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YOUNG WALLINGFORD
by
GEORGE RANDOLPH CHESTER
Author of
The Early Bird
The Making of Bobby Burnit
With Illustrations by F. R. Gruger & Henry Raleigh
Indianapolis
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Publishers
Copyright 1910
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Press of
Braunworth & Co.
Bookbinders and Printers
Brooklyn, N. Y.
[Illustration: Fannie]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I WIX BEGINS TO THINK 1
II EASY MONEY 12
III YOUNG WIX TAKES A HAND 25
IV THE EASIEST WAY 38
V WIX DISAPPEARS FOREVER 52
VI A SAD DISAPPOINTMENT 61
VII A GREEN-GOODS PLAYLET 72
VIII THE DOUBLE CROSS 86
IX SPOILING THE EGYPTIANS 101
X EATING CAKE AND HAVING IT 111
XI A BRIEF CHARACTER BIT 126
XII WALLINGFORD IS FROZEN OUT 144
XIII BEAUTY IN THE SPOT-LIGHT 158
XIV AN OLD SCORE EVENED UP 172
XV TAKING HIS MONEY 183
XVI ENJOYING THEMSELVES 201
XVII J. RUFUS SEEKS INVESTMENT 219
XVIII SPECULATION IN REAL ESTATE 231
XIX A GREAT ART CENTER 251
XX ETRUSCAN BLACK MUD 264
XXI THE GREAT VITTOREO MATTEO 279
XXII THE SURPRISE OF HIS LIFE 288
XXIII STILL ANOTHER SURPRISE 298
XXIV A STRAIGHT BUSINESS 306
XXV THE SCIATACATA COMPANY 318
XXVI A DELUSION AND A SNARE 331
XXVII LAUGH AT THAT WOOZY FEELING 341
YOUNG
WALLINGFORD
CHAPTER I
WHEREIN JONATHAN REUBEN WIX BEGINS TO THINK
"A natural again!" exulted Jonathan Reuben Wix, as the dice bounded
from his plump hand and came to rest upon the billiard-table in
Leiniger's Select Cafe, with a five and a deuce showing. "Somebody
ring the bell for me, because I'm a-going to get off."
He was a large young man in every dimension, broad of chest and big
and pink of face and jovial of eye, and he chuckled as he passed the
dice to his left-hand neighbor. There was a hundred dollars on the
table and he gathered it up in a wad.
"Good-by, boys, and many merry thanks for these kind contributions,"
he bantered as he stuffed the money into his pocket. "It's me for
Bunkville-amidst-the-ferry-boats, on the next Limited."
He was back in less than three days, having spent just twenty-four
hours in New York. The impulsively decided journey was nothing unusual
for him, but it had an intimate bearing upon his future in that it
forced upon him the confidence of secretive Clifford Gilman, who lived
next door.
"Home so soon?" inquired Gilman in surprise. "They must have robbed
you!"
"Robbed!" laughed Wix. "I should say not. I didn't waste a cent.
Railroad ticket, sleepers, meals and extra fare on the Limited cost
twenty-five each way. That left fifty. My room at the hotel cost five
dollars. Breakfast was two dollars; morning drive through Central
Park, four; lunch, three-fifty; matinee ticket, with cab each way,
five; dinner, eight, with the ordinary champagne of commerce; theater
and cab hire, five-fifty; supper, twelve, including a bottle of real
champagne at eight dollars, and the balance in tips."
Clifford gasped as he hungrily reviewed these luscious items.
Young Gilman was not one of those who had been in the game by which
Wix had won a hundred. He never played dice, did young Gilman, nor
poker, nor bet on a horse race, nor drank, nor even smoked; but
wore curly, silken sideburns, and walked up the same side of Main
Street every morning to the bank, with his lunch in a little
imitation-leather box. He walked back down the same side of Main
Street every evening. If he had happened to take the other side on any
morning, before noon there would have been half a dozen conservative
depositors to ask old Smalley, who owned the bank, why Clifford had
crossed over.
Young Gilman was popularly regarded as a "sissy," but that he had
organs, dimensions and senses, and would bleed if pricked, was
presently evidenced to Mr. Wix in a startling proposition.
