“Sam,” he said, “I want you to invest”“Sam,” he said, “I want you to invest”
“I thought so,” said Glidden with a grin. “Fixtures, established business and good will, I suppose.”
Wix chuckled.
“You put it in the loveliest words,” he admitted.
“You’re a bright young man,” said Glidden admiringly. “You’d better pay for those fixtures and put in the whole business at five hundred.”
“What do you suppose I’m enlarging the thing for, except to increase my income?” Wix demanded. “With ten thousand dollars’ worth of stock I’d get only two-fifths of the profit, when I’ve been getting it all heretofore. As a matter of fact, I’m doing pretty well not to try to capture the majority.”
They both laughed upon this, and Glidden capitulated. Within forty-eight hours Wix had his four directors, all ex-traders who would rather make money than gamble, and each willing to put in a thousand dollars. As soon as they were incorporated they paid Wix his hundred shares for the old business, and that developing financier started out to sell the balance of the stock, on commission.
It was an easy task, for his fellow-directors did all the advertising for him. Practically all he had to do was to deliver the certificates and collect. Itwas while he was engaged in this pleasant occupation that he went to Gilman with a blank certificate for twenty-five shares.
“I think you said, Gilman, that if you could get your remaining twenty-five hundred dollars out of the La Salle you’d be satisfied, didn’t you?”
“Satisfied!” gasped Gilman. “Just show me how it can be done!”
“Here’s twenty-five hundred dollars’ worth of stock in the new company I’ve incorporated from the old one, and it’s selling—at par—like beer at a German picnic.”
“That would ruin me,” Gilman protested in a panic. “You must sell it for me or I’m gone. Why, Wix, this new state bank inspection law has just gone into effect, and there may be an inspector at the bank any day.”
“I see,” said Wix slowly, looking him straight in the eye, “and they may object to Smalley’s having loaned you that money on insufficient security. Well, I’ll see what I can do.”
Nevertheless, he let Gilman’s stock lie while he sold the treasury shares, and, the market being still so eager that it seemed a shame not to supply it,he sold his own!
There was now time for Gilman, and Wix, with an artistic eye for dramatic propinquities, presented his proposition to no less a person than Smalley, grinning, however, as he went in.
“I couldn’t think of such a thing, sir,” squeaked that gentleman. “I’ll have nothing to do with gambling in any way, shape or form.”
“No,” agreed Wix, and carefully closed the door of Smalley’s private office. “Well, this isn’t gambling, Mr. Smalley. It’s only the people outside who gamble. The La Salle doesn’t propose to take any chances; it only takes commissions,” and he showed to Mr. Smalley, very frankly, a record of his transactions, including the one disastrous period for the purpose of pointing out the flaw which had brought it about.
Smalley inspected those figures long and earnestly, while Wix sat back smiling. He had penetrated through that leathery exterior, had discovered what no one else would have suspected: that in Smalley himself there ran a long-leashed gambling instinct.
“But I couldn’t possibly have my name connected with a matter of this sort,” was Smalley’s last citadel of objection.
“Why should you?” agreed Wix, and then a diabolical thought came to him, in the guise of an exquisite joke. He had great difficulty in repressing a chuckle as he suggested it. “Why not put the stock in Gilman’s name?”
“It might be a very bad influence for the young man,” protested Smalley virtuously, but clutching at the suggestion. “He is thoroughly trustworthy, however, and I suppose I can explain it to him as being a really conservative investment that should have no publicity. I think you said, Mr. Wix, that there are only twenty-five shares remaining to be sold.”
“That’s all,” Wix assured him. “You couldn’t secure another share if you wanted it.”
“Very well, then, I think I shall take it.”
“I have the certificate in my pocket,” said Wix, and he produced the identical certificate that he had offered Gilman some days before. It had already been signed by the complacent Sam Glidden as secretary. “Make this out to Gilman, shall I?” asked Wix, seating himself at Smalley’s desk, and poising his pen above the certificate.
“I believe so,” assented Smalley, pursing up his lips.
With a smile all of careless pleasure with the world, Wix wrote the name of Clifford M. Gilman, and signed the certificate as president.
“Now, your check, Mr. Smalley, for twenty-five hundred, and the new La Salle Company is completely filled up, ready to start in business on a brand-new basis.”
With his lips still pursed, Smalley made out that check, and Wix shook hands with him most cordially as he left the room. Outside the door he chuckled. He was still smiling when he walked up to the cashier’s wicket, where young Gilman sat tense and white-faced. Wix indorsed the check, and handed it through the wicket.
“Here’s your twenty-five hundred, Cliff,” said he. “You can turn it over on the books of the bank as soon as you like.”
Gilman strove to voice his great relief, but his lips quivered and his eyes filled, and he could only turn away speechless. Wix had gone out, and Gilman was still holding in his nerveless fingers the check that had saved him, when Smalley appeared at his side.
“Ah,” said Smalley; “I see you have the check I gave Mr. Wix. Did he deposit?”
“No, sir,” replied Gilman, in a low voice; “he took currency.”
Mr. Smalley visibly winced.
“A bill of exchange might have done him just as well,” he protested. “No non-employing person has need of actual currency in that amount. I’m afraid young Wix is very extravagant—very. By the way, Mr. Gilman, I have been forced, for protection and very much against my will, to take some stock in an enterprise with which I can not have my name associated for very obvious business reasons; so I have taken the liberty of having the stock made out in your name,” and, before young Gilman’s eyes, he spread his twenty-five-share certificate of The La Salle Grain and Stock Brokerage Company.
Gilman, pale before, went suddenly ghastly. The blow of mockery had come too soon upon the heels of his relief.
“I can’t have it,” he managed to stammer through parched lips. “I must refuse, sir. I—I can not be connected in any way with that business, Mr. Smalley. I—I abhor it. Never, as long as I live—”
Suddenly the fish-white face and staring eyes of Gilman were not in the line of Mr. Smalley’s astonished vision, for Gilman had slid to the floor, betweenhis high stool and his desk. Sam Glidden, coming into the bank a moment after, found Smalley working feverishly over the prostrate form of his feebly reviving clerk.
Just as Jonathan Reuben Wix reached his home, a delivery man was taking in at the front door a fine dresser trunk. On the porch stood a new alligator traveling-bag, and a big, new suit-case of thick sole leather, trimmed profusely with the most expensive knobs and clamps, and containing as elaborate a toilet set as is made for the use of men. In the hall he found five big pasteboard boxes from his tailor. He had the trunk and the suit-case and the traveling-bag delivered up to his room; the clothing he carried up himself.
