[CHAPTER I.]
WANTED: A MAN OF NERVE.
"Mr. Amos Murgatroyd?"
"My name."
Amos Murgatroyd whirled around in his office chair and measured his caller with a pair of little, gimlet eyes. The caller, at the same time, was measuring Murgatroyd.
The young man who had entered the musty office of the loan broker and was now undergoing his scrutiny, stood straight as a plumb line, his shoulders squared, his lithe, well-set-up form "at attention." He wore a cap, and his clothes were of dark blue and of a semi-military cut.
He was prepossessing in appearance, which, most decidedly, the loan broker was not.
Murgatroyd's face was too lean and hard, his eyes too sharp and shifty, to give one a very exalted idea of his character.
The caller drew a folded newspaper from the breast pocket of his coat and laid it on the broker's desk.
"Are you the man who put that 'ad' in the paper?" inquired the youth.