down, Mrs. Effingham won't you? I am delighted to see you. How would you
like a glass of toddy? Just to show there's no ill-feeling!"
He forced a glass into her hand and filled it from the teakettle
standing on the hearth, while Miranda brought a sofa cushion and tucked
it behind the old lady's back.
Mrs. Effingham sighed, tasted the toddy and leaned back deliciously. She
was very wrinkled and her hair under the bonnet was startlingly white in
contrast with the crepe of her veil, but there were still traces of
beauty in her face.
"I've come to you, Mr. Tutt," she explained apologetically, "because I
always said that if I ever was in trouble you'd be the one to whom I
should go to help me out."
"What greater compliment could I receive?"
"Well, in those days I never thought that time would come," she went on.
"You remember my husband--Jim? Jim died two years ago. And little
Jimmy--our eldest--he was only fourteen when you boarded with us--he was
killed at the Front last July." She paused and felt for her
handkerchief, but could not find it. "I still keep the house; but do you
know how old I am, Mr. Tutt? I'm seventy-one! And the two older girls
got married long ago and I'm all alone except for Jessie, the
youngest--and I haven't told her anything about it."
"Yes?" said Mr. Tutt sympathetically. "What haven't you told her about?"
"My trouble. You see, Jessie's not a well girl--she really ought to live
out West somewhere, the doctor says--and Jim and I had saved up all
these years so that after we were gone she would have something to live
on. We saved twelve thousand dollars--and put it into Government bonds."
"You couldn't have anything safer, at any rate," remarked the lawyer. "I
think you did exceedingly well."
"Now comes the awful part of it all!" exclaimed Mrs. Effingham, clasping
her hands. "I'm afraid it's gone--gone forever. I should have consulted
you first before I did it, but it all seemed so fair and above-board
that I never thought."
"Have you got rid of your bonds?"
"Yes--no--that is, the bank has them. You see I borrowed ten thousand
dollars on them and gave it to Mr. Badger to invest in his oil company
for me."
Mr. Tutt groaned inwardly. Badger was the most celebrated of Wall
Street's near-financiers.
"Where on earth did you meet Badger?" he demanded.
"Why, he boarded with me--for a long time," she answered. "I've no
complaint to make of Mr. Badger. He's a very handsome polite gentleman.
And I don't feel altogether right about coming to you and saying
anything that might be taken against him--but lately I've heard so many
things--"
"Don't worry about Badger!" growled Mr. Tutt. "How did you come to
invest in his oil stock?"
"I was there when he got the telegram telling how they had found oil on
the property; it came one night at dinner. He was tickled to death. The
stock had been selling at three cents a share, and, of course, after the
oil was discovered he said it would go right up to ten dollars. But he
was real nice about it--he said anybody who had been living there in the
house could share his good fortune with him, come in on the ground
floor, and have it just the same for three cents. A week later there
came a photograph of the gusher and almost all of us decided to buy
stock."
At this point in the narrative Mr. Tutt kicked the coal hod violently
and uttered a smothered ejaculation.
"Of course I didn't have any ready money," explained Mrs. Effingham,
"but I had the bonds--they only paid two per cent and the oil stock was
going to pay twenty--and so I took them down to the bank and borrowed
ten thousand dollars on them. I had to sign a note and pay five per cent
interest. I was making the difference--fifteen hundred dollars every
year."
"What has it paid?" demanded Mr. Tutt ironically.
"Twenty per cent," replied Mrs. Effingham. "I get Mr. Badger's check
regularly every six months."
"How many times have you got it?"
"Twice."
"Well, why don't you like your investment?" inquired Mr. Tutt blandly.
"I'd like something that would pay me twenty per cent a year!"
"Because I'm afraid Mr. Badger isn't quite truthful, and one of the
ladies--that old Mrs. Channing; you remember her, don't you--the one
with the curls?--she tried to sell her stock and nobody would make a bid
on it at all--and when she spoke to Mr. Badger about it he became very
angry and swore right in front of her. Then somebody told me that Mr.
Badger had been arrested once for something--and--and--Oh, I wish I
hadn't given him the money, because if it's lost Jessie won't have
anything to live on after I'm dead--and she's too sick to work. What do
you think, Mr. Tutt? Do you suppose Mr. Badger would buy the stock
back?"
Mr. Tutt smiled grimly.
"Not if I know him! Have you got your stock with you?"
She nodded. Fumbling in her black bag she pulled forth a flaring
certificate--of the regulation kind, not even engraved--which evidenced
that Sarah Maria Ann Effingham was the legal owner of three hundred and
thirty thousand shares of the capital stock of the Great Geyser Texan
Petroleum and Llano Estacado Land Company.
