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 and here now, with Lahleet observing him, was Scanlon with its portent quaking in his heart. "Mr. Boland," he stammered huskily, "John . . . John, will you look at this?"

Now the number of occasions in recent years on which Thomas Scanlon had hailed his chief by his first name were few; that he did so now betokened his agitation. It was an outcrop of that earlier association between the two as fellow-gamblers in the future of a wilderness.

Mr. Boland appeared to gut the message of its contents with a glance; yet hardened instead of softening with its impact. "Well?" he challenged sharply, eyes a-glitter.

"Well!" echoed Scanlon, mopping perspiration.

"But they can't do it!" snarled Mr. Boland through sheer force of the despot's habit.

"The hell of it is, they can!" Scanlon collapsed into a chair. "Almighty God! . . . If they should happen to," he shuddered.

"They won't," snapped John Boland, irritated with weakness as always. His eyes were narrowed; his glance was hard. Old Two Blades was really looking his fifty-seven years tonight; but for all of them his lined face was tightly sealed, the spike-like jaw thrust out, the lower lip rising till it engulfed the upper and tightening till his mouth was only a seam. His masked countenance was a dare to every menace, a trumpeting that his was not a spirit to be blown out of its course by even the blackest cloud of a mere summer squall.

Billie, wearing a blue negligee, with points of lace and girdled at the waist by a rope of white silk, received Lahleet in her boudoir. With the light filtering softly