As the lights of the railroad yard, red and white and green, slid by, so passed out of the ken of these fugitives all those who had contributed to their luxury through the medium of the Universal Covered Carpet Tack Company. Lamb, Jasper, Lewis, Nolting, Ella; what were all these people to them? What were any living creatures except a part of the always moving panorama which composed the background of their lives? Nomads always since their marriage, when Mrs. Wallingford as a girl had run away from home that was no home to join this cheerful knave of fortune, they had known no resting place, no spot on earth that called to them; had formed no new ties and made no new friendships. Where all the world seemed anchored they were ever flitting on, and the faces that they knew belonged but to the more or less vivid episodes by which the man strove after such luxurious ideals as he had. Onlya few of the dubious acquaintances which Wallingford had formed in his earlier days of adventure remained for them to greet as they paused before fresh flights afield. "Blackie" Daw, who had recently removed his "office" from Boston to New York, was the most constant of these, and him they entertained in one of the most exclusive hostelries in the metropolis soon after their arrival. Mr. Wallingford's face still bore traces of the recent conflict.
"Fanny's the girl!" he declared with his hand resting affectionately on his wife's shoulder, after he had detailed to Mr. Daw how he had squeezed the covered carpet tack dry of its possibilities. "She's little Mamie Bright, all right. For once we got away with it. I'm a piker, I know, but twenty-eight thousand in yellow, crinkly boys to the good, all sewed up in Fanny's skirt till we ripped it out and soused it in a deposit vault, isn't so bad for four months' work; and now we're on our way to ruin Monte Carlo."
"You're all to the mustard," admired Blackie; "you're the big noise and the blinding flash. As I say, I'd go into some legitimate line myself if I wasn't honest. What bites me, though, is that you got all that out of my little Lamb and his easy friends."
"Easy! Um—m—m—m," commented Mr. Wallingford frowningly, as he unconsciously rubbed the tips of his fingers over the black puff under his right eye. "You've got it wrong. I like to sting the big people best. They take it like a dentist's pet; but when you tap one of these pikers for a couple of mean little thousands he howls like a steam calliope. One old pappy guy started to take it out of my hide, and he tried so hard it gave him paralysis."
Mr. Daw laughed in sympathy.
"You must have had a lively get-away, to judge from the marks the mill left on you; but why this trip across the pond? Are they after you?"
"After me!" scorned J. Rufus. "There's no chance! Why, I never did a thing in my life that stepped outside the law!"
"But you lean way over the fence," charged Blackie with a knowing nod, "and some of these days the palings will break."
"By that time I'll have enough soft money in front of me to ease my fall," announced Wallingford confidently. "I'm for that get-rich-quick game, and you can just bank on me as a winner."
"You'll win all right," agreed Blackie confidently, looking at his watch, "but you're likethe rest of us. You'll have to die real sudden if you want to leave anything to your widow. That's the trouble with this quick money. It's lively or you wouldn't catch it on the wing, and it stays so lively after you get it."
He arose as he concluded this sage observation and buttoned his coat.
"But you're going to stay to dinner with us?" insisted Mrs. Wallingford.
"No," he returned regretfully. "I'd like to, but business is business. I have an engagement to trim a deacon in Podunk this evening. Give my regards to the Prince of Monaco."
It was scarcely more than a week afterwards when he somberly turned in at the bar room of that same hotel, and almost bumped into Wallingford, who was as somberly coming out. For a moment they gazed at each other in amazement and then both laughed.
"You must have gone over and back by wireless," observed Blackie. "What turned up?"
"Stung!" exclaimed J. Rufus with deep self-scorn. "I got an inside tip on some copper stock the evening you left, and the next morning I looked up a broker and he broke me. He had just started up in the bucket-shop business and I was his first customer. He didn't wait for any more. That's all."
Daw laughed happily, and he was still laughing when they entered the drawing room of Wallingford's suite.
"It's the one gaudy bet that the biggest suckers of all are the wise people," he observed. "Here you go out West and trim a bunch of come-ons for twenty-five thousand, and what do you do next? Oh, just tarry here long enough to tuck that neat little bundle into the pocket of a bucket-shop broker that throws away the bucket! You'd think he was the wise boy, after that, but he'll drop your twenty-five thousand on a wire-tapping game, and the wire tapper will buy gold bricks with it. The gold-brick man will give it to the bookies and the bookies will lose it on stud poker. I'm a Billy goat myself. I clean up ten thousand last week on mining stock that permits Mr. Easy Mark to mine if he wants to, and I pay it right over last night for the fun of watching a faro expert deal from a sanded deck! Me? Cleaned with-outsoap!"
"You don't mean to say you're broke, too?" demanded his host.
"If I had any less they'd arrest me for loitering."
Mr. Wallingford glowered upon his twenty-dollar-a-day apartments with a sigh. Thelatest in heavy lace curtains fluttered at him from the windows, thick rugs yielded to his feet, all the frippery of Louis-Quinze, while it mocked his bigness, ministered to his comfort—but waited to be paid for!
"You don't look as good to me as you did a while ago," he declared. "I'd figured on you for a sure touch, for now it's back to the Rube patch for us. O Fanny!"
"Yes, Jim," answered a pleasant voice, and Mrs. Wallingford, in a stunning gown which, supplementing her hair and eyes, made of her a symphony in brown, came from the adjoining room. She shook hands cordially with Mr. Daw and sat down with an inquiring look at her husband.
"It's time for us to take up a collection," said the latter gentleman. "We're going ay-wye."
"Ya-as, ay-wye from he-ah!" supplemented Blackie to no one in particular.
"Won't your ring and scarf pin do?" his wife inquired anxiously of Mr. Wallingford. A "collection," in their parlance, meant the sacrifice of a last resource, and she was a woman of experience.
"You know they won't," he returned in mild reproach. "If I don't keep a front I know where my ticket reads to; the first tank!"
Without any further objection she brought him a little black leather case, which he opened. An agreeable glitter sparkled from its velvet depths, and he passed it to his friend with a smile of satisfaction.
"They'll please Uncle, eh, Blackie?" he observed. "The first thing to do, after I cash these, is to look at the map and pick out a fresh town where smart people have money in banks. It always helps a lot to remember that somewhere in this big United States people have been saving up coin for years, just waiting for us to come and get it."
The two men laughed, but Mrs. Wallingford did not.
"Honest, I'm tired of it," she confessed. "If this speculation of Jim's had only turned out luckily I wanted to buy a little house and live quietly and—and decently for a year or so."
Mr. Daw glanced at her in amusement.
"She wants to be respectable!" he gasped in mock surprise.
