“One more thing, Loosh.  What did you do with the certificates, Hallett’s and Miss Phipps’?  You got them, I suppose.”

“Eh?  Yes, oh, yes, I got them.  I don’t know where they are.”

“What?  Don’t know where they are?”

“No.  I took them to your office, Cousin Gussie.  I enclosed them in a large envelope and took them there.  I gave them to a person named—­ah—­Taylor, I think that was the name.”

“Taylor?  There is no Taylor in our office.”

“It was not Taylor.  It may have been Carpenter, although that doesn’t seem exactly right, either.  It was the name of some one—­ ah—­a person who does something to you, you know, like a tailor or a carpenter or a—­a butcher—­or—­”

“Barbour!  Was it Barbour?”

“Yes, that was it—­Barbour.  I gave Mr. Barbour the envelope.  I don’t know what he did with it; I told him I preferred not to know. . . .  Please excuse me.  Good-night.”

He turned abruptly and walked from the room.  They heard him ascending the stairs.  For a moment the pair he had left looked at each other in silence.  Then Cabot burst into a shout of laughter.  He rocked back and forth in his chair and laughed until Martha, who was not laughing, began to think he might laugh forever.

“Oh, by Jove, this is funny?” he exclaimed, as soon as he could speak.  “This is the funniest thing I ever heard of.  Excuse the hysterics, Miss Phipps, but it certainly is.  For the past month Williams and I, through this fellow Pulcifer down here, have been working heaven and earth to get the six hundred and fifty shares of that stock we supposed you and Hallett owned.  And all the time it was locked up in my own safe there in Boston!  And to think that old Loosh, of all persons, should have put this over on us.  Ho, ho, ho!  Isn’t it rich!”

He roared and rocked for another interval.  Still Martha did not speak, nor even smile.  She was not looking at him, but at the braided rug beneath her feet, and he could not see the expression of her face.

“I may as well explain now,” he went on, when this particular laugh was over, “that my friend Williams is one of the leading hotel men of this country.  He owns two very big hotels in Florida and one in the Tennessee mountains.  He has for some time been looking for a site on which to build another here on the northern coast.  He was down this way a while ago and, quite by accident, he discovered this shore property which, he found out later, was owned by the Wellmouth Development Company.  It was ideal, according to his estimate—­view, harbor, water privileges, still water and surf bathing, climate—­everything.  He came to me and we discussed buying it.  Then we discovered that this Development Company owned it.  Fifty thousand dollars, the concern’s capitalization, was too much to pay.  A trust company over here in your next town had twelve hundred shares, but we