“Ain’t it curyus how a feller catches onto a thing like that all to once?” he said after a while. “If it hadn’t been that I was so anxious, I might have fooled with that for weeks and weeks and not got anywheres with it. I do wisht you could be my capper a while anyway, until I could get one.”
“I need all my time to study,” said Mr. Gubb. “It ain’t easy to learn deteckating by mail.”
“Pshaw, now!” said Mr. Critz. “I’m real sorry! Maybe if I was to pay you for your time and trouble five dollars a night? How say?”
Mr. Gubb considered. “Well, I dunno!” he said slowly. “I sort of hate to take money for doin’ a favor like that.”
“Now, there ain’t no need to feel that way,” said Mr. Critz. “Your time’s wuth somethin’ to me—it’s wuth a lot to me to get the hang of this gold-brick game. Once I get the hang of it, it won’t be no trouble for me to sell gold-bricks like this one for all the way from a thousand dollars up. I paid fifteen hundred for this one myself, and got it cheap. That’s a good profit, for this brick ain’t wuth a cent over one hundred dollars, and I know, for I took it to the bank after I bought it, and that’s what they was willin’ to pay me for it. So it’s easy wuth a few dollars for me to have help whilst I’m learnin’. I can easy afford to pay you a few dollars, and to pay a friend of yours the same.”
“Well, now,” said Mr. Gubb, “I don’t know but what I might as well make a little that way as any other. I got a friend—” He stopped short. “You don’t aim to sell the gold-brick to him, do you?”
Mr. Critz’s eyes opened wide behind their spectacles.
“Land’s sakes, no!” he said.
“Well, I got a friend may be willing to help out,” said Mr. Gubb. “What’d he have to do?”
“You or him,” said Mr. Critz, “would be the ‘come-on,’ and pretend to buy the brick. And you or him would pretend to help me to sell it. Maybe you better have the brick, because you can look stupid, and the feller that’s got the brick has got to look that.”