“Go home and go to bed.  I wouldn’t show it to you to-night if I had it here—­as I have not.  I don’t go around with a stick of dynamite in my pocket.”

“Where is it?” Hildreth asked.

“It is in a safety-deposit box in the vault of the Security Bank; where it is going to stay until I am ready to use it.  Go home, I say, and let me go to bed.  I’m ragged enough to sleep the clock around.”

In spite of his weariness, which was real enough, Kent was up betimes the next morning.  He had a wire appointment with Blashfield Hunnicott and two others in Gaston, and he took an early train to keep it.  The ex-local attorney met him at the station with a two-seated rig; and on the way to the western suburbs they picked up Frazee, the county assessor, and Orton, the appraiser of the Apache Building and Loan Association.

“Hunnicott has told you what I am after,” said Kent, when the surrey party was made up.  “We all know the property well enough, but to have it all fair and above-board, we’ll drive out and look it over, so that our knowledge may be said to be fully up to date.”

Twenty minutes afterward the quartet was locating the corners of a square in Gaston’s remotest suburb; an “addition” whose only improvements were the weathered and rotting street and lot stakings on the bare, brown plain.

“‘Lots 1 to 56 in Block 10, Guilford & Hawk’s Addition,’” said Kent, reading from a memorandum in his note-book.  “It lies beautifully, doesn’t it?”

“Yes; for a chicken farm,” chuckled the assessor.

“Well, give me your candid opinion, you two:  what is the property worth?”

The Building and Loan man scratched his chin.

“Say fifty dollars for the plot—­if you’ll fence it.”

“No, put it up.  You are having a little boom here now:  give it the top boom price, if you like.”

The two referees drew apart and laid their heads together.

“As property is going here just now, fifty dollars for the inside lots, and one hundred dollars apiece for the corners; say three thousand for the plot.  And that is just about three times as much as anybody but a land-crazy idiot would give for it.”  It was Frazee who announced the decision.

“Thank you both until you are better paid.  Now we’ll go back to town and you can write me a joint letter stating the fact.  If you think it will get you disliked here at home, make the figure higher; make it high enough so that all Gaston will be dead sure to approve.”

“You are going to print it?” asked the Building and Loan appraiser.

“I may want to.  You may shape it to that end.”

“I’ll stand by my figures,” said Frazee.  “It will give me my little chance to get back at the governor.  I had it assessed as unimproved suburban property at so much the lot, but he made a kick to the board of equalization and got it put in as unimproved farm land at fifty dollars an acre.”  Then, looking at his watch:  “We’d better be getting back, if you have to catch the Accommodation.  Won’t you stay over and visit with us?”