MR. WALLINGFORD TAKES A DOSE OF HIS OWN BITTER MEDICINE
As the lights of the railroad yard, red and white and green, slid by, so
passed out of the ken of these fugitives all those who had contributed
to their luxury through the medium of the Universal Covered Carpet Tack
Company. Lamb, Jasper, Lewis, Nolting, Ella; what were all these people
to them? What were any living creatures except a part of the always
moving panorama which composed the background of their lives? Nomads
always since their marriage, when Mrs. Wallingford as a girl had run
away from home that was no home to join this cheerful knave of fortune,
they had known no resting place, no spot on earth that called to them;
had formed no new ties and made no new friendships. Where all the world
seemed anchored they were ever flitting on, and the faces that they knew
belonged but to the more or less vivid episodes by which the man strove
after such luxurious ideals as he had. Only a few of the dubious
acquaintances which Wallingford had formed in his earlier days of
adventure remained for them to greet as they paused before fresh flights
afield. "Blackie" Daw, who had recently removed his "office" from Boston
to New York, was the most constant of these, and him they entertained in
one of the most exclusive hostelries in the metropolis soon after their
arrival. Mr. Wallingford's face still bore traces of the recent
conflict.
"Fanny's the girl!" he declared with his hand resting affectionately on
his wife's shoulder, after he had detailed to Mr. Daw how he had
squeezed the covered carpet tack dry of its possibilities. "She's little
Mamie Bright, all right. For once we got away with it. I'm a piker, I
know, but twenty-eight thousand in yellow, crinkly boys to the good, all
sewed up in Fanny's skirt till we ripped it out and soused it in a
deposit vault, isn't so bad for four months' work; and now we're on our
way to ruin Monte Carlo."
"You're all to the mustard," admired Blackie; "you're the big noise and
the blinding flash. As I say, I'd go into some legitimate line myself if
I wasn't honest. What bites me, though, is that you got all that out of
my little Lamb and his easy friends."
"Easy! Um--m--m--m," commented Mr. Wallingford frowningly, as he
unconsciously rubbed the tips of his fingers over the black puff under
his right eye. "You've got it wrong. I like to sting the big people
best. They take it like a dentist's pet; but when you tap one of these
pikers for a couple of mean little thousands he howls like a steam
calliope. One old pappy guy started to take it out of my hide, and he
tried so hard it gave him paralysis."
Mr. Daw laughed in sympathy.
"You must have had a lively get-away, to judge from the marks the mill
left on you; but why this trip across the pond? Are they after you?"
"After me!" scorned J. Rufus. "There's no chance! Why, I never did a
thing in my life that stepped outside the law!"
"But you lean way over the fence," charged Blackie with a knowing nod,
"and some of these days the palings will break."
"By that time I'll have enough soft money in front of me to ease my
fall," announced Wallingford confidently. "I'm for that get-rich-quick
game, and you can just bank on me as a winner."
"You'll win all right," agreed Blackie confidently, looking at his
watch, "but you're like the rest of us. You'll have to die real sudden
if you want to leave anything to your widow. That's the trouble with
this quick money. It's lively or you wouldn't catch it on the wing, and
it stays so lively after you get it."
He arose as he concluded this sage observation and buttoned his coat.
"But you're going to stay to dinner with us?" insisted Mrs. Wallingford.
"No," he returned regretfully. "I'd like to, but business is business. I
have an engagement to trim a deacon in Podunk this evening. Give my
regards to the Prince of Monaco."
It was scarcely more than a week afterwards when he somberly turned in
at the bar room of that same hotel, and almost bumped into Wallingford,
who was as somberly coming out. For a moment they gazed at each other in
amazement and then both laughed.
"You must have gone over and back by wireless," observed Blackie. "What
turned up?"
"Stung!" exclaimed J. Rufus with deep self-scorn. "I got an inside tip
on some copper stock the evening you left, and the next morning I looked
up a broker and he broke me. He had just started up in the bucket-shop
business and I was his first customer. He didn't wait for any more.
That's all."
Daw laughed happily, and he was still laughing when they entered the
drawing room of Wallingford's suite.
"It's the one gaudy bet that the biggest suckers of all are the wise
people," he observed. "Here you go out West and trim a bunch of come-ons
for twenty-five thousand, and what do you do next? Oh, just tarry here
long enough to tuck that neat little bundle into the pocket of a
bucket-shop broker that throws away the bucket! You'd think he was the
wise boy, after that, but he'll drop your twenty-five thousand on a
wire-tapping game, and the wire tapper will buy gold bricks with it. The
gold-brick man will give it to the bookies and the bookies will lose it
on stud poker. I'm a Billy goat myself. I clean up ten thousand last
week on mining stock that permits Mr. Easy Mark to mine if he wants to,
and I pay it right over last night for the fun of watching a faro expert
deal from a sanded deck! Me? Cleaned with-_out_ soap!"