That morning he had dressed himself in new linen throughout. Now he took off the suit he wore and put on one of the new business suits. He opened half a dozen huge bundles of haberdashery which he had purchased within the past week, and began packing them in his trunk: underwear, shirts, socks,collars, cravats, everything brand new and of the choicest quality. He packed away the other new business suit, the Prince Albert, the tuxedo, the dress suit—the largest individual order his tailor had ever received—putting into his trunk and suit-case and traveling-bag not one thing that he had ever worn before; nor did he put into any of his luggage a single book or keepsake, for these things had no meaning to him. When he was completely dressed and packed he went to his mother’s room and knocked on the door. It was her afternoon for the Women Journalists’ Club, and she was very busy indeed over a paper she was to read onThe Press: Its Power for Evil. Naturally, interruptions annoyed her very much.
“Well, what is it, son?” she asked in her level, even tone as he came into the room. Her impatience was very nicely suppressed, indeed.
“I’m going to New York on the six-thirty,” he told her.
“Really, I don’t see how I can spare any money until the fifteenth,” she objected.
“I have plenty of money,” he assured her.
“Oh,” she replied with evident relief, and glanced longingly back at her neatly written paper.
“I can even let you have some if you want it,” he suggested.
“No, thank you. I have sufficient, I am sure, portioned out to meet all demands, including the usual small surplus, up to the fifteenth. It’s very nice of you to offer it, however.”
“You see,” he went on, after a moment’s hesitation, “I’m not coming back.”
She turned now, and faced him squarely for the first time.
“You’d better stay here,” she told him. “I’m afraid you’ll cost me more away from home than you do in Filmore.”
“I shall never cost you a cent,” he declared. “I have found out how to make money.”
She smiled in a superior way.
“I am a bit incredulous; but, after all, I don’t see why you shouldn’t. Your father at least had that quality, and you should have inherited something from him besides”—and she paused a trifle—“his name.” She sighed, and then continued: “Very well, son, I suppose you must carve out your own destiny. You are quite old enough to make the attempt, and I have been anticipating it for some time. After all, you really ought to have very little troublein impressing the world favorably. You dress neatly,” she surveyed him critically, “and you make friends readily. Shall I see you again before you go?”
“I scarcely think so. I have a little down-town business to look after, and shall take dinner on the train; so I’ll just say good-by to you now.”
He shook hands with her and stooped down, and they kissed each other dutifully upon the cheek. Mrs. Wix, being advanced, did not believe in kissing upon the mouth. After he had gone, a fleeting impression of loneliness weighed upon her as much as any purely sentimental consideration could weigh. She looked thoughtfully at the closed door, and a stirring of the slight maternal instinct within her made her vaguely wistful. She turned, still with that faint tugging within her breast which she could not understand, and it was purely mechanical that her eyes, dropping to the surface of the paper, caught the sentence: “Mental suggestion, unfit for growing minds, is upon every page.” The word “Mental” seemed redundant, and she drew her pen through it, neatly changing the “s” in “suggestion” to a capital.
A cab drove past Wix as he started down thestreet and he saw Smalley in it. He turned curiously. What was Smalley doing there? He stopped until he saw the cab draw up in front of Gilman’s house. He saw Smalley assist young Gilman out of the cab, and Gilman’s mother run out to meet them. He was thoughtful for a moment over that, then he shrugged his shoulders and strode on.
On the train that night as he swaggered into the dining-car, owning it, in effect, and all it contained, he saw, seated alone at a far table, no less a person than Horace G. Daw, as black and as natty as ever, and with a mustache grown long enough to curl a little bit at the ends.
“Hello, old pal,” greeted Daw. “Where now?”
“I’m going out alone into the cold, cold world, to make fortunes and spend them.”
“Half of that stunt is a good game,” commented Mr. Daw.
Wix chuckled.
“Both ends of it look good to me,” he stated. “I’ve found the recipe for doing it, and it was you that tipped off the plan.”
“I certainly am the grand little tipper-off,” agreed Daw, going back in memory over their last meeting. “You got to that three thousand, did you?”
“Oh, no,” said Wix. “I only used it to get a little more. Our friend Gilman has his all back again. Of course, I didn’t use your plan as it laid. It was too raw, but it gave me the suggestion from which I doped out one of my own. I’ve got to improve my system a little, though. My rake-off’s too small. In the wind-up I handled twenty-one thousand dollars, and only got away with eight thousand-odd of it for myself.”
“You haven’t it all with you?” asked Daw, a shade too eagerly.
Wix chuckled, his broad shoulders heaving and his pink face rippling.
“No use, kind friend,” said he. “Just dismiss it from your active but greedy mind. If anybody gets away unduly with a cent of this wad, all they need to do is to prove it to me, and I’ll make them a present of the balance. No, my dark-complected brother, the bulk of it is in a safe place in little old New York, where I can go get it as I need it; but I have enough along to buy, I think. It seems to me you bought last,” and they both grinned at the reminiscence.
“I wasn’t thinking of trying to annex any of that coin,” lied Mr. Daw glibly, and changing entirelyhis attitude toward Mr. Wix as his admiration grew; “but I was thinking that we might cook up something together. I’ll put up dollar for dollar with you. I’ve just been harvesting, myself.”
Again Wix chuckled.
“Declined with thanks,” he returned. “I don’t mind trailing around a bit with you when we get to New York, and also meeting the carefully assorted selection of dead-sure-thing geniuses who must belong to your set, but I’ll go no further. For one thing, I don’t like the idea of a partner. It cramps me to split up. For another thing, I wouldn’t like to hook up in business with you. You’re not safe enough; you trifle too much with the law, which is not only foolish but unnecessary.”
“Yes?” retorted Daw. “How about this eight thousand or so that you committed mayhem on Filmore to get?”
“Good, honest money,” asserted Wix. “I hate to boast about your present companion, but I don’t owe Filmore a cent. I merely worked up a business and sold my share in it. Of course, they didn’t know I was selling it, but they’ll find out when they go over the records, which are perfectly straight. If, afterbuying the chance to go into business, they don’t know what to do with it, it isn’t my fault.”
A traveling man who had once been in the office of The La Salle Grain and Stock Brokerage Company for an afternoon’s flyer, and who remembered the cordial ease with which Wix had taken his money, came over to the table.
“Hello, Wix; how’s tricks?” he hailed.
