IN WHICH AN ASTOUNDING REVELATION IS MADE CONCERNING J. RUFUS
The first stockholders' meeting of the Tack Company was a cheerful
affair, held around a table that was within an hour or so to have a
cloth; for whenever J. Rufus Wallingford did business, he must,
perforce, eat and drink, and all who did business with him must do the
same. The stockholders, being all present, elected their officers and
their board of directors: Mr. Wallingford, president; Mr. Lamb,
secretary; Mr. Jasper, treasurer; and Mr. Lewis, David Jasper's nearest
friend, vice president, these four and Mr. Nolting also constituting the
board of directors. Immediately after, they adopted a stock, printed
form of constitution, voted an increase of capitalization to one hundred
thousand dollars, and then adjourned.
The president, during the luncheon, made them a little speech in which
he held before them constantly a tack with a crimson top glued upon a
roughened surface, and alluded to the invaluable services their young
friend, Edward Lamb, had rendered to the completion of the company's now
perfect and flawless article of manufacture. He explained to them in
detail the bigness of the Eureka Tack Manufacturing Company, its
enormous undivided profits, its tremendous yearly dividends, the
fabulous price at which its stock was quoted, with none for sale; and
all this gigantic business built upon a simple tack!--Gentlemen, not
nearly, not _nearly_ so attractive and so profitable an article of
commerce as this perfect little convenience held before them. The
gentlemen were to be congratulated upon a bigger and brighter and better
fortune than had ever come to them; they were all to be congratulated
upon having met each other, and since they had been kind enough, since
they had been trusting enough, to give him their confidence with but
little question, Mr. Wallingford felt it his duty to reassure them, even
though they needed no reassurance, that he was what he was; and he
called upon his friend and their secretary, Mr. Lamb, to read to them
the few letters that he understood had been received from the Mexican
and Rio Grande Rubber Company, the St. John's Blood Orange Plantation
Company, the Los Pocos Lead Development Company, the Sierra Cinnabar
Grant, and others.
Mr. Lamb--Secretary Lamb, if you please--arose in self-conscious
dignity, which he strove to taper off into graceful ease.
"It is hardly worth while reading more than one, for they're all alike,"
he stated jovially, "and if anybody questions our president, send him to
his friend Eddy!" Whereupon he read the letters.
According to them, Mr. Wallingford was a gentleman of the highest
integrity; he was a man of unimpeachable character, morally and
financially; he was a genius of commerce; he had been sought, for his
advice and for the tower of strength that his name had become, by all
the money kings of Boston; he was, in a word, the greatest boon that had
ever descended upon any city, and all of the gentlemen who were lucky
enough to be associated with him in any business enterprise that he
might back or vouch for, could count themselves indeed most fortunate.
The letters were passed around. Some of them had embossed heads; most of
them were, at least, engraved; some of them were printed in two or three
rich colors; some had beautifully tinted pictures of vast Mexican
estates, and Florida plantations, and Nevada mining ranges. They were
impressive, those letter-heads, and when, after passing the round of the
table, they were returned to Mr. Lamb, four pairs of eyes followed them
as greedily as if those eyes had been resting upon actual money.
In the ensuing week the committee on factories, consisting of Mr.
Wallingford, Mr. Lamb and Mr. Jasper, honked and inspected and lunched
until they found a small place which would "do for the first year's
business," and within two days the factory was cleaned and the office
most sumptuously furnished; then Mr. Wallingford, having provided work
for the secretary, began to attend to his purely personal affairs, one
of which was the private consulting of the patent attorney. Upon his
first visit Mr. Christopher met him with a dejected air.
"I find four interferences against your application," he dolefully
stated, "and they cover the ground very completely."
"Get me a patent," directed Mr. Wallingford shortly.
Mr. Christopher hesitated. Not only was his working jacket out at the
elbows, but his street coat was shiny at the seams.
"I am bound to tell you," he confessed, after quite a struggle, "that,
while I _might_ get you some sort of a patent, it would not hold
water."
"I don't care if it wouldn't hold pebbles or even brickbats," retorted
Mr. Wallingford. "I'm not particular about the mesh of it. Just you get
me a patent--any sort of a patent, so it has a seal and a ribbon on it.
