Kitobni o'qish: «Young Wallingford»

CHAPTER I

WHEREIN JONATHAN REUBEN WIX BEGINS TO THINK

“A natural again!” exulted Jonathan Reuben Wix, as the dice bounded from his plump hand and came to rest upon the billiard-table in Leiniger’s Select Café, with a five and a deuce showing. “Somebody ring the bell for me, because I’m a-going to get off.”

He was a large young man in every dimension, broad of chest and big and pink of face and jovial of eye, and he chuckled as he passed the dice to his left-hand neighbor. There was a hundred dollars on the table and he gathered it up in a wad.

“Good-by, boys, and many merry thanks for these kind contributions,” he bantered as he stuffed the money into his pocket. “It’s me for Bunkville-amidst-the-ferry-boats, on the next Limited.”

He was back in less than three days, having spent just twenty-four hours in New York. The impulsively decided journey was nothing unusual for him, but it had an intimate bearing upon his future in that it forced upon him the confidence of secretive Clifford Gilman, who lived next door.

“Home so soon?” inquired Gilman in surprise. “They must have robbed you!”

“Robbed!” laughed Wix. “I should say not. I didn’t waste a cent. Railroad ticket, sleepers, meals and extra fare on the Limited cost twenty-five each way. That left fifty. My room at the hotel cost five dollars. Breakfast was two dollars; morning drive through Central Park, four; lunch, three-fifty; matinée ticket, with cab each way, five; dinner, eight, with the ordinary champagne of commerce; theater and cab hire, five-fifty; supper, twelve, including a bottle of real champagne at eight dollars, and the balance in tips.”

Clifford gasped as he hungrily reviewed these luscious items.

Young Gilman was not one of those who had been in the game by which Wix had won a hundred. He never played dice, did young Gilman, nor poker, nor bet on a horse race, nor drank, nor even smoked; but wore curly, silken sideburns, and walked up the same side of Main Street every morning to the bank, with his lunch in a little imitation-leather box. He walked back down the same side of Main Street every evening. If he had happened to take the other side on any morning, before noon there would have been half a dozen conservative depositors to ask old Smalley, who owned the bank, why Clifford had crossed over.

Young Gilman was popularly regarded as a “sissy,” but that he had organs, dimensions and senses, and would bleed if pricked, was presently evidenced to Mr. Wix in a startling proposition.

“Look here, Wix,” said Gilman, lowering his voice to a mystery-fraught undertone, “I’m going to take a little trip and I want you to come along.”

“Behave!” admonished Wix. “It would be awful reckless in me to go with a regular little devil like you; and besides, sarsaparilla and peanuts tear up my system so.”

“I’ve got three hundred dollars,” stated Gilman calmly. “Does that sound like sarsaparilla and peanuts?”

“I’m listening,” said Wix with sudden interest. “Where did you get it, mister?”

Gilman looked around them nervously, then spoke in an eager whisper, clutching Wix by the arm.

“Saved it up, but like you do. I saw the wisdom of your way long ago. Old Smalley makes me put half my salary in the bank, but I pinch out a little more than that, and every time I get twenty dollars on the side, I invest it in margin wheat, by mail. Most often I lose, but when I do win I keep on until it amounts to something. Of course, I’m laying myself open to you in this. If old Smalley found it out he’d discharge me on the spot.”

Wix chuckled.

“I know,” he agreed. “My mother once wanted me to apply for that job. I went to see old Smalley, and the first thing he did was to examine my fingers for cigarette stains. ‘You won’t find any,’ I told him, ‘for I use a holder,’ and I showed him the holder. Of course, that settled my case with Smalley; but do you know that he smokes after-dinner cigarettes away from home, and has beer and whisky and three kinds of wine in his cellar? I’ve got his number, all right, but I didn’t have little Clifford’s. Where do you hide it?”

