WHEREIN THE GREAT TACK INVENTOR SUDDENLY DECIDES TO CHANGE HIS LOCATION
"In two weeks we will be ready for the market," Wallingford told
inquiring members of the company every two weeks, and, in the meantime,
the model for the covering device, in which change after change was
made, went on very slowly, while the money went very rapidly. A half
dozen of the expensive stamping machines had already been installed, and
the treasury was exhausted. The directors began to look worried.
One morning, while Ella Jasper was at her sweeping in the front room,
the big red automobile chugged up to the gate and J. Rufus Wallingford
got out. He seemed gigantic as he loomed up on the little front porch
and filled the doorway.
"Where is your father?" he asked her.
"He is over at Kriegler's," she told him, and directed him how to find
the little German saloon where the morning "lunch club" gathered.
Instead of turning, he stood still for a moment and looked her slowly
from head to foot. There was that in his look which made her tremble,
which made her flush with shame, and when at last he turned away she sat
down in a chair and wept.
At Kriegler's, Wallingford found Jasper and two other stockholders, and
he drew them aside to a corner table. For a quarter of an hour he was
jovial with them, and once more they felt the magnetic charm of his
personality, though each one secretly feared that he had come again for
money. He had, but not for himself.
"The treasury is empty," he calmly informed them, during a convenient
pause, "and the Corley Machine Company insist on having their bill paid.
We owe them two thousand dollars, and it will take five thousand more to
complete the covering machine."
"You've been wasting money in the company as you do at home," charged
David, flaring up at once with long-suppressed grievances. "You had
thirty thousand cash to begin with. I was down to the Corley Machine
Company myself, day before yesterday, and I saw a pile of things you had
them make and throw away that they told me cost nearly five thousand
dollars."
"They didn't show you all of it," returned Wallingford coolly. "There's
more. You don't expect to perfect a machine without experimenting, do
you? Now you let me alone in this. I know my business, and no man can
say that I am not going after the best results in the best way. You
fellows figure on expense as if we were conducting a harness shop or a
grocery store," he continued, whereat Jasper and Lewis reddened with
resentment of the sort for which they could not find voice. "Rent,
light, power, and wages eat up money every day," he reminded them, "and
every day's delay means that much more waste. We _must_ have money to
complete this covering machine, and we must have it at once. There is
twenty thousand dollars' worth of treasury stock for sale, aside from
the hundred thousand held in reserve until we are ready to manufacture.
That extra stock must be sold right away! I leave it to you," he
concluded, rising. "I'm not a stock salesman," and with that brazen
statement he left them.
The statement was particularly brazen because that very morning, after
he left these men, he disposed of a five-thousand-dollar block of his
own stock and turned the money over to his wife before he returned to
the office in the afternoon. Lamb received him in a torrent of
impatience.
"I feel like a cheat," he declared. "The Corley people were over here
again, and say that they do not know us. They only know our money, and
they want some at once or they will not proceed with the machinery."
"I have been doing what I could," replied Wallingford. "I put the matter
up to Jasper and Lewis and Nolting this morning. I told them they would
have to sell the extra treasury stock."
"You did!" exclaimed Lamb. "Why did you go to them? Why didn't you go
out and sell the stock yourself?"
"I am not a stock salesman, my boy."
"You have been active enough in selling your private stock," charged
Lamb.
"That's my business," retorted Mr. Wallingford. "I am strictly within my
legal rights in disposing of my own stock. It is my property, to do with
as I please."
"It is obtaining money under false pretenses, for until you have
completed this machinery and made a market for our goods, the stock you
have sold is not worth the paper it is printed on. It represents no
value whatever."
"It represents as much value as treasury stock or any other stock,"
retorted Mr. Wallingford. "By the way, make a transfer of this
fifty-share certificate to Thomas D. Caldwell."
"Caldwell!" exclaimed Lamb. "Why, he is one of the very men we have been
trying to interest in some of this treasury stock. He is of our lodge.
Last week we had him almost in the notion, but he backed out."
"When the right man came along he bought," said Wallingford, and
laughed.
"This money should have gone into our depleted treasury," Lamb declared
hotly. "I refuse to make the transfer."
"I don't care; it's nothing to me. I have the money and I shall turn
over this certificate to Mr. Caldwell. When he demands the transfer you
will have to make it."
"There ought to be some legal way to compel this sale to be made of
treasury stock."
