"Why can't they?"

"He knows too much about them individually and collectively. They're
afraid of him. Get rid of him, Barbs."

Wilmot Allen's voice was strongly appealing. The fact that he sat
forward in his chair, instead of yielding to its deep and enjoyable
embrace, proved that he was very much in earnest. But Barbara shook her
lovely head.

"You ask too much, Wilmot. My heart's in the beginning I've made. I've
got to go on. It's a test case. If I've got _anything_ in me, now is the
chance for it to show. You see, when I made up my mind seriously to try
to do worth-while things with my own hands, everybody was against me.
And the sympathy that I am going to receive if I fail to make good is of
a kind that's almost impossible to face."

"Then do me a favor. It won't interfere with your work, and it may be
very useful at a pinch." He drew from his hip pocket a small automatic
pistol. "Accept this," he went on, "and keep it somewhere handy as a
sort of guardian. It's much stronger than the strongest man."

"How absurd!" she said. "And what are you doing carrying concealed
weapons? I'm beginning to think that you're a desperado yourself."

He rose, smiling imperturbably, and laid the pistol in her lap.

"At least," she said, "show me how it works."

He explained the mechanism clearly and with patience, not once, but