“Yes,” said Montague.  “Do you know him?”

“Bates knows everybody,” put in the General; “that’s his specialty.”

“I happen to know Gamble particularly well,” said Bates.  “I have a brother in his office in Pittsburg.  What in the world do you suppose he is doing in Newport?”

“Just seeing the world, so he told me,” said Montague.  “He has nothing to do since his company sold out.”

“Sold out!” echoed Bates.  “What do you mean?”

“Why, the Trust has bought him out,” said Montague.

The other stared at him.  “What makes you think that?” he asked.

“He told me so himself,” was the answer.

“Oh!” laughed the other.  “Then it’s just some dodge that he’s up to!”

“You think he hasn’t sold?”

“I don’t think it, I know it,” said Bates.  “At any rate, he hadn’t sold three days ago.  I had a letter from my brother saying that they were expecting to land a big oil contract with the government that would put them on Easy Street for the next five years!”

Montague said no more.  But he did some thinking.  Experience had sharpened his wits, and by this time he knew a clew when he met it.  A while later, when Bates had gone and his brother had come in with Alice, he got Oliver off in a corner and demanded, “How much are you to get out of that oil contract?”

The other stared at him in consternation.  “Good heavens!” he exclaimed.  “Did he tell you about it?”

“He told me some things,” said Montague, “and I guessed the rest.”

Oliver was watching him anxiously.  “See here, Allan,” he said, “you’ll keep quiet about it!”

“I imagine I will,” said the other.  “It’s none of my business, that I can see.”

Then suddenly Oliver broke into a smile of amusement.  “Say, Allan!” he exclaimed.  “He’s a clever dog, isn’t he!”

“Very clever,” admitted the other.

“He’s been after that thing for six months, you know—­and just as smooth and quiet!  It’s about the slickest game I ever heard of!”

“But how could he know what officers were to make out those specifications?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said the other.  “That was the beginning of the whole thing.  They got a tip that the contract was to be let, and they had no trouble in finding out the names of the officers.  That kind of thing is common, you know; the bureaus in Washington are rotten.”

“I see,” said Montague.

“Gamble’s company is in a bad way,” Oliver continued.  “The Trust just about had it in a corner.  But Gamble saw this chance, and he staked everything on it.”

“But what’s his idea?” asked the other.  “What good will it do him to write the specifications?”