“Why don’t you go after Merkle himself, Sis?  Easy picking, these bankers.”

Jim also had come home in the still hours of the night before, and had but lately made his breakfast on a cup of coffee, three cigarettes, and the racing sheet of the Morning Telegraph.  He wore his pajama jacket over a silk undershirt, and was now resting preparatory to his daily battle with the world.  Just how the struggle went or where it was waged the others knew not at all.

His mother shook her head.  “Those old men are all alike.  Mr. Hammon will never marry Lilas.”

“Is that so?” James abandoned his reading.  “The older they are, the softer they get.  Take it from me, on the word of a volunteer fireman, Lilas will cash in on him quicker than you think.  I know.”

“How do you know?” inquired his sister.

“Never mind how.  Maybe I’ve got second sight.  Anyhow, the info is right; Hammon’s in the game-bag.”

“Who told you?”

“Maybe I got it in the dog-eared dope,” mocked the brother.  “Maybe Max Melcher told me.  Anyhow, you could land Merkle just as easy if you’d declare Max in.”

“Now, Jim,” protested Mrs. Knight, “I won’t let you put such ideas into her head.  You and—­that gang of yours—­are full of tricks, but Lorelei’s decent, and she’s going to stay decent.  You’d get everybody in jail or in the newspapers.”

“Has Maxey ever been in jail?  Has Tony the Barber?  No, you bet they haven’t, and they never will be.  This jail talk is funny.  Just wait and see how easy Lilas gets hers.  Of course, if Lorelei could marry Wharton, that would be different, but he’s no sucker.”

“How is Lilas going to get hers?” insisted Lorelei.

“Wait and see.”  James returned to his paper.

“She’ll never marry him.  She hates him.”

Jim laughed, and his sister broke out irritably: 

“Why be so mysterious?  Anybody would think you’d robbed a bank.”

Jim looked up again, and this time with a scowl.  “Well, every time I come through with a suggestion ma crabs it.  What’s the use of talking to a pair of haymakers like you, anyhow?  I could grab a lot of coin for us if you’d let me.  Why, Maxey has been after me a dozen times about you, but I knew you wouldn’t stand for it.”

“Blackmail, eh?”

Jim was highly disgusted.  “What’s the difference how you pronounce it?  It spells k-a-l-e, and it takes a good-looking girl to pull off a deal in this town.  When Lilas lands Hammon she’ll be through with the show business for good.  The Kaiser suite on the Imperator for hers.”

Lorelei flung aside her napkin with an exclamation.

“What’s wrong now?” demanded Jim.  “Sore again because I offer to make a few pennies for you?  All right—­play for Bob Wharton.  I’d like to meet him, though; he can do me a lot of good.”

“How?”

“Well, he dropped eighty-four hundred in Hebling’s Sixth Avenue joint the other night.  Maxey owns a place on Forty-sixth Street where the sky is the limit.”