the revivalist, that the railway company’s treasury was really the alms-box into which all hands were dipping.

“One more question and I’ll let up on you,” said Kent.  “It used to be said of you in the flush times that you kept tab on the real estate transfers when everybody else was too busy to read the record.  Do you still do it?”

Hunnicott laughed uneasily.

“Rather more than ever just now, as you’d imagine.”

“It is well.  Now you know the members of the old gang, from his Excellency down.  Tell me one thing:  are they buying or selling?”

Hunnicott sprang up and slapped his leg.

“By Jupiter, Kent!  They are selling—­every last man of them!”

“Precisely.  And when they have sold all they have to sell?”

“They’ll turn us loose—­drop us—­quit booming the town, if your theory is the right one.  But say, Kent, I can’t believe it, you know.  It’s too big a thing to be credited to Jim Guilford and his handful of subs in the railroad office.  Why, it’s all along the line, everywhere.”

“I’m telling you that Guilford isn’t the man.  He is only a cog in the wheel.  There is a bigger mind than his behind it.”

“I can’t help it,” Hunnicott protested.  “I don’t believe that any man or clique could bring this thing about unless we were really on the upturn.”

“Very good; believe what you please, but do as I tell you.  Sell every foot of Gaston dirt that stands in your name; and while you are about it, sell those six lots for me in Subdivision Five.  More than that, do it pretty soon.”

Hunnicott promised, in the brokerage affair, at least.  Then he switched the talk to the receivership.

“Still up in the air, are you, in the railroad grab case?”

Kent nodded.

“No news of MacFarlane?”

“Plenty of it.  His health is still precarious, and will likely remain so until the spoilsmen have picked the skeleton clean.”

Hunnicott was silent for a full minute.  Then he said: 

“Say, Kent, hasn’t it occurred to you that they are rather putting meat on the bones instead of taking it off?  Their bills for betterments must be out of sight.”