“Yes, sir.  That’s my business.”

“Guess you and me had better talk some.  I’m a-lookin’ for somebody to gimme advice about investin’.  I got a sight of money to invest some’eres—­a sight of it.  Railroad stocks, or suthin’.  Calc’late on makin’ myself well off.”

“I’m not taking any new clients, Mr. Baines.  I’m very busy indeed.”  He glanced at Pansy.  “But if you are a friend of Miss O’Toole’s possibly I can break my rule....  About how much do you wish to invest?”

“Oh, say fifteen to twenty thousand.  Figger on doublin’ it up, or mebby better ’n that.  Folks does it.  I’ve read about ’em.”

“To be sure they do—­if they are properly advised.  But one has to know the stock market—­like a book.”

“And Mr. Peaney knows it like a book,” said Pansy.

Peaney lowered his voice.  “I have agents—­men in the offices of great corporations, and they telegraph me secrets.  I know when a big stock manipulation is coming off—­and my clients profit by it.”

“Don’t call to mind none, right now, do you?”

Mr. Peaney looked about him cautiously.  “I do,” he said, in a low voice.  “My man in the office of the president of the International Utilities Company wired me to-day that to-morrow they were going to shove the stock up five points.”

“Um!...  Don’t understand.  What’s that mean?”

“It means, if you invested a thousand dollars on margin and the stock went up five points, you would get your money back, and five thousand dollars besides.”

“Say!...  I knowed they was money to be made easy....  But I hain’t no fool.  I don’t know you, mister.”  Scattergood became very cunning.  “I don’t know this here girl very well—­though I kinder took to her at the first.  I’m a-goin’ cautious.  I might git smouged....  What I aim to do is to go careful till I git on to the ropes and know who to trust....  Hain’t goin’ to put all my money in at the first go-off.  No, siree.  Goin’ to try it first kind of small, and if it shows all right, why, then I’m a-goin’ in right up to my neck....  Folks back home would figger I was pretty slick if I come home with a million dollars.”

“That’s the smart way,” Pansy said, with a little grimace at Peaney.  “Why don’t you try this International Utilities investment, to-morrow—­say for a thousand dollars?...  If you—­come out right, then you’ll know you can trust Mr. Peaney, and the next time he has some real information you can jump right in and make a fortune.”

“Sounds mighty reasonable.  I kin afford to lose a thousand—­charge it up to investigatin’....  My, jest think of gainin’ five thousand dollars jest by settin’ down and takin’ it.”

“It’s the way money is made,” said Mr. Peaney.

“How’d I know I’d git the money?” Scattergood asked, with sudden doubt.

“Why, you’d see it,” said Pansy, with another grimace at Peaney.  “You put your thousand dollars on the counter, and Mr. Peaney puts five thousand right beside it.  You see it all the time.  If you come out right, you just pick up the money and walk off.”