"Look here, Wix," said Gilman, lowering his voice to a mystery-fraught
undertone, "I'm going to take a little trip and I want you to come
along."
"Behave!" admonished Wix. "It would be awful reckless in me to go with
a regular little devil like you; and besides, sarsaparilla and peanuts
tear up my system so."
"I've got three hundred dollars," stated Gilman calmly. "Does that
sound like sarsaparilla and peanuts?"
"I'm listening," said Wix with sudden interest. "Where did you get it,
mister?"
Gilman looked around them nervously, then spoke in an eager whisper,
clutching Wix by the arm.
"Saved it up, but like you do. I saw the wisdom of your way long ago.
Old Smalley makes me put half my salary in the bank, but I pinch out a
little more than that, and every time I get twenty dollars on the
side, I invest it in margin wheat, by mail. Most often I lose, but
when I do win I keep on until it amounts to something. Of course, I'm
laying myself open to you in this. If old Smalley found it out he'd
discharge me on the spot."
Wix chuckled.
"I know," he agreed. "My mother once wanted me to apply for that job.
I went to see old Smalley, and the first thing he did was to examine
my fingers for cigarette stains. 'You won't find any,' I told him,
'for I use a holder,' and I showed him the holder. Of course, that
settled my case with Smalley; but do you know that he smokes
after-dinner cigarettes away from home, and has beer and whisky and
three kinds of wine in his cellar? I've got his number, all right, but
I didn't have little Clifford's. Where do you hide it?"
"In the bank and here at home," returned Gilman with a snarl; "and
I've been at it so long I'm beginning to curdle. You've worked in
every mercantile establishment, factory and professional office in
town, and never cared to hold a job. Yet everybody likes you. You
drink, smoke, gamble and raise the dickens generally. You don't save a
cent and yet you always manage to have money. You dress swell and
don't amount to a tinker's cuss, yet you're happy all day long. Come
along to the Putnam County Fair and show me how."
"The Putnam County Fair!" repeated Wix. "Two hundred miles to get a
drink?"
"I can't take one any closer, can I?" demanded Gilman savagely. "But
the real reason is that Uncle Thomas lives there. I can go to visit
Uncle Thomas when I wouldn't be allowed to 'go on the cars alone'
anywhere else. But uncle is a good fellow and his wife don't write to
my mother. He tells me to go ahead; and I don't need go near him
unless I'm in trouble."
"Some time I'll borrow your Uncle Tom," laughed Wix. "He sounds good
to me."
Mrs. Gilman came to the door. She was a thin, nervous, little woman,
with a long chin and a narrow forehead.
"Come in, Cliffy," she urged in a shrill, wheedling voice. "You must
have a good, long night's rest for your trip in the morning." In
reality she was worried to have her Clifford talking with the
graceless Wix--though secretly she admired Jonathan Reuben.
"I must go in now," said Gilman hastily. "Go down to the train in the
morning and get in on the other side, so mother won't see you. And
don't tell your mother where you've gone."
"She won't ask," responded Wix, laughing. "Nothing ever worries mother
except our name. I don't like it myself, but I don't worry over it. It
isn't my fault, and it was hers."
If Wix felt any trace of bitterness over his mother's indifference he
never confessed it, even to himself. Mrs. Wix, left a sufficient
income by the late unloved, lived entirely by routine, with a
separate, complacent function for every afternoon of the week. She was
very comfortable, and plump, and placid, was Mrs. Wix, and Jonathan
Reuben was merely an excrescence upon her scheme of life. Jonathan
Reuben, however, had no lack of feminine sympathy. Quite a little
clique of dashing young matrons, with old or dryly preoccupied
husbands, vied with the girls to make him happy.
In the present instance, young Wix was quite right about his mother's
indifference. He called to her as he went down to early breakfast that
he might not be back for a few days, and she sleepily answered. "All
right." So Clifford and his instructor went to the fair, and the more
experienced spendthrift showed the amateur how to get rid of his
money, to their mutual gratification.