Mr. Tutt took it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. It was
signed ALFRED HAYNES BADGER, Pres., and he had an almost irresistible
temptation to twist it into a spill and light a stogy with it. But he
used a match instead, while Mrs. Effingham watched him apprehensively.
Then he handed the stock back to her and poured out another glass of
toddy.
"Ever been in Mr. Badger's office?"
"Oh, yes!" she answered. "It's a lovely office. You can see 'way down
the harbor--and over to New Jersey. It's real elegant."
"Would you mind going there again? That is, are you on friendly terms
with him?"
Already a strange, rather desperate plan was half formulated in his
mind.
"Oh, we're perfectly friendly," she smiled. "I generally go down there
to get my check."
"Whose check is it--his or the company's?"
"I really don't know," she answered simply. "What difference would it
make?"
"Oh, nothing--except that he might claim that he'd loaned you the
money."
"Loaned it? To me?"
"Why, yes. One hears of such things."
"But it is my money!" she cried, stiffening.
"You paid that for the stock."
She shook her head helplessly.
"I don't understand these things," she murmured. "If Jim had been alive
it wouldn't have happened. He was so careful."
"Husbands have some uses occasionally."
Suddenly she put her hands to her face.
"Oh, Mr. Tutt! Please get the money back from him. If you don't
something terrible will happen to Jessie!"
"I'll do my best," he said gently, laying his hand on her fragile
shoulder. "But I may not be able to do it--and anyhow I'll need your
help."
"What can I do?"
"I want you to go down to Mr. Badger's office to-morrow morning and tell
him that you are so much pleased with your investment that you would
like to turn all your securities over to him to sell and put the money
into the Great Geyser Texan Petroleum and Llano Estacado Land Company."
He rolled out the words with unction.
"But I don't!"
"Oh, yes, you do!" he assured her. "You want to do just what I tell
you, don't you?"
"Of course," she answered. "But I thought you didn't like Mr. Badger's
oil company."
"Whether I like it or not makes no difference. I want you to say just
what I tell you."
"Oh, very well, Mr. Tutt."
"Then you must tell him about the note, and that first it will have to
be paid off."
"Yes."
"And then you must hand him a letter which I will dictate to you now."
She flushed slightly, her eyes bright with excitement.
"You're sure it's perfectly honest, Mr. Tutt? I wouldn't want to do
anything unfair!"
"Would you be honest with a burglar?"
"But Mr. Badger isn't a burglar!"
"No--he's only about a thousand times worse. He's a robber of widows and
orphans. He isn't man enough to take a chance at housebreaking."
"I don't know what you mean," she sighed. "Where shall I write?"
Mr. Tutt cleared a space upon his desk, handed her a pad and dipped a
pen in the ink while she took off her gloves.
"Address the note to the bank," he directed.
She did so.
"Now say: 'Kindly deliver to Mr. Badger all the securities I have on
deposit with you, whenever he pays my note. Very truly yours, Sarah
Maria Ann Effingham.'"
"But I don't want him to have my securities!" she retorted.
"Oh, you won't mind! You'll be lucky to get Mr. Badger to take back your
oil stock on any terms. Leave the certificate with me," laughed Mr.
Tutt, rubbing his long thin hands together almost gleefully. "And now as
it is getting rather late perhaps you will do me the honor of letting me
escort you home."
It was midnight before Mr. Tutt went to bed. In the first place he had
felt himself so neglectful of Mrs. Effingham that after he had taken her
home he had sat there a long time talking over the old lady's affairs
and making the acquaintance of the phthisical Jessie, who turned out to
be a wistful little creature with great liquid eyes and a delicate
transparent skin that foretold only too clearly what was to be her
future. There was only one place for her, Mr. Tutt told
himself--Arizona; and by the grace of God she should go there, Badger or
no Badger!
As the old lawyer walked slowly home with his hands clasped behind his
back he pondered upon the seeming mockery and injustice of the law that
forced a lonely, half-demented old fellow with the fixed delusion that
he was a financier behind prison bars and left free the sharp slick
crook who had no bowels or mercies and would snatch away the widow's
mite and leave her and her consumptive daughter to die in the poorhouse.
Yet such was the case, and there they all were! Could you blame people
for being Bolsheviks? And yet old Doc Barrows was as far from a
Bolshevik as anyone could well be.
