"This, Mr. Tomlinson, is our campus," said President Boomer as they
passed through the iron gates of Plutoria University.
"For camping?" said the Wizard.
"Not exactly," answered the president, "though it would, of course,
suit for that. _Nihil humunum alienum_, eh?" and he broke into a loud,
explosive laugh, while his spectacles irradiated that peculiar form of
glee derived from a Latin quotation by those able to enjoy it. Dr.
Boyster, walking on the other side of Mr. Tomlinson, joined in the
laugh in a deep, reverberating chorus.
The two had the Wizard of Finance between them, and they were marching
him up to the University. He was taken along much as is an arrested man
who has promised to go quietly. They kept their hands off him, but they
watched him sideways through their spectacles. At the least sign of
restlessness they doused him with Latin. The Wizard of Finance, having
been marked out by Dr. Boomer and Dr. Boyster as a prospective
benefactor, was having Latin poured over him to reduce him to the
proper degree of plasticity.
They had already put him through the first stage. They had, three days
ago, called on him at the Grand Palaver and served him with a pamphlet
on "The Excavation of Mitylene" as a sort of writ. Tomlinson and his
wife had looked at the pictures of the ruins, and from the appearance
of them they judged that Mitylene was in Mexico, and they said that it
was a shame to see it in that state and that the United States ought to
intervene.
As the second stage on the path of philanthropy, the Wizard of Finance
was now being taken to look at the university. Dr. Boomer knew by
experience that no rich man could look at it without wanting to give it
money.
And here the president had found that there is no better method of
dealing with businessmen than to use Latin on them. For other purposes
the president used other things. For example at a friendly dinner at
the Mausoleum Club where light conversation was in order, Dr. Boomer
chatted, as has been seen, on the archaeological remains of the
Navajos. In the same way, at Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's Dante luncheons, he
generally talked of the Italian _cinquecentisti_ and whether Gian Gobbo
della Scala had left a greater name than Can Grande della Spiggiola.
But such talk as that was naturally only for women. Businessmen are
much too shrewd for that kind of thing; in fact, so shrewd are they, as
President Boomer had long since discovered, that nothing pleases them
so much as the quiet, firm assumption that they know Latin. It is like
writing them up an asset. So it was that Dr. Boomer would greet a
business acquaintance with a roaring salutation of, "_Terque quaterque
beatus_," or stand wringing his hand off to the tune of "_Oh et
presidium et dulce decus meum_."
This caught them every time.
"You don't," said Tomlinson the Wizard in a hesitating tone as he
looked at the smooth grass of the campus, "I suppose, raise anything on
it?"
"No, no; this is only for field sports," said the president; "_sunt
quos curriculo_--"
To which Dr. Boyster on the other side added, like a chorus, "_pulverem
Olympicum_."
This was their favourite quotation. It always gave President Boomer a
chance to speak of the final letter "m" in Latin poetry, and to say
that in his opinion the so-called elision of the final "m" was more
properly a dropping of the vowel with a repercussion of the two last
consonants. He supported this by quoting Ammianus, at which Dr. Boyster
exclaimed, "Pooh! Ammianus: more dog Latin!" and appealed to Mr.
Tomlinson as to whether any rational man nowadays cared what Ammianus
thought?
To all of which Tomlinson answered never a word, but looked steadily
first at one and then at the other. Dr. Boomer said afterwards that the
penetration of Tomlinson was wonderful, and that it was excellent to
see how Boyster tried in vain to draw him; and Boyster said afterwards
that the way in which Tomlinson quietly refused to be led on by Boomer
was delicious, and that it was a pity that Aristophanes was not there
to do it justice.
All of which was happening as they went in at the iron gates and up the
elm avenue of Plutoria University.
The university, as everyone knows, stands with its great gates on
Plutoria Avenue, and with its largest buildings, those of the faculties
of industrial and mechanical science, fronting full upon the street.