I believe it is part of your professional ethics, Mr. Christopher, to do
no particular amount of talking except to your clients.
"Well, yes, sir," admitted Mr. Christopher.
"Very well, then; I am the only client you know in this case, and I
say--get a patent! After all, a patent isn't worth as much as a dollar
at the Waldorf, except to form the basis of a lawsuit," whereat Mr.
Christopher saw a great white light and his conscience ceased to bother
him.
Meanwhile the majestic wheels of state revolved, and at the second
meeting of the board of directors the secretary was able to lay before
them the august permission of the Commonwealth to issue one hundred
thousand dollars of stock in the new corporation. In fact, the secretary
was able to show them a book of especially printed stock certificates,
and a corporate seal had been made. Their own seal! Each man tried it
with awe and pride. This also was a cheerful board meeting, wherein the
directors, as one man, knowing beforehand what they were to do, voted to
Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Lamb sixty thousand dollars in stock, for all
patents relating to covered carpet tacks or devices for making the same
that should be obtained by them for a period of five years to come. The
three remaining members of the board of directors and the one
stockholder who was allowed to be present by courtesy then took up five
thousand dollars' worth of stock each and guaranteed to bring in, by the
end of the week, four more like subscriptions, two of which they
secured; and, thirty thousand dollars of cash having been put into the
treasury, a special stockholders' meeting was immediately called. When
this met it was agreed that they should incorporate another company
under the name of the Universal Covered Tack Company, dropping the word
"Carpet," with an authorized capital of three hundred thousand dollars,
two hundred thousand of which was already subscribed.
It took but a little over a month to organize this new company, which
bought out the old company for the consideration of two hundred thousand
dollars, payable in stock of the new company. With great glee the new
stockholders bought from themselves, as old stockholders, the old
company at this valuation, each man receiving two shares of one hundred
dollars face value for each one hundred dollars' worth of stock that he
had held before. It was their very first transaction in water, and the
delight that it gave them one and all knew no bounds; they had doubled
their money in one day! But their elation was not half the elation of J.
Rufus Wallingford, for in his possession he had ninety thousand dollars'
worth, par value, of stock, the legitimacy of which no one could
question, and the market price of which could be to himself whatever his
glib tongue had the opportunity to make it. In addition to the nine
hundred shares of stock, he had a ten-thousand-dollar house, a
five-thousand-dollar automobile and unlimited credit; and this was the
man who had landed in the city but two brief months before, with no
credit in any known spot upon the globe, and with less than one hundred
dollars in his pocket!
It is a singular commentary upon the honesty of American business
methods that so much is done on pure faith. The standing of J. Rufus
Wallingford was established beyond question. Aside from the perfunctory
inquiries that Edward Lamb had made, no one ever took the trouble to
question into the promoter's past record. So far as local merchants were
concerned, these did not care; for did not J. Rufus own a finely
appointed new house in Gildendale, and did he not appear before them
daily in a fine new automobile? This, added to the fact that he
established credit with one merchant and referred the next one to him,
referred the third to the second, and the fourth to the third, was
ample. If merchant number four took the trouble to inquire of merchant
number three, he was told: "Yes, we have Mr. Wallingford on our books,
and consider him good." Consequently, Mrs. Wallingford was able to go to
any establishment, in her own little runabout that J. Rufus got her
presently, and order what she would; and she took ample advantage of the
opportunity. She, like J. Rufus, was one of those rare beings of earth
for whom earth's most prized treasures are delved, and wrought, and
woven, and sewed; for transcendent beauty demands ever more beauty for
its adornment. In all the city there was nothing too good for either of
them, and they got it without money and without price. The provider of
all this made no move toward paying even a retainer upon his automobile,
for instance; but, when the subtle intuition within him warned that the
dealer would presently make a demand, he calmly went in and selected the
neat little runabout for his wife, and had it added to his bill. After
he had seen the runabout glide away, the dealer was a little aghast at
himself. He had firmly intended, the next time he saw Mr. Wallingford,
to insist upon a payment. In place of that, he had only jeopardized two
thousand dollars more, and all that he had to show for it were half a
dozen covered tacks which J. Rufus had left him to ponder upon. In the
meantime, Lamb's loan of one thousand had been increased, upon plausible
pretext, to two thousand.
