"I hope some day to retire from business," said Jeff Peters; "and when
I do I don't want anybody to be able to say that I ever got a dollar
of any man's money without giving him a quid pro rata for it. I've
always managed to leave a customer some little gewgaw to paste in his
scrapbook or stick between his Seth Thomas clock and the wall after we
are through trading.
"There was one time I came near having to break this rule of mine and
do a profligate and illaudable action, but I was saved from it by the
laws and statutes of our great and profitable country.
"One summer me and Andy Tucker, my partner, went to New York to lay in
our annual assortment of clothes and gents' furnishings. We was always
pompous and regardless dressers, finding that looks went further than
anything else in our business, except maybe our knowledge of railroad
schedules and an autograph photo of the President that Loeb sent us,
probably by mistake. Andy wrote a nature letter once and sent it in
about animals that he had seen caught in a trap lots of times. Loeb
must have read it 'triplets,' instead of 'trap lots,' and sent the
photo. Anyhow, it was useful to us to show people as a guarantee of
good faith.
"Me and Andy never cared much to do business in New York. It was
too much like pothunting. Catching suckers in that town is like
dynamiting a Texas lake for bass. All you have to do anywhere between
the North and East rivers is to stand in the street with an open bag
marked, 'Drop packages of money here. No checks or loose bills taken.'
You have a cop handy to club pikers who try to chip in post office
orders and Canadian money, and that's all there is to New York for a
hunter who loves his profession. So me and Andy used to just nature
fake the town. We'd get out our spyglasses and watch the woodcocks
along the Broadway swamps putting plaster casts on their broken legs,
and then we'd sneak away without firing a shot.
"One day in the papier mâché palm room of a chloral hydrate and hops
agency in a side street about eight inches off Broadway me and Andy
had thrust upon us the acquaintance of a New Yorker. We had beer
together until we discovered that each of us knew a man named
Hellsmith, traveling for a stove factory in Duluth. This caused us to
remark that the world was a very small place, and then this New Yorker
busts his string and takes off his tin foil and excelsior packing and
starts in giving us his Ellen Terris, beginning with the time he used
to sell shoelaces to the Indians on the spot where Tammany Hall now
stands.
"This New Yorker had made his money keeping a cigar store in Beekman
street, and he hadn't been above Fourteenth street in ten years.
Moreover, he had whiskers, and the time had gone by when a true sport
will do anything to a man with whiskers. No grafter except a boy who
is soliciting subscribers to an illustrated weekly to win the prize
air rifle, or a widow, would have the heart to tamper with the man
behind with the razor. He was a typical city Reub--I'd bet the man
hadn't been out of sight of a skyscraper in twenty-five years.
"Well, presently this metropolitan backwoodsman pulls out a roll of
bills with an old blue sleeve elastic fitting tight around it and
opens it up.
"'There's $5,000, Mr. Peters,' says he, shoving it over the table
to me, 'saved during my fifteen years of business. Put that in your
pocket and keep it for me, Mr. Peters. I'm glad to meet you gentlemen
from the West, and I may take a drop too much. I want you to take care
of my money for me. Now, let's have another beer.'
[Illustration: "'I want you to take care of my money for me.'"]
"'You'd better keep this yourself,' says I. 'We are strangers to
you, and you can't trust everybody you meet. Put your roll back in
your pocket,' says I. 'And you'd better run along home before some
farm-hand from the Kaw River bottoms strolls in here and sells you
a copper mine.'
"'Oh, I don't know,' says Whiskers. 'I guess Little Old New York can
take care of herself. I guess I know a man that's on the square when I
see him. I've always found the Western people all right. I ask you as
a favor, Mr. Peters,' says he, 'to keep that roll in your pocket for
me. I know a gentleman when I see him. And now let's have some more
beer.'
"In about ten minutes this fall of manna leans back in his chair and
snores. Andy looks at me and says: 'I reckon I'd better stay with him
for five minutes or so, in case the waiter comes in.'
"I went out the side door and walked half a block up the street. And
then I came back and sat down at the table.
