Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford
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"Wait till I ask the safe," replied his antagonist, but at that moment the telephone bell just behind him rang and he turned to answer it. With almost the first words that he heard he looked at his watch and swore, and when he had hung up the receiver he turned to Wallingford briskly.
"Afraid I'll have to let you carry that bundle of kale for a while," he grudgingly admitted, "for I have to hurry over to the court or lose more than there is in sight right here. But for heaven's sake, man, remember the number and bring that back to me. I want it."
"Thanks," said J. Rufus. "If there's any left after I get through with it I'll bring it back," and he walked out, the admired of all beholders.
He headed straight for a bank, where he exchanged his crumpled money into nice, crisp, fifty-dollar bills, and then with profound satisfaction he strolled into his hotel and threw two hundred dollars in front of the manager. The circumstance, however, was worth more than money to him. It meant a renewal of his confidence. The world was once more his oyster.
That evening, just as he had finished a late dinner, a boy brought a card to him in the dining room; "Mr. Joseph O. Meers."
"Meers!" read Wallingford to his wife. "That isn't one of the men I had to lunch, and besides, none of that bunch would have an engraved card. Where is he?" he asked the boy.
"Out in the lobby, sir."
Wallingford arose and went with the boy. Sitting in one of the big chairs was the "Joe" from whom he had won the money that afternoon, and the man began to laugh as soon as he saw J. Rufus.
"So you're Wallingford!" he said, extending his hand. "No wonder I wanted to hunt you up."
"Yes?" laughed Wallingford, entirely at ease. "I had been expecting either you or a warrant."
"You can square that with a bottle of wine," offered the caller, and together they trailed in to the bar, where, in a snug little corner, they sat down. "What I came to see you about," began Meers, while they waited for the wine to be made cold, "is this cigar dealers' association that I hear you're doping up."
"Who told you?" asked Wallingford.
Mr. Meers winked.
"Never mind about that," he said. "I get it before the newspapers, and if there's a good game going count little Joseph in."
Wallingford studied this over a bit before answering. That afternoon he had decided not to invite Mr. Meers into the combination at all. He had not seemed likely material.
"I want to give you a little tip," added Mr. Meers, observing this hesitation. "No matter what the game is you need me. If I see my bit in it it goes through, but if I don't I'll bet you lose."
"The thing isn't a game at all," Wallingford soberly insisted. "It is a much needed commercial development that lets the cigar store be a real business in place of a peanut stand. What I'm going to do is to consolidate all the small shops in the city, for the purpose of buying at large-lot prices and taking cash discounts."
"That's a good play, too," agreed Meers; "but how about the details of it? How do you organize?"
"Make it a stock company," explained Wallingford, expanding largely; "incorporate as the Retail Cigar Dealers' Consolidation and issue each man stock to the value of his present business; leave each man in charge of his own shop and pay him a salary equal to his present proved clear earnings; split up the surplus profits every three months and declare dividends."
"That's the outside," commented Mr. Meers, nodding his head wisely; "but what's the inside? Show me. Understand, Mr. Wallingford, except for a little friendly gamble like we had this afternoon, I only run a game from behind the table. I do the dealing. I'm not what they call rich back in the effete East, but I'm getting along pretty well on one proposition: I always bet they don't!"
"It's a good healthy bet," admitted Wallingford; "but you want to copper it on this deal. This is a straight, legitimate proposition."
"Sure; sure," assented the other soothingly. "But where do you get in?"
"Well, I'm going to finance it. I'm going to take up some of the stock and get my quarterly dividends. I'll probably buy a few stores and put them in, and I hope to be made manager at a pretty good salary."
"I see but I don't," insisted the seeker after intimate knowledge. "That all sounds good, but it don't look fancy enough for a man that's down on the register of this hotel for suite D. If you come in to get my store in the consolidation – "
"Which I don't know whether I'll do or not," interrupted Wallingford.
"Wait and you will, though," retorted the other. "If you come into my place of business to get my store into the consolidation, I say, how do you close the deal? I suppose I sign an agreement of some sort, don't I?"
"Well, naturally, to have a safe understanding you'd have to," admitted the promoter.
"Let me see the agreement."
