“The hell it mustn’t!” said McQuiggan.

“It’s crooked,” said the quack bluntly.

The promoter laughed.  “A hot one, you are, to talk about crookedness.”

“He’s paying his advertising bills out of my people’s pay envelopes!” accused Dr. Surtaine.

“How’s that, Doc?” asked Ellis.

“Why, when he was here before, he spent some time around the Certina plant and got acquainted with the department managers and a lot of the others, and damn me!” cried Dr. Surtaine, grinning in spite of his wrath, “if he didn’t sting ’em all for stock.”

“How do you know they’re stung?” inquired Ellis.

“From an expert on the ground.  I got anxious when I found my own people were in it, and had a man go out there from Phoenix.  He reports that the Streaky Mountain hasn’t got a thing but expectations and hardly that.”

“Well, you didn’t say there was anything more, did you?” inquired the bland McQuiggan.

“I?  I didn’t say?”

“Yes, you.  You got up the ads.”

“Well—­well—­well, of all the nerve!” cried Dr. Surtaine, grievously appealing to the universe at large.  “I got ’em up!  You gave me the material, didn’t you?”

“Sure, did I. Hot stuff it was, too.”

“Hot bunk!  And to flim-flam my own people with it, too!”

“Anybody that works in your joint ought to be wise to the bunk game,” suggested McQuiggan.

“I’ll tell you one thing:  you don’t run any more of it in this town.”

“Maybe I don’t and then again maybe I do.  It won’t be as good as your copy, p’r’aps.  But it’ll get some coin, I reckon.  Take a look,” he taunted, and tossed his proofs to the other.

The quack broke forth at the first glance.  “Look here!  You claim fifty thousand tons of copper in sight.”

“So there is.”

“With a telescope, I suppose.”

“Well, telescope’s sight, ain’t it?  You wouldn’t try to hear through one, would you?”

“And $200,000.00 worth, ready for milling,” continued the critic.

“Printer’s error in the decimal point,” returned the other, with airy impudence.  “Move it two to the left.  Keno!  There you have it:  $2000.00.”

“Very ingenious, Mr. McQuiggan,” said Hal.  “But you’re practically admitting that your ads. are faked.”

“Admittin’ nothin’!  I offer you the ads. and I’ve got the ready stuff to pay for ’em.”

“And you think that is all that’s necessary?”

“Sure do I!”

“Mr. McQuiggan,” remarked Ellis, “has probably been reading our able editorial on the reformed and chastened policy of the ‘Clarion.’”

Hal turned an angry red.  “That doesn’t commit us to accepting swindles.”

“Don’t it?” queried McQuiggan.  “Since when did you get so pick-an’-choosy?”

“Straight advertising,” announced Dr. Surtaine, “has been the unvarying policy of this paper since my son took it over.”