WALLINGFORD GENEROUSLY LOANS THE PNEUMATIC COMPANY SOME OF ITS OWN MONEY
The arrival of Mrs. Wallingford set upon a much higher plane her
husband's already well-established reputation as a capitalist of
illimitable resources, and had any one of his partners paused to reflect
that Mr. Wallingford had secured an active interest in the concern for
five hundred dollars, Doctor Feldmeyer's report of the capitalist's
charming lady was enough to make that trifling incident forgotten. To
Carl Klug and Jens Jensen at Carl's shop, the doctor, without knowing
it, did the missionary work that Wallingford had planned for him to do.
"She is a stunner," he declared, with the faintest suggestion of a
smirk, "and carries herself like a queen. She wears a fur coat that cost
not less than six or seven hundred dollars, and not a woman in this town
has such diamonds. We all went to the theater last night, and there were
more opera glasses turned on our box than on the stage. I tell you, our
friend Wallingford has the best there is, in women, as well as in wine,
and as for wealth, he could buy and sell us all."
"I believe it," said Jens Jensen. "But why should such a rich man go
into a little business?"
"Because," said Doctor Feldmeyer, with profound wisdom, "a rich man
never overlooks a thousand per cent. like this. That's why they are
rich. Why, this man's daily expenses would keep every one of us. He had
fine apartments at the hotel himself, but when his wife came he got the
best in the house--four fine, big rooms. Last night after the theater he
took me to his own dining room, and we had a supper that cost not less
than thirty or forty dollars!"
Such gossip would go far to establishing any man's reputation for
wealth, especially among such simple natured people as these, and it was
quite certain that Otto Schmitt and Henry Vogel and Emil Kessler would
hear every scrap of it. Had Doctor Feldmeyer heard the conversation that
took place after he left the Wallingford suite the night before, his
report might have been slightly different.
"Well, Jim," Mrs. Wallingford had asked with a trace of anxiety, "what
are you doing this time?"
"The United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey," he replied
with a laugh. "You remember how they turned me down a long time ago when
I tried to sell them a patent?" She nodded. "You made me go right to
them and try what you called 'straight business,' and I got what was
coming to a mollycoddle. I'm going to sell them a patent this time, but
in the right way, and for a good, big round chunk."
"Whose patent?" she inquired.
"What's the difference?" he queried, and laughed again. "It serves him
right for being an inventor."
She did not laugh with him, however. She sat in frowning disquiet, and
he watched her curiously.
"What's the matter with you?" he presently complained. "It used to be
enough for you that I could not be jailed for having a few dollars."
"We're nearly middle-aged, Jim," she replied, turning to him soberly.
"What will we be like when we are old?"
"Cheer up, Fanny, and I will tell you the worst!" he declaimed. "You'll
be gray and I'll be bald!"
She was compelled to laugh herself, and gave up the idea of serious
conversation with him, for that time at least.
Doctor Feldmeyer, encouraged by Wallingford, became an unofficial
attache of the family in the following weeks. Vain, susceptible, and
considering himself very much of a ladies' man, he exerted himself to be
agreeable, and J. Rufus helped him to opportunities. If he had any
ulterior purpose in this he did not confide it to his wife, or even let
her suspect it. It would not have been safe. In the meantime the affairs
of the Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company moved speedily onward. One
entire end of his shop Carl Klug devoted to its affairs, putting in
special machinery and hiring as many men as he could use, and here
Wallingford reported every day, his suggestions being nearly always
sound and inspiring Mr. Klug's respect. He held his standing with the
rest of them in a different way. When they called at the shop they found
Wallingford's cab always standing outside, and it was soon noised about
that this cab was hired by the day! "Blackie" Daw, levying his dubious
contributions on a gullible public, was paying for this and wiping out
his debt.
But little more than two months had elapsed when Carl had his first lot
of recorders ready for the market, and the treasury was depleted. Now it
became necessary to have money for marketing, and that meant the
remaining three thousand dollars of J. Rufus Wallingford's subscription
or an evasion of it. Prepared for this, he took the floor as soon as the
matter was mentioned at the meeting which was called to levy this
assessment.