"All women do," she said, still earnestly.
"You wouldn't last three months," he informed her. "You'd join the village sewing circle and the culture club, and paddle around in a giddy whirl of pale functions till you saw you had to keep your mouth shut all the timefor fear the other women would find out you knew something. Then you'd quit."
"You talk as if you had been crossed in love," she consoled him.
"That's because I'm in pain," confessed Blackie. "It hasn't been an hour since I saw a thousand dollars in real money, and the telegraph company jerked it away from me just as I reached out to bring it home."
"Isthere that much money in the world?" inquired Wallingford.
"Not loose," replied Blackie. "I thought I had this lump pried off, but now it's got a double padlock on it and to-night it starts far, far back to that dear old metropolis of the Big Thick Water, where the windy river looks like a fresh-plowed field. But they've coin out there, and every time I think of Mr. James Clover and his thousand I'm tempted to go down to his two-dollar hotel and coax him up a dark alley."
"Who does Mr. Clover do?" inquired Wallingford perfunctorily.
Blackie's sense of humor came uppermost to soothe his anguished feelings.
"He's the Supreme Exalted Ruler of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands," he grinned, "and his twenty-six members at three or elevencents a month don't turn in the money fast enough; so he took a chance on the cold-iron cage and brought a chunk of the insurance reserve fund to New York to double it. I picked myself out to do the doubling for him."
Mr. Wallingford chuckled.
"I know," he said. "To double it you fold the bills when you put them in your pocket, and when Clover wanted it back you'd have him pinched for a common thief. But how did it get away? I'm disappointed in you, Blackie. I thought when you once saw soft money it was yours."
"Man died in his town. If he'd only put it off for one day the whole burg could have turned into a morgue, for I don't need it. But no! The man died, and the Supreme Exalted Secretary wired the Supreme Exalted Ruler. The telegram was brought to his room just when I had the hook to his gills, and he—went—down—stream! It was perfectly scandalous the names we called that man for having died, but it takes a long time to cuss a thousand dollars' worth."
Mr. Wallingford was thoughtful.
"A fraternal insurance company," he mused. "I've never taken a fall out of that game, and it sounds good. This gifted amateur's goingout to-night? Hustle right down to his hotel and bring him up to dinner. Tell him I've been thinking of going into the insurance field and might be induced to buy a share in his business. I've a notion to travel along with that thousand dollars to-night, no matter where it goes. O Fanny!" he called again to his wife in the other room. "Suppose you begin to pack up while I step out and soak the diamonds."
That was how Mr. James Clover came to obtain some startling new ideas about insurance; also about impressiveness. When Mr. Wallingford in a dinner coat walked into any public dining room, waiters were instantly electrified and ordinary mortals felt humble. His broad expanse of white shirt front awed the most self-satisfied into instant submission, and he carried himself as one who was monarch of all he surveyed. This was due to complacency, for though bills might press and cash be scarce, there never stood any line of worry upon his smooth brow. Worry was for others—those who would have to pay. Mr. Clover, himself of some bulk but of no genuine lordliness whatever, no sooner set eyes upon Mr. J. Rufus Wallingford than he felt comforted. Here was wealth unlimited, and if this opulent beingcould possibly be induced to finance the Noble Order of Friendly Hands, he saw better skies ahead, bright skies that shone down on a fair, fruitful world where all was prosperity and plenty. Mr. Clover was a block-like man with a square face and a heavy fist, with a loud voice and a cultivated oratorical habit of speech which he meant to be awe-inspiring. Behind him there was a string of failures that were a constant source of wonderment to him, since he had not been too scrupulous!
"He'd be a crook if he knew how; but he stumbles over his feet," Blackie confided to Wallingford. To Clover he said: "Look out for the big man. He's a pretty smooth article, and you'll miss the gold out of your teeth if you don't watch him."
It was a recommendation, and a shrewd one. Mr. Clover was prepared by it to be impressed; he ended by becoming a dazed worshiper, and his conquest began when his host ordered the dinner. It was not merely what he ordered, but how, that stamped him as one who habitually dined well; and to Clover, who had always lived upon a beer basis, the ascent to the champagne level was dizzying. It was not until they had broached their second quart of wine that business was brought up for discussion.
"I understand you've just had a bit of hard luck, Mr. Clover," said Wallingford, laughing as if hard luck were a joke.
Mr. Clover winced within, but put on a cheerful air.
"Merely what was to have been expected," he replied. "You refer, I suppose, to the death of one of our members, but as our Order now has a large enrollment we are only averaging with the mortality tables."
"What is your membership?" asked the other with sudden directness.
"At our present rate of progress," began Mr. Clover, eloquently, squaring his shoulders and looking Mr. Wallingford straight in the eye, "thousands will have been enrolled upon our books before the end of the coming year. Already we are perfecting a new and elaborate filing system to take care of the business, which is increasing by leaps and bounds."
Mr. Wallingford calmly closed one blue orb.
"But in chilly figures, discounting next year, how many?" he asked. "Live ones, I mean, that cough up their little dues every month."
The Supreme Exalted Ruler squirmed and smiled a trifle weakly.
"You might just as well tell me, you know," insisted Mr. Wallingford, "because I shallwant to inspect your books if I buy in. Have you a thousand?"
"Not quite," confessed Mr. Clover, in a voice which, in spite of him, would sound a trifle leaden.
"Have you five hundred?" persisted Mr. Wallingford.
Mr. Clover considered, while the silent Mr. Daw discreetly kept his face straight.
"Five hundred and seventeen," he blurted, his face reddening.
"That isn't so bad," said Mr. Wallingford encouragingly. "But how do you clinch your rake-off?"
At this Mr. Clover could smile with smug content; he could swell with pride.
"Out our way, a little knothole in the regulations was found by yours truly," he modestly boasted. "Mine is somewhat different from any insurance order on earth. The members think they vote, but they don't. If they ever elect another Supreme Exalted Ruler, all he can do is to wear a brass crown and a red robe; I'll still handle the funds. You see, we've just held our first annual election, and I had the entire membership vote 'Yes' on a forever-and-ever contract which puts our whole income—for safety, of course—into the hands of a dulybonded company. For ten cents a month from each member this company is to pay all expenses, to handle, invest and disburse its insurance and other funds for the benefit of the Order. It's like making a savings bank our trustee; only it's different, because I'm the company."
His host nodded in approval.
"You have other rake-offs," he suggested.