Wix looked up at him blankly but courteously.
“Beg pardon,” he returned.
The face of the traveling man fell.
“Aren’t you Mr. Wix, of Filmore?”
“I’m afraid not,” replied Wix, smiling with great cordiality. “Sorry to disappoint you, old man.”
“Really, I beg your pardon,” said the traveling man, perplexed. “It is the most remarkable resemblance I ever saw. I would have sworn you were Wix. He used to run a brokerage shop in the Grand Hotel in Filmore.”
“Never was in the town,” lied Wix.
The man turned away. Daw looked after him with an amused smile.
“By the way, Wix, what is your name now?”
“By George, I haven’t decided! I was too busygetting rid of my only handicap to think up a substitute. I’ll tell you in a minute,” and on the spur of the moment he invented a quite euphonious name, one which was to last him for a great many years.
“Wallingford,” he announced. “How does that hit you? J. Rufus Wallingford!”
They were glad to see Blackie Daw back on Broadway—that is, in the way that Broadway is glad; for they of the Great White Way have no sentiments and no emotions, and but scant memories. About Blackie’s companion, however, they were professionally curious.
“Who is this large, pink Wallingford person, and where did you get it?” asked Mr. Phelps, whose more familiar name was Green-Goods Harry.
Mr. Daw, standing for the moment with Mr. Phelps at the famous old cheese-and-crackers end of the Fifth Avenue bar, grinned.
“He’s an educated Hick,” he responded, “and I got him out of the heart of the hay-fever district, right after he’d turned a classy little trick on the easy producers of his childhood home. Sold ’em a bankrupt bucket-shop for eight thousand, which is goingsome!”
Mr. Phelps, natty and jaunty and curly-haired, though shifty of eye, through long habit of trying to watch front and back doors both at once, looked with a shade more interest across at the imposing white vest of young J. Rufus where he stood at the bar with fat and somber Badger Billy. There was a cocksure touch to the joviality of young Wallingford which was particularly aggravating to an expert like Mr. Phelps. Young Wallingford was so big, so impressive, so sure of pleasing, so certain the world was his oyster, that it seemed a shame not to give his pride a tumble—for his own sake, of course.
“Has he got the eight thousand on him, do you think?” asked the green-goods one, his interest rapidly increasing.
“Not so you could notice it,” replied Daw with conviction. “He’s a wise prop, I tell you. He’s probably lugging about five hundred in his kick, just for running expenses, and has a time-lock on the rest.”
“We might tinker with the lock,” concluded Harry, running his fingers through his hair to settle the curls; “it’s worth a try, anyhow.”
“You’ll bounce right off,” declared Mr. Daw. “I tried to put a sweet one over in his home town, andhe jolted the game so quick he made its teeth rattle.”
“Then you owe him one,” persisted Mr. Phelps, whom it pained to see other people have money. “Do you mean to say that any pumpkin husker can’t be trimmed?”
“Enjoy yourself,” invited Mr. Daw with a retrospective smile, “but count me out. I’m going to Boston next week, anyhow. I’m going to open a mine investment office there. It’s a nice easy money mining district.”
“For pocket mining,” agreed his friend dryly.
Young Wallingford, in his desire for everybody to be happy, looked around for them at this juncture, and further conversation was out of the question. The quartet lounged out of the Fifth Avenue bar and across Broadway in that dull way peculiar to their kind. At the Hoffman House bar they were joined by a cadaverous gentleman known to the police as Short-Card Larry, whose face was as that of a corpse, but whose lithe, slender fingers were reputed to have brains of their own, and the five of them sat down for a dull half-hour. Later they had dull dinner together, strolled dully into four theaters, and, still dull, wound up in the apartments of Daw and J. Rufus.
“What do you think of them?” asked Blackie in their first aside moment.
“They give me the pip,” announced J. Rufus frankly. “Why do they hate themselves so? Why do they sit in the darkest corners and bark at themselves? Can’t they ever drink enough to get oiled happy?”
“Not and do business with strangers on Broadway,” Daw explained. “Phelps has been shy about thin glassware for five years, ever since he let an Indiana come-on outdrink him and steal his own money back; Billy Banting stops after the third glass of anything, on account of his fat; the only time Larry Teller ever got pinched was for getting spifflicated and telling a reporter what police protection cost him.”
“If I wasn’t waiting to see one of them bite himself and die of poison I’d cut ’em out,” returned Mr. Wallingford in the utmost disgust. “Any one of them would slung-shot the others for the price of a cigarette. Don’t they ever get interested in anything?”
“Nothing but easy marks,” replied Mr. Daw with a grin. “The way they’re treating you is a compliment. They’re letting you just be one of them.”
“One of them! Take it back, Blackie!” protested Wallingford. “Why, they’re a bunch of crooks!”
In deep dejection young Wallingford, rejoining his guests, ordered three lemonades and a quart of champagne. There was a trifle more of animation among them now, however, since they had been left alone for a few moments. They told three or four very hilarious stories, in each of which the nub of the joke hinged on an utter disregard of every human decency. Then, quite casually and after a lull, Badger Billy smoothed down his smart vest and cleared his throat.
“What do you fellows say to a little game of stud?” he proposed.
“Sure!” agreed Wallingford with alacrity. “That’s the first live noise I’ve heard to-day,” and he went to the ’phone at once to order up some cards and chips.
With his back turned, the three lemonade drinkers exchanged pleased smiles. It was too easy! Mr. Daw let them smile, and reposed calmly upon the couch, entirely disinterested. Professional ethics forbade Mr. Daw to interfere with the “trimming” of the jovial Mr. Wallingford, and the instincts of a gentleman, with which, of course, they were all perfectlyprovided, prevented him from taking any part in that agreeable operation. To his keen amusement the game was very brief—scarcely more than twenty minutes.
It was Short-Card Larry who, with a yawn, discovered suddenly how late it was and stopped the game. As he rose to go, young Wallingford, chuckling, was adding a few additional bills to the plethoric roll in his pocket.
“What made you chop the game, Larry?” asked Green-Goods Harry in impatient wonder. “We’d ought to strung it along a while. What made you let him have that hundred and fifty so quick?”
“Let him!” retorted Larry savagely. “He took it! Twice I gave him aces back to back on my deal, and he turned them down without a bet. On his own deal he bet his head off on a pair of deuces, with not one of us three able to draw out on him; and right there he cops that hundred and fifty himself. He’s too fresh!”