There began, now, busy days at the factory. In the third floor of their
building a machine shop was installed. Three thousand dollars went
there. Outside, in a large experimental shop, work was being rapidly
pushed on machinery which would make tacks with cross-corrugated heads.
Genius Wallingford had secretly secured drawings of tack machinery, and
devised slight changes which would evade the patents, adding dies that
would make the roughened tops. A final day came when, set up in their
shop, the first faulty machine pounded out tacks ready for later
covering, and every stockholder who had been called in to witness the
working of the miracle went away profoundly convinced that fortune was
just within his reach. They had their first patent granted now, and the
sight of it, on stiff parchment with its bit of bright ribbon, was like
a glimpse at dividends. It was right at this time, however, that one cat
was let out of the bag. The information came first to Edward Lamb,
through the inquiries of a commercial rating company, that their Boston
capitalist was a whited sepulcher, so far as capital went. He had not a
cent. The secretary, in the privacy of their office, put the matter to
him squarely, and he admitted it cheerfully. He was glad that the
_expose_ had come--it suited his present course, and he would have
brought it about himself before long.
"Who said I had money?" he demanded. "I never said so."
"Well, but the way you live," objected Lamb.
"I have always lived that way, and I always shall. Not only is it a fact
that I have no money, but I must have some right away."
"I haven't any more to lend."
"No, Eddy; I'm not saying that you have. I am merely stating that I have
to have some. I am being bothered by people who want it, and I cannot
work on the covering machine until I get it," and Mr. Wallingford coolly
telephoned for his big automobile to be brought around.
They sat silently in the office for the next five minutes, while Lamb
slowly appreciated the position they were in. If J. Rufus should "lay
down on them" before the covering machine was perfected, they were in a
bad case. They had already spent over twenty thousand dollars in
equipping their office, their machine shop, and perfecting their
stamping machine, and time was flying.
"You might sell a little of your stock," suggested Lamb.
"We have an agreement between us to hold control."
"But you can still sell a little of yours, and stay within that amount.
I'm not selling any of mine."
Mr. Wallingford drew from his pocket a hundred-share stock certificate.
"I have already sold some. Make out fifty shares of this to L. W.
Ramsay, twenty-five to E. H. Wyman, and the other twenty-five to C. D.
Wyman."
Ramsay and the Wyman Brothers! Ramsay was the automobile dealer; Wyman
Brothers were Wallingford's tailors.
"So much? Why didn't you sell them at least part from our extra treasury
stock? There is twenty thousand there, replacing the ten thousand of the
old company."
"Why didn't I? I needed the money. I got twenty-five hundred cash from
Ramsay, and let him put twenty-five on account. I agreed to take one
thousand in trade from Wyman Brothers, and got four thousand cash
there."
The younger man looked at him angrily.
"Look here, Wallingford; you're hitting it up rather strong, ain't you?
This makes six thousand five hundred, besides two thousand you borrowed
from me, that you have spent in three months. You have squandered money
since you came here at the rate of three thousand a month, besides all
the bills I know you owe, and still you are broke. How is it possible?"
"That's my business," retorted Wallingford, and his face reddened with
assumed anger. "We are not going to discuss it. The point is that I need
money and must have it."
The automobile drew up at the door, and J. Rufus, who was in his
automobile suit, put on his cap and riding coat.
"Where are you going?"
"Over to Rayling."
Lamb frowned. Rayling was sixty miles away.
"And you will not be back until midnight, I suppose."
"Hardly."
"Why, confound it, man, you can't go!" exclaimed Lamb. "They're waiting
for you now over at the machine shop, for further instructions on the
covering device."
"They'll have to wait!" announced J. Rufus, and stalked out of the door.
The thing had been deliberately followed up. Mr. Wallingford had come to
the point where he wished his flock to know that he had no financial
resources whatever, and that they would have to support him. It was the
first time that he had departed from his suavity, and he left Lamb in a
panic. He had been gone scarcely more than an hour when David Jasper
came in.
"Where is Wallingford?" he asked.
"Gone out for an automobile trip."
"When will he be back?"
"Not to-day."
Jasper's face was white, but the flush of slow anger was creeping upon
his cheeks.
"Well, he ought to be; his note is due."
"What note?" inquired Lamb, startled.