"Right again!" agreed Clover with gleeful enthusiasm. "Certificate fees, fines for delinquency, regalia company and all that. But the main fountain is the little dime. Ten cents seems like a cheap game, maybe, but when we have two hundred and fifty thousand members, that trifling ante amounts to twenty-five thousand dollars a month. Bad, I guess!"
"When you get it," agreed the other. "You're incorporated, then. For how much?"
"Ten thousand."
"I see," said Mr. Wallingford with a smile of tolerance. "You need me, all right. You ought togiveme a half interest in your business."
Mr. Clover's self-assertiveness came back to him with a jerk.
"Anything else?" he asked pleasantly.
Mr. Wallingford beamed upon him.
"I might want a salary, but it would be purely nominal; a hundred a week or so."
Mr. Clover was highly amused. The only reason on earth that he would admit another man to a partnership with him was that he must have ready cash. His shoe soles were wearing out.
"I'm afraid our business wouldn't suit you, anyhow, Mr. Wallingford," he said with bantering sarcasm. "Our office is very plain, for one thing, and we have no rug on the floor."
"We'll put rugs down right away, and if the offices are not as swell as they make 'em we'll move," Wallingford promptly announced. "I might give you two thousand for a half interest."
Mr. Clover drank a glass of champagne and considered. Two thousand dollars, at the present stage of his finances, was real money. The Noble Order of Friendly Hands had been started on a "shoestring" of five hundred dollars, and the profits of the Friendly Hands Trust Company had been nil up to the present time. This offer was more than a temptation; it was a fall.
"Couldn't think of it," he nevertheless coldly replied. "But I'll sell you half my stock atpar. The secretary has ten shares, and dummy directors four. I hold eighty-six."
"Forty-three hundred dollars!" figured Wallingford. "And you'd charge me that for a brick with the plating worn thin! You forget the value of my expert services."
"What do you know about fraternal insurance?" demanded Clover, who had reddened under fire.
"Not a thing," confessed Mr. Wallingford. "All I know is how to get money. If I go in with you, the first thing we do is to reorganize on a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar basis."
Mr. Clover pounded his fist upon the table until the glasses rang, and laughed so loudly that the head waiter shivered and frowned. Seeing, however, that the noise came from Mr. Wallingford's corner, he smiled. He was venal, was the head waiter, and he remembered the pleasant, velvety rustle of a bill in his palm.
"That joke's good enough for a minstrel show," Clover declared. "Why, man, even if that stock could be sold, Gabriel's horn would catch us still struggling to pay our first dividend."
Mr. Wallingford lit a cigarette and smiled in pity.
"Oh, well, if you figure on staying in the business till you drop dead I won't wake you up," he stated. "But I thought you wanted money."
Mr. Clover shook his head.
"We have laws in my State, Mr. Wallingford."
"I should hope so," returned that gentleman. "If it wasn't for good, safe, solid laws I never would make a cent. Why, the law's on my side all the time, and the police are the best friends I've got. They show me the way home at night."
Mr. Clover looked incredulous.
"I'm afraid you don't understand the fraternal insurance business," he insisted. "It takes a lot of hard, patient work to build up an order."
"Youdon't understand the business," retorted the other. "What, for instance, are you going to do with that thousand dollars you're taking back home?"
"Give it to the widow of Mr. Henry L. Bishop, of course," said Mr. Clover, expanding his chest and pursing his mouth virtuously. "The widows and orphans who look to the Noble Order of Friendly Hands for protection shall not look in vain."
"That will look well in a prospectus," admitted Mr. Wallingford with a knowing twinkle of his eyes; "but I'm not going to take out any insurance so you could notice it. Suppose I show you how to have Mrs. Bishop hand you back that thousand with sobs of gratitude? Do I get two hundred and fifty of it?"
"If you can do that legitimately," said Mr. Clover, leaning forward and surprised into sudden warm eagerness, "I'll accept your price for a half interest."
"I'll go with you to-night—if I can get the drawing-room on your train," decided Wallingford, and arose.
The Supreme Exalted Ruler gazed up at him with profound admiration. He looked so much like actual cash. He might be a "smooth article," but was not one Clover also "smooth"? He could guard the gold in his own teeth, all right.
"You're a wonder, Jim," said Mr. Daw to his friend when they were alone for a few minutes; "but where are you going to get that two thousand?"
"Out of the business—if I pay it at all," replied Mr. Wallingford. "Trust your Uncle Rufus."
Mrs. Bishop, a small, nervous-looking woman of forty-five, with her thin hair drawn back so tightly from her narrow forehead that it gave one the headache to look at her, was in her dismal "front room" with her wrinkled red hands folded in her lap when Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Clover called. It was only the day after the funeral, and she broke into tears the moment they introduced themselves.
"Madam," declaimed Mr. Clover in his deepest and most sympathetic voice, "it is the blessed privilege of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands to dry the tears of the widows and orphans, and to shed the light of hope upon their disconsolate pathway. It is our pleasure to bring you, as a testimonial of your husband's affection and loving care, this check for one thousand dollars."
Mrs. Bishop took the check and burst into uncontrollable sobs, whereat Mr. Wallingfordlooked distinctly annoyed. If he could help it, he never, by any possibility, looked upon other than the most cheerful aspects of life.
Mr. Clover cleared his throat.
"But the broad paternal interest of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands does not stop here," he went on, turning for a glance of earned approval from J. Rufus Wallingford. "The family of every member of our Order becomes at once a ward of ours, and they may look to us for assistance, advice, and benefit in every way possible. We are a group of friends, banded together for mutual aid in time of trouble and sorrow."
Mr. Wallingford judged this magnificent flight to be a quotation from the ritual of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands, and he was correct; but, as Mrs. Bishop had ventured to look up at them, he nodded his head gravely.
"It is about that thousand dollars you hold in your hand, Mrs. Bishop," Clover continued, resuming his oratorical version of the lesson he had carefully learned from Wallingford; "and we feel it our duty to remind you that, unless it is wisely used, the plans of your thoughtful husband for your safe future will not have been carried out. How had you thought of investing this neat little sum?"
Mrs. Bishop gazed at the check through her tears and tried to comprehend that it was real money, as it would have been but for the astuteness of Mr. Wallingford. Mr. Clover had proposed to bring her ten new, crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, but his monitor had pointed out that if she ever got that money between her fingers and felt it crinkle she would never let go of it. A check was so different.
"Well," she faltered, "my daughter Minnie wanted me to get us some clothes and pay some down on a piano and lay in the winter coal and provisions and put the rest in a bank for a rainy day. Minnie's my youngest. She's just quit the High School because she wants to go to a commercial college. But my oldest daughter, Hattie, wouldn't hear to it. She says if Minnie'll only take a job in the store where she works they can run the family, and for me to take this thousand dollars and finish paying off the mortgage on the house with it. The mortgage costs six per cent. a year."