“Well,” said Badger Billy philosophically, “he’ll come for more.”
“Not of mine, he won’t,” snorted the dexterous one. “I can’t do any business against a man that’s next. I hope he chokes.”
“There you go again, letting your temper get the best of you,” protested Mr. Phelps, himself none too pleased. “This fresh lollop has coin, and it ought to be ours.”
“Ought to be? Itisours,” growled Larry. “We’ll get it if we have to mace him, at noon, on Madison Square.”
In the meantime J. Rufus was chuckling himself to sleep. He rose at eleven, breakfasted at one, and was dressing and planning to besiege New York upon his own account, when the telephone advised him that Mr. Phelps was down-stairs with a parched throat, and on the way up to get a drink!
“Fine business!” exclaimed J. Rufus with a cordiality which had nothing whatever to do with the puzzled expression on his brow. “What’ll you have? I’ll order it while you’re on your way up.”
“Nothing stronger than a Scotch highball,” was the reply, whereupon young Wallingford, as soon as the telephone was clear, ordered the materials therefor.
“Fine business,” he repeated to himself musingly as he stood with his hand still on the receiver after he had hung it up; “also rough work. This thirst is too sudden.”
He was still most thoughtful when Mr. Phelps knocked at the door, and had yet more food for contemplation when the caller began talking with great enthusiasm about his thirst, explaining the height and breadth and thickness thereof, its atomic weight, its color and the excellent style of its finish.
“If I just had that thirst outside of me where I could get at it, I could make an airship of it,” he imaginatively concluded.
“Gas or hot air?” inquired young Mr. Wallingford, entirely unmoved, as he poured the highballs and dosed both quite liberally with the Scotch, whereat Mr. Phelps almost visibly winced, though gamely planning to drink with every appearance of enjoyment.
“Where’s Daw?” he asked, after two sips which he tried to make seem like gulps.
“Gone out to a print-shop to locate a couple of gold mines,” announced Wallingford dryly, holding his own opinion as to the folly of Mr. Daw’s methods. They were so unsanctioned of law.
“Sorry for that,” said Mr. Phelps, who was nevertheless relieved to hear it, for Mr. Daw was rather in the way. “We’ve got a great game on; a Reuben right from Reubensville, with five thousand of pa’smoney in his jeans. I wanted you fellows to come and look him over.”
“What’s the use?” returned Wallingford. “Come down to the lobby and I’ll show you a whole procession of them.”
“No, but they’re not so liberal as this boy,” protested Phelps laughing. “He just naturally hones and hones and hones to hand us this nice little bundle of kale, and we’re going to accommodate him. You can get in on the split-up if you want to. Daw would have first choice, of course, if he was here, but since he isn’t you might as well come in. Five thousand iron men are hardly worth bending to pick up, I guess.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” objected Wallingford condescendingly. “It would make cigarette money, anyhow, if there are not too many to tear it apart.”
“It takes just four,” Phelps informed him: “look-out, spieler, panel-man and engraver.”
Wallingford shook his head, refusing even to speculate on the duties of the four named actors in the playlet.
“Four makes it hardly union wages,” he objected.
Green-Goods Harry cast at him a look of quick dislike.
“I know, but wait till you see the sample,” he insisted. “The fun’s worth more than the meat. He’s the rawest you ever saw; wants green goods, you know; thinks there really is green-goods, and stands ready to exchange his five thousand of the genuine rhino for twenty of the phoney stuff. Of course you know how this little joke is rimmed up. We count out the twenty thousand in real money and wrap it up in bales before both of his eyes, then put it in a little satchel of which we make Mr. Alfred Alfalfa a present. While we’re giving him the solemn talk about the po-lice Badger Billy switches in another satchel with the same kind of looking bales in it, but made out of tissue-paper with twenties top and bottom; then we all move, and Henry Whiskers don’t dare make a holler because he’s in on a crooked play himself; see?”
“I see,” assented Wallingford still dryly. “I’ve been reading the papers ever since I was a kid. What puzzles me is how you can find anybody left in the world who isn’t hep.”
“There’s a new sucker born every minute,” returned Mr. Phelps airily, whereat Wallingford, detecting that Mr. Phelps held his intelligence andeducation so cheaply as to offer this sage remark as original, inwardly fumed.
“Come on and look him over, anyhow,” insisted Phelps, rising.
Wallingford arose reluctantly.
“What’s the matter with your highball?” he demanded.
“It’s great Scotch!” said Mr. Phelps enthusiastically, and drank about a tablespoonful with great avidity. “Come on; the boys are waiting,” and he surged toward the door.
Wallingford finished his own glass contemplatively and followed with a trace of annoyance.
Into the back room of a flashy saloon just off Broadway Mr. Phelps led the way, after pausing outside to post Wallingford carefully on all their new names, and here they found Billy Banting and Larry Teller in company with a stranger, one glance at whom raised Wallingford’s spirits quite appreciably, for he was so obviously made up.
He was a raw-boned young fellow who wore an out-of-date derby, a cheap, made cravat which rode his collar, a cheap suit of loud-checked clothes that was entirely too tight for him, and the trousers of which, two inches too short, were rounded stiffly out below the knees, like stove-pipes, by top-boots which were wrinkled about the ankles. Moreover, the stranger spoke with a nasal drawl never heard off the stage.
Wallingford, with a wink from Phelps, was introducedto Mr. Pickins as Mr. Mombley. Then, leaning down to Mr. Pickins with another prodigious wink at Wallingford, Phelps said in a stage-whisper to the top-booted one:
“Mr. Mombley is our engraver. Used to work in the mint.”
“Well, I’ll swan!” drawled Mr. Pickins. “I’d reckoned to find such a fine gove’ment expert a older man.”
With a sigh Wallingford took up his expected part.
“I’m older than I look,” said he. “Making money keeps a man young.”
“I reckon,” agreed Mr. Pickins, and “haw-hawed” quite broadly. “And did you really make this greenback?” he asked, drawing from his vest pocket a crinkled new ten-dollar-bill which he spread upon the table and examined with very eager interest indeed.
“This is one of that last batch, Joe,” Short-Card Larry negligently informed Wallingford, with a meaning wink. “I just gave it to him as a sample.”
“By jingo, it’s scrumptious work!” said Mr. Pickins admiringly.
“Yes, they’ll take that for a perfectly good billanywhere,” asserted Wallingford. “Just spend it and see,” and he pushed the button. “Bring us a bottle of the best champagne you have in the house,” he directed the waiter, and with satisfaction he noted the startled raising of heads all around the table,including the head of Mr. Pickins.