"'Andy,' says I, 'I can't do it. It's too much like swearing off
taxes. I can't go off with this man's money without doing something to
earn it like taking advantage of the Bankrupt act or leaving a bottle
of eczema lotion in his pocket to make it look more like a square
deal.'
"'Well,' says Andy, 'it does seem kind of hard on one's professional
pride to lope off with a bearded pard's competency, especially after
he has nominated you custodian of his bundle in the sappy insouciance
of his urban indiscrimination. Suppose we wake him up and see if we
can formulate some commercial sophistry by which he will be enabled to
give us both his money and a good excuse.'
"We wakes up Whiskers. He stretches himself and yawns out the
hypothesis that he must have dropped off for a minute. And then he
says he wouldn't mind sitting in at a little gentleman's game of
poker. He used to play some when he attended high school in Brooklyn;
and as he was out for a good time, why--and so forth.
"Andy brights up a little at that, for it looks like it might be a
solution to our financial troubles. So we all three go to our hotel
further down Broadway and have the cards and chips brought up to
Andy's room. I tried once more to make this Babe in the Horticultural
Gardens take his five thousand. But no.
"'Keep that little roll for me, Mr. Peters,' says he, 'and oblige.
I'll ask you fer it when I want it. I guess I know when I'm among
friends. A man that's done business on Beekman street for twenty
years, right in the heart of the wisest old village on earth, ought to
know what he's about. I guess I can tell a gentleman from a con man or
a flimflammer when I meet him. I've got some odd change in my clothes
--enough to start the game with, I guess.'
"He goes through his pockets and rains $20 gold certificates on the
table till it looked like a $10,000 'Autumn Day in a Lemon Grove'
picture by Turner in the salons. Andy almost smiled.
"The first round that was dealt, this boulevardier slaps down his
hand, claims low and jack and big casino and rakes in the pot.
"Andy always took a pride in his poker playing. He got up from the
table and looked sadly out of the window at the street cars.
"'Well, gentlemen,' says the cigar man, 'I don't blame you for not
wanting to play. I've forgotten the fine points of the game, I guess,
it's been so long since I indulged. Now, how long are you gentlemen
going to be in the city?'
"I told him about a week longer. He says that'll suit him fine. His
cousin is coming over from Brooklyn that evening and they are going to
see the sights of New York. His cousin, he says, is in the artificial
limb and lead casket business, and hasn't crossed the bridge in eight
years. They expect to have the time of their lives, and he winds up by
asking me to keep his roll of money for him till next day. I tried to
make him take it, but it only insulted him to mention it.
"'I'll use what I've got in loose change,' says he. 'You keep the rest
for me. I'll drop in on you and Mr. Tucker to-morrow afternoon about 6
or 7,' says he, 'and we'll have dinner together. Be good.'
"After Whiskers had gone Andy looked at me curious and doubtful.
"'Well, Jeff,' says he, 'it looks like the ravens are trying to feed
us two Elijahs so hard that if we turned 'em down again we ought to
have the Audubon Society after us. It won't do to put the crown aside
too often. I know this is something like paternalism, but don't you
think Opportunity has skinned its knuckles about enough knocking at
our door?'
"I put my feet up on the table and my hands in my pockets, which is an
attitude unfavorable to frivolous thoughts.
"'Andy,' says I, 'this man with the hirsute whiskers has got us in a
predicament. We can't move hand or foot with his money. You and me
have got a gentleman's agreement with Fortune that we can't break.
We've done business in the West where it's more of a fair game. Out
there the people we skin are trying to skin us, even the farmers and
the remittance men that the magazines send out to write up Goldfields.
But there's little sport in New York city for rod, reel or gun. They
hunt here with either one of two things--a slungshot or a letter of
introduction. The town has been stocked so full of carp that the game
fish are all gone. If you spread a net here, do you catch legitimate
suckers in it, such as the Lord intended to be caught--fresh guys who
know it all, sports with a little coin and the nerve to play another
man's game, street crowds out for the fun of dropping a dollar or
two and village smarties who know just where the little pea is? No,
sir,' says I. 'What the grafters live on here is widows and orphans,
and foreigners who save up a bag of money and hand it out over the
first counter they see with an iron railing to it, and factory girls
and little shopkeepers that never leave the block they do business
on. That's what they call suckers here. They're nothing but canned
sardines, and all the bait you need to catch 'em is a pocketknife and
a soda cracker.