Back of the Streets of Cairo, on the closing day, Wix and Gilman,
hunting a drink, found a neat young man with piercing black eyes and
black hair, who upon the previous days had been making a surreptitious
hand-book on the races. Just now he was advising an interested group
of men that money would not grow in their pockets.
"If your eye is quicker than my hand you get my dollars," he
singsonged as he deftly shifted three English walnut shells about on a
flimsy folding stand. "If my hand is quicker than your eye, I get your
dollars. Here they go, three in a row. They're all set, and here's a
double sawbuck for some gentleman with a like amount of wealth and a
keen eye and a little courage. Where, oh, where, is the little pea?"
The location of the little pea was so obvious that it seemed a shame
to take the black-eyed young man's money, for just as he had stopped
moving the shells, Wix and Gilman, pressing up, saw that the edge of
the left-hand shell had rested upon the rubber "pea" and had
immediately closed over it. Notwithstanding this slip on the part of
the operator, there seemed some reluctance on the part of the audience
to invest; instead, with what might have seemed almost suspicious
eagerness, they turned toward the new-comers. Gilman, flushed of face
and muddy of eye, and hiccoughing slightly--though Wix, who had drunk
with him drink for drink, was clean and normal and his usual jovial,
clear-eyed self--hastily pressed in before any one else should take
advantage of the golden chance.
"Don't, Gilman," cautioned Wix, and grabbed him by the arm, but
Clifford, still eager, jerked his arm away; and it was strange how all
those who had been packed around the board made room for him.
"Here's the boy with the nerve and the money," commented the
black-eyed one as he took Mr. Gilman's twenty and flaunted it in the
air with his own. "Now lift up the little shell. If the little pea is
under it you get the twin twenties. Lovely twins!" He laughed and
kissed them lightly. "It's only a question," he shouted loudly, as
Gilman prepared to make his choice, "of whether your eye is quicker
than my hand."
Confidently Mr. Gilman picked up the left-hand shell, and a
ludicrously bewildered look came over his face as he saw that the
pellet was not under it. There was a laugh from the crowd. They had
been waiting for another victim. Gilman looked hastily down at the
trampled mass of straw and grass and muddy, black earth.
"The elusive little pea is not on the ground," explained the brisk
young man. "The elusive little pea is right here on the board in plain
sight."
To prove it he lifted up the center shell and displayed the pellet!
There was another laugh. Not one person in that crowd had seen the
dexterous movement of his little finger, so quick and certain that it
was scarcely more than a quiver; but, to make sure that his "quickness
of hand" had not been detected, he scanned every face about him
swiftly and piercingly. In this inspection his eye happened to light
on that of Jonathan Reuben Wix, and met a wink so knowing, and withal
so bubbling with gleeful appreciation, that he was himself forced to
grin.
"How you've wasted your young life," commented Wix as he led away his
still dazed companion. "I thought everybody knew that trick by this
time, but I guess postmasters and bank clerks are always exempt."
"But how did he do it?" protested Gilman. "I saw that little ball
under the left-hand shell as plain as day."
"That's what he meant you to see," returned Wix with a grin. "He let
that one stop under the edge as if he were awkward, then he flipped it
into the crook of his little finger. When he lifted the middle shell
he shoved the ball under it. At the time you picked yours up there
wasn't a ball under any of the three shells. There never is."
"I guess it's too late for me to get an education," sighed the other
plaintively. "Smalley won't give me a chance. I don't even dare buy a
new suit of clothes too often. I'd never see a bit of life if it
wasn't for this wheat speculation."
Wix turned to him slowly.
"You want to let that game alone," he cautioned.
"Oh, I'm cautious enough," returned Gilman.
"You're almost in full charge at the bank now, aren't you?" observed
Wix carelessly. "Smalley's over at his new bank in Milton a good
deal."
"About half the time," admitted Gilman uneasily.
"He keeps a big cash reserve, doesn't he? Done up in bales, I suppose,
and never looks at it except to count the mere bundles."
"Of course." Gilman was extremely nonchalant about it.
The other let him change the subject, but he found himself studying
Clifford speculatively every now and then. This day was another
deciding step in the future of Wix.