“I don’t like to brag on myself,” continued Wallingford, taking on fresh animation as he began to see humor in the situation, “but I think I’m the grandest little money-maker in the city, in my special line. I don’t go after small game very often. A ten is the smallest I handle. Peters,” he suddenly commanded Phelps, “show him one of those lovely twenties.”
“I don’t think I have one of the new ones,” said Phelps, moistening his lips, but nevertheless reaching for his wallet. “I think the only twenties I have are those that we put through the aging process.”
Wallingford calmly took the wallet from him and as calmly leafed over the bills it contained.
“No, none of these twenties is from the new batch,” he decided, entering more and more into the spirit of the game, “but this half-century is one that we’re all proud of. Just examine that, Mr. Pickins,” and closing the wallet he handed it back to Phelps,passing the fifty-dollar bill to the stranger. “Billy, give me one of those twenties. I’m bound to show Mr. Pickins one of our best output.”
Badger Billy, being notorious even among his fellows as a tight-wad, swallowed hard, but he produced a small roll of bills and extracted the newest twenty he could find. During this process it had twice crossed Billy’s mind to revolt; but, after all, Wallingford was evincing an interest in the game that might be worth while.
“That’s it,” approved Wallingford, running it through his fingers and passing it over to Pickins. He got up from his place and took the vacant chair by that gentleman. “I just want you to look at the nifty imitation of engine work in this scroll border,” he insisted with vast enthusiasm, while Mr. Pickins cast a despairing glance, half-puzzled and half-bored, at the others of the company, themselves awed into silence.
He was still explaining the excellent work in the more intricate portions of the two designs when the waiter appeared with the wine, and Wallingford only interrupted himself long enough nonchalantly to toss the ten-dollar bill on the tray after the glasses were filled. Then, with vast fervor, he returnedto the counterfeiting business, with the specimens before him as an inspiring text.
The waiter brought back two dollars in silver.
“Just keep the change,” said Wallingford grandly, and then, as the waiter was about to withdraw, he quickly handed up the fifty and the twenty-dollar bills to him. “Just take this twenty, George,” said he to the waiter, “and run down to the cigar-store on the corner and buy some of those dollar cigars. You might as well get us about three apiece. Then take this fifty and get us a box forThe Prince of Pikersto-night. Hustle right on, now,” and he gave the waiter a gentle but insistent shove on the arm that had all the effect of bustling him out of the room. “We’ll show Mr. Pickins a good time,” he exultantly declared. “We’ll show him how easy it is to live on soft money like this.”
“Just keep the change,” said Wallingford grandly“Just keep the change,” said Wallingford grandly
Wallingford had held the floor for fifteen solid minutes. Now he paused for some one else to offer a remark, his eager eye glowing with the sense of a duty not only well, but brilliantly, performed, as it roved from one to the other in search of approval. But feeble encouragement was in any other eye. Four men could have throttled him, singly and in company. Wallingford was too enthusiastic anactor. He was taking the part entirely too well, and a vague doubt began to cross the minds of the other gentlemen in the party as to whether he would do or not. It was Short-Card Larry who first recovered his poise and broke the dismal silence.
“Show him one or two of those new hundreds, Mombley,” he invited Wallingford with almost a snarl.
Wallingford merely smiled in a superior way.
“You know I never carry any but the genuine,” he said in mild reproach. “It wouldn’t do, you know. Anyhow, are we sure that Mr. Pickins wants to invest?”
Mr. Pickins drew a long breath and once more plunged into the character which he had almost doffed.
“Invest? Well, I reckon!” he nasally drawled. “If I can get twenty thousand dollars as good money as that for five, I’d be a blame fool not to take it. And I got the five thousand, too.”
Things were coming back to a normal basis now, and the others cheered up.
“Look here,” Mr. Pickins went on, and, reaching down, he drew off with much tugging one of the high boots, in the top of which had reposed a packageof greenbacks: ten crisp, nice-looking five-hundred-dollar bills.
For just a moment Wallingford eyed that money speculatively, then he picked up one of the bills and slid it through his fingers.
“It’s good money, I suppose,” he observed. “You can hardly tell the good from the bad these days, except by offering to spend it. We might break one of these—say for an automobile ride.”
“No, you don’t,” hurriedly interposed Mr. Pickins, losing his nasal drawl for the moment and reaching for the bill, which he put back in the package, snapping a weak rubber band around it. “I reckon I don’t let go of one of these bills till I see something in exchange. I—I ain’t no greenhorn!”
His nasal drawl had come back, and now seemed to be the cue for all the others to affect laughter.
“To be sure he’s not,” said Mr. Phelps, reaching over to slap him on the back in all the jovial heartiness with which a greenhorn is supposed to be encouraged. “You’re wise, all right, Pickins. We wouldn’t do business with you if you weren’t. You see, we’re putting ourselves in danger of the penitentiary and we have to be careful. More than that, wise people come back; and, with a dozen or so likeMr. Pickins shoving the queer for us, we put out about all we can make. Nobody in the business, Mr. Pickins, gets as high a price for green-goods as we do, and nobody in the business keeps all their customers as we do. That’s because our output is so good.”
This, which was one of the rehearsed speeches, went off very well, and they began to feel comfortable again.
“That’s me, by Jinks!” announced Pickins, slapping his leg. “I’ll be one of your steady customers, all right. When’ll I get this first twenty thousand?”
“Right away,” said Mr. Phelps, rising. “Just wait a moment till I talk it over with the engraver and see if he has the supply ready.”
“The supply’s all right,” declared Wallingford. “These boys will ’tend to the business with you, Mr. Pickins. I’m very glad to have met you. I’ll probably see you to-night at the show. I have to go back and look after a little more engraving just now.” And, shaking hands cordially with Mr. Pickins, he rose to go.
“Wait a minute, Mombley,” said Phelps amidst a general scowl, and he walked outside with Wallingford. “Fine work, old man,” he complimented,keeping his suavity with no little effort. “We can go right in and pick our bunch of posies any minute.”
“Go right ahead!” said Wallingford heartily. “I’m glad to have helped you out a little.”
Mr. Phelps looked at him in sour speculation.
“Of course you’re in on it,” he observed with a great air of making a merely perfunctory remark.
“Me?” inquired Wallingford in surprise. “Not on your life. I only played engraver for accommodation. I thought I did a grand little piece of work, too.”