J. Rufus drew a long breath and chuckled.
"You're a regular insister, ain't you?" he said as he drew a carbon copy of the agreement from his pocket.
Mr. Meers read the paper over twice. The wine was brought to their table and served, but he paid no attention to the filled glass at his elbow. He was reading a certain portion of that agreement for the third and fourth time, but at last he laid it down on the chair beside him and solemnly tilted his hat to Mr. Wallingford.
"You're an honor to your family," he announced. "I didn't suppose there were any more games left, but you've sprung a new one and it's a peach!"
Wallingford strove to look magnificently unaware of what he meant, but the attempt was a failure.
"The scheme is so smooth," went on Mr. Meers with a heartfelt appreciation, "that it strained my eyesight to find the little joker; but now I can tell you all about it. It's in the transfer of the stock, and here's what you do. The consolidation buys my place for, say, five thousand dollars, and gives me five thousand dollars' worth of stock in the consolidation for it. That's what this paper seems to say, but that's not what happens. It's you that buys my place for five thousand dollars and gives me five thousand dollars' worth of stock in the consolidation for it, and you, being then the temporary owner through a fake trusteeship, turn around and sell my business to the consolidation, the management of which is in your flipper through a board of dummy directors, for ten thousand dollars; and you have our iron-clad contract to let you do this, though it don't say so! When you get through you have consolidated a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of business into a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar stock company, and you have a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of stock which didn't cost you a cent! Say! Have this wine on me. I insist! I want to buy you something!"
Slowly Mr. Wallingford's shoulders began to heave and his face to turn red, and presently he broke into a series of chuckles that expanded to a guffaw.
"I don't see how I ever won that five hundred from you this afternoon," he observed, and shook again.
"The pleasure is all mine," said the loser politely. "Now I'm sorry it wasn't a thousand. You're worth the money and I'm glad I came to see you. Count me in on the Retail Cigar Dealers' Consolidation."
"All right, sign the paper," said Wallingford with another chuckle.
"Watch me sign it not," said Meers. "I'm too patriotic. I'm so patriotic that I hate to see all this good money go to a stranger, so I'm going to take sixty-two and one half thousand dollars' worth of that free stock myself. I declare myself in. You hear me?"
By the time Mr. Meers was through talking Wallingford was delighted so far as surface went, though he was already doing some intense figuring.
"I don't know but that it's a good thing you came to see me," he admitted. "However, I hope it don't strike you that I intend to give you half a nice ripe peach without a good reason for it. What do I get for letting you in?"
"That's a fair question. I guess you noticed that if we want to cut a melon or open a keg of nails over in my place we don't go down in the cellar?"
"I certainly did," admitted the big man with a grin.
"Well, that's it. I'm permanent alderman from the fifth ward, and every time they hold an election they come and ask me whether I want it served with mushrooms or tomato sauce. The job has belonged to me ever since I was old enough to lie about my age. What I say goes in the privilege line, and I guess a mere child could figure out what that privilege would be worth to the Retail Cigar Dealers' Consolidation; the dice box privilege; the back room privilege with a nice little poker game going on twenty-four hours a day; faro if I want it. Besides, I'm coming in just because. Why, I'm the man that stopped the ping pong game in this town so I could have a monopoly of it!"
"How soon can you be ready to incorporate?" asked Wallingford, satisfied to all external appearances; for this man could stop him. "To-morrow?"
"To-night, if you say so."
Wallingford laughed.
"It won't spoil over night," he said; "but there's just one thing I want to know. Is there anybody else to cut in on this?"
In reply, Mr. Meers slowly drew down the under lid of his right eye to show that there was no green in it, and when they parted an hour or so later it was with mutual, even hilarious expressions of good will. Immediately thereafter, however, Wallingford retired within himself and spent long, long hours in thought.
CHAPTER XXVIII
WHEREIN MR. WALLINGFORD JOINS THE LARGEST CLUB IN THE WORLD
The name of Meers was magic. It is quite probable that the magnetic Wallingford would have been able to carry through his proposed consolidation alone; but with the fifth ward alderman to back him his work was easy. A few of the small dealers were afraid of Meers, but they were also afraid to stay out; for the most part, however, they were glad to enter into any combination with him, particularly since it was tacitly understood that this would open up to them the much coveted "ping pong" privilege, an attraction which not only increased the sale of goods but gave an additional hundred per cent. of profit.
