Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/249

Rh to call it off. What'd the young fellow do?"

"Wrote the article, of course," said Magee.

"Now—now," reproved Cargan. "That remark don't fit in with the estimate I've made of you. I think you re a smart boy. Don't disappoint me. This young fellow I speak of—he was smart, all right. He thought the matter over. He knew the reform bunch, through and through. All glory and no pay, serving them. He knew how they chased bubbles, and made a lot of noise, and never got anywhere in the end. He thought it over, Magee, the same as you're going to do. You're on, says this lad, and added five figures to his roll as easy as we'd add a nickel. He had brains, that guy."

"And no conscience," commented Magee.

"Conscience," said Mr. Cargan, "ain't worth much except as an excuse for a man that hasn't made good to give his wife. How much did you say you was going to get for this article?"

Mr. Magee looked him coolly in the eye.

"If it's ever written," he said, "it will be a two-hundred-thousand-dollar story."

There ain't anything like that in it for you,"