“But we can’t go through without you,” insisted Mr. Phelps desperately, ignoring the other’s maddening complacency and sticking to the main point. “It takes twenty thousand and we only have five thousand apiece. We’re looking to you for the other five.”
Wallingford looked him squarely in the eyes, with an entire change of manner, and chuckled.
“There are four reasons, Phelps, why I won’t,” he kindly explained. “The first is, I never do anything in partnership; second, I never pike; third, I won’t take a fall out of any game that has the brown-and-white-striped clothes at the end of it;fourth, Billy might not get the satchels switched right;extra, I won’t fool with any farmer that strikes a match on the sole of his boot!”
The fifth and extra reason was so unexpected and was laid before Mr. Phelps with such meaning emphasis that that gentleman could only drop his jaw and gape in reply. Wallingford laid both hands on his shoulders and chuckled in his face.
“You’re a fiercely unimaginative bunch,” he said. “Let’s don’t try to do any more business together. Just come up to my room to-night and have a friendly game of stud poker.”
At last Green-Goods Harry found his tongue.
“You go to hell!” said he.
Back in their common sitting-room, Wallingford found Daw studying some gaudy samples of stock certificates. “Blackie, did you tell this gang of yours that they didn’t drink enough to suit me?” Wallingford demanded.
Blackie grinned.
“They wanted to know why you wouldn’t warm up,” he admitted.
“I see the pretty, pretty lights at last,” Wallingford chuckled. “I was sure there was something doing when Curly Harry came up here claiming athirst, and went so far as to drink champagne on top of a highball.”
“He’s taking stomach and liver dope right now,” Blackie guessed. “You see, these Broadway boys are handicapped when they run across a man who still has a lining. They lost theirs years ago.”
“They lost everything years ago. I’m disappointed in them, Blackie. I had supposed that these people of the metropolis had Herman the Great looking like a Bowery waiter when it came to smooth work; but they’ve got nothing but thumbs.”
“You do them deep wrong, J. Rufus Wallingford Wix,” admonished Blackie. “I’ve trailed with this crowd four or five years. They’re always to be found right here and they always have coin—whether they spend it or not.”
“They get it gold-bricking New Yorkers, then,” declared Wallingford contemptuously. “They couldn’t cold deck anybody on the rural free delivery routes. They wear the lemon sign on their faces, and when one of their kind comes west of the big hills we padlock all our money in our pockets and lock ourselves in jail till they get out of town.”
“What have they been doing to you?” asked Blackie. “You’ve got a regular Matteawan grouch.”
“They had the nerve to try to ring me in for the fall guy on a green-goods play, baited up with a stage farmer from One Hundred and Sixtieth Street,” asserted Wallingford. “Don’t they ever spring a new one here?”
Mr. Blackie Daw only laughed.
“I’m afraid they don’t,” he confessed. “They take the old ones that have got the money for years, and work in new props and scenery on them, just like they do in the theaters; and that goes for Broadway.”
“It don’t go for me,” declared Wallingford. “If they come after mine again I’ll get real peevish and take their flash rolls away from them.”
“Go to it,” invited Blackie. “They need a trimming.”
“I think I’ll hand it to them,” said Wallingford savagely, and started to walk out.
“Where are you going?” asked the other.
“I don’t know,” said Wallingford, “but I am going to scare up some excitement in the only way possible for a stranger, and that is go out and hunt for it by myself. No New Yorker knows where to go.”
In the bar Wallingford found a convivial gentlemanfrom Georgia, lonesome like himself, with whom he became firm friends in an hour, and it was after midnight when, their friendship still further fixed by plenty of liquid cement, he left the Georgian at one of the broad, bright entrances in charge of a door-man. It being but a few blocks to his own hotel, he walked, carrying with complacent satisfaction a burden of assorted beverages that would have staggered most men.
It was while he was pausing upon his own corner for a moment to consider the past evening in smiling retrospection, that a big-boned policeman tapped him on the shoulder. He was startled for a moment, but a hearty voice reassured him with:
“Why, hello, Wix, my boy! When did you come to town?”
A smile broke over Wallingford’s face as he shook hands with the bluecoat.
“Hello, Harvey,” he returned. “I never would have looked for you in this make-up. It’s a funny job for the ex-secretary of the Filmore Coal Company.”
“Forget it,” returned Harvey complacently. “There’s three squares a day in this and pickings. Where are you stopping?”
Wallingford told him, and then looked at him speculatively.
“Come up and see me when you go off watch,” he invited. “But don’t ask for me under the name of Wix. It’s Wallingford now, J. Rufus Wallingford.”
“No!” said Harvey. “What did you do at home?”
“Not a thing,” protested Wallingford. “I can go right back to Filmore and play hop-scotch around the county jail if I want to. I just didn’t like the name, that’s all. But I want to talk with you, Harvey. I think I can throw about a hundred or so in your way.”
“Not me,” returned Harvey with a grin. “That’s the price of a murder in this town.”
“Come up, and I’ll coax you,” laughed Wallingford.
He walked away quite thoughtfully. Harvey Willis, who had left Filmore on account of his fine sense of honor—he had embezzled to pay a poker debt—seemed suddenly to fit an empty and an aching void.
“
The fresh Hick!” observed Mr. Pickins savagely. “I’d like to hand him a bunch of knuckles.”
Mr. Pickins was not now in character, but was clad in quite ordinary good clothes; his prominent cheek-bones, however, had become two white spots in the midst of an angrily red countenance.
“I don’t know as I blame him so much,” said Phelps. “The trouble is we sized him for about the intelligence of a louse. Anybody who would stand for your Hoop-pole County line of talk wouldn’t need such a careful frame-up to make him lay down his money.”
“There’s something to that,” agreed Short-Card Larry. “I always did say your work was too strong, Pick.”
“There ain’t another man in the crowd can play as good a Rube,” protested Mr. Pickins, toucheddeeply upon the matter of his art. “I don’t know how many thousands we’ve cleaned up on that outfit of mine.”
“Ye-e-es, but this Wallingford person called the turn,” insisted Phelps. “The only times we ever made it stick was on the kind of farmers that work in eleven-story office buildings. You can fool a man with a stuffed dog, but you can’t fool a dog with it; and you couldn’t fool Yap Wallingford with a counterfeit yap.”
“Well,” announced Mr. Pickins, with emphatic finality, “you may have my part of him. I’m willing to let him go right back to Oskaloosa, or Oshkosh, or wherever it is.”