"What is the use?" he demanded to know. "Why use our own money? I
understand that Mr. Schmitt must get his three thousand from the
building loan association, to which he must pay six per cent. I
understand that Mr. Jensen has his now out at five per cent. Let me show
you how to finance this concern. I will put in ten thousand at once, and
take the company's note. This note I can then discount, and put the
money right back into my business, and in that way my ten thousand
dollars is doing twenty thousand dollars' worth of work--a bank carrying
the burden of both operations."
It was a financial argument entirely new to these men, unused to tricks
of money manipulation, and it took them some little time to grasp it.
When they did, however, they were as pleased as a boy with his first
watch, and Wallingford was a dazzling hero, as, with a nonchalant air,
after glancing at the clock to make sure that it was after banking
hours, he wrote them a check on "his bank in Boston" for ten thousand,
and took their note, signed by the Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company and
indorsed jointly by all its members.
That night Wallingford drove up in hot haste to Jens Jensen's house.
"Let me see that check I gave you this afternoon," he demanded, with an
air of suspecting a good joke on himself. Jens, wondering, produced it
from a little tin box. "That's what I thought," said Wallingford as he
glanced at it. Then, smiling, he handed it back. "I have made it out on
the Fifth National of Boston. They'd probably honor it, but it's the
wrong bank. I have a balance there, but am not sure that it is
sufficient to cover this check. Just hold that, and I'll wire them in
the morning. If my balance isn't large enough I'll give you a check on
the First, with which I do most of my business."
"Sure," said Jens, and put back into the tin box the worthless paper
which called for ten thousand dollars.
The next morning Wallingford called at one of the local banks and had no
difficulty whatever in discounting the quite acceptable note. He gained
a full day by forwarding the proceeds, special delivery, to the Fifth
National Bank of Boston, where his balance at that moment was
considerably less than a hundred dollars; then he told Jensen to deposit
the check: that his balance in the Fifth National was all right.
It was financial jugglery of a shrewd order, and the juggler prided
himself upon it. He was not yet through, however. Having loaned the
company ten thousand dollars of its own money at six per cent. interest,
he was now confronted by the necessity of securing money for his own
enormous personal expenses. For replenishment, however, he had long
planned, and now he went to his new source of income--Doctor Feldmeyer.
The time was ripe, for, though Mrs. Wallingford had given him no more
encouragement than the ordinary courteous graciousness which is so often
misinterpreted by male coquettes, the doctor was aflame with foolish
imaginings, and, within the past week or so, had felt guilty upon every
meeting with Mr. Wallingford, betraying it as Wallingford had planned
that he should, growing nervous at a sharp glance, a sudden movement, an
obscure remark. He was as uncomfortable as guilty conscience ever made a
coward, and when the big man, on the plea of sudden business and
personal needs, went to him almost peremptorily for a loan of rather
staggering proportions, the doctor was an easy victim. Thus provided and
at ease, Wallingford "consented" to become the salesman for the first
output of Pneumatic Sales Recorders, going directly to a list of cities
supplied to him by Maylie; and in those cities he went to see certain
gentlemen whose names came to him from the same source! Incidentally, he
sold a number of sales recorders with a celerity that was most
gratifying to the delighted members of the company. Why, even if the
United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey did not care to buy
them out, a fortune was in sight through the legitimate manufacture and
sale of this device! Before the salesman returned from his trip,
however, a blow, entirely unexpected by Klug and his friends, fell on
them from a clear sky. An injunction and a notice of suit was served,
not only upon the company, but upon every purchaser of their
contrivance. The injunction restrained the buyers from using and the
company from manufacturing or selling any further machines, and the suit
was for infringement of patent. The device by which the drawer flew open
after the keys had been pressed, the United Sales Recording Machine
Company of New Jersey claimed to be modeled upon their own. The news was
wired to Wallingford. He had been waiting for it, and he came home at
once, where he found that Maylie had been appointed the local legal
representative of the big New Jersey concern; but as this had been a
matter of Wallingford's own contriving, he was not nearly so much
surprised over it as he might have been. He also found direst
consternation in the company's ranks, and himself shook his head sadly
when questioned, though he spoke bravely.