These buildings are exceptionally fine, standing fifteen stories high
and comparing favourably with the best departmental stores or factories
in the City. Indeed, after nightfall, when they are all lighted up for
the evening technical classes and when their testing machinery is in
full swing and there are students going in and out in overall suits,
people have often mistaken the university, or this newer part of it,
for a factory. A foreign visitor once said that the students looked
like plumbers, and President Boomer was so proud of it that he put the
phrase into his next Commencement address; and from there the
newspapers got it and the Associated Press took it up and sent it all
over the United States with the heading, "Have Appearance of Plumbers;
Plutoria University Congratulated on Character of Students," and it was
a proud day indeed for the heads of the Industrial Science faculty.
But the older part of the university stands so quietly and modestly at
the top end of the elm avenue, so hidden by the leaves of it, that no
one could mistake it for a factory. This, indeed, was once the whole
university, and had stood there since colonial days under the name
Concordia College. It had been filled with generations of presidents
and professors of the older type with long white beards and rusty black
clothes, and salaries of fifteen hundred dollars.
But the change both of name and of character from Concordia College to
Plutoria University was the work of President Boomer. He had changed it
from an old-fashioned college of the by-gone type to a university in
the true modern sense. At Plutoria they now taught everything.
Concordia College, for example, had no teaching of religion except
lectures on the Bible. Now they had lectures also on Confucianism,
Mohammedanism Buddhism, with an optional course on atheism for students
in the final year.
And, of course, they had long since admitted women, and there were now
beautiful creatures with Cleo de Merode hair studying astronomy at
oaken desks and looking up at the teacher with eyes like comets. The
university taught everything and did everything. It had whirling
machines on the top of it that measured the speed of the wind, and deep
in its basements it measured earthquakes with a seismograph; it held
classes on forestry and dentistry and palmistry; it sent life classes
into the slums, and death classes to the city morgue. It offered such a
vast variety of themes, topics and subjects to the students, that there
was nothing that a student was compelled to learn, while from its own
presses in its own press-building it sent out a shower of bulletins and
monographs like driven snow from a rotary plough.
In fact, it had become, as President Boomer told all the businessmen in
town, not merely a university, but a _universitas_ in the true sense,
and every one of its faculties was now a _facultas_ in the real
acceptance of the word, and its studies properly and truly _studia_;
indeed, if the businessmen would only build a few more dormitories and
put up enough money to form an adequate _fondatum_ or _fundum_, then
the good work might be looked upon as complete.
As the three walked up the elm avenue there met them a little stream of
students with college books, and female students with winged-victory
hats, and professors with last year's overcoats. And some went past
with a smile and others with a shiver.
"That's Professor Withers," said the president in a sympathetic voice
as one of the shivering figures went past; "poor Withers," and he
sighed.
"What's wrong with him?" said the Wizard; "is he sick?"
"No, not sick," said the president quietly and sadly, "merely
inefficient."
"Inefficient?"
"Unfortunately so. Mind you, I don't mean 'inefficient' in every sense.
By no means. If anyone were to come to me and say, 'Boomer, can you put
your hand for me on a first-class botanist?' I'd say, 'Take Withers.'
I'd say it in a minute." This was true. He would have. In fact, if
anyone had made this kind of rash speech, Dr. Boomer would have given
away half the professoriate.
"Well, what's wrong with him?" repeated Tomlinson, "I suppose he ain't
quite up to the mark in some ways, eh?"
"Precisely," said the president, "not quite up to the mark--a very
happy way of putting it. _Capax imperii nisi imperasset_, as no doubt
you are thinking to yourself. The fact is that Withers, though an
excellent fellow, can't manage large classes. With small classes he is
all right, but with large classes the man is lost. He can't handle
them."
"He can't, eh?" said the Wizard.
"No. But what can I do? There he is. I can't dismiss him. I can't
pension him. I've no money for it."
Here the president slackened a little in his walk and looked sideways
at the prospective benefactor. But Tomlinson gave no sign.
A second professorial figure passed them on the other side.
"There again," said the president, "that's another case of
inefficiency--Professor Shottat, our senior professor of English."
"What's wrong with _him_?" asked the Wizard.
"He can't handle _small_ classes," said the president. "With large
classes he is really excellent, but with small ones the man is simply
hopeless."
In this fashion, before Mr. Tomlinson had measured the length of the
avenue, he had had ample opportunity to judge of the crying need of
money at Plutoria University, and of the perplexity of its president.
