"Billy,' listen now. There's a fellow down in Wall Street. His name is Shepler, Rulon Shepler. He's most the biggest man down there."
"Sure! I heard of him."
"Listen! I'm goin' to bed now. I can sleep since I got my mind made up. But I want to see Shepler in private to-morrow. Don't wake me up in the morning. But get up yourself, and go find his office—look in a directory, then ask a policeman. Shepler's a busy man. You tell the clerk or whoever holds you up that Mr. Peter Bines wants an appointment with Mr. Shepler as soon as he can make it—Mr. Peter Bines, of Montana City. Be there by 9.30 so's to get him soon as he comes. He knows me; tell him I want to see him on business soon as possible, and find out when he can give me time. And don't you say to any one else that I ever seen him or sent you there. Understand? Don't ever say a word to any one. Remember, now, be there at 9.30, and don't let any clerk put you off, and ask him what hour'll be convenient for him. Now get what sleep's comin' to you. It's five o'clock."
At noon Billy Brue returned to the hotel to find Uncle Peter finishing a hearty breakfast.
"I found him all right, Uncle Peter. The lookout acted suspicious, but I saw the main guy himself come out of a door—like I'd seen his picture in the papers, so I just called to him, and said, 'Mr. Peter Bines wants to see you,' like that. He took me right into his office, and I told him what you said, and he'll be ready for you at two o'clock. He knows mines, all right, out our way, don't he?—and he crowded a handful of these tin-foil cigars on to me, and acted real sociable. Told me to drop in any time. Say, he'd run purty high in the yellow stuff all right."
"At two o'clock, you say?"
"Yes."
"And what's his number?"
"Gee, I forgot; I can tell you, though. You go down Broadway to that old church—say, Uncle Peter, there's folks in that buryin'-ground been dead over two hundred years, if you can go by their gravestones. Gee! I didn't s'pose anybody'd been dead that long—then you turn down the gulch right opposite, until you come to the Vandevere Building, a few rods down on the left. Shepler's there. Git into the bucket and go up to the second level, and you'll find him in the left-hand back stope—his name's on the door in gold letters."
"All right. And look here, Billy, keep your head shut about all I said last night about anything. Don't you ever let on to a soul that I ain't stuck on this place and its people—no matter what I do."