WALLINGFORD HELPS IN A GREEN-GOODS PLAYLET
PURELY FOR ACCOMMODATION
Into the back room of a flashy saloon just off Broadway Mr. Phelps led
the way, after pausing outside to post Wallingford carefully on all
their new names, and here they found Billy Banting and Larry Teller in
company with a stranger, one glance at whom raised Wallingford's
spirits quite appreciably, for he was so obviously made up.
He was a raw-boned young fellow who wore an out-of-date derby, a
cheap, made cravat which rode his collar, a cheap suit of loud-checked
clothes that was entirely too tight for him, and the trousers of
which, two inches too short, were rounded stiffly out below the knees,
like stove-pipes, by top-boots which were wrinkled about the ankles.
Moreover, the stranger spoke with a nasal drawl never heard off the
stage.
Wallingford, with a wink from Phelps, was introduced to Mr. Pickins
as Mr. Mombley. Then, leaning down to Mr. Pickins with another
prodigious wink at Wallingford, Phelps said in a stage-whisper to the
top-booted one:
"Mr. Mombley is our engraver. Used to work in the mint."
"Well, I'll swan!" drawled Mr. Pickins. "I'd reckoned to find such a
fine gove'ment expert a older man."
With a sigh Wallingford took up his expected part.
"I'm older than I look," said he. "Making money keeps a man young."
"I reckon," agreed Mr. Pickins, and "haw-hawed" quite broadly. "And
did you really make this greenback?" he asked, drawing from his vest
pocket a crinkled new ten-dollar-bill which he spread upon the table
and examined with very eager interest indeed.
"This is one of that last batch, Joe," Short-Card Larry negligently
informed Wallingford, with a meaning wink. "I just gave it to him as a
sample."
"By jingo, it's scrumptious work!" said Mr. Pickins admiringly.
"Yes, they'll take that for a perfectly good bill anywhere," asserted
Wallingford. "Just spend it and see," and he pushed the button. "Bring
us a bottle of the best champagne you have in the house," he directed
the waiter, and with satisfaction he noted the startled raising of
heads all around the table, _including the head of Mr. Pickins_.
"I don't like to brag on myself," continued Wallingford, taking on
fresh animation as he began to see humor in the situation, "but I
think I'm the grandest little money-maker in the city, in my special
line. I don't go after small game very often. A ten is the smallest I
handle. Peters," he suddenly commanded Phelps, "show him one of those
lovely twenties."
"I don't think I have one of the new ones," said Phelps, moistening
his lips, but nevertheless reaching for his wallet. "I think the only
twenties I have are those that we put through the aging process."
Wallingford calmly took the wallet from him and as calmly leafed over
the bills it contained.
"No, none of these twenties is from the new batch," he decided,
entering more and more into the spirit of the game, "but this
half-century is one that we're all proud of. Just examine that, Mr.
Pickins," and closing the wallet he handed it back to Phelps, passing
the fifty-dollar bill to the stranger. "Billy, give me one of those
twenties. I'm bound to show Mr. Pickins one of our best output."
Badger Billy, being notorious even among his fellows as a tight-wad,
swallowed hard, but he produced a small roll of bills and extracted
the newest twenty he could find. During this process it had twice
crossed Billy's mind to revolt; but, after all, Wallingford was
evincing an interest in the game that might be worth while.
"That's it," approved Wallingford, running it through his fingers and
passing it over to Pickins. He got up from his place and took the
vacant chair by that gentleman. "I just want you to look at the nifty
imitation of engine work in this scroll border," he insisted with vast
enthusiasm, while Mr. Pickins cast a despairing glance, half-puzzled
and half-bored, at the others of the company, themselves awed into
silence.
He was still explaining the excellent work in the more intricate
portions of the two designs when the waiter appeared with the wine,
and Wallingford only interrupted himself long enough nonchalantly to
toss the ten-dollar bill on the tray after the glasses were filled.
Then, with vast fervor, he returned to the counterfeiting business,
with the specimens before him as an inspiring text.
The waiter brought back two dollars in silver.
"Just keep the change," said Wallingford grandly, and then, as the
waiter was about to withdraw, he quickly handed up the fifty and the
twenty-dollar bills to him. "Just take this twenty, George," said he
to the waiter, "and run down to the cigar-store on the corner and buy
some of those dollar cigars. You might as well get us about three
apiece. Then take this fifty and get us a box for _The Prince of
Pikers_ to-night. Hustle right on, now," and he gave the waiter a
gentle but insistent shove on the arm that had all the effect of
bustling him out of the room. "We'll show Mr. Pickins a good time," he
exultantly declared. "We'll show him how easy it is to live on soft
money like this."
