When I got back to my office and was settling in to the proofs of the
“Letter to Investors,” which I published in sixty newspapers throughout the
country and which daily reached upward of five million people, Sam Ellersly
came in. His manner was certainly different from what it had ever been
before; a difference so subtle that I couldn't describe it more nearly than
to say it made me feel as if he had not until then been treating me as of
the same class with himself. I smiled to myself and made an entry in my
mental ledger to the credit of Mowbray Langdon.
“That club business is going nicely,” said Sam. “Langdon is enthusiastic,
and I find you've got good friends on the committee.”
I knew that well enough. Hadn't I been carrying them on my books at a good
round loss for two years?
“If it wasn't for--for some features of this business of yours,” he went
on, “I'd say there wouldn't be the slightest trouble.”
“Bucket-shop?” said I with an easy laugh, though this nagging was beginning
to get on my nerves.
“Exactly,” said he. “And, you know, you advertise yourself like--like--”
“Like everybody else, only more successfully than most,” said I. “Everybody
advertises, each one adapting his advertising to the needs of his
enterprises, as far as he knows how.”
“That's true enough,” he confessed. “But there are enterprises and
enterprises, you know.”
“You can tell 'em, Sam,” said I, “that I never put out a statement I don't
believe to be true, and that when any of my followers lose on one of my
tips, I've lost on it, too. For I play my own tips--and that's more than
can be said of any 'financier' in this town.”
“It'd be no use to tell 'em that,” said he. “Character's something of
a consideration in social matters, of course. But it isn't the chief
consideration by a long shot, and the absence of it isn't necessarily
fatal.”
“I'm the biggest single operator in the country,” I went on. “And it's my
methods that give me success--because I know how to advertise--how to keep
my name before the country, and how to make men say, whenever they hear
it: 'There's a shrewd, honest fellow.' That and the people it brings me,
in flocks, are my stock in trade. Honesty's a bluff with most of the big
respectables; under cover of their respectability, of their 'old and
honored names,' of their social connections, of their church-going and
that, they do all sorts of queer work.”
“To hear you talk,” put in Sam, with a grin, “one would think you didn't
shove off millions of dollars of suspicious stuff on the public through
those damn clever letters of yours.”
“There's where you didn't stop to think, Sam,” said I. “When I say a
stock's going to rise, it rises. When I stop talking about it, it may go on
rising or it may fall. But I never advise anybody to buy except when I have
every reason to believe it's a good thing. If they hold on too long, that's
their own lookout.”
“But they invest--”
“You use words too carelessly,” I said. “When I say buy, I don't mean
_invest_. When I mean invest, I say invest.” There I laughed. “It's a
word I don't often use.”
“And that's what you call honesty!” jeered he.
“That's what I call honesty,” I retorted, “and that _is_ honesty.” And
I thought so then.
“Well--every man has a right to his own notion of what's honest,” he said.
“But no man's got a right to complain if a fellow with a different notion
criticizes him.”
“None in the world,” I assented. “Do _you_ criticize me?”
“No, no, no, indeed!” he answered, nervous, and taking seriously what I had
intended as a joke.
After a while I dragged in _the_ subject. “One thing I can and will
do to get myself in line for that club,” I said, like a seal on promenade.
“I'm sick of the crowd I travel with--the men and the women. I feel it's
about time I settled down. I've got a fortune and establishment that needs
a woman to set it off. I can make some woman happy. You don't happen to
know any nice girls--the right sort, I mean?”
“Not many.” said Sam. “You'd better go back to the country where you came
from, and get her there. She'd be eternally grateful, and her head wouldn't
be full of mercenary nonsense.”
“Excuse me!” exclaimed I. “It'd turn her head. She'd go clean crazy. She'd
plunge in up to her neck--and not being used to these waters, she'd make
a show of herself, and probably drown, dragging me down with her, if
possible.”
Sam laughed. “Keep out of marriage, Matt,” he advised, not so obtuse to my
real point as he wanted me to believe. “I know the kind of girl you've got
in mind. She'd marry you for your money, and she'd never appreciate you.
She'd see in you only the lack of the things she's been taught to lay
stress on.”
“For instance?”
“I couldn't tell you any more than I could enable you to recognize a person
you'd never seen by describing him.”
“Ain't I a gentleman?” I inquired.
He laughed, as if the idea tickled him. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.”
“Ain't I got as proper a country place as there is a-going? Ain't my
apartment in the Willoughby a peach? Don't I give as elegant dinners as you
ever sat down to? Don't I dress right up to the Piccadilly latest? Don't
I act all right--know enough to keep my feet off the table and my knife
out of my mouth?” All true enough; and I so crude then that I hadn't a
suspicion what a flat contradiction of my pretensions and beliefs about
myself the very words and phrases were.
“You're right in it, Matt,” said Sam. “But--well--you haven't traveled with
our crowd, and they're shy of strangers, especially as--as energetic a sort
of stranger as you are. You're too sudden, Matt--too dazzling--too--”
“Too shiny and new?” said I, beginning to catch his drift. “That'll be
looked after. What I want is you to take me round a bit.”
“I can't ask you to people's houses,” protested he, knowing I'd not realize
what a flimsy pretense that was.
While we were talking I had been thinking--working out the proposition
along lines he had indicated to me without knowing it. “Look here, Sam,” I
said. “You imagine I'm trying to butt in with a lot of people that don't
know me and don't want to know me. But that ain't my point of view. Those
people can be useful to me. I need 'em. What do I care whether they want to
be useful to me or not? The machine'd have run down and rusted out long ago
if you and your friends' idea of a gentleman had been taken seriously by
anybody who had anything to do and knew how to do it. In this world you've
got to _make_ people do what's for your good and their own. Your
idea of a gentleman was put forward by lazy fakirs who were living off of
what their ungentlemanly ancestors had annexed, and who didn't want to be
disturbed. So they 'fixed' the game by passing these rules you and your
kind are fools enough to abide by--that is, you are fools, unless you
haven't got brains enough to get on in a free-and-fair-for-all.”
Sam laughed.. “There's a lot of truth in what you say,” he admitted.
“However,” I ended, “my plans don't call for hurry just there. When I get
ready to go round, I'll let you know.”