IN WHICH J. RUFUS HEARS OF SOME EGYPTIANS
WORTH SPOILING
It was in a spirit of considerable loneliness that Wallingford came
back from seeing Blackie Daw to the midnight train, for he had grown
to like Blackie very well indeed. Moreover, his friend from Georgia
was gone, and quite disconsolate, for him, he stood in front of the
hotel wondering about his next move. Fate sent him a cab, from which
popped a miniature edition of the man from Georgia. The new-comer,
who had not waited for the cab door to be opened for him, immediately
offered to bet his driver the price of the fare that the horse
would eat bananas. He was a small, clean, elderly gentleman, of
silvery-white hair and mustache, who must have been near sixty, but
who possessed, temporarily at least, the youth and spirits of thirty;
and he was one of that sort of looking men to whom one instinctively
gives a title.
"Can't take a chance, Governor," said the driver, grinning. "I might
as well go jump off the dock as go back to the stand without them four
dollars. I'm in bad, anyhow."
"I'll bet you the tip, then," offered the very-much-alive elderly
gentleman, flourishing a five-dollar bill.
"All right," agreed the driver, eying the money. "Nothing or two
dollars."
"No, you don't! Not with Silas Fox, you don't!" promptly disputed that
gentleman. "First comes out of the dollar change two bits for bananas,
and then the bet is nothing or a dollar and a half that your horse'll
eat 'em. Why, any horse'll eat bananas," he added, turning suddenly to
Wallingford. With the habit of shrewdness he paused for a thorough
inspection of J. Rufus, whose bigness and good grooming and jovial
pinkness of countenance were so satisfactory that Mr. Fox promptly
made up his mind the young man could safely be counted as one of the
pleasures of existence.
"I'll bet _you_ this horse'll eat bananas," he offered.
"I'm not acquainted with the horse," objected Wallingford, with no
more than reasonable caution. "I don't even know its name. What do you
want to bet?"
"Anything from a drink to a hundred dollars."
J. Rufus threw back his head and chuckled in a most infectious manner,
his broad shoulders shaking and his big chest heaving.
"I'll take you for the drink," he agreed.
Two strapping big fellows in regulation khaki came striding past the
hotel, and Mr. Fox immediately hailed them.
"Here, you boys," he commanded, with a friendly assurance born of the
feeling that to-night all men were brothers; "you fellows walk across
the street there and get me a quarter's worth of real ripe bananas."
The soldiers stopped, perplexed, but only for an instant. The driver
of the cab was grinning, the door-man of the hotel was grinning, the
prosperous young man by the curb was grinning, and the well-dined and
wined elderly gentleman quite evidently expected nothing in this world
but friendly complaisance.
"All right, Senator," acquiesced the boys in khaki, themselves
catching the grinning contagion; and quite cheerfully they accepted a
quarter, wheeled abreast, marched over to the fruit stand, bought the
ripest bananas on sale, wheeled, and marched back.
Selecting the choicest one with great gravity and care, Mr. Silas Fox
peeled it and prepared for the great test. The driver leaned forward
interestedly; the two in khaki gathered close behind; the large young
man chuckled as he watched; the horse poked forward his nose gingerly,
then sniffed--then turned slowly away!
Mr. Fox was shocked. He caught that horse gently by the opposite jaw,
and drew the head toward him. This time the horse did not even sniff.
It shook its head, and, being further urged, jerked away so decidedly
that it drew its tormentor off the curb, and he would have fallen had
not Wallingford caught him by the arm.
"I win," declared the driver with relief, gathering up his lines.
"Not yet," denied Mr. Fox, and stepping forward he put his arm around
the horse's neck and tried to force the banana into its mouth.
This time the horse was so vigorous in its objection that the man came
near being trampled underfoot, and it was only on the unanimous vote
of the big man and the two in khaki that he profanely gave up the
attempt.
"Not that I mind losing the bet," announced Mr. Fox in apology, "but
I'm disappointed in the be damned horse. That horse loves bananas and
I know it, but he's just stubborn. Here's your money," and he gave the
driver his five-fifty; "and here's the rest of the bananas. When you
get back to the barn you try that horse and see if he won't eat 'em,
after he's cooled down and in his stall."
"All right," laughed the driver, and started away.
As he turned the corner he was peeling one of the bananas. The loser
looked after the horse reluctantly, and sighed in finality.
"Come on, young man, let's go get that drink," he said.
Delighted to have found company of happy spirit, Wallingford promptly
turned with the colonel into the hotel bar.
"Can you beat it?" asked one big soldier of the other as both looked
after the departing couple in pleased wonder.
At about the same second the new combination was falling eagerly and
vigorously into conversation upon twelve topics at once.
