"Look here, Nat," demanded Kellogg, when they were half way through the
meal, "do you mind telling me what you're going to do?"
Duncan pondered this soberly. "No," he replied in the end.
Kellogg waited a moment, but his guest did not continue. "What does
that kind of a 'No' mean, Nat?"
"It means I don't mind telling you."
Again an appreciable pause elapsed.
"Well, then, what do you mean to do?"
"I'm sure I don't know."
Kellogg regarded him sombrely for a moment, then in silence returned
his attention to his plate; and in silence, for the most part, the
remainder of the dinner was served and eaten. Duncan himself had
certainly enough to occupy his mind, while Kellogg had altogether
forgotten his own cause for rejoicing in his concern for the fortunes
of his friend. He was entirely of the opinion that something would have
to be done for Nat, with or without his consent; and he sounded the
profoundest depths of romantic impossibilities in his attempts to
discover some employment suited to Duncan's interesting but
impracticable assortment of faculties and qualifications, natural and
acquired. But nothing presented itself as feasible in view of the fact
that employment which would prove immediately remunerative was
required. And by the time that Robbins, clearing the board, left them
alone with coffee and cigars and cigarettes, Kellogg was fain to
confess failure--though the confession was a very private one, confined
to himself only.
"Nat," he said suddenly, rousing that young man out of the dreariest of
meditations, "what under the sun _can_ you do?"
"Me? I don't know. Why bother your silly old head about that? I'll make
out somehow."
"But surely there's something you'd rather do than anything else."
"My dear sir," Duncan told him impressively, "the only walk of life in
which I am fitted to shine is that of the idle son of a rich and
foolish father. Since I lost that job I've not been worth my salt."
"That's piffle. There isn't a man living who hasn't some talent or
other, some sort of an ability concealed about his person."
"You can search me," Duncan volunteered gloomily.
His unresponsiveness irritated Kellogg; he thought a while, then
delivered himself of a didactic conclusion:
"The trouble with you is you were brought up all wrong."
"Well, I've been brought down all right. Besides, that's a platitude in
my case."
"Let's see: I've know you--er--nine years."
"Is it that long?" Duncan looked up from a gloomy inspection of the
interior of his demitasse, displaying his first gleam of interest in
this analysis of his character. "You are a long-suffering old duffer.
Any man who'd stand for me for nine years--"
"That'll be all of that," Kellogg cut in sharply. "I was going on to
say that you can't room with a man for four terms at college and then
know him, off and on, for five years more, pretty intimately, without
forming a pretty clear estimate of what he's worth in your own mind."
"And I don't mind telling you, Harry, I think you're the best little
business man as well as the finest sort of an all-round good-fellow on
this continent."
"Thanks awfully. I presume that's why you're determined to throw me
down just at the time you need me most.... What I was trying to get at
is the fact that I've never doubted your ultimate success for an
instant."
"You'd be a mighty lonesome minority in a congress of my employers,
Harry."
"Given the proper opportunity--"
"Hold on," Duncan interrupted. "I know just what you're going to say,
and it's all very fine, and I'm proud that you want to say it of me.
But you're dead wrong, Harry. The truth is I haven't got it in me--the
capacity to succeed. Just as much as you love work, I hate it. I ought
to know, for I've had a good, hard try at it--several tries, in fact.
And you know what they came to."
"But if you persist in this way, Nat,--don't you know what it means?"
"None better. It means going back to what you helped me out of--the
life that nearly killed me."
"And you'd rather--"
"I'd rather that a thousand years before I'd sponge on you another
day.... But, on the level, I'd as lieve try the East River or turn on
the gas.... What's the use? That's the way I feel."
"That's fool talk. Brace up and be a man. All you need is a way to earn
money."
"No," Duncan insisted firmly: "get it. I'll never be able to earn
it--that's a cinch."
Kellogg laughed a little mirthlessly, absorbed in revolving something
which had popped into his head within the last few moments. "There are
ways to get it," he admitted abstractedly, "if you're not too
particular."
"I'm not. I only wish I understood the burglar business."