He was shown professors who could handle the first year, but were
powerless with the second; others who were all right with the second
but broke down with the third, while others could handle the third but
collapsed with the fourth. There were professors who were all right in
their own subject, but perfectly impossible outside of it; others who
were so occupied outside of their own subject that they were useless
inside of it; others who knew their subject, but couldn't lecture; and
others again who lectured admirably, but didn't know their subject.
In short it was clear--as it was meant to be--that the need of the
moment was a sum of money sufficient to enable the president to dismiss
everybody but himself and Dr. Boyster. The latter stood in a class all
by himself. He had known the president for forty-five years, ever since
he was a fat little boy with spectacles in a classical academy,
stuffing himself on irregular Greek verbs as readily as if on oysters.
But it soon appeared that the need for dismissing the professors was
only part of the trouble. There were the buildings to consider.
"This, I am ashamed to say," said Dr. Boomer, as they passed the
imitation Greek portico of the old Concordia College building, "is our
original home, the _fons et origo_ of our studies, our faculty of arts."
It was indeed a dilapidated building, yet there was a certain majesty
about it, too, especially when one reflected that it had been standing
there looking much the same at the time when its students had trooped
off in a flock to join the army of the Potomac, and much the same,
indeed, three generations before that, when the classes were closed and
the students clapped three-cornered hats on their heads and were off to
enlist as minute men with flintlock muskets under General Washington.
But Dr. Boomer's one idea was to knock the building down and to build
on its site a real _facultas_ ten storeys high, with elevators in it.
Tomlinson looked about him humbly as he stood in the main hall. The
atmosphere of the place awed him. There were bulletins and time-tables
and notices stuck on the walls that gave evidence of the activity of
the place. "Professor Slithers will be unable to meet his classes
today," ran one of them, and another "Professor Withers will not meet
his classes this week," and another, "Owing to illness, Professor
Shottat will not lecture this month," while still another announced,
"Owing to the indisposition of Professor Podge, all botanical classes
are suspended, but Professor Podge hopes to be able to join in the
Botanical Picnic Excursion to Loon Lake on Saturday afternoon." You
could judge of the grinding routine of the work from the nature of
these notices. Anyone familiar with the work of colleges would not heed
it, but it shocked Tomlinson to think how often the professors of the
college were stricken down by overwork.
Here and there in the hall, set into niches, were bronze busts of men
with Roman faces and bare necks, and the edge of a toga cast over each
shoulder.
"Who would these be?" asked Tomlinson, pointing at them. "Some of the
chief founders and benefactors of the faculty," answered the president,
and at this the hopes of Tomlinson sank in his heart. For he realized
the class of man one had to belong to in order to be accepted as a
university benefactor.
"A splendid group of men, are they not?" said the president. "We owe
them much. This is the late Mr. Hogworth, a man of singularly large
heart." Here he pointed to a bronze figure wearing a wreath of laurel
and inscribed GULIEMUS HOGWORTH, LITT. DOC. "He had made a great
fortune in the produce business and wishing to mark his gratitude to
the community he erected the anemometer, the wind-measure, on the roof
of the building, attaching to it no other condition than that his name
should be printed in the weekly reports immediately beside the velocity
of the wind. The figure beside him is the late Mr. Underbugg, who
founded our lectures on the Four Gospels on the sole stipulation that
henceforth any reference of ours to the four gospels should be coupled
with his name."
"What's that after his name?" asked Tomlinson.
"Litt. Doc.?" said the president. "Doctor of Letters, our honorary
degree. We are always happy to grant it to our benefactors by a vote of
the faculty."
Here Dr. Boomer and Dr. Boyster wheeled half round and looked quietly
and steadily at the Wizard of Finance. To both their minds it was
perfectly plain that an honourable bargain was being struck.
"Yes, Mr. Tomlinson," said the president, as they emerged from the
building, "no doubt you begin to realize our unhappy position. Money,
money, money," he repeated half-musingly. "If I had the money I'd have
that whole building down and dismantled in a fortnight."