"Possibly," admitted Mr. Wallingford; "but there isn't. You will find,
my boy, that everything I do is strictly within the pale of the law. I
can go into any court and prove that I am an honest man."
Lamb sprang angrily from his chair.
"You're a thief," he charged, his eyes flashing.
"I'm not drawing any salary for it," replied Wallingford, and Lamb
halted his anger with a sickened feeling. The two hundred dollars a
month that he had been drawing lay heavily upon his conscience.
"I'm going to ask for a reduction in my pay at the next meeting," he
declared. "I cannot take the money with a clear conscience."
"That's up to you," replied Wallingford; "but I want to remind you that
unless money is put into this treasury within a day or so the works are
stopped," and he went out to climb into his auto, leaving the secretary
to some very sober thought.
Well, Lamb reflected, what was there to do? But one thing: raise the
money by the sale of treasury stock to replenish their coffers and carry
on the work. He wished he could see his friend Jasper. The wish was like
sorcery, for no more was it uttered than David and Mr. Lewis came in.
They were deeply worried over the condition into which affairs had been
allowed to drift, but Lamb had cooled down by this time. He allowed them
to hold an indignation meeting for a time, but presently he reminded
them that, after all, no matter what else was right or wrong, it would
be necessary to raise money--that the machine must be finished. They
went over to the shop to look at it. The workmen were testing it by hand
when they arrived, and it was working with at least a fair degree of
accuracy. The inspection committee did not know that the device was
entirely impractical. All that they saw was that it produced the result
of a finished tack with a cover of colored cloth glued tightly to its
head, and to them its operation was a silent tribute to the genius of
the man they had been execrating. They came away encouraged. It was Mr.
Lewis who expressed the opinion which was gaining ground with all of
them.
"After all," he declared, "we're bound to admit that he's a big man."
The result was precisely what Wallingford had foreseen. These men, to
save their company, to save the money they had already invested, raised
ten thousand dollars among them. David Jasper put another
five-thousand-dollar mortgage on his property; Mr. Lewis raised two
thousand, and Edward Lamb three thousand, and with this money they
bought of the extra treasury stock to that amount. J. Rufus Wallingford
returned in the morning. The stock lay open for him to sign; there was
ten thousand dollars in the treasury, and a check to the Corley Machine
Company, already signed by the treasurer, was also awaiting his
signature.
The eight thousand dollars that was left went at a surprisingly rapid
rate, for, with a love for polished detail, Wallingford had ordered
large quantities of shipping cases, stamps to burn the company's device
upon them, japanned steel signs in half a dozen colors to go with each
shipment, and many other expensive incidentals, besides the experimental
work. There were patent applications and a host of other accumulating
bills that gave Lamb more worry and perplexity than he had known in all
his fifteen years of service with the Dorman Company. The next
replenishment was harder. To get the remaining ten thousand dollars in
the treasury, the already committed stockholders scraped around among
their friends to the remotest acquaintance, and placed scrip no longer
in blocks of five thousand, but of ten shares, of five shares, even in
driblets of one and two hundred dollars, until they had absorbed all the
extra treasury stock; and in that time Wallingford, by appointing a St.
Louis agent, had managed to dispose of twenty thousand dollars' worth of
his own holdings. He was still "cleaning up," and he brought in his
transfer certificates with as much nonchalance as if he were turning in
orders for tacks.
Rapid as he now was, however, he did not work quite fast enough. He had
still some fifteen thousand dollars' worth of personal stock when, early
one morning, a businesslike gentleman stepped into the office where Lamb
sat alone at work, and presented his card. It told nothing beyond the
mere fact that he was an attorney.
"Well, Mr. Rook, what can I do for you?" asked Lamb pleasantly, though
not without apprehension. He wondered what J. Rufus had been doing.
"Are you an officer of the Universal Covered Tack Company?" inquired Mr.
Rook.
"The secretary; Edward Lamb."
"Quite so. Mr. Lamb, I represent the Invisible Carpet Tack Company, and
I bring you their formal notification to cease using their device;"
whereupon he delivered to Edward a document. "The company assumes that
you are not thoroughly posted as to its article of manufacture, nor as
to its patents covering it," he resumed. "They have been on the market
three years with this product."
From his pocket he took a fancifully embellished package, and, opening
it, he poured two or three tacks into Edward's hand. With dismay the
secretary examined one of them. It was an ordinary carpet tack, such as
they were about to make, but with a crimson-covered top. Dazed, scarcely
knowing what he was doing, he mechanically took his knife from his
pocket and cut the cloth from it. The head was roughened for gluing
precisely as had been planned for their own!