“In the bank and here at home,” returned Gilman with a snarl; “and I’ve been at it so long I’m beginning to curdle. You’ve worked in every mercantile establishment, factory and professional office in town, and never cared to hold a job. Yet everybody likes you. You drink, smoke, gamble and raise the dickens generally. You don’t save a cent and yet you always manage to have money. You dress swell and don’t amount to a tinker’s cuss, yet you’re happy all day long. Come along to the Putnam County Fair and show me how.”

“The Putnam County Fair!” repeated Wix. “Two hundred miles to get a drink?”

“I can’t take one any closer, can I?” demanded Gilman savagely. “But the real reason is that Uncle Thomas lives there. I can go to visit Uncle Thomas when I wouldn’t be allowed to ‘go on the cars alone’ anywhere else. But uncle is a good fellow and his wife don’t write to my mother. He tells me to go ahead; and I don’t need go near him unless I’m in trouble.”

“Some time I’ll borrow your Uncle Tom,” laughed Wix. “He sounds good to me.”

Mrs. Gilman came to the door. She was a thin, nervous, little woman, with a long chin and a narrow forehead.

“Come in, Cliffy,” she urged in a shrill, wheedling voice. “You must have a good, long night’s rest for your trip in the morning.” In reality she was worried to have her Clifford talking with the graceless Wix – though secretly she admired Jonathan Reuben.

“I must go in now,” said Gilman hastily. “Go down to the train in the morning and get in on the other side, so mother won’t see you. And don’t tell your mother where you’ve gone.”

“She won’t ask,” responded Wix, laughing. “Nothing ever worries mother except our name. I don’t like it myself, but I don’t worry over it. It isn’t my fault, and it was hers.”

If Wix felt any trace of bitterness over his mother’s indifference he never confessed it, even to himself. Mrs. Wix, left a sufficient income by the late unloved, lived entirely by routine, with a separate, complacent function for every afternoon of the week. She was very comfortable, and plump, and placid, was Mrs. Wix, and Jonathan Reuben was merely an excrescence upon her scheme of life. Jonathan Reuben, however, had no lack of feminine sympathy. Quite a little clique of dashing young matrons, with old or dryly preoccupied husbands, vied with the girls to make him happy.

In the present instance, young Wix was quite right about his mother’s indifference. He called to her as he went down to early breakfast that he might not be back for a few days, and she sleepily answered. “All right.” So Clifford and his instructor went to the fair, and the more experienced spendthrift showed the amateur how to get rid of his money, to their mutual gratification.

Back of the Streets of Cairo, on the closing day, Wix and Gilman, hunting a drink, found a neat young man with piercing black eyes and black hair, who upon the previous days had been making a surreptitious hand-book on the races. Just now he was advising an interested group of men that money would not grow in their pockets.

“If your eye is quicker than my hand you get my dollars,” he singsonged as he deftly shifted three English walnut shells about on a flimsy folding stand. “If my hand is quicker than your eye, I get your dollars. Here they go, three in a row. They’re all set, and here’s a double sawbuck for some gentleman with a like amount of wealth and a keen eye and a little courage. Where, oh, where, is the little pea?”

The location of the little pea was so obvious that it seemed a shame to take the black-eyed young man’s money, for just as he had stopped moving the shells, Wix and Gilman, pressing up, saw that the edge of the left-hand shell had rested upon the rubber “pea” and had immediately closed over it. Notwithstanding this slip on the part of the operator, there seemed some reluctance on the part of the audience to invest; instead, with what might have seemed almost suspicious eagerness, they turned toward the new-comers. Gilman, flushed of face and muddy of eye, and hiccoughing slightly – though Wix, who had drunk with him drink for drink, was clean and normal and his usual jovial, clear-eyed self – hastily pressed in before any one else should take advantage of the golden chance.

“Don’t, Gilman,” cautioned Wix, and grabbed him by the arm, but Clifford, still eager, jerked his arm away; and it was strange how all those who had been packed around the board made room for him.

