A little later he started for home at Selwyn’s advice.  But the memory of his card losses frightened him, and he stopped on the way to see what money Austin would advance him.

Julius Neergard came up from Long Island, arriving at the office about noon.  The weather was evidently cold on Long Island; he had the complexion of a raw ham, but the thick, fat hand, with its bitten nails, which he offered Selwyn as he entered his office, was unpleasantly hot, and, on the thin nose which split the broad expanse of face, a bead or two of sweat usually glistened, winter and summer.

“Where’s Gerald?” he asked as an office-boy relieved him of his heavy box coat and brought his mail to him.

“I advised Gerald to go home,” observed Selwyn carelessly; “he is not perfectly well.”

Neergard’s tiny mouse-like eyes, set close together, stole brightly in Selwyn’s direction; but they usually looked just a little past a man, seldom at him.

“Grippe?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Selwyn.

“Lots of grippe ’round town,” observed Neergard, as though satisfied that Gerald had it.  Then he sat down and rubbed his large, membranous ears.

“Captain Selwyn,” he began, “I’m satisfied that it’s a devilish good thing.”

“Are you?”

“Emphatically.  I’ve mastered the details—­virtually all of ’em.  Here’s the situation in a grain of wheat!—­the Siowitha Club owns a thousand or so acres of oak scrub, pine scrub, sand and weeds, and controls four thousand more; that is to say—­the club pays the farmers’ rents and fixes their fences and awards them odd jobs and prizes for the farm sustaining the biggest number of bevies.  Also the club pays them to maintain the millet and buckwheat patches and to act as wardens.  In return the farmers post their four thousand acres for the exclusive benefit of the club.  Is that plain?”

“Perfectly.”

“Very well, then.  Now the Siowitha is largely composed of very rich men—­among them Bradley Harmon, Jack Ruthven, George Fane, Sanxon Orchil, the Hon. Delmour-Carnes—­that crowd—­rich and stingy.  That’s why they are contented with a yearly agreement with the farmers instead of buying the four thousand acres.  Why put a lot of good money out of commission when they can draw interest on it and toss an insignificant fraction of that interest as a sop to the farmers?  Do you see?  That’s your millionaire method—­and it’s what makes ’em in the first place.”

He drew a large fancy handkerchief from his pistol-pocket and wiped the beads from the bridge of his limber nose.  But they reappeared again.

“Now,” he said, “I am satisfied that, working very carefully, we can secure options on every acre of the four thousand.  There is money in it either way and any way we work it; we get it coming and going.  First of all, if the Siowitha people find that they really cannot get on without controlling these acres—­why”—­and he snickered so that his nose curved into a thin, ruddy beak—­“why, Captain, I suppose we could let them have the land.  Eh?  Oh, yes—­if they must have it!”