From the central building the three passed to the museum building,
where Tomlinson was shown a vast skeleton of a Diplodocus Maximus, and
was specially warned not to confuse it with the Dinosaurus Perfectus,
whose bones, however, could be bought if anyone, any man of large
heart; would come to the university and say straight out, "Gentlemen,
what can I do for you?" Better still, it appeared the whole museum
which was hopelessly antiquated, being twenty-five years old, could be
entirely knocked down if a sufficient sum was forthcoming; and its
curator, who was as ancient as the Dinosaurus itself, could be
dismissed on half-pay if any man had a heart large enough for the
dismissal.
From the museum they passed to the library, where there were
full-length portraits of more founders and benefactors in long red
robes, holding scrolls of paper, and others sitting holding pens and
writing on parchment, with a Greek temple and a thunderstorm in the
background.
And here again it appeared that the crying need of the moment was for
someone to come to the university and say, "Gentlemen, what can I do
for you?" On which the whole library, for it was twenty years old and
out of date, might be blown up with dynamite and carted away.
But at all this the hopes of Tomlinson sank lower and lower. The red
robes and the scrolls were too much for him.
From the library they passed to the tall buildings that housed the
faculty of industrial and mechanical science. And here again the same
pitiful lack of money was everywhere apparent. For example, in the
physical science department there was a mass of apparatus for which the
university was unable to afford suitable premises, and in the chemical
department there were vast premises for which the university was unable
to buy apparatus, and so on. Indeed it was part of Dr. Boomer's method
to get himself endowed first with premises too big for the apparatus,
and then by appealing to public spirit to call for enough apparatus to
more than fill the premises, by means of which system industrial
science at Plutoria University advanced with increasing and gigantic
strides.
But most of all, the electric department interested the Wizard of
Finance. And this time his voice lost its hesitating tone and he looked
straight at Dr. Boomer as he began,
"I have a boy--"
"Ah!" said Dr. Boomer, with a huge ejaculation of surprise and relief;
"you have a boy!"
There were volumes in his tone. What it meant was, "Now, indeed, we
have got you where we want you," and he exchanged a meaning look with
the professor of Greek.
Within five minutes the president and Tomlinson and Dr. Boyster were
gravely discussing on what terms and in what way Fred might be admitted
to study in the faculty of industrial science. The president, on
learning that Fred had put in four years in Cahoga County Section No. 3
School, and had been head of his class in ciphering, nodded his head
gravely and said it would simply be a matter of a _pro tanto_; that, in
fact, he felt sure that Fred might be admitted _ad eundem_. But the
real condition on which they meant to admit him was, of course, not
mentioned.
One door only in the faculty of industrial and mechanical science they
did not pass, a heavy oak door at the end of a corridor bearing the
painted inscription: Geological and Metallurgical Laboratories. Stuck
in the door was a card with the words (they were conceived in the
courteous phrases of mechanical science, which is almost a branch of
business in the real sense): Busy--keep out.
Dr. Boomer looked at the card. "Ah, yes," he said. "Gildas is no doubt
busy with his tests. We won't disturb him." The president was always
proud to find a professor busy; it looked well.
But if Dr. Boomer had known what was going on behind the oaken door of
the Department of Geology and Metallurgy, he would have felt
considerably disturbed himself.
For here again Gildas, senior professor of geology, was working among
his blue flames at a final test on which depended the fate of the Erie
Auriferous Consolidated and all connected with it.
Before him there were some twenty or thirty packets of crumpled dust
and splintered ore that glittered on the testing-table. It had been
taken up from the creek along its whole length, at even spaces twenty
yards apart, by an expert sent down in haste by the directorate, after
Gildas's second report, and heavily bribed to keep his mouth shut.
And as Professor Gildas stood and worked at the samples and tied them
up after analysis in little white cardboard boxes, he marked each one
very carefully and neatly with the words, PYRITES: WORTHLESS.
Beside the professor worked a young demonstrator of last year's
graduation class. It was he, in fact, who had written the polite notice
on the card.
"What is the stuff, anyway?" he asked.