“Here’s the boy with the nerve and the money,” commented the black-eyed one as he took Mr. Gilman’s twenty and flaunted it in the air with his own. “Now lift up the little shell. If the little pea is under it you get the twin twenties. Lovely twins!” He laughed and kissed them lightly. “It’s only a question,” he shouted loudly, as Gilman prepared to make his choice, “of whether your eye is quicker than my hand.”

Confidently Mr. Gilman picked up the left-hand shell, and a ludicrously bewildered look came over his face as he saw that the pellet was not under it. There was a laugh from the crowd. They had been waiting for another victim. Gilman looked hastily down at the trampled mass of straw and grass and muddy, black earth.

“The elusive little pea is not on the ground,” explained the brisk young man. “The elusive little pea is right here on the board in plain sight.”

To prove it he lifted up the center shell and displayed the pellet! There was another laugh. Not one person in that crowd had seen the dexterous movement of his little finger, so quick and certain that it was scarcely more than a quiver; but, to make sure that his “quickness of hand” had not been detected, he scanned every face about him swiftly and piercingly. In this inspection his eye happened to light on that of Jonathan Reuben Wix, and met a wink so knowing, and withal so bubbling with gleeful appreciation, that he was himself forced to grin.

“How you’ve wasted your young life,” commented Wix as he led away his still dazed companion. “I thought everybody knew that trick by this time, but I guess postmasters and bank clerks are always exempt.”

“But how did he do it?” protested Gilman. “I saw that little ball under the left-hand shell as plain as day.”

“That’s what he meant you to see,” returned Wix with a grin. “He let that one stop under the edge as if he were awkward, then he flipped it into the crook of his little finger. When he lifted the middle shell he shoved the ball under it. At the time you picked yours up there wasn’t a ball under any of the three shells. There never is.”

“I guess it’s too late for me to get an education,” sighed the other plaintively. “Smalley won’t give me a chance. I don’t even dare buy a new suit of clothes too often. I’d never see a bit of life if it wasn’t for this wheat speculation.”

Wix turned to him slowly.

“You want to let that game alone,” he cautioned.

“Oh, I’m cautious enough,” returned Gilman.

“You’re almost in full charge at the bank now, aren’t you?” observed Wix carelessly. “Smalley’s over at his new bank in Milton a good deal.”

“About half the time,” admitted Gilman uneasily.

“He keeps a big cash reserve, doesn’t he? Done up in bales, I suppose, and never looks at it except to count the mere bundles.”

“Of course.” Gilman was extremely nonchalant about it.

The other let him change the subject, but he found himself studying Clifford speculatively every now and then. This day was another deciding step in the future of Wix.

CHAPTER II

THE BLACK-EYED YOUNG MAN DISCOURSES OF EASY MONEY

It was to Jonathan Reuben that the waiters in the dining-car paid profound attention, although Gilman had the money. There was something about young Wix’s breadth of chest and pinkness of countenance and clearness of smiling eye which marked him as one with whom good food agreed, whom good liquor cheered, and whom good service thawed to the point of gratitude and gratuities: whereas Clifford Gilman, take him any place, was only background, and not much of that.

“Say, General Jackson,” observed Wix pleasantly to the waiter, “put a quart of bubbles in the freezer while we study over this form sheet. Then bring us a dry Martini, not out of a bottle.”

“I reckon you’re going to have about what you want, boss,” said the negro with a grin, and darted away.

He talked with the steward, who first frowned, then smiled, as he looked back and saw the particular guest. A moment later he was mixing, and Clifford Gilman gazed upon his friend with most worshipful eyes. Here, indeed, was a comrade of whom to be proud, and by whom to pattern!

They had swallowed their oysters and had finished their soup, with a quart of champagne in a frosty silver bucket beside them and the entrée on the way, when the “captain” was compelled to seat a third passenger at their table. It was the black-eyed young man of the walnut shells.

