The Mystery Megapack

into my hands yet. I hope—”
    “So did half-witted Lem Budkins,” snapped Whitecotton.
    “Take a look at this,” pleaded Mr. Clackworthy, producing a letter. It was ostensibly from a New York chemical company offering him twenty thousand dollars for his entire rights. The banker, of course, had no way of knowing that those letterheads had been printed on Mr. Clackworthy’s order and mailed by Pop Blanchard in New York; nevertheless, he tossed it aside with hardly a glance.
    “Not interested,” he said harshly. “You haven’t the money to pay the draft; therefore, I send it back.”
    “And force me to sell out for a paltry twenty thousand dollars!” Mr. Clackworthy exclaimed bitterly. Mr. Whitecotton winced; it hurt him to hear such a sum sneeringly referred to as “paltry.”
    V.
    The following afternoon, on the five o’clock train, George Bascom arrived in Alschoola. According to previous instructions, he was shabbily dressed, wore a dented derby hat, and had a four-day bristle of beard on his normally round and clean-shaven face.
    He slouched almost furtively up the street away from the railroad station. The bank, of course, was closed, but he made inquiries at Hope’s Drug Store and had himself directed to the residence of Flint Whitecotton. The banker was on the front porch of his cottage—it, like everything else he owned, had been secured with the smallest possible outlay of cash—fanning himself with a palm-leaf fan, which was an advertisement and had cost him nothing, waiting for supper. He glared at the approach of the ragged stranger.
    “Go away!” he called. “We don’t feed tramps.”
    “Mr. Whitecotton,” said George. “I’m no tramp, and you’ve got to listen to me. I’m a chauffeur, and—”
    “Save your breath; I don’t need a chauffeur. I haven’t any automobile—not with gasoline at thirty cents a gallon. Sinful extravagance, that is!”
    “I don’t want a job, either,” went on George Bascom; “I don’t want money or free food or a job. All I want is that you should listen to me.”
    “Well, so long as it don’t cost anything,” agreed Banker Whitecotton a little less grudgingly, “I’ll listen.”
    “To keep you from throwing me off the place for a lunatic,” began George, “I’ll show you some of these newspaper clippings.” He poked a grimy hand into his pocket and brought out a half dozen badly worn newspaper clippings. “Just glance over those, and then I’ll talk.”
    Flint Whitecotton did glance them over, and his impatience gave way to curiosity.
    “Well?” he demanded.
    “Maybe you wonder why I come to you,” went on George. “I’ll tell you why. It’s because I’m too dead broke to buy so much as a shovel to dig for the gold that is buried—I won’t tell you where until we make a deal. Any minute I’m liable to be arrested as a vagrant. Your city marshal followed me three blocks when I got off the train. Two hundred thousand dollars in gold weighs a lot more than anyone man can pack. There’s got to be a car to take it away. Understand? I’ve got to have help. Sure, I might have gone in with some crook, but he’d probably have knifed me in the back for my share.
    “If I tell you where it’s buried, do we split fifty-fifty? There’s only two people on earth who know where it’s hid, me and the woman, and she don’t dare to make a move, on account of the government agents watching her so close. Do we make a deal?”
    There was a light of fascination in Flint Whitecotton’s cold, blue eyes; as Mr. Clackworthy had predicted, he could hardly believe it, and yet he dared not doubt it entirely. There was just one thing that decided him—no expense was involved.
    “I’ll go in with you,” he agreed, “I’ll buy the shovels. We don’t have to go to the cost of hiring an automobile until we’re sure it’s where you say it was buried. Where is that place?”
    “On your own land,” answered George Bascom, “that patch of yours out on the State road. It’s buried four feet down in the clay. I can take you right to the spot; I’ll take you now.”
    A hoarse cry burst through the lips of the miserly banker. The land that he had sold for two thousand dollars was worth almost a quarter of a million dollars in buried treasure!
    VI.
    Even Mr. Clackworthy in his most confident moments had not anticipated that things would go through to such a whirlwind finish. He had not dreamed that the banker’s greed would be so sharply