"'Now, this cigar man,' I went on, 'is one of the types. He's lived
twenty years on one street without learning as much as you would
in getting a once-over shave from a lockjawed barber in a Kansas
crossroads town. But he's a New Yorker, and he'll brag about that all
the time when he isn't picking up live wires or getting in front of
street cars or paying out money to wire-tappers or standing under a
safe that's being hoisted into a skyscraper. When a New Yorker does
loosen up,' says I, 'it's like the spring decomposition of the ice
jam in the Allegheny River. He'll swamp you with cracked ice and
back-water if you don't get out of the way.
"'It's mighty lucky for us, Andy,' says I, 'that this cigar exponent
with the parsley dressing saw fit to bedeck us with his childlike
trust and altruism. For,' says I, 'this money of his is an eyesore to
my sense of rectitude and ethics. We can't take it, Andy; you know
we can't,' says I, 'for we haven't a shadow of a title to it--not a
shadow. If there was the least bit of a way we could put in a claim
to it I'd be willing to see him start in for another twenty years and
make another $5,000 for himself, but we haven't sold him anything,
we haven't been embroiled in a trade or anything commercial. He
approached us friendly,' says I, 'and with blind and beautiful idiocy
laid the stuff in our hands. We'll have to give it back to him when he
wants it.'
[Illustration: "'We can't take it, Andy.'"]
"'Your arguments,' says Andy, 'are past criticism or comprehension.
No, we can't walk off with the money--as things now stand. I admire
your conscious way of doing business, Jeff,' says Andy, 'and I
wouldn't propose anything that wasn't square in line with your
theories of morality and initiative.
"'But I'll be away to-night and most of to-morrow Jeff,' says Andy.
'I've got some business affairs that I want to attend to. When this
free greenbacks party comes in to-morrow afternoon hold him here till
I arrive. We've all got an engagement for dinner, you know.'
"Well, sir, about 5 the next afternoon in trips the cigar man, with
his eyes half open.
"'Been having a glorious time, Mr. Peters,' says he. 'Took in all the
sights. I tell you New York is the onliest only. Now if you don't
mind,' says he, 'I'll lie down on that couch and doze off for about
nine minutes before Mr. Tucker comes. I'm not used to being up all
night. And to-morrow, if you don't mind, Mr. Peters, I'll take that
five thousand. I met a man last night that's got a sure winner at
the racetrack to-morrow. Excuse me for being so impolite as to go to
sleep, Mr. Peters.'
"And so this inhabitant of the second city in the world reposes
himself and begins to snore, while I sit there musing over things and
wishing I was back in the West, where you could always depend on a
customer fighting to keep his money hard enough to let your conscience
take it from him.
"At half-past 5 Andy comes in and sees the sleeping form.
"'I've been over to Trenton,' says Andy, pulling a document out of his
pocket. 'I think I've got this matter fixed up all right, Jeff. Look
at that.'
"I open the paper and see that it is a corporation charter issued
by the State of New Jersey to 'The Peters & Tucker Consolidated and
Amalgamated Aerial Franchise Development Company, Limited.'
"'It's to buy up rights of way for airship lines,' explained Andy.
'The Legislature wasn't in session, but I found a man at a postcard
stand in the lobby that kept a stock of charters on hand. There are
100,000 shares,' says Andy, 'expected to reach a par value of $1. I
had one blank certificate of stock printed.'
"Andy takes out the blank and begins to fill it in with a fountain
pen.
"'The whole bunch,' says he, 'goes to our friend in dreamland for
$5,000. Did you learn his name?'
"'Make it out to bearer,' says I.
"We put the certificate of stock in the cigar man's hand and went out
to pack our suit cases.
[Illustration: "We put the certificate of stock in the cigarman's
hand."]
"On the ferryboat Andy says to me: 'Is your conscience easy about
taking the money now, Jeff?'
"'Why shouldn't it be?' says I. 'Are we any better than any other
Holding Corporation?'"