This time Kellogg laughed outright. He sat up with a new spirit in his
manner. "You mean you'd steal to get money?"
"Oh, well ..." Duncan smiled a trace sheepishly. "I can't think of
anything hardly I wouldn't do to get it."
"Very well, my son. Now attend to uncle." Kellogg leaned across the
table, fixing him with an enthusiastic eye. "Here, have a smoke. I'm
going to demonstrate high finance to your debased intelligence." He
thrust the cigarette case over to Duncan, who helped himself
mechanically, his gaze held in wonder to Kellogg's face.
"Fire when ready," he assented.
"I know a way," said Kellogg slowly, "by which, if you'll discard a
scruple or two, you can be worth a million dollars--or
thereabouts--within a year."
Duncan held a lighted match until it singed his fingertips, the while
he stared agape. "Say that again," he requested mildly.
"You can be worth a million in a year."
"Ah!" Duncan nodded slowly and comprehendingly. He turned aside in his
chair and raked a second match across the sole of his shoe. "Let him
rave," he observed enigmatically, and began to smoke.
"No, I'm not dippy; and I'm perfectly serious."
"Of course. But what'd they do to me if I were caught?"
"This is not a joke; the proposition's perfectly legal; it's being done
right along."
"And I could do it, Harry?"
"A man of your calibre couldn't fail."
"Would you mind ringing for Robbins?" Duncan asked abruptly.
"Certainly." Kellogg pressed a button at his elbow. "What d'you want?"
"A straight-jacket and a doctor to tell which one of us needs it."
Kellogg, chagrined as he always was if joked with when expounding one
of his schemes, broke into a laugh that lasted until Robbins appeared.
"You rang, sir?"
"Yes. Put those decanters over here, and some glasses, please."
"Yes, sir."
The man obeyed and withdrew. Kellogg filled two glasses, handing one to
Duncan.
"Now be decent and listen to me, Nat. I've thought this thing over
for--oh, any amount of time. I'll bet anything it will work. What d'you
say? Would you like to try it?"
"Would I like to try it?" A conviction of Kellogg's earnestness forced
itself upon Duncan's understanding. "Would I--!" He lifted his glass
and drained it at a gulp. "Why, that's the first laugh I've had for a
month!"
"Then I'll tell you--"
Duncan placed a pleading hand on his forearm. "Don't kid me, Harry," he
entreated.
"Not a bit of it. This is straight goods. If you want to try it and
will follow the rules I lay down, I'll guarantee you'll be a rich man
inside of twelve months."
"Rules! Man, I'll follow all the rules in the world! Come on--I'm
getting palpitation of the heart, waiting. Tell it to me: what've I got
to do?"
"Marry," said Kellogg serenely.
"Marry!" Duncan echoed, aghast.
"Marry," reaffirmed the other with unbroken gravity.
"Marry--who?"
"A girl with a fortune.... You see, I can't guarantee the precise size
of her pile. That all depends on luck and the locality. But it'll run
anywhere from several hundred thousand up to a million--perhaps more."
Duncan sank back despondently. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself,
Harry," he said dully; "you had me all excited, for a minute."
"No, but honestly, I mean what I say."
"Now look here: do you really think any girl with a million would take
a chance on me?"
"She'll jump at it."
Duncan thought this over for a while. Then his lips twitched. "What's
the matter with her?" he inquired. "I'm willing to play the game as it
lies, but I bar lunatics and cripples."
"There's no particular her--yet. You can take your pick. I've no more
idea where she is than you have."
"Now I know you're stark, staring, gibbering----"
"Not a bit of it. I'm inspired--that's all. I've solved your
problem--you only can't believe it."
"How could I? What the devil are you getting at, anyhow?"
"This pet scheme of mine. Lend me your ears. Have you ever lived in a
one-horse country town--a place with one unspeakable hotel and about
twenty stores and five churches?"
"No ..."
"I have; I was born in one of 'em.... Have you any idea what becomes of
the young people of such towns?"
"Not a glimmering."
