The Mystery Megapack

thousand-dollar bills. He gave the new depositor a look of baffled curiosity.
    “Humph!” he grunted. His voice was like his face—harsh and unpleasant. “May I ask if you contemplate—ah—going into business here?”
    “You might call it that.”
    “What line?”
    “I propose to develop a resource that has been locally overlooked.” Mr. Clackworthy smiled as he spoke. “If you will kindly give me credit for the five thousand, and a check book, I will write to your order a check for two thousand dollars.”
    “Huh? Check—two thousand—to my order?” gasped Mr. Whitecotton. He again stared at the new customer, this time as if searching for some outward signs of insanity.
    “Precisely. You see, I have purchased from Lemuel Bodkins his option on that twenty acres of clay land east of town, and I wish to exercise the option. The check, if you please. You’ll pardon me if I seem rather abrupt, but there are so many things I want to attend to—lumber for the buildings, some telegrams, and that sort of thing. Quite a lot of detail to getting a new enterprise started, you know.”
    As the banker mechanically made a notation in a pass book, an ill-concealed sneer twisted his thin lips.
    “You are buying that clay land?” he demanded incredulously.
    “Quite so.” Already Mr. Clackworthy had uncapped his fountain pen and was filling in a check. “Just give me a receipt for it, and you can make the deed out later; tomorrow will do.”
    “What are you going to do with it?” demanded the banker bluntly.
    “Extract a certain chemical property valuable to science,” replied the confidence man glibly; and then, with a laugh: “Oh, I assure you that it has nothing to do with sculptor’s clay, Mr. Whitecotton. You would hardly expect me to be wasting my time with an insignificant scheme like Budkins’. The poor chap has had his little dream and, fortunately, gets out with a whole skin and a little to spare. I gave him seven hundred dollars for his option.”
    “What?” The banker’s tone rose to a shrill note for two reasons. One was because it seemed such an unnecessary waste of money—seven hundred dollars tossed away to a visionary young fool like Lem Budkins, when a hundred would have done quite as well; the other was that the option would have expired within another week. This extravagantly dressed stranger evidently wanted the twenty acres badly, and how Flint Whitecotton would have made him pay!
    “Sure,” said Mr. Clackworthy. “I felt sorry for the chap.” The banker shivered; such costly pity was beyond his ken. Immediately he formed a very low regard for Mr. Clackworthy’s ability as a business man.
    IV.
    Within the succeeding days, Alschoola was shown some speed. A neat but inexpensive shack went up on the Whitecotton twenty acres, almost overnight. Mr. Clackworthy paid spot cash for the lumber and the carpenter hire. The town, of course, was abuzz with speculation and guesses; but no one except Mr. Clackworthy knew, and he didn’t tell. Even The Early Bird was not, as he would say, “in on the know,” a fact which galled him bitterly.
    With the completing of the shack and a high board fence, total cost eight hundred dollars, the two mysterious strangers began to keep regular hours, admitting no one. The town wondered what they did there, and would have been further mystified to have witnessed the strange capitalist calmly stretched out in a steamer chair, reading a volume of Freud’s Psychoanalysis, while The Early Bird paced the floor like a caged lion, smoking countless cigarettes and muttering angrily.
    It was midafternoon and James gave way to his daily explosion.
    “I gotta have a look-in!” he stormed. “You gotta tell me what the lay is.”
    Mr. Clackworthy looked up lazily.
    “We are going to sell Mr. Whitecotton’s worthless farm back to him—at a handsome profit,” he answered innocently. “I thought you knew that.”
    “But how are you gonna hook him?” demanded The Early Bird. “What’s the bait we’re usin’?”
    “Gold,” answered Mr. Clackworthy solemnly, “a pot of gold. Didn’t you read that item on the third page of—”
    “I didn’t see nothin’ from no Pennsylvania towns except—”
    “As it happens,” interrupted Mr. Clackworthy with a chuckle, “it wasn’t a news item from any Pennsylvania town, but an Associated Press dispatch from Washington, D. C., relating to a certain Congressional inquiry which is now in progress and