"A sulphuret of iron," said the professor, "or iron pyrites. In colour
and appearance it is practically identical with gold. Indeed, in all
ages," he went on, dropping at once into the classroom tone and
adopting the professional habit of jumping backwards twenty centuries
in order to explain anything properly, "it has been readily mistaken
for the precious metal. The ancients called it 'fool's gold.' Martin
Frobisher brought back four shiploads of it from Baffin Land thinking
that he had discovered an Eldorado. There are large deposits of it in
the mines of Cornwall, and it is just possible," here the professor
measured his words as if speaking of something that he wouldn't
promise, "that the Cassiterides of the Phoenicians contained deposits
of the same sulphuret. Indeed, I defy anyone," he continued, for he was
piqued in his scientific pride, "to distinguish it from gold without a
laboratory-test. In large quantities, I concede, its lack of weight
would betray it to a trained hand, but without testing its solubility
in nitric acid, or the fact of its burning with a blue flame under the
blow-pipe, it cannot be detected. In short, when crystallized in
dodecahedrons--"
"Is it any good?" broke in the demonstrator.
"Good?" said the professor. "Oh, you mean commercially? Not in the
slightest. Much less valuable than, let us say, ordinary mud or clay.
In fact, it is absolutely good for nothing."
They were silent for a moment, watching the blue flames above the
brazier.
Then Gildas spoke again. "Oddly enough," he said, "the first set of
samples were undoubtedly pure gold--not the faintest doubt of that.
That is the really interesting part of the matter. These gentlemen
concerned in the enterprise will, of course, lose their money, and I
shall therefore decline to accept the very handsome fee which they had
offered me for my services. But the main feature, the real point of
interest in this matter remains. Here we have undoubtedly a sporadic
deposit--what miners call a pocket--of pure gold in a Devonian
formation of the post-tertiary period. This once established, we must
revise our entire theory of the distribution of igneous and aqueous
rocks. In fact, I am already getting notes together for a paper for the
Pan-Geological under the heading, Auriferous Excretions in the Devonian
Strata: a Working Hypothesis. I hope to read it at the next meeting."
The young demonstrator looked at the professor with one eye half-closed.
"I don't think I would if I were you." he said.
Now this young demonstrator knew nothing or practically nothing, of
geology, because he came of one of the richest and best families in
town and didn't need to. But he was a smart young man, dressed in the
latest fashion with brown boots and a crosswise tie, and he knew more
about money and business and the stock exchange in five minutes than
Professor Gildas in his whole existence.
"Why not?" said the professor.
"Why, don't you see what's happened?"
"Eh?" said Gildas.
"What happened to those first samples? When that bunch got interested
and planned to float the company? Don't you see? Somebody salted them
on you."
"_Salted_ them on me?" repeated the professor, mystified.
"Yes, salted them. Somebody got wise to what they were and swopped them
on you for the real thing, so as to get your certified report that the
stuff was gold."
"I begin to see," muttered the professor. "Somebody exchanged the
samples, some person no doubt desirous of establishing the theory that
a sporadic outcropping of the sort might be found in a post-tertiary
formation. I see, I see. No doubt he intended to prepare a paper on it,
and prove his thesis by these tests. I see it all!"
The demonstrator looked at the professor with a sort of pity.
"You're on!" he said, and he laughed softly to himself.
* * * * *
"Well," said Dr. Boomer, after Tomlinson had left the university, "what
do you make of him?" The president had taken Dr. Boyster over to his
house beside the campus, and there in his study had given him a cigar
as big as a rope and taken another himself. This was a sign that Dr.
Boomer wanted Dr. Boyster's opinion in plain English, without any Latin
about it.
"Remarkable man," said the professor of Greek; "wonderful penetration,
and a man of very few words. Of course his game is clear enough?"
"Entirely so," asserted Dr. Boomer.
"It's clear enough that he means to give the money on two conditions."
"Exactly," said the president.
"First that we admit his son, who is quite unqualified, to the senior
studies in electrical science, and second that we grant him the degree
of Doctor of Letters. Those are his terms." "Can we meet them?"
"Oh, certainly. As to the son, there is no difficulty, of course; as to
the degree, it's only a question of getting the faculty to vote it. I
think we can manage it."