"Your daughter Hattie is a very sensible young lady," said Mr. Wallingford with great gravity. "It would be folly to expend this thousand dollars upon personal luxuries; but equally wrong to lose its earning power."
It was the voice of Wall Street, of theGovernment Mint, of the very soul and spirit of all financial wisdom, that spoke here, and Mrs. Bishop felt it with a thrill.
"Madam," orated Mr. Clover, "the Noble Order of Friendly Hands has provided a way for the safe and profitable investment of the funds left to the widows and orphans under its protection. It has set aside a certain amount of high-dividend-bearing stock in the Order itself, or rather in its operating department, of which, by the way, I am the president, and of which the eminent capitalist and philanthropist, Mr. J. Rufus Wallingford, is a leading spirit." His sweeping gesture toward that benevolent multi-millionaire, and Mr. Wallingford's bow in return, were sights worth beholding. "The benevolent gentlemen who organized this generous association have just made possible this further beneficence to its dependents. The stock should pay you not less than twelve per cent. a year, and your original capital can be withdrawn at any time. With this income you can pay the interest on your mortgage, and have a tidy little sum left at the end of each quarter. Think of it, madam! Money every three months, and your thousand dollars always there!"
Mrs. Bishop glanced at him in slowcomprehension. The figures that he gave her did not, as yet, mean so much, but the sight of Mr. Wallingford did. He was so big, so solid looking, so much like substantial prosperity itself. A huge diamond glowed from his finger. It must be worth several hundred dollars. Another one gleamed from his scarf. His clothing was of the latest cut and the finest material. Even his socks, in the narrow rim which showed above his low-cut shoes, were silk; she could see that clear across the room.
The door opened, and a girl of seventeen or eighteen came in. That she was unusually pretty was attested by the suddenly widening eyes of Mr. Wallingford.
"And is this your daughter Minnie?" asked the benevolent gentleman, all his protecting and fostering instincts aroused.
Mrs. Bishop, in a flutter, presented her younger daughter to the fortune-bringing gentlemen, and Minnie fluttered a bit on her own account. She knew she was pretty; she read in the eyes of the wealthy-looking, perfectly groomed Mr. Wallingford that she was pretty; she saw in the smile of Mr. Clover that she was pretty, and her vanity was pleased inordinately.
A sudden brilliant idea came to Mr. Wallingford.
"I have the solution to your problem, Mrs. Bishop," he said. "We shall need more help in our offices, and your daughter shall have the place. She can soon earn more money than she ever could in a store, and can secure as good a training as she could in a business college. How would you like that, Miss Bishop?"
"I think it would be fine," replied the young lady, with a large-eyed glance toward Mr. Wallingford.
The glance was more of habit than intent. Minnie's mirror and what she had heard from her boy friends had given her an impulse toward coquetry. It was pleasant to feel her power, to see what instantaneous impression she could make upon grown men. Such a friendly party it was! Everybody was pleased, and in the end Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Clover walked away from the house with Mrs. Bishop's check and her receipt and her policy in their pockets.
Mr. Clover was lost in profound admiration.
"It worked, all right!" he said exultantly to Mr. Neil, as soon as they returned to the dingy little office. "Here's the thousand dollars," and he threw down the check. "Good Lord! I couldn't believe but that thousand was gone; and then if another man died he would put us on the toboggan."
Mr. Neil was a thin young man whose forehead wore the perpetual frown of slow thought. Also his cuffs were ragged. He was the Supreme Exalted Secretary.
"Now may I have fifty?" he inquired in an aside to Clover. "My board bill, you know."
"Certainly not!" declared the Supreme Exalted Ruler with loud rectitude. "This thousand dollars belongs in the insurance reserve fund."
"Tut, tut," interposed Wallingford. "Your alarm clock is out of order. You just now paid a death claim with that money, and the reserve fund is out that much. A private individual, however, just now bought a thousand dollars' worth of stock in the reorganized Friendly Hands Trust Company, and you have the pay in advance. Let Mr. Neil have his fifty dollars, and give me a check for my two hundred and fifty; then we'll go out to hunt a decent suite of offices and buy the furniture for it."
"There wouldn't be much of the thousand left after that," objected Mr. Clover, frowning.
"Why not? You don't suppose we are going to pay cash for anything, do you?" returned Wallingford in surprise. "My credit's good, if yours isn't."
His credit! He had not been in town four hours! As Mr. Clover looked him over again, however, he saw where he was wrong. Mr. Wallingford's mere appearance was as good as a bond. He would not ask for credit; he would take it. Mr. Clover, in a quick analysis of this thought, decided that this rich man's resources were so vast that they shone through his very bearing. Mr. Wallingford, at that same moment, after having paid his enormous hotel bill in New York and the expenses of his luxurious trip, had only ten dollars in the world.
"Now then," suggested Mr. Clover as he passed the hypnotically won check to his new partner, "we might as well conclude our personal business. I'll make you over half my stock in the company, and take your two thousand."
"All right," agreed Wallingford very cheerfully, and they both sat down to write.
Mr. Clover transferred to Mr. Wallingford forty-three shares of stock in the Friendly Hands Trust Company, Incorporated, and received a rectangular slip of paper in return. His face reddened as he examined it.
"Why, this isn't a check!" he said sharply. "It's a note for ninety days!"
"Sure!" said J. Rufus Wallingford. "In our talk there wasn't a word said about cash."
"But cash is what I want, and nothing but cash!" exploded the other, smacking his hairy fist upon his desk.
"How foolish!" chided J. Rufus smilingly. "I see I'll have to teach you a lot about business. Draw up your chairs and get my plan in detail. If, after that, Clover, you do not want my note, you may give it back and go broke in your own way. Here's what we will do. We will organize a new operating company for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in twenty-five-dollar shares. We will buy over the old ten-thousand-dollar company for one hundred and fifty thousand in stock of the new company. Dividing this pro rata, you and I, Clover, will each have nearly twenty-six hundred shares. Mr. Neil, in place of his present ten shares, will have six hundred, and we shall have left four thousand shares of treasury stock. These we will sell among your members. We will reduce your present insurance rate one fourth, and use the hundred thousand dollars we take in on stock sales to get new members to whom to sell more stock. In the meantime, we'll see money every day. You and I, Clover, will each draw a hundreda week, and I think Mr. Neil will be pretty well satisfied if he drags down fifty."
