“I don’t want anybody ’croaked’,” replied Bince.  “I didn’t tell you to kill Torrance in the first place.  I just said I didn’t want him to come back here to work.”

“Ah, hell, what you givin’ us?” growled the other.  “I knew what you meant and you knew what you meant, too.  Come across straight.  What do you want?”

“I want all the records of the certified public accountants who are working here,” said Bince after a moment’s pause.  “I want them destroyed, together with the pay-roll records.”

“Where are they?”

“They will all be in the safe in Mr. Compton’s office.”

Krovac knitted his brows in thought for several moments.  “Say,” he said, “we can do the whole thing with one job.”

“What do you mean?” asked Bince,

“We can get rid of this Torrance guy and get the records, too.”

“How?” asked Bince.  “Do you know where Feinheimer’s is?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you be over there to-night about ten thirty and I’ll introduce you to a guy who can pull off this whole thing, and you and I won’t have to be mixed up in it at all.”

“To-night at ten thirty,” said Bince.

“At Feinheimer’s,” said Krovac.

CHAPTER XX.

An invitation to Dine.

As the workman passed through the little outer office Edith Hudson glanced up at him.

“Where,” she thought after he had gone, “have I seen that fellow before?”

Jimmy was in the shop applying “How to Get More Out of Your Factory” to the problems of the International Machine Company when he was called to the telephone.

“Is this Mr. Torrance?” asked a feminine voice.

“It is,” replied Jimmy.

“I am Miss Compton.  My father will probably not be able to get to the office for several days, and as he wishes very much to talk with you he has asked me to suggest that you take dinner with us this evening.”  “Thank you,” said Jimmy.  “Tell Mr. Compton that I will come to the house right after the shop closes to-night.”

“I suppose,” said Elizabeth Compton as she turned away from the phone, “that an efficiency expert is a very superior party and that his conversation will be far above my head.”

Compton laughed.  “Torrance seems to be a very likable chap,” he said, “and as far as his work is concerned he is doing splendidly.”

“Harold doesn’t think so,” said Elizabeth.  “He is terribly put out about the fellow.  He told me only the other night that he really believed that it would take years to overcome the bad effect that this man has had upon the organization and upon the work in general.”

“That is all poppycock,” exclaimed Compton, rather more irritably than was usual with him.  “For some reason Harold has taken an unwarranted dislike to this man, but I am watching him closely, and I will see that no very serious mistakes are made.”