Capital is not accustomed to tart answers to its humor caustic, from persons in need of financial assistance for their enterprises. Harrah raised his toothbrush eyebrows and once more he favored Bruce with a sweeping glance of interest, which Bruce, in his sensitive pride, resented.
"Who sent you?" Harrah demanded roughly.
"Never mind who sent me," Bruce answered in the same tone, reaching for his hat which he had laid on the floor beside him, "but he had his dog-gone nerve directing me to an ill-mannered four-flusher like you."
The color flamed to Harrah's cheek bones and over his high, white forehead.
"You've got a curious way of trying to raise money," he observed. "I suppose," dryly, "that's what you're here for?"
"You suppose right," Bruce answered hotly as he stood up, "but I'm no damn pauper. And get it out of your head," he went on as the accumulated wrath of weeks swept over him, "that you're talking to the office boy. I've found somebody at last that's big enough to stand up to and tell 'em to go to hell! Sabe? You needn't touch my proposition, you needn't even listen to it, but, hear me, you talk civil!"
As Harrah arose Bruce took a step closer and looked at him squarely.
A lurking imp sprang to life in Harrah's vivid eyes, a dare-devil look which found its counterpart in Bruce's own.
"I believe you think you're a better man than I am."
"I can lick you any jump in the road," Bruce answered promptly.
Harrah looked at him speculatively, without resentment, then his lips parted in a grin which showed two sharp, white, prominent front teeth.
"On the square," eagerly, "do you think you can down me?"
"I know it," curtly--"any old time or place. Now, if it suits you."
To Bruce's amazement Harrah took his hand and shook it joyfully.
"I wouldn't be surprised if you could! You look as hard as nails. Do you box or wrestle?"
Bruce wondered if he was crazy.
He answered shortly: "Some."
"Bully!" excitedly. "The best luck ever! We'll have a try-out in private and if you're the moose I think you are you can break him in two!"
"Break who in two?"
"The Spanish Bull-dog! Eureka!" he chuckled gleefully. "I'll back you to the limit!"
"What's the matter with you?" Bruce demanded. "Are you loco?"
"Close to it!" the eccentric capitalist cried gaily,--"with joy! He bested me proper the other night at the Athletic Club--he dusted the mat with me--and I want to play even." Seeing that Bruce's face did not lose its look of mystification he curbed his exuberance: "You see I've got some little reputation as a wrestler so when Billy Harper ran across this fellow in Central America he imported him on purpose to reduce the swelling in my head, he said, and he did it, for while the chap hasn't much science he's so powerful I couldn't hold him. But you, by George! wait till I spring you on him!"