The pleased expression upon Mr. Neil's face struggled with the deepening creases on his brow. Fifteen dollars a week was the most he had ever earned in his life, but he was so full of fraternal insurance figures that his skin prickled.
"But how about the insurance end of it?" he interposed. "How will we ever keep up at that ridiculously low rate? That might do for a while, but as our membership becomes older the death rate will increase on us and we can't pay it. Why, the mortality tables—" and he reached for the inevitable facts and figures.
"Who's talking about insurance?" demanded Wallingford. "I'm talking about how to get money. Put up the little red dope-book. Clover, you get busy right away and write a lot of circus literature about the grand work your members will be doing for the widows and orphans by buying this stock; also how much dividend it will pay them. When the treasury stock is sold, and we have a big enough organization to absorb it, we will begin to unload our own shares and get out. If you clean up your sixty-four thousand dollars in this year, I guess you will be willing tolet the stockholders elect new officers and conduct their own Friendly Hands Trust Company any way they please, won't you?"
Mr. Clover quietly folded Mr. Wallingford's note and put it in his pocket.
"Let's go out and rent some new offices," he said.
He came back, at Mr. Neil's call, to write out that fifty-dollar check, and incidentally made out one for himself in a like amount.
"What do you think of him, anyhow?" asked Neil with a troubled countenance.
"Think of him?" repeated Clover with enthusiasm. "He's the greatest ever! If I had known him five years ago I'd be worth a million to-day!"
"But is this scheme on the level?" asked Neil.
"That's the beauty of it," said Clover, exulting like a schoolboy. "The law can't touch us any place."
"Maybe not," admitted Neil; "but somehow I don't quite like it."
"I guess you'll like your fifty a week when it begins to come in, and your fifteen thousand when we clean up," retorted Clover.
"You bet!" said Neil, but he began to do some bewildered figuring on his own account. His head was in a whirl.
Minnie Bishop came to work for the Noble Order of Friendly Hands on the day that they moved into offices more in keeping with the magnificence of Mr. Wallingford, and she was by no means out of place amid the mahogany desks and fine rugs and huge leather chairs.
"Her smile alone is worth fifty dollars a week to the business," Clover admitted, but they only paid her five at the start.
She had more to recommend her, however, than white teeth and red lips. Wallingford himself was surprised to find that, in spite of her apparently frivolous bent, she had considerable ability and was quick to learn. From the first he assumed a direct guardianship over her, and his approaches toward a slightly more than paternal friendship she considered great fun. At home she mimicked him, and when her older sister tried to talk to her seriously about it she only laughed the more. Clover sheamused continually, but Neil fell desperately in love with her from the start, and him she flouted most unmercifully. Really, she liked him, although she would not admit it even to herself, charging him with the fatal error of being "too serious."
In the meantime the affairs of the concern progressed delightfully. For the regulation fee, the Secretary of State, after some perfunctory inquiries, permitted the "Trust Company" to increase its capitalization to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Even before the certificates were delivered from the printer's, however, that month's issue of "The Friendly Hand" bore the news to the five hundred members of the Order and to four thousand five hundred prospective members, of the truly unprecedented combination of philanthropy and profit. Somewhere the indefatigable Wallingford had secured a copy of a most unusual annual statement of a large and highly successful insurance company, of the flat-rate variety and of a similar sounding name. In the smallest type to be found he had printed over this:
READ THIS REPORT OF THE PROVIDENT FRIENDS TO ITS STOCKHOLDERS
Then followed direct quotations, showing that the Provident Friends had a membershipof a quarter of a million; that it had paid out in death claims an enormous amount; that it had a surplus fund expressed in a staggering array of figures; that its enrollment had increased fifty thousand within the past year. Striking sentences, such as:
WE HAVE JUST DECLARED A THIRTY PER CENT. DIVIDEND
were displayed in big, black type, the whole being spread out in such form that readers ignorant of such matters would take this to be a sworn statement of the present condition of the Order of Friendly Hands; and they were invited to subscribe for its golden stock at the rate of twenty-five dollars a share! The prudent members who were providing for their families after death could now also participate in the profits of this commendable investment during life, and at a rate which, while not guaranteed, could be expected, in the light of past experience, to pay back the capital in a trifle over three years, leaving it still intact and drawing interest.
But this, dear friends and coworkers in a noble cause, was not just a hard, money-grinding proposition. The revenue derived from the sale of stock was to be expended in thefurther expansion of the Order, until it should blanket the world and carry the blessings of protection to the widows and orphans throughout the universe! Never before in the history of finance had it been made possible for men of modest means to further a charitable work, a noble work, a work appealing to all the highest aspirations of humanity and creditable to every finest instinct of the human heart, and at the same time to reap an enormous profit! And the price was only twenty-five dollars a share—while they lasted!
Wallingford had secured the data and supplied the human frailty ideas for this flaming announcement, but Clover had put it together, and, as he examined the proof sheet, the latter gentleman leaned back in his chair with profound self-esteem.
"That'll get 'em!" he exulted. "If that don't bring in the money to make this the greatest organization in the business, I don't want a cent!"
"You spread it on too much," objected Neil. "Why can't we do just as well or better by presenting the thing squarely? It seems to me that any man who would be caught by the self-evident buncombe of that thing would be too big a sucker to have any money."
Wallingford looked at him thoughtfully.
"You're right, in a way, Neil," he admitted. "The men who have real money wouldn't touch it, but the people we're appealing to have stacked theirs up a cent at a time, and they are afraid of all investments—even of the banks. When you offer them thirty per cent., however, they are willing to take a chance; and, after all, I don't see why, with the money that comes in from this stock sale, we should not be able to expand our organization to even larger proportions than the Provident Friends. If we do that, what is to prevent a good dividend to our stockholders?"
Clover glanced at his partner in surprise. From that overawing bulk there positively radiated high moral purpose, and Neil shriveled under it. When they were alone, Clover, making idle marks with his pencil, looked up at Wallingford from time to time from under shaggy brows, and finally he laughed aloud.
"You're the limit," he observed. "That's a fine line of talk you gave Neil."
"Can't we buy him out?" asked Wallingford abruptly.
"What with? A note?" inquired Clover. "Hardly."
"Cash, then."
"Will you put it up?"
"I'll see about it, for if I have him gauged right he will be hunting for trouble all along the line."
Wallingford went to the window and looked out; then he got his hat. As he stepped into the hall Neil came from an adjoining room.
"Do you want to sell your stock, Neil?" asked Clover.
"To whom?" asked Neil slowly. Wallingford had shaken his slow deductions, had suggested new possibilities to ponder, and he was still bewildered.
"To Wallingford."