"Then I'll enlighten your egregious density. ...The boys--those who've
got the stuff in them--strike out for the cities to make their
everlasting fortunes. Generally they do it, too."
"The same as you."
"The same as me," assented Kellogg, unperturbed. "But the yaps, the
Jaspers, stay there and clerk in father's store. After office-hours
they put on their very best mail-order clothes and parade up and down
Main Street, talking loud and flirting obviously with the girls. The
girls haven't much else to do; they don't find it so easy to get away.
A few of 'em escape to boarding-schools and colleges, where they meet
and marry young men from the cities, but the majority of them have to
stay at home and help mother--that's a tradition. If there are two
children or more, the boys get the chance every time; the girls stay
home to comfort the old folks in their old age. Why, by the time
they're old enough to think of marrying--and they begin young, for
that's about the only excitement they find available--you won't find a
small country town between here and the Mississippi where there aren't
about four girls to every boy."
"It's a horrible thought ..."
"You'd think so if you knew what the boys were like. There isn't one in
ten that a girl with any sense or self-respect could force herself to
marry if she ever saw anything better. Do you begin to see my drift?"
"I do not. But go on drifting."
"No? Why, the demand for eligible males is three hundred per cent. in
excess of the supply. Don't you know--no, you don't: I got to that
first--that there are twenty times as many old maids in small country
towns as there are in the cities? It's a fact, and the reason for it is
because when they were young they couldn't lower themselves to accept
the pick of the local matrimonial market. Now, do you see--?"
"You're as interesting as a magazine serial. Please continue in your
next. I pant with anticipation."
"You're an ass.... Now take a young chap from a city, with a good
appearance, more or less a gentleman, who doesn't talk like a yap or
walk like a yap or dress like a yap or act like a yap, and throw him
into such a town long enough for the girls to get acquainted with him.
He simply can't lose, can't fail to cop out the best-looking girl with
the biggest bank-roll in town. I tell you, there's nothing to it!"
"It's wonderful to listen to you, Harry."
"I'm talking horse sense, my son. Now consider yourself: down on your
luck, don't know how to earn a decent living, refusing to accept
anything from your friends, ready (you say) to do almost anything to
get some money.... And think of the country heiresses, with plenty of
money for two, pining away in--in innocuous desuetude--hundreds of
them, fine, straight, good girls, girls you could easily fall in love
with, sighing their lives away for the lack of the likes of you....
Now, why not take one, Nat--when you come to consider it, it's your
duty--marry her and her bank-roll, make her happy, make yourself happy,
and live a contented life on the sunny side of Easy Street for the rest
of your natural born days? Can't you see it now?"
"Yes," Duncan admitted, half-persuaded of the plausibility of the
scheme. "I see--and I admire immensely the intellect that conceived the
notion, Harry. But ... I can't help thinking there must be a catch in
it somewhere."
"Not if you follow my instructions. You see, having come from just such
a hole-in-the-ground, I know just what I'm talking about. Believe me,
everything depends on the way you go about it. There are a lot of
things to contend with at first; you won't enjoy it at all, to begin
with. But I can demonstrate how it can be managed so that you'll win
out to a moral certainty."
Duncan drew a deep breath, sat back and looked Kellogg over very
critically. There was not a suspicion of a gleam of humour in his face;
to the contrary, it blazed with the ardour of the instinctive schemer,
the man who, with the ability to originate, throws himself heart and
soul into the promotion of the product of his imagination. Kellogg was
not sketching the outlines of a gigantic practical joke; he believed
implicitly in the feasibility of his project; and so strongly that he
could infuse even the less susceptible fancy of Duncan with some of his
faith.
"If I didn't know you so well, Harry," said Duncan slowly, "I'd be
certain you were mad. I'm not at all sure that I'm sane. It's raving
idiocy--and it's a pretty damned rank thing to do, to start
deliberately out to marry a woman for her money. But I've been through
a little hell of my own in my time, and--it's not alluring to
contemplate a return to it. There's nothing mad enough nor bad enough
to stop me. What've I got to do?"