"You don't mean to say you're broke, too?" demanded his host.
"If I had any less they'd arrest me for loitering."
Mr. Wallingford glowered upon his twenty-dollar-a-day apartments with a
sigh. The latest in heavy lace curtains fluttered at him from the
windows, thick rugs yielded to his feet, all the frippery of
Louis-Quinze, while it mocked his bigness, ministered to his
comfort--but waited to be paid for!
"You don't look as good to me as you did a while ago," he declared. "I'd
figured on you for a sure touch, for now it's back to the Rube patch for
us. O Fanny!"
"Yes, Jim," answered a pleasant voice, and Mrs. Wallingford, in a
stunning gown which, supplementing her hair and eyes, made of her a
symphony in brown, came from the adjoining room. She shook hands
cordially with Mr. Daw and sat down with an inquiring look at her
husband.
"It's time for us to take up a collection," said the latter gentleman.
"We're going ay-wye."
"Ya-as, ay-wye from he-_ah_!" supplemented Blackie to no one in
particular.
"Won't your ring and scarf pin do?" his wife inquired anxiously of Mr.
Wallingford. A "collection," in their parlance, meant the sacrifice of a
last resource, and she was a woman of experience.
"You know they won't," he returned in mild reproach. "If I don't keep a
front I know where my ticket reads to; the first tank!"
Without any further objection she brought him a little black leather
case, which he opened. An agreeable glitter sparkled from its velvet
depths, and he passed it to his friend with a smile of satisfaction.
"They'll please Uncle, eh, Blackie?" he observed. "The first thing to
do, after I cash these, is to look at the map and pick out a fresh town
where smart people have money in banks. It always helps a lot to
remember that somewhere in this big United States people have been
saving up coin for years, just waiting for us to come and get it."
The two men laughed, but Mrs. Wallingford did not.
"Honest, I'm tired of it," she confessed. "If this speculation of Jim's
had only turned out luckily I wanted to buy a little house and live
quietly and--and decently for a year or so."
Mr. Daw glanced at her in amusement.
"She wants to be respectable!" he gasped in mock surprise.
"All women do," she said, still earnestly.
"You wouldn't last three months," he informed her. "You'd join the
village sewing circle and the culture club, and paddle around in a giddy
whirl of pale functions till you saw you had to keep your mouth shut all
the time for fear the other women would find out you knew something.
Then you'd quit."
"You talk as if you had been crossed in love," she consoled him.
"That's because I'm in pain," confessed Blackie. "It hasn't been an hour
since I saw a thousand dollars in real money, and the telegraph company
jerked it away from me just as I reached out to bring it home."
"_Is_ there that much money in the world?" inquired Wallingford.
"Not loose," replied Blackie. "I thought I had this lump pried off, but
now it's got a double padlock on it and to-night it starts far, far back
to that dear old metropolis of the Big Thick Water, where the windy
river looks like a fresh-plowed field. But they've coin out there, and
every time I think of Mr. James Clover and his thousand I'm tempted to
go down to his two-dollar hotel and coax him up a dark alley."
"Who does Mr. Clover do?" inquired Wallingford perfunctorily.
Blackie's sense of humor came uppermost to soothe his anguished
feelings.
"He's the Supreme Exalted Ruler of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands,"
he grinned, "and his twenty-six members at three or eleven cents a
month don't turn in the money fast enough; so he took a chance on the
cold-iron cage and brought a chunk of the insurance reserve fund to New
York to double it. I picked myself out to do the doubling for him."
Mr. Wallingford chuckled.
"I know," he said. "To double it you fold the bills when you put them in
your pocket, and when Clover wanted it back you'd have him pinched for a
common thief. But how did it get away? I'm disappointed in you, Blackie.
I thought when you once saw soft money it was yours."
"Man died in his town. If he'd only put it off for one day the whole
burg could have turned into a morgue, for I don't need it. But no! The
man died, and the Supreme Exalted Secretary wired the Supreme Exalted
Ruler. The telegram was brought to his room just when I had the hook to
his gills, and he--went--down--stream! It was perfectly scandalous the
names we called that man for having died, but it takes a long time to
cuss a thousand dollars' worth."
Mr. Wallingford was thoughtful.