"Say, Clover, has hegotany money?" demanded Neil.
"If he hasn't he can get it," replied the other. "Come here a minute."
He drew Neil to the window and they looked down into the street. Standing in front of the office building was a huge, maroon-colored automobile with a leather-capped chauffeur in front. As they watched, Mr. Wallingford came out to the curb and the chauffeur saluted with his finger. Mr. Wallingford took from the rear seat a broad-checked ulster, put it on, and exchanged his derby for a cap to match. Then he climbed into the auto and went whirring away.
"That looks like money, don't it?" demanded Clover.
"I give up," said Neil.
"How much do you want for your stock?" inquired Clover, again with a smile.
"Par!" exclaimed Neil, once more satisfied. "Nothing less!"
"Right you are," agreed Clover. "This man Wallingford is the greatest ever, I tell you! He's a wonder, a positive genius, and it was a lucky day for me that I met him. He will make us all rich."
His admiration for Wallingford knew no bounds. He had detected in the man a genius for chicanery, and so long as he was "in with it" Wallingford might be as "smooth" as he liked. Were they not partners? Indeed, yes. Share and share alike!
That night Clover and Neil dined with Mr. and Mrs. Wallingford at their hotel, and if Neil had any lingering doubts as to Mr. Wallingford's command of money, those doubts were dispelled by the size of the check, by the obsequiousness shown them, and by the manner in which Mrs. Wallingford wore her expensive clothing. After dinner Wallingford took them for a ride in his automobile, and at a quiet road house, a dozen miles out of town,over sparkling drinks and heavy cigars, they quite incidentally discussed a trifling matter of business.
"You fellows go ahead with the insurance part of the game," Wallingford directed them. "I don't understand any part of that business, but I'll look after the stock sales. That I know I can handle."
They were enthusiastic in their seconding of this idea, and after this point had been reached, the host, his business done, took his guests back to town in the automobile upon which he had not as yet paid a cent, dropping them at their homes in a most blissful state of content.
Proceeding along the lines of the understanding thus established, within a few days money began to flow into the coffers of the concern. Mr. Wallingford's method of procedure was perfectly simple. When an experimentally inclined member of any one of the out-of-town "Circles" sent in his modest twenty-five dollars for a share of stock, or even inquired about it, Wallingford promptly got on a train and went to see that man. Upon his arrival he immediately found out how much money the man had and issued him stock to the amount; then he got introductions to the other members and brought home stock subscriptionsto approximately the exact total of their available cash. There was no resisting him. In the meantime, with ample funds to urge it forward, the membership of the organization increased at a rapid enough rate to please even the master hand. New members meant new opportunities for stock sales, and that only, to him, and to Clover, the world, at last, was as it should be. Money was his for the asking, and by means which pleased his sense of being "in" on a bit of superior cleverness. Quite early in the days of plenty he saw a side investment which, being questionable, tempted him, and he came to Wallingford—to borrow money!
"I'll sell some of your stock," offered Wallingford. "I want to sell a little of my own, anyhow."
In all, he sold for Clover five thousand dollars' worth, and the stock was promptly reported by the purchasers for transfer on the books of the company. Some of Wallingford's also came in for transfer, although a much less amount; sufficient, however, it seemed, for he took the most expensive apartments in town, filled them with the best furnishings that were made, and lived like a king. Mrs. Wallingford secured her diamonds again and bought manymore. Clover also "took on airs." Neil worried. He had made a study of the actual cost of insurance, and the low rate that they were now receiving filled him with apprehension.
"We're going on the rocks as fast as we can go," he declared to Clover. "According to the tables we're due for a couple of deaths right now, and the longer they delay the more they will bunch up on us. Mark what I say: the avalanche will get you before you have time to get out, if that's what you plan on doing. I wish the laws governed our rate here as they do in some of the other States."
"What's the matter with the rate?" Clover wanted to know. "When it's inadequate we'll raise it."
"That isn't what we're promising to do," insisted Neil. "We're advertising a permanent flat rate."
"Show me where," demanded Clover.
Neil tried to do so, but everywhere, in their policies, in their literature, or even in their correspondence, that he pointed out a statement apparently to that effect, Clover showed him a "joker" clause contradicting it.
"You see, Neil, you're too hasty in jumping at conclusions," he expostulated. "You know that the law will not permit us to claim a flatrate without a sufficient cash provision, under State control, to guarantee it, and compels us to be purely an assessment company. When the time comes that we must do so, we will do precisely what other companies have done before us: raise the rate. If it becomes prohibitive the company will drop out of business, as so many others have; but we will be out of it long before then."
"Yes," retorted Neil, "and thousands of people who are too old to get fresh insurance at any price, and who will have paid for years, will be left holding the bag."
"The trouble with you, Neil, is that you have a streak of yellow," interrupted Clover impatiently. "Don't you like your fifty a week?"
"Yes."
"Don't you like your fifteen thousand dollars' worth of stock?"
"It looks good to me," confessed Neil.
"Then keep still or sell out and get out."
"I'm not going to do that," said Neil deliberately. He had his slow mind made up at last. "I'm going to stick, and reorganize the company when it goes broke!"
When Clover reported this to Wallingford that gentleman laughed.
"How is he on ritual work?" he asked.
"Fine! He has a streak of fool earnestness in him that makes him take to that flubdubbery like a duck to water."
"Then send him out as a special degree master to inaugurate the new lodges that are formed. He's a nuisance in the office."
In this the big man had a double purpose. Neil was paying entirely too much attention to Minnie Bishop of late, and Wallingford resented the interference. His pursuit of the girl was characteristic. He gave her flowers and boxes of candy in an offhand way, not as presents, but as rewards. As the business grew he appropriated her services more and more to his own individual work, seating her at a desk in his private room, and a neat balance-sheet would bring forth an approving word and an offhand:
"Fine work. I owe you theater tickets for that."
The next time he came in he would bring the tickets and drop them upon her desk, with a brusque heartiness that was intended to disarm suspicion, and with a suggestion to take her mother and sister along. Moreover, he raised her salary from time to time. The consideration that he showed her would have won the gratitude of any girl unused to suchattentions and unfamiliar with the ways of the world, but under them she nevertheless grew troubled and thoughtful. Noticing this, Wallingford conceived the idea that he had made an impression, whereupon he ventured to become a shade more personal.
About this time another disagreeable circumstance came to her attention and plunged her into perplexity. Clover walked into Mr. Wallingford's room just as the latter was preparing to go out.
"Tag, you're it, Wallingford," said Clover jovially, holding out a piece of paper. "I've just found out that your note was due yesterday."