At first, as with his quick sweep he recognized in Mr. Gilman one of his victims, he hesitated, but a glance at the jovial Mr. Wix reassured him.

“We’re just going to open a bottle of joy,” invited Wix. “Shall I send for another glass?”

“Surest thing, you know,” replied the other. “I’m some partial to headache water.”

“This is on the victim,” observed Wix with a laugh, as the cork was pulled. “You see he has coin left, even after attending your little party.”

“Pity I didn’t know he was so well padded,” grinned the black-eyed one, whereat all three laughed, Gilman more loudly than any of them. Gilman ceased laughing, however, to struggle with his increasing tendency toward cross-eyes.

Wix turned to him with something of contempt.

“He don’t mind the loss of twenty or so,” he dryly observed. “He’s in a business where he sees nothing but money all day long. He’s a highly trusted bank clerk.”

Instead of glancing with interest at Mr. Gilman, the black-eyed young man sharply scrutinized Mr. Wix. Then he smiled.

“And what line are you in?” he finally asked of Wix.

“I’ve been in everything,” confessed that joyous young gentleman with a chuckle, “and stayed in nothing. Just now, I’m studying law.”

“Doing nothing on the side?”

“Not a thing.”

“He can’t save any money to go into anything else,” laughed Gilman, momentarily awakened into a surprising semblance of life. “Every time he gets fifty dollars he goes out of town to buy a fancy meal.”

“You were born for easy money,” the black-eyed one advised Wix. “It’s that sort of a lip that drives us all into the shearing business.”

Wix shook his head.

“Not me,” said he. “The law books prove that easy money costs too much.”

The black-eyed one shrugged his shoulders.

“In certain lines it does,” he admitted. “I’m going to get out of my line right away, for that very reason. Besides,” he added with a sigh, “these educated town constables are putting the business on the bump-the-bumps. They’ve got so they want from half to two-thirds, and put a bookkeeper on the job.”

Mr. Gilman presently created a diversion by emitting a faint whoop, and immediately afterward went to sleep in the bread-platter. Wix sent for the porter of their sleeping-car, and between the two they put Mr. Gilman to bed. Before Wix returned to the shell expert he carefully extracted the money from his friend Clifford’s pocket.

“He won’t need it, anyhow,” he lightly explained, “and we will. I’ll tell him about it in the morning.”

“I guess you can do that and make him like it all right,” agreed the other. “He’s a born sucker. He can get to the fat money, can’t he?”

Wix shook his head.

“No,” he declared; “parents poor, and I don’t think he has enough ginger in him ever to make a pile of his own.”

The other was thoughtful and smiling for a time.

“He’ll get hold of it some way or other, mark what I tell you, and you might just as well have it as anybody. Somebody’s going to cop it. I think you said you lived in Filmore? Suppose I drop through there with a quick-turn proposition that would need two or three thousand, and would show that much profit in a couple of months? If you help me pull it through I’ll give you a slice out of it.”

Wix was deeply thoughtful, but he made no reply.

“You don’t live this way all the time, and you’d like to,” urged the other. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t. Why, man, the bulk of this country is composed of suckers that are able to lay hands on from one to ten thousand apiece. They’ll spend ten years to get it and can be separated from it in ten minutes. You’re one of the born separators. You were cut out for nothing but easy money.”

Easy money! The phrase sank into the very soul of Jonathan Reuben Wix. Every professional, commercial and manufacturing man who knew him had predicted for him a brilliant future; but they had given him false credit for his father’s patience to plod for years. Heredity had only given him, upon his father’s side, selfishness and ingenuity; upon his mother’s side, selfishness and a passion for luxurious comfort, and now, at twenty-six, he was still a young man without any prospect whatsoever.

Easy money! He was still dreaming of it; looking lazily for chance to throw it his way, and reading law, commercial law principally, in a desultory fashion, though absorbing more than he knew, when one day, about six months afterward, the black-haired young man landed in Filmore. He was growing a sparse, jet-black mustache now, and wore a solemn, black frock-coat which fitted his slender frame like a glove. He walked first into the Filmore Bank, and by his mere appearance there nearly scared Clifford Gilman into fits.