Mr. Tutt passed a restless night, dreaming, when he slept at all, of
mines from which poured myriads of pieces of yellow gold, of gushers
spouting columns of blood-red oil hundreds of feet into the air, and of
old-fashioned locomotives dragging picturesque trains of cars across
bright green prairies studded with cacti in the shape of dollar signs.
Old Doc Barrows was with him, and from time to time he would lean toward
him and whisper "Listen, Mr. Tutt, I'll tell you a secret! There's a
vein of gold runs right through my daughter's cow pasture!"
When Willie next morning at half past eight reached the office he found
the door already unlocked and Mr. Tutt busy at his desk, up to his
elbows in a great mass of bonds and stock certificates.
"Gee!" he exclaimed to Miss Sondheim, the stenographer, when she made
her appearance at a quarter past nine. "Just peek in the old man's door
if you want to feel rich! Say, he must ha' struck pay dirt! I wonder if
we'll all get a raise?"
But all the securities on Mr. Tutt's desk would not have justified even
the modest advance of five dollars in Miss Sondheim's salary, and their
employer was merely sorting out and making an inventory of Doc Barrows'
imaginary wealth. By the time Mrs. Effingham arrived by appointment at
ten o'clock he had them all arranged and labeled; and in a special
bundle neatly tied with a piece of red tape were what on their face were
securities worth upward of seventy thousand dollars. There were ten of
the beautiful bonds of the Great Lakes and Canadian Southern Railroad
Company with their miniature locomotives and fields of wheat, and ten
equally lovely bits of engraving belonging to the long-since defunct
Bluff Creek and Iowa Central, ten more superb lithographs issued by the
Mohawk and Housatonic in 1867 and paid off in 1882, and a variety of
gorgeous chromos of Indians and buffaloes, and of factories and
steamships spouting clouds of soft-coal smoke; and on the top of all was
a pile of the First Mortgage Gold Six Per Cent obligations of the
Chicago Water Front and Terminal Company--all of them fresh and crisp,
with that faintly acrid smell which though not agreeable to the nostrils
nevertheless delights the banker's soul.
"Ah! Good morning to you, Mrs. Effingham!" Mr. Tutt cried, waving her in
when that lady was announced. "You are not the only millionaire, you
see! In fact, I've stumbled into a few barrels of securities
myself--only I didn't pay anything for them."
"Gracious!" cried Mrs. Effingham, her eyes lighting with astonishment.
"Wherever did you get them? And such exquisite pictures! Look at that
lamb!"
"It ought to have been a wolf!" muttered Mr. Tutt. "Well, Mrs.
Effingham, I've decided to make you a present--just a few pounds of
Chicago Water Front and Canadian Southern--those over there in that
pile; and now if you say so we'll just go along to your bank."
"Give them to me!" she protested. "What on earth for? You're joking, Mr.
Tutt."
"Not a bit of it!" he retorted. "I don't make any pretensions as to the
value of my gift, but they're yours for whatever they're worth."
He wrapped them carefully in a piece of paper and returned the balance
to Doc Barrows' dress-suit case.
"Aren't you afraid to leave them that way?" she asked, surprised.
"Not at all! Not at all!" he laughed. "You see there are fortunes lying
all about us everywhere if we only know where to look. Now the first
thing to do is to get your bonds back from the bank."
Mr. Thomas McKeever, the popular loan clerk of the Mustardseed National,
was just getting ready for the annual visit of the state bank examiner
when Mr. Tutt, followed by Mrs. Effingham, entered the exquisitely
furnished boudoir where lady clients were induced by all modern
conveniences except manicures and shower baths to become depositors. Mr.
Tutt and Mr. McKeever belonged to the same Saturday evening poker game
at the Colophon Club, familiarly known as The Bible Class.
"Morning, Tom," said Mr. Tutt. "This is my client, Mrs. Effingham. You
hold her note, I believe, for ten thousand dollars secured by some
government bonds. She has a use for those bonds and I thought that you
might be willing to take my indorsement instead. You know I'm good for
the money."
"Why, I guess we can accommodate her, Mr. Tutt!" answered the
Chesterfieldian Mr. McKeever. "Certainly we can. Sit down, Mrs.
Effingham, while I send for your bonds. See the morning paper?"
Mrs. Effingham blushingly acknowledged that she had not seen the paper.
In fact, she was much too excited to see anything.
"Sign here!" said the loan clerk, placing the note before the lawyer.
Mr. Tutt indorsed it in his strange, humpbacked chirography.
"Here are your bonds," said Mr. McKeever, handing Mrs. Effingham a small
package in a manila envelope. She took them in a half-frightened way, as
if she thought she was doing something wrong.
