"Eh? Eh?"
"Arkalion. The North American Carpet King. Right?"
"How did you know?" the man whose name was not Jones but Arkalion asked the man whose name was not Smith but might as well have been.
"When I saw your ad," said not-Smith, "I said to myself, 'now here must be a very rich, influential man.' It only remained for me to study a series of photographs readily obtainable—I have a fine memory for that, Mr. Arkalion—and here you are; here is Arkalion the Carpet King."
"What will you do with the ten million dollars?" demanded Arkalion, not minding the loss nearly so much as the ultimate disposition of his fortune.
"Why, what does anyone do with ten million dollars? Treasure it. Invest it. Spend it."
"I mean, what will you do with it if you are going in place of my—" Arkalion bit his tongue.
"Your son, were you saying, Mr. Arkalion? Alaric Arkalion the Third. Did you know that I was able to boil my list of men down to thirty when I studied their family ties?"
"Brilliant, Mr. Smith. Alaric is so young—"
"Aren't they all? Twenty-one to twenty-six. Who was it who once said something about the flower of our young manhood?"