"A fraternal insurance company," he mused. "I've never taken a fall out
of that game, and it sounds good. This gifted amateur's going out
to-night? Hustle right down to his hotel and bring him up to dinner.
Tell him I've been thinking of going into the insurance field and might
be induced to buy a share in his business. I've a notion to travel along
with that thousand dollars to-night, no matter where it goes. O Fanny!"
he called again to his wife in the other room. "Suppose you begin to
pack up while I step out and soak the diamonds."
That was how Mr. James Clover came to obtain some startling new ideas
about insurance; also about impressiveness. When Mr. Wallingford in a
dinner coat walked into any public dining room, waiters were instantly
electrified and ordinary mortals felt humble. His broad expanse of white
shirt front awed the most self-satisfied into instant submission, and he
carried himself as one who was monarch of all he surveyed. This was due
to complacency, for though bills might press and cash be scarce, there
never stood any line of worry upon his smooth brow. Worry was for
others--those who would have to pay. Mr. Clover, himself of some bulk
but of no genuine lordliness whatever, no sooner set eyes upon Mr. J.
Rufus Wallingford than he felt comforted. Here was wealth unlimited, and
if this opulent being could possibly be induced to finance the Noble
Order of Friendly Hands, he saw better skies ahead, bright skies that
shone down on a fair, fruitful world where all was prosperity and
plenty. Mr. Clover was a block-like man with a square face and a heavy
fist, with a loud voice and a cultivated oratorical habit of speech
which he meant to be awe-inspiring. Behind him there was a string of
failures that were a constant source of wonderment to him, since he had
not been too scrupulous!
"He'd be a crook if he knew how; but he stumbles over his feet," Blackie
confided to Wallingford. To Clover he said: "Look out for the big man.
He's a pretty smooth article, and you'll miss the gold out of your teeth
if you don't watch him."
It was a recommendation, and a shrewd one. Mr. Clover was prepared by it
to be impressed; he ended by becoming a dazed worshiper, and his
conquest began when his host ordered the dinner. It was not merely what
he ordered, but how, that stamped him as one who habitually dined well;
and to Clover, who had always lived upon a beer basis, the ascent to the
champagne level was dizzying. It was not until they had broached their
second quart of wine that business was brought up for discussion.
"I understand you've just had a bit of hard luck, Mr. Clover," said
Wallingford, laughing as if hard luck were a joke.
Mr. Clover winced within, but put on a cheerful air.
"Merely what was to have been expected," he replied. "You refer, I
suppose, to the death of one of our members, but as our Order now has a
large enrollment we are only averaging with the mortality tables."
"What is your membership?" asked the other with sudden directness.
"At our present rate of progress," began Mr. Clover, eloquently,
squaring his shoulders and looking Mr. Wallingford straight in the eye,
"thousands will have been enrolled upon our books before the end of the
coming year. Already we are perfecting a new and elaborate filing system
to take care of the business, which is increasing by leaps and bounds."
Mr. Wallingford calmly closed one blue orb.
"But in chilly figures, discounting next year, how many?" he asked.
"Live ones, I mean, that cough up their little dues every month."
The Supreme Exalted Ruler squirmed and smiled a trifle weakly.
"You might just as well tell me, you know," insisted Mr. Wallingford,
"because I shall want to inspect your books if I buy in. Have you a
thousand?"
"Not quite," confessed Mr. Clover, in a voice which, in spite of him,
would sound a trifle leaden.
"Have you five hundred?" persisted Mr. Wallingford.
Mr. Clover considered, while the silent Mr. Daw discreetly kept his face
straight.
"Five hundred and seventeen," he blurted, his face reddening.
"That isn't so bad," said Mr. Wallingford encouragingly. "But how do you
clinch your rake-off?"
At this Mr. Clover could smile with smug content; he could swell with
pride.
"Out our way, a little knothole in the regulations was found by yours
truly," he modestly boasted. "Mine is somewhat different from any
insurance order on earth. The members think they vote, but they don't.
If they ever elect another Supreme Exalted Ruler, all he can do is to
wear a brass crown and a red robe; I'll still handle the funds. You see,
we've just held our first annual election, and I had the entire
membership vote 'Yes' on a forever-and-ever contract which puts our
whole income--for safety, of course--into the hands of a duly bonded
company. For ten cents a month from each member this company is to pay
all expenses, to handle, invest and disburse its insurance and other
funds for the benefit of the Order. It's like making a savings bank our
trustee; only it's different, because I'm the company."
His host nodded in approval.
"You have other rake-offs," he suggested.
