I had already named it on my walk.
“The Interurban,” I said.
“A dummy company?” said Mr. Jason.
“Lively enough to bid something over a hundred thousand to the city for its franchise,” I replied.
Judd Jason, with a queer look, got up and went to a desk in a dark corner, and after rummaging for a few moments in one of the pigeon-holes, drew forth a glass cylinder, which he held out as he approached me.
“You get it, Mr. Paret,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked, “a bomb!”
“That,” he announced, as he twisted the tube about in his long fingers, holding it up to the light, “is the finest brand of cigars ever made in Cuba. A gentleman who had every reason to be grateful to me—I won't say who he was—gave me that once. Well, the Lord made me so's I can't appreciate any better tobacco than those five-cent 'Bobtails' Monahan's got downstairs, and I saved it. I saved it for the man who would put something over me some day, and—you get it.”
“Thank you,” I said, unconsciously falling in with the semi-ceremony of his manner. “I do not flatter myself that the solution I have suggested did not also occur to you.”
“You'll smoke it?” he asked.