“I guess you don’t remember me,” said the stranger with a smile. “My name is Horace G. Daw, and I had the pleasure of doing a little business with you at the Putnam County Fair.”

“Yes, I – I – remember,” admitted Gilman, thankful that there were no depositors in, and looking apprehensively out of the door. “What can I do for you?”

“I have a little business opportunity that I think would about suit you,” said Mr. Daw, reaching toward his inside coat pocket.

“Not here; not here!” Gilman nervously interrupted him. “Somebody might come in at any minute, even Mr. Smalley himself. He’s started for the train, but he might come back.”

“When, then, can I see you?” demanded Daw, seeing that Gilman was afraid of him. He had intended to meet the young man upon terms of jovial cordiality, but this was better.

“Any time you say, out of hours,” said Gilman.

“Then suppose you come down to the Grand Hotel at from seven-thirty to eight o’clock.”

“All right,” gulped Gilman. “I’ll be there.”

Under the circumstances Mr. Daw changed his plans immediately. He had meant to hunt up Mr. Wix also, but now he most emphatically did not wish to do so, and kept very closely to his hotel. Mr. Gilman, on the contrary, did wish to find Mr. Wix, and hunted frantically for him; but Wix, that day, obeying a sudden craving for squab, had gone fifty miles to dine!

Alone, then, Gilman went in fear and trembling to the Grand Hotel, and was very glad indeed to be sheltered from sight in Mr. Daw’s room.

What would Mr. Gilman have to drink? Nothing, thank you. No, no wine. A highball? No, not a highball. Some beer? Not any beer, thank you. Nevertheless, Mr. Daw ordered a pitcher of draft beer with two glasses, and Mr. Gilman found himself sipping eagerly at it almost before he knew it: for after an enforced abstinence of months, that beer tasted like honey. Also, it was warming to the heart and exhilarating to the brain, and it enabled him to listen better to the wonderful opportunity Mr. Daw had to offer him.

It seemed that Mr. Daw had obtained exclusive inside information about the Red Mud Gold Mine. Three genuine miners – presumably top-booted, broad-hatted and red neck-kerchiefed – had incorporated that company, and, keeping sixty per cent. of the stock for themselves, had placed forty per cent. of it in the East for sale. As paying ore had not been found in it, after weary months of prospecting, one of the three partners brought his twenty per cent. of the stock East, and Mr. Daw had bought it for a song. A song, mind you, a mere nothing. Mr. Daw, moreover, knew where the other forty per cent. had been sold, and it, too, could be bought for a song. But now here came the point. After the departure of the disgruntled third partner the others had found gold! The two fortunate miners were, however, carefully concealing their good luck, because they were making most strenuous endeavors to raise enough money to buy in the outstanding stock before the holders realized its value.

Mr. Gilman, pouring another amber glassful for himself, nodded his head in vast appreciation. Smart men, those miners.

Mr. Daw had been fortunate enough to glean these facts from a returned miner whom he had befriended in early years, and fortunate enough, too, to secure samples of the ore, all of which had happened within the past week. Here was one of the samples. Look at those flecks! Those were gold, virgin gold!

Mr. Gilman feasted his eyes on those flecks, their precious color richly enhanced when seen through four glasses of golden beer. That was actually gold, in the raw state. He strove to comprehend it.

Here was the certified report of the assay, on the letter-head of the chemist who had examined the ore. It ran a hundred and sixty-three dollars to the ton! Marvelous; perfectly marvelous! Mr. Daw himself, even as he showed the assay, admired it over and over. As for Mr. Gilman, words could not explain how he was impressed. A genuine assay!