"Quit joking with me on Wednesdays," admonished Wallingford, and taking the note he tore it into little bits and threw them into the waste basket.
"Here! That's two thousand dollars, and it's mine," Clover protested.
Wallingford laughed.
"You didn't really think I'd pay it, did you? Why, I told you at the time that it was only a matter of form; and, besides that, you know my motto: 'I never give up money,'" and, still chuckling, he went out.
"Isn't he the greatest ever?" said Clover admiringly, to Minnie.
But Minnie could not see the joke. If Wallingford "never gave up money," and Clover subscribed to that clever idea with such enthusiasm that he was willing to be laughed out of two thousand dollars, what would become of her mother's little nest-egg? A thousand dollars was a tragic amount to the Bishops. That very evening, as Wallingford went out, he ventured to pinch and then to pat her cheek, and shame crimsoned her face that she had brought upon herself the coarse familiarities which now she suddenly understood. Neil, who had come in from a trip that afternoon, walked into the office just after Wallingford had gone, and found her crying. The sight of her in tears broke down the reserve that she had forced upon him, so that he told her many things; told them eloquently, too, and suddenly she found herself glad that he had come—glad to rely upon him and confide in him. Naturally, when she let him draw from her the cause of her distress, he was furious. He wanted to hunt Wallingford at once and chastise him, but she stopped him with vehement earnestness.
"No," she insisted, "I positively forbid it! When Mr. Wallingford comes here to-morrow,I want him to find me the same as ever, and I do not want one word said that will make him think I am any different. But I want you to walk home with me, if you can spare the time. I want to talk with you."
Neil, the next day after his talk with Minnie Bishop, had a great idea, which was nothing more nor less than a Supreme Circle Conclave, in which a picked degree team would exemplify the ritual, and to which delegates from all the local circles should be invited. They had never held a Supreme Conclave, and they needed it to arouse enthusiasm. Clover fell in with the idea at once. It would provide him with an opportunity for one of the spread-eagle speeches he was so fond of making. As this phase of the business—comprising the insurance and the lodge work—was left completely in charge of Clover and Neil, Wallingford made no objections, and, having ample funds for carrying out such a plan, it was accordingly arranged. Neil went on the road at once about this matter, but letters between himself and Minnie Bishop passed almost daily. An indefinable change had come over the girl. Shehad grown more earnest, for one thing, but she assumed a forced flippancy with Wallingford because she found that it was her only defense against him. She turned off his advances as jests, and her instinct of coquetry, though now she recognized it and was ashamed of it, made her able to puzzle and hold uncertainly aloof even this experienced "man of the world." It was immediately after she had jerked her hand away from under his one afternoon that, in place of the reproof he had half expected from her, she turned to him with a most dazzling smile.
"By the way, we've both forgotten something, Mr. Wallingford," she said. "Quarter day for the Bishops is long past due."
"What is it that is past due?" he asked in surprise.
"When my mother bought her stock, you know, you promised that she should have twelve per cent. interest on it, payable every three months."
"That's right," he admitted, looking at her curiously, and before she started home that evening he handed her an envelope with thirty dollars in it.
She immediately made a note of the amount and dropped it in the drawer of her desk.
"Never mind entering that in your books," he said hastily, noting her action; "just keep the memorandum until we arrange for a regular dividend, then it can all be posted at once. It's—it's a matter that has been overlooked."
She thanked him for the money and took it home with her. She had been planning for a week or more upon how to get this thirty dollars. On the very next day, while he was absorbedly poring over a small account book that he kept locked carefully in his desk, he found her standing beside him.
"I'm afraid that I shall have to ask you to buy back mother's stock in the company," she said. That morning's mail had been unusually heavy in stock sale possibilities. "We have a sudden pressing need for that thousand dollars, and we'll just have to have it, that's all."
Wallingford's first impulse was to dissuade her from this idea, but another thought now came to him as he looked musingly into his roll-top desk; and as the girl, standing above him, gazed down upon his thick neck and puffy cheeks, he reminded her of nothing so much as a monstrous toad.
"Have you the stock certificate with you?" he inquired presently.
No, she had not.
"Well, bring it down to-night," he said, "and I'll give you a check for it. I'm going away on a little trip to-morrow, and I want you to get me up a statement out of the books, anyhow."
For an instant the girl hesitated with a sharp intake of breath. Then she said, "Very well," and went home.
That night, when she returned, she paused in the hall a moment to subdue her trepidation, then, whether foolish or not, but with such courage as men might envy, she boldly opened the door and stepped in. She found Wallingford at his desk, and she had walked up to him and laid at his elbow the stock certificate, properly released, before he turned his unusually flushed face toward her. In his red eyes she saw that he had been dining rather too well, even for him. She had been prepared for this, however, and her voice was quite steady as she asked:
"Have you the check made out, Mr. Wallingford?"
"There's no hurry about it," he replied a trifle thickly. "There's some work I want you to do first."
"I'd rather you would make out the check now," she insisted, "so that I won't forget it."
Laboriously he filled out the blank and signed it, and then blinkingly watched her smooth, white fingers as she folded it and snapped it into her purse. Suddenly he swung his great arm about her waist and drew her toward him. What followed was the surprise of his life, for a very sharp steel hatpin was jabbed into him in half a dozen indiscriminate places, and Minnie Bishop stood panting in the middle of the floor.
"I have endured it here for weeks now, longer than I believed it possible," she shrieked at him, crying hysterically, "because we could not afford to lose this money: stood it for days when the sight of you turned me sick! It seems a year ago, you ugly beast, that I made sure you were a thief, but I wouldn't leave till I knew it was the right time to ask you for this check!"
Dazed, he stood nursing his hurts. One of her strokes had been into his cheek, and as he took his reddened handkerchief away from it a flood of rage came over him and he took a step forward; but he had miscalculated her spirit.
"I wish I had killed you!" she cried, and darted out of the door.
For three days after that episode the man was confined to his room under the care of hiswife, whom he told that he had been attacked by a footpad, "a half-crazy foreigner with a stiletto." For a week more he was out of town. A peremptory telegram from Clover brought him in from his stock-drumming transactions, and by the time he reached the city he was ready for any emergency, though finally attributing the call to the fact, which he had almost forgotten, that to-morrow was the first day of the three set apart for the Supreme Circle Conclave of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands.