"Right again!" agreed Clover with gleeful enthusiasm. "Certificate fees,
fines for delinquency, regalia company and all that. But the main
fountain is the little dime. Ten cents seems like a cheap game, maybe,
but when we have two hundred and fifty thousand members, that trifling
ante amounts to twenty-five thousand dollars a month. Bad, I guess!"
"When you get it," agreed the other. "You're incorporated, then. For how
much?"
"Ten thousand."
"I see," said Mr. Wallingford with a smile of tolerance. "You need me,
all right. You ought to _give_ me a half interest in your business."
Mr. Clover's self-assertiveness came back to him with a jerk.
"Anything else?" he asked pleasantly.
Mr. Wallingford beamed upon him.
"I might want a salary, but it would be purely nominal; a hundred a week
or so."
Mr. Clover was highly amused. The only reason on earth that he would
admit another man to a partnership with him was that he must have ready
cash. His shoe soles were wearing out.
"I'm afraid our business wouldn't suit you, anyhow, Mr. Wallingford," he
said with bantering sarcasm. "Our office is very plain, for one thing,
and we have no rug on the floor."
"We'll put rugs down right away, and if the offices are not as swell as
they make 'em we'll move," Wallingford promptly announced. "I might give
you two thousand for a half interest."
Mr. Clover drank a glass of champagne and considered. Two thousand
dollars, at the present stage of his finances, was real money. The Noble
Order of Friendly Hands had been started on a "shoestring" of five
hundred dollars, and the profits of the Friendly Hands Trust Company had
been nil up to the present time. This offer was more than a temptation;
it was a fall.
"Couldn't think of it," he nevertheless coldly replied. "But I'll sell
you half my stock at par. The secretary has ten shares, and dummy
directors four. I hold eighty-six."
"Forty-three hundred dollars!" figured Wallingford. "And you'd charge me
that for a brick with the plating worn thin! You forget the value of my
expert services."
"What do you know about fraternal insurance?" demanded Clover, who had
reddened under fire.
"Not a thing," confessed Mr. Wallingford. "All I know is how to get
money. If I go in with you, the first thing we do is to reorganize on a
two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar basis."
Mr. Clover pounded his fist upon the table until the glasses rang, and
laughed so loudly that the head waiter shivered and frowned. Seeing,
however, that the noise came from Mr. Wallingford's corner, he smiled.
He was venal, was the head waiter, and he remembered the pleasant,
velvety rustle of a bill in his palm.
"That joke's good enough for a minstrel show," Clover declared. "Why,
man, even if that stock could be sold, Gabriel's horn would catch us
still struggling to pay our first dividend."
Mr. Wallingford lit a cigarette and smiled in pity.
"Oh, well, if you figure on staying in the business till you drop dead I
won't wake you up," he stated. "But I thought you wanted money."
Mr. Clover shook his head.
"We have laws in my State, Mr. Wallingford."
"I should hope so," returned that gentleman. "If it wasn't for good,
safe, solid laws I never would make a cent. Why, the law's on my side
all the time, and the police are the best friends I've got. They show me
the way home at night."
Mr. Clover looked incredulous.
"I'm afraid you don't understand the fraternal insurance business," he
insisted. "It takes a lot of hard, patient work to build up an order."
"_You_ don't understand the business," retorted the other. "What, for
instance, are you going to do with that thousand dollars you're taking
back home?"
"Give it to the widow of Mr. Henry L. Bishop, of course," said Mr.
Clover, expanding his chest and pursing his mouth virtuously. "The
widows and orphans who look to the Noble Order of Friendly Hands for
protection shall not look in vain."
"That will look well in a prospectus," admitted Mr. Wallingford with a
knowing twinkle of his eyes; "but I'm not going to take out any
insurance so you could notice it. Suppose I show you how to have Mrs.
Bishop hand you back that thousand with sobs of gratitude? Do I get two
hundred and fifty of it?"
"If you can do that legitimately," said Mr. Clover, leaning forward and
surprised into sudden warm eagerness, "I'll accept your price for a half
interest."
"I'll go with you to-night--if I can get the drawing-room on your
train," decided Wallingford, and arose.
The Supreme Exalted Ruler gazed up at him with profound admiration. He
looked so much like actual cash. He might be a "smooth article," but was
not one Clover also "smooth"? He could guard the gold in his own teeth,
all right.
"You're a wonder, Jim," said Mr. Daw to his friend when they were alone
for a few minutes; "but where are you going to get that two thousand?"
"Out of the business--if I pay it at all," replied Mr. Wallingford.
"Trust your Uncle Rufus."