Now, here is what Mr. Daw had done. Immediately upon receiving the report upon this assay he had scraped together all the money he could, and had bought up an additional ten per cent. of the stock of that company, which left him holding thirty per cent. Also, he had secured an option upon the thirty per cent. still outstanding. That additional thirty per cent. could be secured, if it were purchased at once, for three thousand dollars. Now, if Mr. Gilman could invest that much money, or knew any one who could, by pooling their stock Mr. Gilman and Mr. Daw would have sixty per cent. of the total incorporated stock of the company, and would thus hold control. Mr. Gilman certainly knew what that meant.

Mr. Gilman did, for Mr. Smalley’s Filmore Bank had been started as a stock company, with Mr. Smalley holding control, and by means of that control Mr. Smalley had been able to vote himself sufficient salary to be able to buy up the balance of the stock, so that now it was all his; but Mr. Gilman could not see where it was possible for him to secure three thousand dollars for an investment of this nature.

An investment? Mr. Daw objected. This was not an investment at all. It was merely the laying down of three thousand dollars and immediately picking it up again fourfold. Why, having secured this stock, all they had to do was to let the secret of the finding of the hundred-and-sixty-three-dollar-a-ton gold be known, and, having control to offer, they could immediately sell it, anywhere, for four times what they had paid for it. The entire transaction need not take a week: it need not take four days.

Now, here is what Mr. Daw would do – that is, after he had ordered another pitcher of beer. He had the thirty per cent. of stock with him. He spread it out before Mr. Gilman. It was most beautifully printed stock, on the finest of bond paper, with gold-leaf letters, a crimson border and green embellishments, and was carefully numbered in metallic blue. It was also duly transferred in the name of Horace G. Daw. Mr. Daw would do this: In order that Mr. Gilman might be protected from the start, Mr. Daw would, upon taking Mr. Gilman’s three thousand, make over to Mr. Gilman this very stock. He would then take Mr. Gilman’s three thousand and purchase the other thirty per cent. of stock in his, Mr. Daw’s, own name, and would, in the meantime, sign a binding agreement with Mr. Gilman that their stock should be pooled – that neither should sell without the consent of the other. It was a glorious opportunity! Mr. Daw was sorry he could not swing it all himself, but, being unable to do so, it immediately occurred to him that Mr. Gilman was the very man to benefit by the opportunity.

Mr. Gilman looked upon that glittering sample of ore, that unimpeachable certified assay, those beautifully printed stock certificates of the Red Mud Gold Mining Company, and he saw yellow. Nothing but gold, rich, red mud gold, was in all his safe, sane and conservative vision. Here, indeed, was no risk, for here were proofs enough and to spare. Besides, the entire transaction was so plausible and natural.

“By George, I’ll do it!” said Mr. Gilman, having already, in those few brief moments, planned what he would do with nine thousand dollars of profits. Mr. Daw was very loath to let Mr. Gilman go home after this announcement. He tried to get him to stay all night, so that they could go right down to the bank together in the morning and fix up the matter; for it must be understood that a glittering opportunity like this must be closed immediately. Mr. Gilman, as a business man of experience, could appreciate that. But there were weighty reasons why Mr. Gilman could not do this, no matter how much he might desire it, or see its advisability. Very well, then, Mr. Daw would simply draw up that little agreement to pool their stock, so that the matter could be considered definitely settled, and Mr. Daw would then wire, yet that night, to the holders of the remaining stock that he would take it.

With much gravity and even pomp the agreement was drawn up and signed; then Mr. Gilman, taking the sage advice of Mr. Daw, drank seltzer and ammonia and ate lemon peel, whereupon he went home, keeping squarely in the center of the sidewalk to prove to himself that he could walk a straight line without wavering. Young Mr. Daw, meanwhile, clinging to that signed agreement as a mariner to his raft, sat upon the edge of his bed to rejoice and to admire himself; for this was Mr. Daw’s first adventure into the higher and finer degrees of “wise work,” and he was quite naturally elated over his own neatness and despatch.