"And now," said Mr. Tutt, "the lady would like a box in your
safe-deposit vaults; a small one--about five dollars a year--will do.
She has quite a bundle of securities with her, which I am looking into.
Most if not all of them are of little or no value, but I have told her
she might just as well leave them as security for what they are worth,
in addition to my indorsement. Really it's just a slick game of ours to
get the bank to look after them for nothing. Isn't it, Mrs. Effingham?"
"Ye-es!" stammered Mrs. Effingham, not understanding what he was talking
about.
"Well," answered Mr. McKeever, "we never refuse collateral. I'll put the
bonds with the note--" His eye caught the edges of the bundle. "Great
Scott, Tutt! What are you leaving all these bonds here for against that
note? There must be nearly a hundred thousand dol--"
"I thought you never refused collateral, Mr. McKeever!" challenged Mr.
Tutt sternly.
Twenty minutes later the exquisite blonde that acted as Mr. Badger's
financial accomplice learned from Mrs. Effingham's faltering lips that
the widow would like to see the great man in regard to further
investments.
"How does it look, Mabel?" inquired the financier from behind his
massive mahogany desk covered with a six by five sheet of plate glass.
"Is it a squeal or a fall?"
"Easy money," answered Mabel with confidence. "She wants to put a
mortgage on the farm."
"Keep her about fourteen minutes, tell her the story of my
philanthropies, and then shoot her in," directed Badger.
So Mrs. Effingham listened politely while Mabel showed her the
photographs of Mr. Badger's home for consumptives out in Tyrone, New
Mexico, and of his wife and children, taken on the porch of his summer
home at Seabright, New Jersey; and then, exactly fourteen minutes having
elapsed, she was shot in.
"Ah! Mrs. Effingham! Delighted! Do be seated!" Mr. Badger's smile was
like that of the boa constrictor about to swallow the rabbit.
"About my oil stock," hesitated Mrs. Effingham.
"Well, what about it?" demanded Badger sharply. "Are you dissatisfied
with your twenty per cent?"
"Oh, no!" stammered the old lady. "Not at all! I just thought if I could
only get the note paid off at the Mustardseed Bank I might ask you to
sell the collateral and invest the proceeds in your gusher."
"Oh!" Mr. Badger beamed with pleasure. "Do you really wish to have me
dispose of your securities for you?"
He did not regard it as necessary to inquire into the nature of the
collateral. If it was satisfactory to the Mustardseed National it must
of course exceed considerably the amount of the note.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Effingham timidly; and she handed him the letter
dictated by Mr. Tutt.
"Well," replied Mr. Badger thoughtfully, after reading it, "what you ask
is rather unusual--quite unusual, I may say, but I think I may be able
to attend to the matter for you. Leave it in my hands and think no more
about it. How have you been, my dear Mrs. Effingham? You're looking
extraordinarily well!"
Mr. McKeever had about concluded his arrangements for welcoming the
state bank examiner when the telephone on his desk buzzed, and on taking
up the receiver he heard the ingratiating voice of Alfred Haynes Badger.
"Is this the Loan Department of the Mustardseed National?"
"It is," he answered shortly.
"I understand you hold a note of a certain Mrs. Effingham for ten
thousand dollars. May I ask if it is secured?"
"Who is this?" snapped McKeever.
"One of her friends," replied Mr. Badger amicably.
"Well, we don't discuss our clients' affairs over the telephone. You had
better come in here if you have any inquiries to make."
"But I want to pay the note," expostulated Mr. Badger.
"Oh! Well, anybody can pay the note who wants to."
"And of course in that case you would turn over whatever collateral is
on deposit to secure the note?"
"If we were so directed."
"May I ask what collateral there is?"
"I don't know."
"There is some collateral, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"Well, I have an order from Mrs. Effingham directing the bank to turn
over whatever securities she has on deposit as collateral, on my payment
of the note."
"In that case you'll get 'em," said Mr. McKeever gruffly. "I'll get
them out and have 'em ready for you."
* * * * *
"Here is my certified check for ten thousand; dollars," announced Alfred
Haynes Badger a few minutes later. "And here is the order from Mrs.
Effingham. Now will you kindly turn over to me all the securities?"
Mr. McKeever, knowing something of the reputation of Mr. Badger, first
called up the bank which had certified the latter's check, and having
ascertained that the certification was genuine he marked Mrs.
Effingham's note as paid and then took down from the top of his roll-top
desk the bundle of beautifully engraved securities given him by Mr.
Tutt. Badger watched him greedily.
