But the financier’s mood had changed.  The keen mind was busy behind his narrow eyes.  Perhaps Idepski understood the man.  Perhaps the coolness of the agent appealed to the implacable nature of the Swede.  Whatever it was the hot eyes had cooled, and the fleshy cheeks had returned to their normal pasty hue.  He raised a hand pointing.

“Sit down and smoke all you need,” he said, in the sharp, autocratic fashion that was his habit.  “We aren’t through yet.”  Then, for a few moments, he regarded the slim figure as it lay back once more in the armchair.  “Say,” he began, abruptly, “you reckon to go on for—­yourself?  Yes?  You’re a good hater.”

He went on as the other inclined his head.

“I like a good hater.  Yes.  Well, just cut out all I said.  We’ll go on.  I guess you’ll need to blunder some before we get this swine.  You’re bound to.  But I want him.  I want him bad.  If it’s good for you to go on for yourself, that’s good for me.  There’s a lifetime ahead yet, and I don’t care so I see him down—­right down where I need him.  Maybe I won’t get the money, but we’ll get him, and that’ll do.  Yes, cut out what I said, and go ahead.  Tell me about it.”

Idepski displayed neither enthusiasm nor added interest.  He accepted the position with seeming indifference.  Hellbeam to him was just an employer.  A means to those ends which he had in view.  If Hellbeam turned him down it would mean a setback, but not a disaster, and Idepski appraised setbacks at their simple value, without exaggeration.  Besides, he knew that this Swede, powerful, wealthy as he was, could not afford to do without him in this matter.  His intolerant, hectic temper mattered nothing at all.  He paid for the privilege of its display, and he paid well.  So—­

“There’s nothing much to tell,” the agent returned, with a shrug.  “I’m going to get him—­that’s all.  See here, Mr. Hellbeam,” he went on after a pause, with a sudden change to keen energy, “you’re a mighty big power in the financial world, and to be that I guess you’ve had to be some judge of the other feller.  That’s so.  You most generally know when he’s beat before you begin.  And when he squeals it don’t come as a surprise.  Well, that’s how it is with me, only it’s a bigger thing to me because it sometimes happens to mean the difference between life and death.  Say, when you put up your bluff at a feller, and watch him square in the eyes, and you see ’em flicker and shift, do you reckon you’ve lit on the ‘yellow streak,’ that lies somewhere in most folk?  I guess so.  Well, that’s how I know my man.  I’ve seen it in this bum, Leslie Standing as he calls himself now.  And when I saw it I knew he was beat, for all he’d the drop on me.  Since then my notion’s proved itself.  He’s lit out.  He’s cut from his gopher hole at Sachigo.  An’ when a gopher gets away from his hole, the man with the gun has him dead set.  But say, that muss up you reckon I made doesn’t look that