"Assuming, as I say, that you are not aware of the encroachment," the
attorney went on, "the Invisible Company does not desire to let you
invite prosecution, but wishes merely to warn you against attempting to
put an infringement of their goods on the market. They have plenty of
surplus capital, and are prepared to defend their rights with all of it,
if necessary. Should you wish to communicate with me or have your
counsel do so, my address is on that card," and, leaving the paper of
tacks behind him, Mr. Rook left the office.
Without taking the trouble to investigate, Lamb knew instinctively that
the lawyer was right, an opinion which later inquiry all too thoroughly
corroborated. For three years the Invisible Carpet Tack Company had been
supplying precisely the article the Universal Company was then striving
to perfect. What there was of that trade they had and would keep, and a
sickening realization came to the secretary that it meant a total loss
to himself and his friends of practically everything they possessed. The
machinery in which their money was invested was special machinery that
could be used for no other purpose, and was worth but little more than
the price of scrap iron. Every cent that they had invested was gone!
His first thought was for David Jasper. As for himself, he was young
yet. He could stand the loss of five thousand. He could go back to
Dorman's, take his old position and be the more valuable for his ripened
experience, and there was always a chance that a minor partnership might
await him there after a few more years; but as for Jasper, his day was
run, his sun had set. It was a hard task that confronted the secretary,
but he must do it. He called up Kriegler's and asked for David Jasper,
and when David came to the telephone he told him what had happened. Over
and over, carefully and point by point, he had to explain it, for his
friend could not believe, since he could not even comprehend, the blow
that had fallen upon him. Suddenly, Lamb found there was no answer to a
question that he asked. He called anxiously again and again. He could
hear only a confused murmur in the 'phone. There were tramping feet and
excited voices, and he gathered that the receiver was left dangling,
that no one held it, that no one listened to what he said. Hastily
putting on his coat and hat, he locked the office and took a car for the
North Side.
J. Rufus Wallingford himself was busy that morning, and in the North
Side, too. His huge car whirled past the little frame houses that were
covered with mortgages which would never be lifted, and stopped before
the home of David Jasper. His jaw was hanging loosely, his big, red face
was bloated and splotched, and his small eyes were bloodshot, though
they glowed with a somber fire. He had been out all night, and this was
one of the few times he had been indiscreet enough to carry his excesses
over into the morning; usually he was alcohol proof. At first, blinking
and blearing in the sunlight, he had been numb; but an hour's swift ride
in the fresh air of the country had revived him, while the ascending sun
had started into life again the fumes of the wine that he had drunk, so
that all of the evil within him had come uppermost without the
restraining caution that belonged to his sober hours. In his abnormal
condition the thought had struck him that now was the time for the final
coup--that he would dispose of his remaining shares of stock at a
reduced valuation and get away, at last, from the irksome tasks that
confronted him, from the dilemma that was slowly but surely encompassing
him. In pursuance of this idea it had occurred to him, as it never would
have done in his sober moments, that David Jasper could still raise
money and that he could still be made to do so. Lumbering back to the
kitchen door, he knocked upon it, and Ella Jasper opened it. Ella had
finished her morning's work hurriedly, for she intended to go downtown
shopping, and was already preparing to dress. Her white, rounded arms
were bared to the elbow, and her collar was turned in with a "V" at the
throat.
The somber glow in Wallingford's eyes leaped into flame, and, without
stopping to question her, he pushed his way into the kitchen, closing
the door behind him. He lurched suddenly toward her, and, screaming, she
flew through the rooms toward the front door. She would have gained the
door easily enough, and, in fact, had just reached it, when it opened
from the outside, and her father, accompanied by his friend Lewis, came
suddenly in. For half an hour, up at Kriegler's, they had been restoring
David from the numb half-trance in which he had dropped the receiver of
the telephone, and even now he swayed as he walked, so that his
condition could scarcely have been told from that of Wallingford when
the latter had come through the gate. But there was this difference
between them: the strength of Wallingford had been dissipated; that of
Jasper had been merely suspended. It was a mental wrench that had
rendered him for the moment physically incapable. Now, however, when he
saw the author of all his miseries, a hoarse cry of rage burst from him,
and before his eyes there suddenly seemed to surge a red mist. Hale and
sturdy still, a young man in physique, despite his sixty years, he
sprang like a tiger at the adventurer who had wrecked his prosperity and
who now had held his home in contempt.