* * * * *
Vote it they did that very afternoon. True, if the members of the
faculty had known the things that were being whispered, and more than
whispered, in the City about Tomlinson and his fortune, no degree would
ever have been conferred on him. But it so happened that at that moment
the whole professoriate was absorbed in one of those great educational
crises which from time to time shake a university to its base. The
meeting of the faculty that day bid fair to lose all vestige of decorum
in the excitement of the moment. For, as Dean Elderberry Foible, the
head of the faculty, said, the motion that they had before them
amounted practically to a revolution. The proposal was nothing less
than the permission of the use of lead-pencils instead of pen and ink
in the sessional examinations of the university. Anyone conversant with
the inner life of a college will realize that to many of the
professoriate this was nothing less than a last wild onslaught of
socialistic democracy against the solid bulwarks of society. They must
fight it back or die on the walls. To others it was one more step in
the splendid progress of democratic education, comparable only to such
epoch-making things as the abandonment of the cap and gown, and the
omission of the word "sir" in speaking to a professor.
No wonder that the fight raged. Elderberry Foible, his fluffed white
hair almost on end, beat in vain with his gavel for order. Finally,
Chang of Physiology, who was a perfect dynamo of energy and was known
frequently to work for three or four hours at a stretch, proposed that
the faculty should adjourn the question and meet for its further
discussion on the following Saturday morning. This revolutionary
suggestion, involving work on Saturday, reduced the meeting to a mere
turmoil, in the midst of which Elderberry Foible proposed that the
whole question of the use of lead-pencils should be adjourned till that
day six months, and that meantime a new special committee of seventeen
professors, with power to add to their number, to call witnesses and,
if need be, to hear them, should report on the entire matter _de novo_.
This motion, after the striking out of the words _de novo_ and the
insertion of _ab initio_, was finally carried, after which the faculty
sank back completely exhausted into its chair, the need of afternoon
tea and toast stamped on every face.
And it was at this moment that President Boomer, who understood
faculties as few men have done, quietly entered the room, laid his silk
hat on a volume of Demosthenes, and proposed the vote of a degree of
Doctor of Letters for Edward Tomlinson. He said that there was no need
to remind the faculty of Tomlinson's services to the nation; they knew
them. Of the members of the faculty, indeed, some thought that he meant
the Tomlinson who wrote the famous monologue on the Iota Subscript,
while others supposed that he referred to the celebrated philosopher
Tomlinson, whose new book on the Indivisibility of the Inseparable was
just then maddening the entire world. In any case, they voted the
degree without a word, still faint with exhaustion.
* * * * *
But while the university was conferring on Tomlinson the degree of
Doctor of Letters, all over the City in business circles they were
conferring on him far other titles. "Idiot," "Scoundrel," "Swindler,"
were the least of them. Every stock and share with which his name was
known to be connected was coming down with a run, wiping out the
accumulated profits of the Wizard at the rate of a thousand dollars a
minute.
They not only questioned his honesty, but they went further and
questioned his business capacity.
"The man," said Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, sitting in the Mausoleum Club and
breathing freely at last after having disposed of all his holdings in
the Erie Auriferous, "is an ignoramus. I asked him only the other day,
quite casually, a perfectly simple business question. I said to him.
'T.C. Bonds have risen twenty-two and a half in a week. You know and I
know that they are only collateral trust, and that the stock underneath
never could and never would earn a par dividend. Now,' I said, for I
wanted to test the fellow, 'tell me what that means?' Would you believe
me, he looked me right in the face in that stupid way of his, and he
said, 'I don't know!'"
"He said he didn't know!" repeated the listener contemptuously; "the
man is a damn fool!"
* * * * *
The reason of all this was that the results of the researches of the
professor of geology were being whispered among the directorate of the
Erie Auriferous. And the directors and chief shareholders were busily
performing the interesting process called unloading. Nor did ever a
farmer of Cahoga County in haying time with a thunderstorm threatening,
unload with greater rapidity than did the major shareholders of the
Auriferous. Mr. Lucullus Fyshe traded off a quarter of his stock to an
unwary member of the Mausoleum Club at a drop of thirty per cent, and
being too prudent to hold the rest on any terms, he conveyed it at once
as a benefaction in trust to the Plutorian Orphans' and Foundlings'
Home; while the purchaser of Mr. Fyshe's stock, learning too late of
his folly, rushed for his lawyers to have the shares conveyed as a gift
to the Home for Incurables.