"His note for a thousand dollars that I went security on."
"You might just as well renew it, or pay it. I had to renew mine," said
Lamb. "Dave, the man is a four-flusher, without a cent to fall back on.
I just found it out this morning. Why didn't you tell me that he was
borrowing money of you?"
"Why didn't you tell me he was borrowing money of you?" retorted his
friend.
They looked at each other hotly for a moment, and then both laughed. The
big man was too much for them to comprehend.
"We are both cutting our eye teeth," Lamb decided. "I wonder how many
more he's borrowed money from."
"Lewis, for one. He got fifteen hundred from him. Lewis told me this
morning, up at Kriegler's."
Lamb began figuring. To the eight thousand five hundred of which he
already knew, here was twenty-five hundred more to be added--eleven
thousand dollars that the man had spent in three months! Some bills, of
course, he had paid, but the rest of it had gone as the wind blew. It
seemed impossible that a man could spend money at the rate of one
hundred and twenty-five dollars a day, but this one had done it, and
that at first was the point which held them aghast, to the forgetting of
their own share in it. They could not begin to understand it until Lamb
recalled one incident that had impressed him. Wallingford had taken his
wife and two friends to the opera one night. They had engaged a private
dining room at the hotel, indulging in a dinner that, with flowers and
wines, had cost over a hundred dollars. Their seats had cost fifty.
There had been a supper afterward where the wine flowed until long past
midnight. Altogether, that evening alone had cost not less than three
hundred dollars--and the man lived at that gait all the time! In his
home, even when himself and wife were alone, seven-course dinners were
served. Huge fowls were carved for but the choicest slices, were sent
away from the table and never came back again in any form. Expensive
wines were opened and left uncorked after two glasses, because some whim
had led the man to prefer some other brand.
Lamb looked up from his figuring with an expression so troubled that his
older friend, groping as men will do for cheering words, hit upon the
idea that restored them both to their equilibrium.
"After all," suggested Jasper, "it's none of our business. The company
is all right."
"That's so," agreed Lamb, recovering his enthusiasm in a bound. "The
tack itself can't be beat, and we are making progress toward getting on
the market. Suppose the man were to sell all his stock. It wouldn't make
any difference, so long as he finishes that one machine for covering the
tack."
"He's a liar!" suddenly burst out David Jasper. "I wish he had his
machinery done and was away from us. I can't sleep well when I do
business with a liar."
"We don't want to get rid of him yet," Lamb reminded him, "and, in the
meantime, I suppose he will have to have money in order to keep him at
work. You'd better get him to give you stock to cover your note and tell
Lewis to do the same. We'll all go after him on that point, and get
protected."
David looked troubled in his turn.
"I can't afford it. When I took up that five thousand dollars' worth of
stock I only had fifteen hundred in the building loan, and I put a
mortgage on one of my houses to make up the amount. If I have to stand
this thousand I'll have to give another mortgage, and I swore I'd never
put a plaster on my property."
"The tack's good for it," urged Lamb, with conviction.
"Yes, the tack's good," admitted Jasper.
That was the thing which held them all in line--the tack! Wallingford
himself might be a spendthrift and a ne'er-do-well, but their faith in
the tack that was to make them all rich was supreme. Lamb picked up one
from his desk and handed it to his friend. The very sight of it, with
its silken covered top, imagination carrying it to its place in a carpet
where it would not show, was most reassuring, and behind it, looming up
like the immense open cornucopia of Fortune herself, was the Eureka
Company, the concern that would buy them out at any time for a million
dollars if they were foolish enough to sell. After all, they had nothing
to worry them.
David Jasper went up to the bank and had them hold the note until the
next day, which they did without comment. David was "good" for anything
he wanted. The next day he got hold of Wallingford to get him to renew
the note and to give him stock as security for it. When J. Rufus came
out of that transaction, in which David had intended to be severe with
him, he had four thousand dollars in his pocket, for he had transferred
to his indorser five thousand dollars of his stock and Jasper had placed
another mortgage on his property. The single tack in his vest pocket had
assumed proportions far larger than his six cottages and his home. It
was the same with Lewis and one of the others, and, for a week, the
inventor struggled with the covering machine.