The first steps in the incorporation were taken the next day after the interview of Wallingford and Meers, and within a few days the Retail Cigar Dealers' Consolidation was formally effected, even to the trifling little mummeries which covered the state's requirement of a certain percentage of "fully paid up stock." Wallingford's share of the initial expense was one hundred dollars, but he had no mind to give up any of his precious pocket money at this time.
"Suppose you just pay the whole bill yourself, and let us pay you," he suggested in an offhand way to Meers. "It looks so much better all in one lump."
Of course, Mr. Meers was agreeable to this eminently respectable suggestion; but when Wallingford handed over his own check it was dated a week ahead.
"If this won't do you I'll have to give up some cash," he explained with an easy laugh. "I'm having some securities negotiated back East to open an account here, and it may take three or four days to have it arranged."
Meers heard him with a curious smile.
"I beat a pleasant stranger's head off once for putting up a line of talk like that," he commented; "but, of course, this is different," and he took the check.
He had become an enthusiastic admirer of Wallingford's undoubted genius, and at nothing was he more amused than by the caliber of the three other incorporators who had been chosen. Stock valuations were at once made for these three, at an exaggerated estimate of the value of their concerns, and when they came to Meers himself the same plan was followed.
"For," said Wallingford, "to make this strong you have to come in just like the rest, and I have to take up the balance of the stock right now as trustee."
Meers balked a trifle at that.
"I never feel so cheerful as when I'm my own stakeholder," he stated frankly. "When I hold all the coin it's a cinch I'll get mine, but when somebody else holds it I keep trained down for a foot race."
"Fix it any way to suit yourself," offered Wallingford with a carelessness that he was far from feeling. "If you can figure out a better stunt, show it to me."
Mr. Meers tried earnestly to think of a better plan but was forced to concede that there was none.
"Oh, well," he gave in at last, "it don't matter. It's only for a week or so I'll have to rub salve on my fingers to cure that itch."
"Certainly," Wallingford assured him. "It won't take more than a week, after we get the stock certificates from the printers, to make all the transfers, and then we'll have from a hundred and twenty to a hundred and forty thousand dollars' worth to split up. If we can't make that yield us five or six thousand a year apiece, aside from salaries, the buying and manufacturing grafts and other rake-offs, we ought to have guardians appointed."
"Fine business," agreed Meers complacently.
That complacency, which meant forgetfulness of the fact that all the stock would be temporarily in Wallingford's hands and under his absolute legal mastery, was what J. Rufus wished to encourage, and to that end he arranged for "secret" meetings of the Retail Cigar Dealers during the constructive period. Here the promoter was at his best. Singly, his big impressiveness dominated men; in masses, he swayed them. Enthusiasm was raised to fever heat. Even the smallest among these men grew large. Individually they were poor; collectively they were rich. Outside the consolidation not one of them amounted to much; inside it each one was a part of a millionaire! In the business of cigar selling a new era had come, and its name was Wallingford! By the close of the second meeting, scarcely a small dealer in the town but had signed the cleverly worded agreement.
It was while the stock certificates were being printed that Wallingford, who almost lived in the resplendent carriage these days, drove up to Ed Nickel's place of business, at a time when both the flabby solitaire player and the apathetic watcher had gone out to whatever mysterious place it was that they secured food.
"I say, Mr. Vice President," asked Wallingford, addressing the amazingly spruced up Mr. Nickel quite as an equal, "do you know where I could buy a nice house? One for about fifteen thousand?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," regretted Nickel, pleased to be taken thus into the great Wallingford's intimacy, "but there ought to be plenty of them. I wish I could figure on a house like that."
"Stick to me and see what happens to you," advised Wallingford with no thought of the joke he was uttering. "There's no reason you shouldn't have anything you want if you just go after the big game. Watch me."
"But you've got money," protested the Vice President.
"Did I always have it?" demanded the eminent financier. "Every cent I have, Mr. Nickel, I made myself; and you can do the same. The trouble is, you don't go in big enough. You have only a thousand dollars worth of stock in our consolidation, for instance. You ought to have at least ten thousand."