"Thank you," he gurgled, stuffing them into his pocket. "Much obliged
for your courtesy. Perhaps you would like me to open an account here?"
"Oh, anybody can open an account who wants to," remarked Mr. McKeever
dryly, turning away from him to something else.
Mr. Badger fairly flew back to his office. The exquisite blonde had
hardly ever before seen him exhibit so much agitation.
"What have you pulled this time?" she inquired dreamily. "Father's
daguerreotype and the bracelet of mother's hair?"
"I've grabbed off the whole bag of tricks!" he cried. "Look at 'em!
We've not seen so much of the real stuff in six months.
"Ten--twenty--thirty--forty--fifty--By gad!--sixty--seventy!"
"What are they?" asked Mabel curiously. "Some bonds--what?"
"I should say so!" he retorted gaily. "Say, girlie, I'll give you the
swellest meal of your young life to-night! Chicago Water Front and
Terminal, Great Lakes and Canadian Southern, Mohawk and Housatonic,
Bluff Creek and Iowa Central. '_Oh, Mabel_!'"
It was at just about this period of the celebration that Mr. Tutt
entered the outer office and sent in his name; and as Mr. Badger was at
the height of his good humor he condescended to see him.
"I have called," said Mr. Tutt, "in regard to the bonds belonging to my
client, Mrs. Effingham. I see you have them on the desk there in front
of you. Unfortunately she has changed her mind. She has decided not to
have you dispose of her securities."
Mr. Badger's expression instantly became hostile and defiant.
"It's too late!" he replied. "I have paid off her note and I am going to
carry out the rest of the arrangement."
"Oh," said Mr. Tutt, "so you are going to sell all her securities and
put the proceeds into your bogus oil company--whether she wishes it or
not? If you do the district attorney will get after you."
"I stand on my rights," snarled Badger. "Anyhow I can sell enough of the
securities to pay myself back my ten thousand dollars."
"And then you'll steal the rest?" inquired Mr. Tutt. "Be careful, my
dear sir! Remember there is such a thing as equity, and such a place as
Sing Sing."
Badger gave a cynical laugh.
"You're too late, my friend! I've got a written order--_a written
order_--from your client, as you call her. She can't go back on it now.
I've got the bonds and I'm going to dispose of them."
"Very well," said Mr. Tutt tolerantly. "You can do as you see fit.
But"--and he produced ten genuine one-thousand-dollar bills and
exhibited them to Mr. Badger at a safe distance--"I now on behalf of
Mrs. Effingham make you a legal tender of the ten thousand dollars you
have just paid out to cancel her note, and I demand the return of the
securities. Incidentally I beg to inform you that they are not worth the
paper they are printed on."
"Indeed!" sneered Badger. "Well, my dear! old friend, you might have
saved yourself the trouble of coming round here. You and your client
can go straight to hell. _You_ can keep the money; _I'll_ keep the
bonds. See?"
Mr. Tutt sighed and shook his head hopelessly.
Then he put the bills back into his pocket and started slowly for the
door.
"You absolutely and finally decline to give up the securities?" he asked
plaintively.
"Absolutely and finally?" mocked Mr. Badger with a sweeping bow.
"Dear! Dear!" almost moaned Mr. Tutt. "I'd heard of you a great many
times but I never realized before what an unscrupulous man you were!
Anyhow, I'm glad to have had a look at you. By the way, if you take the
trouble to dig through all that junk you'll find the certificate of
stock in the Great Jehoshaphat Oil Company you used to flim flam Mrs.
Effingham with out of her ten thousand dollars. Maybe you can use it on
someone else! Anyhow, she's about two thousand dollars to the good. It
isn't every widow who can get twenty per cent and then get her money
back in full."
The Hepplewhite Tramp
"No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized
or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed--nor will
we go upon or send upon him--save by the lawful judgment
of his peers or by the law of the land."
--MAGNA CHARTA, Sec. 39.
"'Somebody has been lying in my bed--and here she
is,' cried the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small,
wee voice."
--THE THREE BEARS.
One of the nicest men in New York was Mr. John De Puyster Hepplewhite.
The chief reason for his niceness was his entire satisfaction with
himself and the padded world in which he dwelt, where he was as
protected from all shocking, rough or otherwise unpleasant things as a
shrinking débutante from the coarse universe of fact. Being thus
shielded from every annoyance and irritation by a host of sycophants he
lived serenely in an atmosphere of unruffled calm, gazing down benignly
and with a certain condescension from the rarefied altitude of his
Fifth Avenue windows, pleased with the prospect of life as it appeared
to him to be and only slightly conscious of the vileness of his fellow
man.