“My word!” ejaculated Reggie. “What had he done to you?”
“Offered me fifty thousand dollars to throw games so that the Giants would lose the pennant,” replied Joe. Then after exacting a pledge of secrecy, he told Reggie of the night he had dined with Harrish and Tompkinson.
Reggie gasped as he heard the story.
“The bally crook!” he exclaimed. “So that’s the kind of fellow Harrish is! Makes it look bad for the stocks I trusted him with.”
“He’s so crooked that he could hide behind a corkscrew,” declared Joe. “But I knocked one of his crooked schemes endways, and perhaps we can thwart the skin game he’s trying to play on you. But you haven’t told me yet the ins and outs of your business dealings with him.”
“I’m rather mixed on it myself,” confessed Reggie. “But it was something like this. I put in the scoundrel’s hands ten thousand dollars’ worth of stock. He undertook to advance a certain amount of money on those and use the money in playing the market for my benefit. Whatever profit there was, was to be placed to my credit after deducting his commission. If there were any losses—but he said that with his experience there would hardly ever be any losses——”
“Of course not,” put in Joe sarcastically.
“If there were any losses,” went on Reggie, “they would be charged up against my account.”
“Just wait a moment,” interrupted Joe, as a thought struck him.