[Illustration: "Just keep the change," said Wallingford grandly]
Wallingford had held the floor for fifteen solid minutes. Now he
paused for some one else to offer a remark, his eager eye glowing
with the sense of a duty not only well, but brilliantly, performed,
as it roved from one to the other in search of approval. But feeble
encouragement was in any other eye. Four men could have throttled him,
singly and in company. Wallingford was too enthusiastic an actor. He
was taking the part entirely too well, and a vague doubt began to
cross the minds of the other gentlemen in the party as to whether he
would do or not. It was Short-Card Larry who first recovered his poise
and broke the dismal silence.
"Show him one or two of those new hundreds, Mombley," he invited
Wallingford with almost a snarl.
Wallingford merely smiled in a superior way.
"You know I never carry any but the genuine," he said in mild
reproach. "It wouldn't do, you know. Anyhow, are we sure that Mr.
Pickins wants to invest?"
Mr. Pickins drew a long breath and once more plunged into the
character which he had almost doffed.
"Invest? Well, I reckon!" he nasally drawled. "If I can get twenty
thousand dollars as good money as that for five, I'd be a blame fool
not to take it. And I got the five thousand, too."
Things were coming back to a normal basis now, and the others cheered
up.
"Look here," Mr. Pickins went on, and, reaching down, he drew off with
much tugging one of the high boots, in the top of which had reposed a
package of greenbacks: ten crisp, nice-looking five-hundred-dollar
bills.
For just a moment Wallingford eyed that money speculatively, then he
picked up one of the bills and slid it through his fingers.
"It's good money, I suppose," he observed. "You can hardly tell the
good from the bad these days, except by offering to spend it. We might
break one of these--say for an automobile ride."
"No, you don't," hurriedly interposed Mr. Pickins, losing his nasal
drawl for the moment and reaching for the bill, which he put back in
the package, snapping a weak rubber band around it. "I reckon I don't
let go of one of these bills till I see something in exchange. I--I
ain't no greenhorn!"
His nasal drawl had come back, and now seemed to be the cue for all
the others to affect laughter.
"To be sure he's not," said Mr. Phelps, reaching over to slap him on
the back in all the jovial heartiness with which a greenhorn is
supposed to be encouraged. "You're wise, all right, Pickins. We
wouldn't do business with you if you weren't. You see, we're putting
ourselves in danger of the penitentiary and we have to be careful.
More than that, wise people come back; and, with a dozen or so like
Mr. Pickins shoving the queer for us, we put out about all we can
make. Nobody in the business, Mr. Pickins, gets as high a price for
green-goods as we do, and nobody in the business keeps all their
customers as we do. That's because our output is so good."
This, which was one of the rehearsed speeches, went off very well, and
they began to feel comfortable again.
"That's me, by Jinks!" announced Pickins, slapping his leg. "I'll be
one of your steady customers, all right. When'll I get this first
twenty thousand?"
"Right away," said Mr. Phelps, rising. "Just wait a moment till I talk
it over with the engraver and see if he has the supply ready."
"The supply's all right," declared Wallingford. "These boys will 'tend
to the business with you, Mr. Pickins. I'm very glad to have met you.
I'll probably see you to-night at the show. I have to go back and look
after a little more engraving just now." And, shaking hands cordially
with Mr. Pickins, he rose to go.
"Wait a minute, Mombley," said Phelps amidst a general scowl, and
he walked outside with Wallingford. "Fine work, old man," he
complimented, keeping his suavity with no little effort. "We can
go right in and pick our bunch of posies any minute."
"Go right ahead!" said Wallingford heartily. "I'm glad to have helped
you out a little."
Mr. Phelps looked at him in sour speculation.
"Of course you're in on it," he observed with a great air of making a
merely perfunctory remark.
"Me?" inquired Wallingford in surprise. "Not on your life. I only
played engraver for accommodation. I thought I did a grand little
piece of work, too."
"But we can't go through without you," insisted Mr. Phelps
desperately, ignoring the other's maddening complacency and sticking
to the main point. "It takes twenty thousand and we only have five
thousand apiece. We're looking to you for the other five."
Wallingford looked him squarely in the eyes, with an entire change of
manner, and chuckled.
"There are four reasons, Phelps, why I won't," he kindly explained.
"The first is, I never do anything in partnership; second, I never
pike; third, I won't take a fall out of any game that has the
brown-and-white-striped clothes at the end of it; fourth, Billy might
not get the satchels switched right; _extra, I won't fool with any
farmer that strikes a match on the sole of his boot_!"
