Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/134

 "Henry Harrington will be in for it, also for twenty thousand currency. Get 'em both ready."

Just like that Quackenbaugh had ordered forty thousand dollars out of the First National vaults to be used as pawns in the playing of a little game.

Power, thought Henry. Power! It was astonishingly pleasant to sit so close to the reins of power; but reservations began to occur to him.

"We might bring the Indian in here and show it to him," he suggested.

"Wouldn't have one-tenth the pull," decided the relentlessly eager Quackenbaugh after one thoughtful moment. "Dump it in his lap out there, and he can't get away from it."

"He'd probably refuse to come in here anyway," reflected Henry. "However, I'm going to be uneasy with all that pile in a motorboat. She might turn turtle or the bottom drop out or something." He was unaccustomed to using huge sums of money to bait traps with.

Quackenbaugh was entirely accustomed to it. Yet he confessed quite frankly: "So am I. When it's the raw stuff we're handling, I never get over having the shivers; but the man that hasn't got the nerve to take a chance when the stake is big enough never gets on with J. B. In this instance, the game is worth the chance; but we'll reduce the hazard by reducing the length of the marine voyage. We'll put a man with a sawed-off shotgun in a car with you and have you driven to the mouth of Cub Creek. The motorboat will meet you there and it's only two hundred yards across the channel to the island."

Henry looked relieved for a moment, but then re-