No one seemed to appreciate the fact that here their genius was
confronting a problem that was most difficult of solution. To them it
meant a mere bit of mechanical juggling, as certain to be accomplished
as the simple process of multiplication; but to glue a piece of cloth to
so minute and irregular a thing as the head of a tack, to put it on
firmly and leave it trimmed properly at the edges, to do this trick by
machinery and at a rate rapid enough to insure profitable operation, was
a Herculean task, and the stockholders would have been aghast had they
known that J. Rufus was in no hurry to solve this last perplexity. He
knew better than to begin actual manufacture. The interference report on
the first patent led him to make secret inquiries, the result of which
convinced him that the day they went on the market would be the day that
they would be disrupted by vigorous suits, backed by millions of
capital. He had been right in stating that a patent is of no value
except as a basis for lawsuits.
There was only one thing which offset his shrewdness in realizing these
conditions, and that was his own folly. Had he been content to devote
himself earnestly to the accomplishment even of his own ends, the many
difficulties into which he had floundered would never have existed.
Always there was the pressing need for money. He was a colossal example
of the fact that easily gotten pelf is of no value. His wife was
shrewder than he. She had no social aspirations whatever at this time.
They were both of them too bohemian of taste and habit to conform to the
strict rules which society imposes in certain directions, even had they
been able to enter the charmed circle. She cared only to dress as well
as the best and to go to such places of public entertainment as the best
frequented, to show herself in jewels that would attract attention and
in gowns that would excite envy; but she did tire of continuous
suspense--and she was not without keenness of perception.
"Jim," she asked, one night, "how is your business going?"
"You see me have money every day, don't you? There's nothing you want,
is there?" was the evasive reply.
"Not a thing, except this: I want a vacation. I don't want to be
wondering all my life when the crash is to come. So far as I have seen,
this looks like a clean business arrangement that you are in now; but,
even if it is, it can't stand the bleeding that you are giving it. If
you are going to get out of this thing, as you have left everything else
you were ever in, get out right away. Realize every dollar you can at
once, and let us take a trip abroad."
"I can't let go just yet," he replied.
She looked up, startled.
"Nothing wrong in this, is there, Jim?"
"Wrong!" he exclaimed. "Fanny, I never did anything in my life that the
law could get me for. The law is a friend of mine. It was framed up
especially for the protection of J. Rufus Wallingford. I can shove
ordinary policemen off the sidewalk and make the chief stand up and
salute when I go past. The only way I could break into a jail would be
to buy one."
She shook her head.
"You're too smart a man to stay out of jail, Jim. The penitentiary is
full of men who were too clever to go there. You're a queer case,
anyhow. If you had buckled down to straight business, with your ability
you'd be worth ten million dollars to-day."
He chuckled.
"Look at the fun I'd have missed, though."
But for once she would not joke about their position.
"No," she insisted, "you're looking at it wrong, Jim. You had to leave
Boston; you had to leave Baltimore; you had to leave Philadelphia and
Washington; you will have to leave this town."
"Never mind, Fanny," he admonished her. "There are fifty towns in the
United States as good as this, and they've got coin in every one of
them. They're waiting for me to come and get it, and when I have been
clear through the list I'll start all over again. There's always a fresh
crop of bait-nibblers, and money is being turned out at the mint every
day."
"Have it your own way," responded Mrs. Wallingford; "but you will be
wise if you take my advice to accumulate some money while you can this
time, so that we do not have to take a night train out in the suburbs,
as we did when we left Boston."
Mr. Wallingford returned no answer. He opened the cellar door and
touched the button that flooded his wine cellar with light, going down
himself to hunt among his bottles for the one that would tempt him most.
Nevertheless, he did some serious thinking, and, at the next
board-of-directors' meeting, he announced that the covering machine was
well under way, showing them drawings of a patent application he was
about to send off.
It was a hopeful sign--one that restored confidence. He must now
organize a selling department and must have a Chicago branch. They
listened with respect, even with elation. After all, while this man had
deceived them as to his financial standing when he first came among
them, he was well posted, for their benefit, upon matters about which
they knew nothing. Moreover, there was the great tack! He went to
Chicago and appointed a Western sales agent. When he came back he had
sold fifteen thousand dollars' worth of his stock through the
introductions gained him by this man.
J. Rufus Wallingford was "cleaning up."