"What we have to do," he declared, "is to keep a stiff upper lip and
fight it."
They did so. Within a couple of months they had the suit decided in
their favor, and Carl Klug was vindicated in the eyes of his friends.
Again they were jubilant, again they prepared for an era of commercial
triumph; but on the very next day another injunction and suit were
brought, and from the very start of this proceeding delays were
encountered. The weakest case had been brought first, the stubborn one
being held back for a longer and more discouraging fight. When that was
over there would be a third suit and a fourth. With their millions of
capital and their knowledge of such matters, gleaned from vital
struggles with others who had demanded either their money or their
business life, they could continue such a fight indefinitely, or until
the Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company should be choked out of existence.
There never was a more discouraged lot of men than those who met in Carl
Klug's shop upon the day after notice of this second suit was brought.
Wallingford was the most inconsolable of all. Of course, if the others
felt like putting in any more money to fight this company with its
millions they could do so; in fact, they ought to do so, but his own
business affairs were in such shape that, at the present moment, he
could not spare a dollar. He said this in such a hesitant way, with a
five-hundred-dollar diamond gleaming from his finger and another from
his scarf, that they felt sure he had plenty of capital, but would not
risk it further in such a losing fight; and it helped them to realize
that all the capital they could command would be but as a wisp of straw
to be brushed aside by this formidable giant, which not only could crush
them, but had the disposition to do so.
Wallingford left them in this hopeless spirit, and went "back East to
look after his other business." That business took him directly to the
offices of the United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey, and
into an immediate conference with the man who had charge of all its
patent affairs.
"I have come to sell you the Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company," said
Wallingford, by way of introduction.
"The Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company?" repeated Mr. Priestly vaguely,
trying to convey the impression that the name was unfamiliar to him, and
he looked into his desk file. "Oh, yes; we have a suit pending against
them."
"Exactly," agreed his caller. "Suit number two is now pending. We won
suit number one. We will win suits number two, three, four, five and
six, if need be, but it is such a waste of money on both sides. You
might just as well buy us out now as later."
Mr. Priestly shook his head without a smile. He was almost gloomy about
it, even. He was a small man with gray mutton-chop whiskers, and
nothing could exceed his deep gravity. From another file he produced a
copy of the patent taken out by Mr. Klug, and of the one just issued to
Mr. Wallingford, assignor to Mr. King's company.
"The Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company," he stated, tossing down the
papers as if they were too trifling to examine after he had found them,
"has nothing whatever that we wish to purchase."
"Oh, yes, it has," Wallingford insisted. "It has two patents, and the
absolute certainty of a business that in three years will take trade
enough and profits enough away from you to buy the company several times
over."
Again Mr. Priestly shook his head sadly.
"We shall have to wait three years to determine that," he hinted, with
no sinister intonation whatever to go with the veiled threat. "We must
defend our very existence here every day of our lives. If we did not we
would have been put out of the business years ago."
"Exactly," again agreed the other. "In your files you have comprehensive
reports on Mr. Carl Klug, Mr. Jens Jensen, Mr. Otto Schmitt and the
others of the company. You know their small resources to a penny, and
you can figure almost to the day how long they can last. But that, Mr.
Priestly, is where you have made your error, for these men will soon be
out of the game. I have here another list about which you will not need
to collect any information, for you have it even in memory, no doubt."
He laid before Mr. Priestly a neatly-typewritten slip, containing barely
over half a dozen names. In spite of his excellent facial command, Mr.
Priestly could not repress a start of surprise, and he shot across at
Mr. Wallingford one quick little glance, which had in it much more of
respect than he had hitherto shown.
"_J. B._ Hammond," read Mr. Priestly, clutching at a straw. "The last
name is familiar, but the initials are not."
"No," agreed Wallingford. "By the terms under which he sold out to you,
Mr. W. A. Hammond is not to go into the sales recorder business at all.
Allow me to read you a letter," and from a pocketbook he took a folded
paper.
