He lifted his straw hat as though to ease its pressure upon his head and then settled it well down over his eyes. This was the sign to the Gulwings' messenger, watching him covertly from behind a newspaper over on the far side of the lobby, that the plan had failed. The signal he had so confidently expected to give—a trick of relighting his cigar and flipping the match into the air—would have conveyed to the watcher the information that all augured well. The latter's job then would have been to get up from his chair and step outside and bear the word to Sig Gulwing, who, letter-perfect in the part of the conspiring telegraph manager, would promptly enter and present himself to Marr, and by Marr be introduced to the Westerner. The hat-shifting device had been devised in the remote contingency of failure on Marr's part to win over the chosen victim. Plainly the collapse of the plot had been totally unexpected by the messenger. Over his paper he stared at Marr until Marr repeated the gesture. Then, fully convinced now that there had been no mistake, the messenger arose and headed for the door, the whole thing—signaling, duplicated signaling and all—having taken very much less time for its action than has here been required to describe it.
The signal bearer had taken perhaps five steps when Hartridge spoke words which instantly filled Marr with regret that he had been so impetuously prompt to take a no for a no.
"Say, hold your hosses, Markham," said Hartridge contritely. "Don't be in such a hurry! Come to think about it, I might go so far as to risk altogether as much, say, as eight or ten thousand dollars in this scheme of yours—I don't want to be a piker."
In the hundredth part of a second Marr's mind reacted; his brain was galvanized into speedy action. Ten thousand wasn't very much—not nearly so much as he had counted on—still, ten thousand dollars was ten thousand dollars; besides, if the Gulwings did their work cannily the ten thousand ought to be merely a starter, an initiation fee, really, for the victim. Once he was enmeshed, trust Sig and Alf to trim him to his underwear; the machinery of the wire-tapping game was geared for just that.
He must stop the departing messenger then, must make him understand that the wrong sign had been given and that the fish was nibbling the bait. Yet the messenger's back was to them; ten steps, fifteen steps more, and he would be out of the door.
For Marr suddenly to hail a man he was supposed not to know might be fatal; almost surely at this critical moment it would stir up suspicion in Hartridge's mind. Yet some way, somehow, at once, he must stop the word bearer. But how? That was it—how?
Ah, he had it! In the fraction of a moment he had it. It came to him now, fully formed, the shape of it conjured up out of that jumble of words which had been flowing to him from the telephone desk all the while he had been sitting there and which had registered subconsciously in his quick brain. The pause, naturally spaced, which fell between Hartridge's 'bout-faced concession and Marr's reply, was not unduly lengthened, yet in that flash of time Marr had analyzed the puzzle of the situation and had found the answer to it.
"Bully, Hartridge!" he exclaimed. "You'll never regret it. Our man ought to be here any minute now.... By Jove! That reminds me—I meant to telephone for some tickets for to-night's Follies—you're going with me as my guest. Just a moment!"
He got on his feet and as he came out of the corner and still was eight feet distant from the telephone girl, he called out loudly, as a man might call whose hurried anxiety to get an important number made him careless of the pitch of his voice: "Worth 10,000! Worth 10,000!"
He feared to look toward the door—yet. For the moment he must seem concerned only with the hasty business of telephoning.