The fifth and extra reason was so unexpected and was laid before Mr.
Phelps with such meaning emphasis that that gentleman could only drop
his jaw and gape in reply. Wallingford laid both hands on his
shoulders and chuckled in his face.
"You're a fiercely unimaginative bunch," he said. "Let's don't try to
do any more business together. Just come up to my room to-night and
have a friendly game of stud poker."
At last Green-Goods Harry found his tongue.
"You go to hell!" said he.
Back in their common sitting-room, Wallingford found Daw studying some
gaudy samples of stock certificates. "Blackie, did you tell this gang
of yours that they didn't drink enough to suit me?" Wallingford
demanded.
Blackie grinned.
"They wanted to know why you wouldn't warm up," he admitted.
"I see the pretty, pretty lights at last," Wallingford chuckled. "I
was sure there was something doing when Curly Harry came up here
claiming a thirst, and went so far as to drink champagne on top of a
highball."
"He's taking stomach and liver dope right now," Blackie guessed. "You
see, these Broadway boys are handicapped when they run across a man
who still has a lining. They lost theirs years ago."
"They lost everything years ago. I'm disappointed in them, Blackie. I
had supposed that these people of the metropolis had Herman the Great
looking like a Bowery waiter when it came to smooth work; but they've
got nothing but thumbs."
"You do them deep wrong, J. Rufus Wallingford Wix," admonished
Blackie. "I've trailed with this crowd four or five years. They're
always to be found right here and they always have coin--whether they
spend it or not."
"They get it gold-bricking New Yorkers, then," declared Wallingford
contemptuously. "They couldn't cold deck anybody on the rural free
delivery routes. They wear the lemon sign on their faces, and when one
of their kind comes west of the big hills we padlock all our money in
our pockets and lock ourselves in jail till they get out of town."
"What have they been doing to you?" asked Blackie. "You've got a
regular Matteawan grouch."
"They had the nerve to try to ring me in for the fall guy on a
green-goods play, baited up with a stage farmer from One Hundred and
Sixtieth Street," asserted Wallingford. "Don't they ever spring a new
one here?"
Mr. Blackie Daw only laughed.
"I'm afraid they don't," he confessed. "They take the old ones that
have got the money for years, and work in new props and scenery on
them, just like they do in the theaters; and that goes for Broadway."
"It don't go for me," declared Wallingford. "If they come after mine
again I'll get real peevish and take their flash rolls away from
them."
"Go to it," invited Blackie. "They need a trimming."
"I think I'll hand it to them," said Wallingford savagely, and started
to walk out.
"Where are you going?" asked the other.
"I don't know," said Wallingford, "but I am going to scare up some
excitement in the only way possible for a stranger, and that is go out
and hunt for it by myself. No New Yorker knows where to go."
In the bar Wallingford found a convivial gentleman from Georgia,
lonesome like himself, with whom he became firm friends in an hour,
and it was after midnight when, their friendship still further fixed
by plenty of liquid cement, he left the Georgian at one of the broad,
bright entrances in charge of a door-man. It being but a few blocks to
his own hotel, he walked, carrying with complacent satisfaction a
burden of assorted beverages that would have staggered most men.
It was while he was pausing upon his own corner for a moment to
consider the past evening in smiling retrospection, that a big-boned
policeman tapped him on the shoulder. He was startled for a moment,
but a hearty voice reassured him with:
"Why, hello, Wix, my boy! When did you come to town?"
A smile broke over Wallingford's face as he shook hands with the
bluecoat.
"Hello, Harvey," he returned. "I never would have looked for you in
this make-up. It's a funny job for the ex-secretary of the Filmore
Coal Company."
"Forget it," returned Harvey complacently. "There's three squares a
day in this and pickings. Where are you stopping?"
Wallingford told him, and then looked at him speculatively.
"Come up and see me when you go off watch," he invited. "But don't ask
for me under the name of Wix. It's Wallingford now, J. Rufus
Wallingford."
"No!" said Harvey. "What did you do at home?"
"Not a thing," protested Wallingford. "I can go right back to Filmore
and play hop-scotch around the county jail if I want to. I just didn't
like the name, that's all. But I want to talk with you, Harvey. I
think I can throw about a hundred or so in your way."
"Not me," returned Harvey with a grin. "That's the price of a murder
in this town."
"Come up, and I'll coax you," laughed Wallingford.
He walked away quite thoughtfully. Harvey Willis, who had left Filmore
on account of his fine sense of honor--he had embezzled to pay a poker
debt--seemed suddenly to fit an empty and an aching void.