He arrived at about eight o'clock in the evening, and as his automobile rolled past the big building where their offices were located, he glanced up and saw that lights were blazing brightly from the windows. Anxious to find out at once the true status of affairs he went up. He was surprised to find the big reception room full of hard-featured men who looked uncomfortable in their "best clothes," and among them he recognized two or three, from surrounding small towns, to whom he had sold stock. At first, as he opened the door, black looks were cast in his direction, and a couple of the men half arose from their seats; but they sat down again as Mr. J. Rufus Wallingford's face beamed with a cordial smile.
"Good evening, gentlemen," he observed cheerfully, with a special nod for those he remembered, and then he stalked calmly through the room.
The nights being cool now, Mr. Wallingford wore a fur-lined ulster of rich material and of a fit which made his huge bulk seem the perfection of elegance. Upon his feet were shining patent leather shoes; upon his head was a shining high hat. He carried one new glove in his gloved left hand; from his right hand gleamed the big diamond. His ulster hung open in front, displaying his sparkling scarf pin, his rich scarf of the latest pattern, his fancy waistcoat. He held his head high, and no man could stand before him nor against him. When the door had closed behind him they almost sighed in unison. There went money, sacred money, even the more so that some of it was their own!
In the inner office, Wallingford was surprised to find Minnie Bishop present and working earnestly upon the books. Looking up she met his darkening glance defiantly, but even if he had chosen to speak to her there was no time, for Clover had opened the door of his own private office and greeted him with a curt nod.
"Come in here," said Clover roughly. "I want to talk to you."
It was the inevitable moment, the one for which Wallingford had long been prepared.
"Certainly," he said with aggravating cheerfulness, and, walking in, let Clover close the door behind him. He sat comfortably in the big leather chair at the side of the desk and lit a cigar, while Clover plumped himself in his own swivel.
"Who are the Rubes outside?" asked Wallingford, puffing critically at his half-dollar perfecto.
"Neil's picked degree team," answered Clover shortly. "He had them meet up here to-night for some instructions, I believe, but he's not here yet. It's his affair entirely. I want to see you about something else."
"Blaze away," said Wallingford with great heartiness, carefully placing his silk hat upon a clean sheet of paper. He was still smiling cheerfully, but in his eyes had come the trace of a glitter.
"I'll blaze away all right, whether I have your invitation or not!" snapped Clover. "You've been giving me the double cross. For every share of stock you sold for the companyyou've sold five of your own and pocketed the money."
"Why shouldn't I?" inquired Mr. Wallingford calmly, his willingness to admit it so pleasantly amounting to insolence. "It was my stock, and the money I got for such of it as I sold was my money."
"Suchof it as you sold!" repeated Clover indignantly. "I know how much you unloaded. You have placed somewhat over twenty thousand for the company—"
"And five thousand for you," Wallingford reminded him. "I suppose you went South with the proceeds. If you didn't you're crazy!"
Clover flushed a trifle.
"But you got rid of nearly sixty thousand dollars of your own stock," he charged bitterly. It still rankled in him that Wallingford had "handed the lemon" to him.Him!Monstrous that a man should be so dishonorable! "You played me for a mark. When you handed out my certificates you instructed every man to send them in for transfer, but when you peddled your own you said nothing about that, and only the few yaps who happened to know about such things sent them in. You're nearly all sold out, and I'm holding the bag."
"Right you are," admitted Wallingford, openly amused. "I have a few shares left in my desk, though, and I'll make you a present of them. I'm going out of the company, you know."
"You're not!" exclaimed Clover, smiting his fist upon his desk. "We were in this thing together, half and half, and I want my share!"
Wallingford laughed.
"I told you once," he informed his irate partner, "that I never give up any money. My action is strictly legal. Now, don't choke!" he added as he saw Clover about to make another objection. "You've not a gasp coming. When I took hold here you were practically on your last legs. You have had a salary of one hundred dollars a week since that time. In addition to that I have handed you five thousand dollars, and you have nearly sixty thousand dollars' worth of stock left. You can do just what I have been doing: sell your stock and get out. As for me Iamout, and that's all there is to it! I have all I want and I'm going to quit!"
The door had opened and Neil stood on the threshold.
"You bet you're going to quit!" said Neil. His face was pale but his eyes were blazingand his fists were clenched. "You're both going to quit, but not the way you think you are! Come out here. Some of my friends are in the waiting room, and they want to see you right away!"
Clover had turned a sickly, ashen white, but Wallingford rose to his feet.
"You tell them to go plumb to Hell!" he snarled.
His eyes were widened until they showed the whites. He was fully as much cowed by the suggestion as Clover, but he would "put up a front" to the last.
"Come in, boys!" commanded Neil loudly.
They came with alacrity. They crowded into the small room, packing it so snugly that Neil and Wallingford and Clover, forced into the little space before Clover's desk, stood touching.
"What does this mean?" demanded Wallingford, glaring at the invaders.
He stood almost head and shoulders above them, and where he met a man's eyes those eyes dropped. Some of them who had not removed their hats hastily did so. His lordliness was still potent.
"You can't bluff me!" shrieked Neil, who, standing beside him, shook his fist in Wallingford's face. The contrast between the sizes ofthe two men would have been ludicrous, had it not been for Neil's intensity, which seemed to expand him, to make him and his passionate purpose colossal. "I know you, and these men don't!" he went on, his neck chords swelling with anger. "Why, think of it, gentlemen, in the four months that he has been here, this man has taken sixty thousand dollars from the hard-working members of this Order, has stuffed it in his pocket and is making ready to leave! The little girl out there, who is getting us up a statement for to-morrow, figured him out for the dog he is while I was still groping for the facts. He tried to take her for a fool, but she—she—" His voice broke and he smacked his fist in his palm to loosen his tongue. "You're a smart man, Mr. Wallingford, but you made a few mistakes. One of them was in sending me on the road so you could—so you—" again his voice broke and he sank his nails into his palms for control. "You thought this meeting was a mere jolly for our members, didn't you? It's not. These men are here solely as representatives of the business interests of their friends. We're going to put this Order back upon a sound basis, and the first thing we're going to do is to cut out graft. Why, you unclean whelp, you have spent overfourteen thousand dollars in the four months you have been here, and you have—or had, up to a week ago—forty-five thousand dollars in the Second National—all of poor men's money! How do I know? You lost your bank book which had just been balanced. As for you, Clover, you're a clog upon the business, too!" Clover had brought this upon himself by darting at Wallingford a glance of hate, which Neil caught. "Now this is whatyou'regoing to do, James Clover. For having fathered the Order you're to be allowed to keep the five thousand dollars you got for the sale of stock. Your remaining stock you're going to transfer over to our treasury, and then you're going to step down and out. As for you, Mr. J. Rufus Wallingford, you're going to write a check for forty-five thousand dollars, payable to the company."