“Not me,” declared Phelps. “I want to get him just on general principles. He’s handed me too much flossy talk. You know the last thing he had the nerve to say? He invited us up to play stud poker with him.”
“Why don’t you?” asked Pickins.
“Ask Larry,” said Phelps with a laugh, whereat Larry merely swore.
Badger Billy, who had been silently listening with his eyes half closed, was possessed of a sudden inventive gift.
“Yes, why don’t you?” he repeated. “If I read this village cut-up right, and I think I do, he’ll take a sporting chance. Get him over to the Forty-second Street dump on a proposition to play two-handed stud with Harry there, then pull off a phoney pinch for gambling.”
“No chance,” returned Phelps. “He’d be on to that game; it’s a dead one, too.”
“Not if you work it this way,” insisted Billy, in whom the creative spirit was still strong. “Tell him that we’re all sore at Harry, here; that Harry threw the gang last night and got me put away. I’ll have McDermott take me down and lock me up on suspicion for a couple of hours, so you can bring him down and show me to him. Tell him you’ve found a way to get square. Harry’s supposed to have a grouch about that stud poker taunt and wants to play Wallingford two-handed, five thousand a side. Tell him to go into this game, and that just when they have the money and the cards on the table, you’ll pull off a phoney pinch and have your fake officer take the money and cards for evidence, then you’ll split up with him.”
Billy paused and looked around with a triumphant eye. It was a long, long speech for the Badger, anda vivid bit of creative work of which he felt justly proud.
“Fine!” observed Larry in deep sarcasm. “Then I suppose we give him the blackjack and take it all away from him?”
“No, you mutt,” returned Billy, having waited for this objection so as to bring out the clever part of his scheme as a climax. “Just as we have Dan pull off the pinch, in jumps Sprig Foles and pinches Dan for impersonating an officer. Then Sprig cops the money and the cards for evidence, while we all make a get-away.”
A long and thoughtful silence followed the exposition of this great scheme of Billy’s. It was Phelps who spoke first.
“There’s one thing about it,” he admitted: “it’s a new one.”
“Grandest little double cross that was ever pulled over,” announced Billy in the pride of authorship.
It was a matter of satisfaction, to say nothing of surprise, to Short-Card Larry to note the readiness, even the alacrity, with which young Wallingford fell into the trap. Would he accept the traitorous Mr. Phelps’ challenge if guaranteed that he would win? He would! There was nothing young Wallingforddetested so much as a traitor. Moreover, he had a grouch at Mr. Phelps himself.
Short-Card Larry had expected to argue more than this, and, having argument still lying heavily upon his lungs, must rid himself of it. It must be distinctly understood that the crowd wanted nothing whatever out of this. They merely wished to see the foresworn Mr. Phelps lose all his money, so that he could not hire a lawyer to defend him, and when he was thus resourceless they intended to have him arrested on an old charge and “sent over.” They were very severe and heartless about Mr. Phelps, but they did not want his money. They would not touch it! Wallingford could have it all with the exception of the two hundred and fifty dollars he would have to pay to the experienced plain-clothes-man impersonator whom Larry, having a wide acquaintance, would secure.
Mr. Wallingford understood perfectly. He appreciated thoroughly the motives that actuated Mr. Larry Teller and his friends, and those motives did them credit. He counted himself, moreover, highly fortunate in being on hand to take advantage of the situation. Still moreover, after the trick was turned he would stand a fine dinner for the entirecrowd, including Mr. Pickins, to whom Mr. Teller would kindly convey his, Mr. Wallingford’s, respects.
Accepting this commission with some inward resentment but outward pleasure, Mr. Teller suggested that the game be played off that very afternoon. Mr. Wallingford was very sorry. That afternoon and evening he had business of grave importance. To-morrow evening, however, say at about nine o’clock, he would be on hand with the five thousand, in bills of convenient denomination. Mr. Teller might call for him at the hotel and escort him to the room, although, from having had the location previously pointed out to him, Mr. Wallingford was quite sure he could find Mr. Teller’s apartment, where the contest was to take place. Left alone, Mr. Wallingford, in the exuberance of his youth, lay back in his big chair and spent five solid minutes in chuckling self-congratulation, to the great mystification of the incoming Mr. Daw, whom J. Rufus would not quite trust with his reason for mirth. Feeling the need of really human companionship at this juncture, young Wallingford called up his convivial friend from Georgia and they went out to spend another busy and pleasant afternoon and evening,amid a rapidly widening circle of friends whom these two enterprising and jovial gentlemen had already managed to attach to them. With an eye to business, however, Wallingford carefully timed their wanderings so that he should return, alone, on foot, to his own hotel a trifle after midnight.
As Mr. Teller and Mr. Wallingford, on the following evening at a few minutes before nine, turned into the house on Forty-second Street, they observed a sturdy figure helping a very much inebriated man up the stone steps just before them, but as the sturdy figure inserted a latch-key in the door and opened it with one hand while supporting his companion with the other arm, the incident was not one to excite comment. Just inside the door the inebriated man tried to raise a disturbance, which was promptly squelched by the sturdy gentleman, who held his charge firmly in a bearlike grip while Mr. Teller and Mr. Wallingford passed around them at the foot of the stairs, casting smiling glances down at the face of the perpetually-worried landlady, who had come to the parlor door to wonder what she ought to do about it.
In the second floor back room Mr. Phelps and Mr. Badger already awaited them. Mr. Badger’s greetingto Larry was the ordinary greeting of one man who had seen the other within the hour; his greeting to Mr. Wallingford was most cordial and accompanied by the merest shade of a wink. Mr. Phelps, on the other hand, was most grim. While not denying the semblance of courtesy one gentleman should bestow upon another, he nevertheless gave Mr. Wallingford distinctly to understand by his bearing that he was out for Mr. Wallingford’s financial blood, and after the coldest of greetings he asked gruffly:
“Did you bring cards?”
“One dollar’s worth,” said Wallingford, tossing four packs upon the table. “Ordinary drug-store cards, bought at the corner.”
“You see them bought, Larry?” inquired Phelps.
“They’re all right, Phelps,” Mr. Teller assured him.
“Good,” said Mr. Phelps. “Then we might just as well get to work right away,” and from his pocket he drew a fat wallet out of which he counted five thousand dollars, mostly in bills of large denomination.
In the chair at the opposite side of the little table Wallingford sat down with equal grimness, andproduced an equal amount of money in similar denominations.