"I haven't the money," said Nickel.
"How much have you?"
"Just a shade over five thousand. Say, man, I'm forty-six years old and I been slavin' like a dog ever since I was sixteen. Thirty years it took me to scrape that five thousand together."
"Saved it!" snorted Wallingford. "No wonder you haven't but five thousand. You can't make money that way. You have to invest. Do you suppose Rockefeller saved his first million? Tell you what I'll do, Nickel. Can you keep a secret?"
"Sure," asserted Mr. Nickel, with the eagerness of one who has never been entrusted with a secret of consequence.
"If you want it and will pay for it on delivery next Saturday, I can scheme it for you to take up an extra five thousand dollars' worth of stock in the consolidation; but if I do you must not say one word about it to any one until after everything is settled, or some of these other fellows will be jealous. There's Meers, for instance. He's crazy right now to take over every share of the surplus, but, between you and I, we don't want him to have such a big finger in the pie."
"I should say not," agreed Mr. Nickel emphatically. "He's too big as it is. Why, he pretty near runs this town."
"He can't run the consolidation; I'll tell him that!" declared Mr. Wallingford with much apparent heat. "It's my project and I'll favor whoever I want to. But about this stock, old man. You think it over, and if you want it let me know by not later than to-day noon. If it isn't spoken for by that time I'll take it myself; but remember, not one word!"
Mr. Nickel promised, on his honor as a man and his self-interest as a favored stockholder, to say nothing, and Wallingford started out. At the door he turned back, however.
"By the way," said he, "when we get going I've made up my mind to push the Nickelfine and the Double Nickel brands. I've been trying those two boxes you gave me and they're great. But don't say anything. Jealousy, you know!"
Mr. Nickel put his finger to his lips and smiled and bowed significantly. Fine man, that Wallingford! Knew a good thing when he saw it, and easy as an old shoe in spite of all his money. Regular howling swell, too.
The regular howling swell was at that very moment on his rubber-tired way to the shop of Alfred Norton, where he made a similar proposition to the one he had made Nickel. In all his manipulating he had kept careful track of the gentlemen who had or who might have money, and now he made it his business to visit each of them in turn, to talk additional stock with them and bind them to inviolate secrecy. For three days he kept this up, and on Friday evening was able to mop his brow in content.
"Fanny," he opined, "you have a smart husband."
"That's the only fault I have to find with you, Jim," she retorted smiling. "What have you done this time?"
"I've just tapped Mr. Joseph O. Meers on the solar plexus," he exulted. "I'll show that gentleman how to horn into my game and take the rake-off that's coming to a real artist! He's dreaming happy dreams just now, but when I leave town with the mezuma he'll wake up."
"I thought you were going to stay here," she objected with a troubled frown.
He understood her at once, and reached over to stroke her hair.
"Never mind, girl," he said. "I'm as anxious now as you are to settle down," and he glanced at the fluffy white sewing in her lap; "but this isn't the town. I had a nice clean business planned here, but the village grafter tried to jiu-jitsu me, so I just naturally had to jolt him one. I'll clean up about a hundred thousand to-morrow, and with that I'll go anywhere you say and into any business you pick out. Suppose we go back to Battlesburg, clear off that mortgage on your house and settle down there?"
"Oh, will you?" she asked eagerly. "But who loses this money, Jim?" she suddenly wanted to know. "I'm more particular than ever about it just now. I don't want to take a dollar that isn't right."
Again he understood.
"Don't worry about that," he replied seriously. "This money is legitimate water that I am sopping up out of a reorganization, just like a Harriman or a Morgan. The drag-down I get is simply my pay as promoter and organizer, and is no bigger percentage than other promoters take when they get a chance."
He had never taken so much pains to justify himself in her eyes, and she felt that this was due to a new tenderness. What if the wonderful influence that was dawning upon their lives should make a permanent change in him?
There came a knock at the door. Wallingford opened it and was confronted by a tall and stoutly built gentleman, who wore a blue helmet and numerous brass buttons upon his clothes.