There was no impact of strained bodies, as when two warriors meet in
mortal combat; as when attacker and defender prepare to measure prowess.
Instead, the big man, twice the size and possibly twice the lifting and
striking strength of David Jasper, having on his side, too, the
advantage of being in what should have been the summit of life, shrank
back, pale to the lips, suddenly whimpering and crying for mercy. It was
only a limp, resistless man of blubber that David Jasper had hurled
himself upon, and about whose throat his lean, strong fingers had
clutched, the craven gurgling still his appeals for grace. Ordinarily
this would have disarmed a man like David Jasper, for disgust alone
would have stayed his hand, have turned his wrath to loathing, his
righteous vengefulness to nausea; but now he was blind, blood-mad, and
he bore the huge spineless lump of moral putty to the floor by the force
of his resistless onrush.
"Man!" Lewis shouted in his ear. "Man, there's a law against that sort
of thing!"
"Law!" screamed David Jasper. "Law! Did it save me my savings? Let me
alone!"
The only result of the interference was to alter the direction of his
fury, and now, with his left hand still gripping the throat of his
despoiler, his stalwart fist rained down blow after blow upon the hated,
fat-jowled face that lay beneath him. It was a brutal thing, and, even
as she strove to coax and pull her father away, Ella was compelled to
avert her face. The smacking impact of those blows made her turn faint;
but, even so, she had wit enough to close the front door, so that morbid
curiosity should not look in upon them nor divine her father's madness.
Just as she returned to him, however, and even while his fist was
upraised for another stroke at that sobbing coward, a spasmodic twitch
crossed his face as he gasped deeply for air, and he toppled to the
floor, inert by the side of his enemy. Age had told at last. In spite of
an abstemious life, the unwonted exertion and the unwonted passion had
wreaked their punishment upon him.
It was David's friend Lewis who, with white, set face, helped
Wallingford to his feet, and, without a word, scornfully shoved him
toward the door, throwing his crumpled hat after him as he passed out.
With blood upon his face and two rivulets of tears streaming down across
it, J. Rufus Wallingford, the suave, the gentleman for whom all good
things of earth were made and provided, ran sobbing, with downstretched
quivering lips, to his automobile. The chauffeur jumped out for a moment
to get the hat and to dip his kerchief in the stream that he turned on
for a moment from the garden hydrant; coming back to the machine, he
handed the wet kerchief to his master, then, without instructions, he
started home. When his back was thoroughly turned, the chauffeur,
despite that he had been well paid and extravagantly tipped during all
the months of his fat employment, smiled, and smiled, and kept on
smiling, and had all he could do to prevent his shoulders from heaving.
He was gratified--was Frank--pleased in his two active senses of justice
and of humor.
Just as the automobile turned the corner, Edward Lamb came running down
the street from Kriegler's, where he had gone first to find out what had
happened, and he met Mr. Lewis going for a doctor. Without stopping to
explain, Lewis jerked his thumb in the direction of the house, and
Edward, not knocking, dashed in at the door. They had laid David on his
bed in the front room, and his daughter bent over him, bathing his brow
with camphor. David was speechless, but his eyes were open now, and the
gleam of intelligence was in them. As their friend came to the bedside,
Ella looked around at him. She tried to gaze up at him unmoved as he
stood there so young, so strong, so dependable; she strove to look into
his eyes bravely and frankly, but it had been a racking time, in which
her strength had been sorely tested, and she swayed slightly toward
him. Edward Lamb caught his sister in his arms, but when her head was
pillowed for an instant upon his shoulder and the tears burst forth, lo!
the miracle happened. The foolish scales fell so that he could see into
his own heart, and detect what had lain there unnamed for many a long
year--and Ella Jasper was his sister no longer!
"There, there, dear," he soothed her, and smoothed her tresses with his
broad, gentle palm.
The touch and the words electrified her. Smiling through her tears, she
ventured to look up at him, and he bent and kissed her solemnly and
gently upon the lips; then David Jasper, lying there upon his bed, with
all his little fortune gone and all his sturdy vigor vanished, saw, and
over his wan lips there flickered the trace of a satisfied smile.
Hidden that night in a stateroom on a fast train, J. Rufus Wallingford
and his wife, with but such possessions as they could carry in their
suit cases and one trunk, whirled eastward.