"My dear Mr. Wallingford," he read. "Under no circumstances could I
participate in the manufacture of sales recorders; but my son, Mr. J.
B. Hammond, is quite convinced that the Klug patent is both practical
and tenable, and he advises me that he is willing to invest up to two
hundred thousand dollars, provided a company of at least one million
_bona fide_ capitalization can be formed."
"It is a curious coincidence," added Wallingford, passing over this
letter with a smile, "that two hundred thousand dollars is exactly the
price you paid William Hammond for his business, after five years of
very bitter litigation. The son, no doubt, would take a keen personal
interest in regaining the losses of the father through a company that
has so excellent a chance to compete with yours. You see, a company with
a million dollars, composed of men who know all about the sales recorder
business, would set aside these suits of yours in a jiffy, because they
are untenable, and you know it, although I do not expect you to admit it
just now. Mr. Keyes, whose name is next on the list, had nothing left to
sell after losing almost a quarter of a million in fighting you, and so
is unbound. It just happens, however, that he has been left quite a
comfortable legacy, and would like nothing so much as to sink part of it
in our company. Here is the letter from Mr. Keyes," and he spread the
second document in the case before Mr. Priestly, who now laid down the
first letter and, readjusting his glasses, took up the second one in
profound silence.
Mr. Wallingford lit a cigar in calm content and waited until Mr.
Priestly had finished reading the letter of Mr. Keyes, when he produced
another one.
"Mr. Rankley," he observed, "has never been in the sales recorder
business, but he apparently has his own private and personal reasons for
wishing to engage in it," and at the mention of Mr. Rankley's name Mr.
Priestly broke the toothpick he was holding and threw it away.
Mr. Rankley, as he quite well knew, was Mr. Alexander's bitterest enemy,
and Mr. Alexander was practically the United Sales Recording Machine
Company of New Jersey. Wallingford went on down the list in calm joy. It
was composed entirely of men of means, who would put into this
enterprise not only experience and shrewd business ability, but a
particularly energetic hatred of the big corporation and its components.
"I see," said Mr. Priestly, laying down the final letter upon the
previous ones, and with great delicacy and precision placing a glass
paperweight squarely in the middle of them. "Permit me to retain these
letters for a short time. I wish to take them before our board of
directors."
"When?" asked Wallingford.
"Well, our regular monthly meeting--" began Mr. Priestly.
"No, you don't," interrupted the other. "I think a few minutes of
conversation with Mr. Alexander himself would do away entirely with the
necessity of consulting the board of directors. You think it possible, I
know, that by going directly to Mr. Klug and his friends you would be
able to purchase the patents cheaper than you can from me, but I am
quite sure I can convince Klug and his company that these gentlemen will
raise the price on you."
"Why didn't you form this new company in the first place, then?"
demanded Mr. Priestly sharply, implying a doubt. "Why do you come to us
at all!"
"Because I personally," patiently explained Wallingford, "can make more
money by quietly selling the patent to you than I personally can make by
selling it openly to them, as you will see if you reflect a moment. At
present I own a twelfth share in the company. If I induce this other
company to take hold of it I must divide the purchase price into twelve
equal shares, of which I receive but one. Is Mr. Alexander in the city?"
"I believe so," hesitated Mr. Priestly.
"Is he in his office?"
"Possibly," admitted the other.
"Oh, he's in, then," concluded Wallingford sagely. "Well, I think you
can give me my answer in an hour. I'll be down at the Hotel Vandyne. You
might telephone me. I want to go back West this evening."
It did not take Mr. Priestly and Mr. Alexander sixty minutes to conclude
that they could save a lot of money by doing business with Mr.
Wallingford, and they asked him to drive up to their office and see them
again. When they got through "dickering," Mr. Wallingford had agreed, in
writing, to deliver over to them, within sixty days, the Pneumatic Sales
Recorder Company patents, for the sum of one hundred and seventy-five
thousand dollars, the receipt of a ten-thousand-dollar advance payment
being acknowledged therewith.
Before he started West, Wallingford wired Maylie: "Note due in morning.
Advise bank on quiet to sue."