"Mr. Wallingford," said the caller, with a laborious wink and a broad brogue, "could ye step across to the Court House wid me a few minutes and sign them papers?" and when Wallingford had stepped outside, he added: "'Twas on account of the lady I told ye that, but on the level, I'm after arrestin' yez!"
"What's the charge?" asked Wallingford with a tolerant smile, knowing his entire innocence of wrong.
"Obtainin' money under false pretenses."
Wallingford whistled, and, still unworried, excused himself for a moment. His statement to his wife was characteristic.
"I'll be back in about an hour," he said, "but I don't feel safe with so much wealth in my clothes when I'm out with a policeman," and with a laugh he tossed into her lap practically all the money that he had – an even fifty dollars.
Of course Wallingford sent immediately for Joseph O. Meers, and that gentleman came at once.
"Lovely place to find your old college chum," the prisoner cheerfully remarked. "I wish you'd go find out what this charge is all about and get me out of this, Meers. It might hurt the consolidation if it becomes known. There's a mistake some place."
"Oh, is there?" Mr. Meers wanted to know. "I'll bet there ain't a mistake, because I'm the baby that secured the warrant, and I'm going to send you over. Tried to double cross me, didn't you?" he asked pleasantly. "Well, it can't be done. Any grafter that tries to hand me the worst of it is going to find himself sucking at the sour end of a lemon, – quick. So I was to be the mark, eh? Just because there wasn't a paper signed between us to show that I was entitled to half that surplus stock, you was going to sell the bunch of it and make a quick get-away. I was to be the fall guy for that nice little futurity check, too! You remember that little old hundred, don't you? Well, it got you. I was hep to you day before yesterday, but your date didn't run out on that check till to-day, so I waited; and I'm going to send you over the road for as long a stretch as a good lawyer can hand you. Now stay here and rot!" and Joseph O. Meers, highly pleased with himself, walked out.
Jail! Mr. J. Rufus Wallingford, to whom tufted carpets and soft leather chairs were not luxuries but necessities, looked around him with the nearest substitute for a "game" grin that he could muster, and the prophetic words of Blackie Daw occurred to him:
"Our turn's next!"
"It's a fine joke I played on myself," he mused. "Me that a few weeks ago had a million in sight and that two hours ago had a hundred thousand cinched for to-morrow, to lose out like this; and for a hundred dollars!"
That was the rub! To think that after all these years, during which he had conducted his pleasant and legally safe financial recreations with other people's money upon a scale large enough to live like a gentleman, his first introduction to a jail should be because of a miserable, contemptible hundred dollars! Why had he forgotten that check? Why had he been fool enough to think he could swear a lot of spineless jelly fish to secrecy? Why hadn't he been content with half? It served him right, he admitted, and unless Meers relented, the penitentiary yawned its ugly mouth very close to him. At any rate, he was now a full-fledged member of the largest organization in the world – the Down and Out Club. It was queer that in all this thought there came no trace of regret for what he had done; there came only regret for the consequences, only self-revilement that he had "overlooked a bet." His "conscience" did not reproach him at all, except for failure; for, monstrous as it may seem, to his own mind he had done no wrong! Nor had he meant any wrong! With no sense of moral obligation whatever – and no more to be blamed for that than another man is for being born hunchbacked – he merely looked upon himself as smarter than most men, doing just what they would have done had they been blessed with the ability. Only at last he had been unfortunate! Well, the joke was on him, and he must be a good loser.
The humor of the situation rather wore off when, after a night upon a hard pallet and a breakfast of dry bread and weak coffee, he sent a message to Ed Nickel and learned from that indignantly virtuous citizen that he would have nothing to do with swindlers! Then he sent word to his wife and the answer he got to that message was the last straw. Mrs. Wallingford had quitted the hotel early that morning! He was sure of her, however. She would turn up again in her own good time, but what could she do? Nothing! For the first time in his life, the man who had never thought to have need of a friend outside a few moral defectives of his own class, realized what it is to be absolutely friendless. There was no one left in all this wide world upon whom he could make any demand of loyalty. Blackie Daw a fugitive, Billy Riggs a convict, all the old clan scattered far and wide, either paying their penalty, or, having transgressed the law, fleeing from it, the universe had come to an end.