"You can't do anything without you have a pull," was Silas Fox's
fallacious theory of life, as summed up in the intimate friendship of
the second bottle. "That's why I left New Jersey. I had a National
Building and Loan Association organized down there that would have
been a public benefactor and a private joy; in business less than six
months, and already nine hundred honest working-men paying in their
dollar and a quarter a week; eleven hundred and fifty a week for us to
handle, and the amount growing every month."
"That's a pretty good start," commented J. Rufus, considering the
matter carefully as he eyed the stream of ascending bubbles in his
hollow-stemmed glass. "No matter what business you're in, if you have
a package of clean, new, fresh dollars every week to handle, some of
it is bound to settle to the bottom; but there mustn't be too many to
swallow the settlings."
"Six of us on the inside," mused the other. "Doc Turner, who sells
real estate only to people who can't pay for it; Ebenezer Squinch, a
lawyer that makes a specialty of widows and orphans and damage claims;
Tom Fester, who runs the nicest little chattel-mortgage company that
ever collected a life income from a five-dollar bill; Andy Grout, who
has been conducting a prosperous instalment business for ten years on
the same old stock of furniture; and Jim Christmas, who came in from
the farm ten years ago to become a barber, shaving nothing but notes."
Young Wallingford sat lost in admiration.
"What a lovely bunch of citizens to train a growing young dollar; to
teach it to jump through hoops and lay down and roll over," he
declared. "And I suppose you were in a similar line, Judge?" he
ventured.
"Nothing like it," denied the judge emphatically. "I was in a decent,
respectable loan business. Collateral loans were my specialty."
"I see," said J. Rufus, chuckling. "All mankind were not your
brothers, exactly, but your brothers' children."
"Making me the universal uncle, yes," admitted Mr. Fox, then he
suddenly puffed up with pride in his achievements. "And I do say," he
boasted, "that I could give any Jew cards and spades at the game and
still beat him out on points. I reckon I invented big casino, little
casino and the four aces in the pawn brokerage business. Let alone my
gage of the least a man would take, I had it fixed so that they could
slip into my place by the front door, from the drug-store on one side,
from the junk-yard on the other, from the saloon across the alley in
the rear, and down-stairs, from the hall leading to Doc Turner's
office."
Lost in twinkling-eyed admiration of his own cleverness he lapsed into
silence, but J. Rufus, eager for information, aroused him.
"But why did you blow the easy little new company?" he wanted to know.
"I could understand it if you had been running a local building-loan
company, for in that the only salaried officer is the secretary, who
gets fifty cents a year, and the happy home-builders pile up double
compound interest for the wise members who rent; but with a national
company it's different. A national building-loan company's business is
to collect money to juggle with, for the exclusive benefit of the
officers."
"You're a bright young man," said Mr. Fox admiringly. "But the
business was such a cinch it began to get crowded, and so the
lawmakers, who were mostly stock-holders in the three biggest
companies, had a spasm of virtue, and passed such stringent laws for
the protection of poor investors that no new company could do any
business. We tried to buy a pull but it was no use; there wasn't pull
enough to go round; so I'm going to retire and enjoy myself. This
country's getting too corrupt to do business in," and Mr. Fox relapsed
into sorrowful silence over the degeneracy of the times.
When his sorrow had become grief--midway of another bottle--a house
detective prevailed upon him to go to bed, leaving young Wallingford
to loneliness and to thought--also to settle the bill. This, however,
he did quite willingly. The evening had been worth much in an
educational way, and, moreover, it had suggested vast, immediate
possibilities. These possibilities might have remained vague and
formless--mere food for idle musing--had it not been for one important
circumstance: while the waiter was making change he picked some folded
papers from the floor and laid them at Wallingford's hand. Opened,
this packet of loose leaves proved to be a list of several hundred
names and addresses. There could be no riddle whatever about this
document; it was quite obviously a membership roster of the defunct
building-loan association.
"The judge ought to have a duplicate of this list; a single copy's so
easy to lose," mused Wallingford with a grin; so, out of the goodness
of his heart, he sat up in his room until very late indeed, copying
those pages with great care. When he sent the original to Mr. Fox's
room in the morning, however, he very carelessly omitted to send the
duplicate, and, indeed, omitted to think of remedying the omission
until after Mr. Fox had left the hotel for good.
Oh, well, a list of that sort was a handy thing for anybody to have
around. The names and addresses of nine hundred people naive enough to
pay a dollar and a quarter a week to a concern of whose standing they
knew absolutely nothing, was a really valuable curiosity indeed. It
was pleasant to think upon, in a speculative way.
Another inspiring thought was the vision of Doc Turner and Ebenezer
Squinch and Tom Fester and Andy Grout and Jim Christmas, with plenty
of money to invest in a dubious enterprise. It seemed to be a call to
arms. It would be a noble and a commendable thing to spoil those
Egyptians; to smite them hip and thigh!