“I don’t suppose we need chips,” said Phelps. “The game may not last over a couple of deals. Make it table stakes, loser of each hand to deal the next one.”
They opened a pack of cards and cut for the deal, which fell to Wallingford, and they began with a mutual five-dollar ante. Upon the turn card of the first deal each placed another five. Upon the third card, Phelps, being high, shoved forward a five-dollar bill, which Wallingford promptly raised with fifty. Scarcely glancing at his hole-card, Phelps let him take the pot, and it became Phelps’ deal.
It was a peculiar game, in that Phelps kept the deal from then on, betting mildly until Wallingford raised, in which case Wallingford was allowed to take down the money. By this means Wallingford steadily won, but in such small amounts that Mr. Phelps could have kept playing for hours on his five thousand dollars in spite of the annoyance of maudlin quarreling from the next room. It was not necessary to enter such a long test of endurance to gain mere time, however, for in less than a half-hour the door suddenly burst open, its latch-bar losingits screws with suspicious ease, and a gaunt but muscular-looking individual with a down-drooping mustache strode in upon them, displaying a large shining badge pinned on his vest underneath his coat.
“Every man keep his seat!” commanded this apparition. “The place is pinched as a gambling joint.”
Mr. Phelps made a grab for the money on the table.
“Drop that!” said the new-comer, making a motion toward his hip pocket, and Mr. Phelps subsided in his chair.
The others had posed themselves most dramatically, and now they sat in motionless but trembling obedience to the law, while the man with the tin badge produced from his pocket a little black bag into which he stuffed the cards and all the money on the table.
“It’s a frame-up!” shouted Mr. Phelps.
Loud voices and the overturning of chairs from the room just ahead interrupted them at this moment, and not only Mr. Badger and Mr. Teller and Mr. Phelps looked annoyed, but the man with the shining badge glanced apprehensively in that direction,especially as, added to the sudden uproar, there was the unmistakable clang of a patrol-wagon in the street.
Simultaneously with this there bounded into the room a large gentleman with a red face and a husky voice, who whipped a revolver from his pocket the minute he passed the threshold and leveled it at the man with the badge, while all the others sprang from their chairs.
“Hands up!” said he, in a hurried but businesslike manner, himself apparently annoyed with and apprehensive of the adjoining disturbance and the clanging in the street. “This is a sure-enough pinch, but it ain’t for gambling, you can bet your sweet life! You’re all pulled for a bunch of cheap sure-thing experts, but this guy has got the lock-step comin’ to him for impersonating an officer. You’ve played that gag too long, Dan Blazer. Give me that evidence!” and he snatched the black bag from the hand of the man with the badge.
Short-Card Larry, standing near what was apparently a closet door, now took his cue and threw it open, and, grabbing Wallingford by the arm, suddenly pulled him forward. “This is the real thing,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “We’ve got to makea get-away or go up. They’re fierce on us here if the pinch once comes.”
“Hello, boys,” broke in a third new voice, and then the real shock came. The third new voice was not in the play at all, and the consternation it wrought was more than ludicrous.
Wallingford, drawing back for a moment, was nearly knocked off his feet by fat Badger Billy’s dashing past him through that door to the back stairway, closely followed by Mr. Phelps, and Mr. Phelps was trailed almost as closely by the gaunt man of the badge. Glancing toward the door, Mr. Wallingford smiled beatifically. The cause of all this sudden exodus was huge Harvey Willis, in his blue suit and brass buttons and helmet, with a club in his hand, who, making one dive for the husky red-faced man as he, too, was bent on disappearing, whanged him against the wall with a blow upon the head from his billy; and as the red-faced man fell over, Harvey grabbed the black bag. The crash of a breaking water-pitcher from the adjoining room, the shrill voice of a protesting and frightened landlady as she came tearing up the stairs, and the clamor of one of those lightning-collected mobs in front of the house around the patrol-wagon, created a diversionin the midst of which Harvey Willis started out into the hall, a circumstance which gave the dazed red-faced man an opportunity to stagger down the back stairway and out through the alley after his companions, whom Wallingford had already followed. They were not waiting for him, by any means, but this time were genuinely interested in getting away from the law, each man darkly suspicious of all the others, and Wallingford, alone, serene in mind.
In the hall, Willis, with a grin, thrust the black bag into his big pocket, and turned his attention to the terrified landlady and his brother officer of the wagon, who was just then mounting the stairs.
“Case of plain coke jag,” he explained, and burst into the noisy room, from which the two presently emerged with the shrieking and inebriated man who had been brought up-stairs but a short while before.
In Wallingford’s room that night, Blackie Daw was just starting for Boston when Harvey Willis, now off duty, came up with the little black bag, which he dropped upon the table, sitting down in one of the big chairs and laughing hugely.
“Mr. Daw, shake hands with Mr. Willis, a friendof mine from Filmore,” said Wallingford. “Order a drink, Daw.”
As he spoke, he untied the bag, and, taking its lower corners, sifted the mixture of cards and greenbacks upon the table. Daw, in the act of shaking hands, stopped with gaping jaws.
“What in Moses is that?” he asked.
“Merely a little contribution from your Broadway friends,” Wallingford explained with a chuckle. “Harvey, what do I owe out of this?”
“Well,” said Harvey, sitting down again and naming over the cast of characters on his fingers, “there’s seven dollars for the room, and the tenner I gave Sawyer to go down on Park Row and hunt up a coke jag. Sawyer gets fifty. We ought to slip a twenty to the wagon-man. Sawyer will have to pay about a ten-case note for broken furniture, and I suppose you’ll want to pay this poor coke dip’s fine. That’s all, except me.”
“Ninety-seven dollars, besides the fine,” said Wallingford, counting it up. “Suppose we say a hundred and fifty to cover all expenses, and about three hundred and fifty for you. How would that do?”
“Fine!” agreed Harvey. “Stay right here and keep me busy at the price.”
“Not me,” said Wallingford warmly. “I only did this because I was peevish. I don’t like this kind of money. It may not be honest money. I don’t know how Phelps and Banting and Teller got this money.”
Blackie Daw came solemnly over and shook hands with him.
“Stay amongst our midst, J. Rufus,” he pleaded. “We need an infusion of live ones on Broadway. Our best workers have grown jaded and effete, and our reputation is suffering. Stay, oh, stay!”
“No,” refused J. Rufus positively. “I don’t want to have anything more to do with crooks!”