Mr. Asmodeus Boulder transferred his entire holdings to the Imbeciles'
Relief Society, and Mr. Furlong, senior, passed his over to a Chinese
mission as fast as pen could traverse paper.
Down at the office of Skinyer and Beatem, the lawyers of the company,
they were working overtime drawing up deeds and conveyances and trusts
in perpetuity, with hardly time to put them into typewriting. Within
twenty-four hours the entire stock of the company bid fair to be in the
hands of Idiots, Orphans, Protestants, Foundlings, Imbeciles,
Missionaries, Chinese, and other unfinancial people, with Tomlinson the
Wizard of Finance as the senior shareholder and majority control. And
whether the gentle Wizard, as he sat with mother planning his vast
benefaction to Plutoria University, would have felt more at home with
his new group of fellow-shareholders than his old, it were hard to say.
But, meantime, at the office of Skinyer and Beatem all was activity.
For not only were they drafting the conveyances of the perpetual trusts
as fast as legal brains working overtime could do it, but in another
part of the office a section of the firm were busily making their
preparations against the expected actions for fraud and warrants of
distraint and injunctions against disposal of assets and the whole
battery of artillery which might open on them at any moment. And they
worked like a corps of military engineers fortifying an escarpment,
with the joy of battle in their faces.
The storm might break at any moment. Already at the office of the
_Financial Undertone_ the type was set for a special extra with a
heading three inches high:
COLLAPSE
OF THE ERIE CONSOLIDATED
ARREST OF THE MAN TOMLINSON
EXPECTED THIS AFTERNOON
Skinyer and Beatem had paid the editor, who was crooked, two thousand
dollars cash to hold back that extra for twenty-four hours; and the
editor had paid the reporting staff, who were crooked, twenty-five
dollars each to keep the news quiet, and the compositors, who were also
crooked, ten dollars per man to hold their mouths shut till the
morning, with the result that from editors and sub-editors and
reporters and compositors the news went seething forth in a flood that
the Erie Auriferous Consolidated was going to shatter into fragments
like the bursting of a dynamite bomb. It rushed with a thousand
whispering tongues from street to street till it filled the corridors
of the law courts and the lobbies of the offices, and till every honest
man that held a share of the stock shivered in his tracks and reached
out to give, sell, or destroy it. Only the unwinking Idiots, and the
mild Orphans, and the calm Deaf mutes and the impassive Chinese held
tight to what they had. So gathered the storm, till all the town, like
the great rotunda of the Grand Palaver, was filled with a silent "call
for Mr. Tomlinson," voiceless and ominous.
And while all this was happening, and while at Skinyer and Beatem's
they worked with frantic pens and clattering type there came a knock at
the door, hesitant and uncertain, and before the eyes of the astounded
office there stood in his wide-awake hat and long black coat the figure
of "the man Tomlinson" himself.
And Skinyer, the senior partner, no sooner heard what Tomlinson wanted
than he dashed across the outer office to his partner's room with his
hyena face all excitement as he said:
"Beatem, Beatem, come over to my room. This man is absolutely the
biggest thing in America. For sheer calmness and nerve I never heard of
anything to approach him. What do you think he wants to do?"
"What?" said Beatem.
"Why, he's giving his entire fortune to the university."
"By Gad!" ejaculated Beatem, and the two lawyers looked at one another,
lost in admiration of the marvellous genius and assurance of Tomlinson.
* * * * *
Yet what had happened was very simple.
Tomlinson had come back from the university filled with mingled hope
and hesitation. The university, he saw, needed the money and he hoped
to give it his entire fortune, to put Dr. Boomer in a position to
practically destroy the whole place. But, like many a modest man, he
lacked the assurance to speak out. He felt that up to the present the
benefactors of the university had been men of an entirely different
class from himself. It was mother who solved the situation for him.
"Well, father," she said, "there's one thing I've learned already since
we've had money. If you want to get a thing done you can always find
people to do it for you if you pay them. Why not go to those lawyers
that manage things for the company and get them to arrange it all for
you with the college?"
As a result, Tomlinson had turned up at the door of the Skinyer and
Beatem office.
* * * * *
"Quite so, Mr. Tomlinson," said Skinyer, with his pen already dipped in
the ink, "a perfectly simple matter. I can draw up a draft of
conveyance with a few strokes of the pen. In fact, we can do it on the
spot."
What he meant was, "In fact, we can do it so fast that I can pocket a
fee of five hundred dollars right here and now while you have the money
to pay me."
"Now then," he continued, "let us see how it is to run."
"Well," said Tomlinson, "I want you to put it that I give all my stock
in the company to the university."
"All of it?" said Skinyer, with a quiet smile to Beatem.
"Every cent of it, sir," said Tomlinson; "just write down that I give
all of it to the college."
"Very good," said Skinyer, and he began to write, "I, so-and-so, and
so-and-so, of the county of so-and-so--Cahoga, I think you said, Mr.
Tomlinson?"
"Yes, sir," said the Wizard, "I was raised there."
"--do hereby give, assign, devise, transfer, and the transfer is hereby
given, devised and assigned, all those stocks, shares, hereditaments,
etc., which I hold in the etc., etc., all, several and whatever--you
will observe, Mr. Tomlinson, I am expressing myself with as great
brevity as possible--to that institution, academy, college, school,
university, now known and reputed to be Plutoria University, of the
city of etc., etc."
He paused a moment. "Now what special objects or purposes shall I
indicate?" he asked.
Whereupon Tomlinson explained as best he could, and Skinyer, working
with great rapidity, indicated that the benefaction was to include a
Demolition Fund for the removal of buildings, a Retirement Fund for the
removal of professors, an Apparatus Fund for the destruction of
apparatus, and a General Sinking Fund for the obliteration of anything
not otherwise mentioned.
"And I'd like to do something, if I could, for Mr. Boomer himself, just
as man to man," said Tomlinson.
"All right," said Beatem, and he could hardly keep his face straight.
"Give him a chunk of the stock--give him half a million."
"I will," said Tomlinson; "he deserves it."
"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Skinyer.
And within a few minutes the whole transaction was done, and Tomlinson,
filled with joy, was wringing the hands of Skinyer and Beatem, and
telling them to name their own fee.
They had meant to, anyway.
* * * * *
"Is that legal, do you suppose?" said Beatem to Skinyer, after the
Wizard had gone. "Will it hold water?"
"Oh, I don't think so," said Skinyer, "not for a minute. In fact,
rather the other way. If they make an arrest for fraudulent flotation,
this conveyance, I should think, would help to send him to the
penitentiary. But I very much doubt if they can arrest him. Mind you,
the fellow is devilish shrewd. You know, and I know that he planned
this whole flotation with a full knowledge of the fraud. _You_ and _I_
know it--very good--but we know it more from our trained instinct in
such things than by any proof. The fellow has managed to surround
himself with such an air of good faith from start to finish that it
will be deuced hard to get at him."
"What will he do now?" said Beatem.
"I tell you what he'll do. Mark my words. Within twenty-four hours
he'll clear out and be out of the state, and if they want to get him
they'll have to extradite. I tell you he's a man of extraordinary
capacity. The rest of us are nowhere beside him."
In which, perhaps, there was some truth.
* * * * *
"Well, mother," said the Wizard, when he reached the thousand-dollar
suite, after his interview with Skinyer and Beatem, his face irradiated
with simple joy, "it's done. I've put the college now in a position it
never was in before, nor any other college; the lawyers say so
themselves."
"That's good," said mother.
"Yes, and it's a good thing I didn't lose the money when I tried to.
You see, mother, what I hadn't realized was the good that could be done
with all that money if a man put his heart into it. They can start in
as soon as they like and tear down those buildings. My! but it's just
wonderful what you can do with money. I'm glad I didn't lose it!"
So they talked far into the evening. That night they slept in an
Aladdin's palace filled with golden fancies.
And in the morning the palace and all its visions fell tumbling about
their heads in sudden and awful catastrophe. For with Tomlinson's first
descent to the rotunda it broke. The whole great space seemed filled
with the bulletins and the broadside sheets of the morning papers, the
crowd surging to and fro buying the papers, men reading them as they
stood, and everywhere in great letters there met his eye:
COLLAPSE
OF THE ERIE AURIFEROUS