Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford
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"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."
CHAPTER IX
MR. WALLINGFORD SHOWS MR. CLOVER HOW TO DO THE WIDOWS AND ORPHANS GOOD
Mrs. Bishop, a small, nervous-looking woman of forty-five, with her thin hair drawn back so tightly from her narrow forehead that it gave one the headache to look at her, was in her dismal "front room" with her wrinkled red hands folded in her lap when Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Clover called. It was only the day after the funeral, and she broke into tears the moment they introduced themselves.
"Madam," declaimed Mr. Clover in his deepest and most sympathetic voice, "it is the blessed privilege of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands to dry the tears of the widows and orphans, and to shed the light of hope upon their disconsolate pathway. It is our pleasure to bring you, as a testimonial of your husband's affection and loving care, this check for one thousand dollars."
Mrs. Bishop took the check and burst into uncontrollable sobs, whereat Mr. Wallingford looked distinctly annoyed. If he could help it, he never, by any possibility, looked upon other than the most cheerful aspects of life.
Mr. Clover cleared his throat.
"But the broad paternal interest of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands does not stop here," he went on, turning for a glance of earned approval from J. Rufus Wallingford. "The family of every member of our Order becomes at once a ward of ours, and they may look to us for assistance, advice, and benefit in every way possible. We are a group of friends, banded together for mutual aid in time of trouble and sorrow."
Mr. Wallingford judged this magnificent flight to be a quotation from the ritual of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands, and he was correct; but, as Mrs. Bishop had ventured to look up at them, he nodded his head gravely.
"It is about that thousand dollars you hold in your hand, Mrs. Bishop," Clover continued, resuming his oratorical version of the lesson he had carefully learned from Wallingford; "and we feel it our duty to remind you that, unless it is wisely used, the plans of your thoughtful husband for your safe future will not have been carried out. How had you thought of investing this neat little sum?"
Mrs. Bishop gazed at the check through her tears and tried to comprehend that it was real money, as it would have been but for the astuteness of Mr. Wallingford. Mr. Clover had proposed to bring her ten new, crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, but his monitor had pointed out that if she ever got that money between her fingers and felt it crinkle she would never let go of it. A check was so different.
"Well," she faltered, "my daughter Minnie wanted me to get us some clothes and pay some down on a piano and lay in the winter coal and provisions and put the rest in a bank for a rainy day. Minnie's my youngest. She's just quit the High School because she wants to go to a commercial college. But my oldest daughter, Hattie, wouldn't hear to it. She says if Minnie'll only take a job in the store where she works they can run the family, and for me to take this thousand dollars and finish paying off the mortgage on the house with it. The mortgage costs six per cent. a year."
"Your daughter Hattie is a very sensible young lady," said Mr. Wallingford with great gravity. "It would be folly to expend this thousand dollars upon personal luxuries; but equally wrong to lose its earning power."
It was the voice of Wall Street, of the Government Mint, of the very soul and spirit of all financial wisdom, that spoke here, and Mrs. Bishop felt it with a thrill.
"Madam," orated Mr. Clover, "the Noble Order of Friendly Hands has provided a way for the safe and profitable investment of the funds left to the widows and orphans under its protection. It has set aside a certain amount of high-dividend-bearing stock in the Order itself, or rather in its operating department, of which, by the way, I am the president, and of which the eminent capitalist and philanthropist, Mr. J. Rufus Wallingford, is a leading spirit." His sweeping gesture toward that benevolent multi-millionaire, and Mr. Wallingford's bow in return, were sights worth beholding. "The benevolent gentlemen who organized this generous association have just made possible this further beneficence to its dependents. The stock should pay you not less than twelve per cent. a year, and your original capital can be withdrawn at any time. With this income you can pay the interest on your mortgage, and have a tidy little sum left at the end of each quarter. Think of it, madam! Money every three months, and your thousand dollars always there!"
Mrs. Bishop glanced at him in slow comprehension. The figures that he gave her did not, as yet, mean so much, but the sight of Mr. Wallingford did. He was so big, so solid looking, so much like substantial prosperity itself. A huge diamond glowed from his finger. It must be worth several hundred dollars. Another one gleamed from his scarf. His clothing was of the latest cut and the finest material. Even his socks, in the narrow rim which showed above his low-cut shoes, were silk; she could see that clear across the room.
The door opened, and a girl of seventeen or eighteen came in. That she was unusually pretty was attested by the suddenly widening eyes of Mr. Wallingford.
"And is this your daughter Minnie?" asked the benevolent gentleman, all his protecting and fostering instincts aroused.
Mrs. Bishop, in a flutter, presented her younger daughter to the fortune-bringing gentlemen, and Minnie fluttered a bit on her own account. She knew she was pretty; she read in the eyes of the wealthy-looking, perfectly groomed Mr. Wallingford that she was pretty; she saw in the smile of Mr. Clover that she was pretty, and her vanity was pleased inordinately.
A sudden brilliant idea came to Mr. Wallingford.
"I have the solution to your problem, Mrs. Bishop," he said. "We shall need more help in our offices, and your daughter shall have the place. She can soon earn more money than she ever could in a store, and can secure as good a training as she could in a business college. How would you like that, Miss Bishop?"
"I think it would be fine," replied the young lady, with a large-eyed glance toward Mr. Wallingford.
The glance was more of habit than intent. Minnie's mirror and what she had heard from her boy friends had given her an impulse toward coquetry. It was pleasant to feel her power, to see what instantaneous impression she could make upon grown men. Such a friendly party it was! Everybody was pleased, and in the end Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Clover walked away from the house with Mrs. Bishop's check and her receipt and her policy in their pockets.
Mr. Clover was lost in profound admiration.
"It worked, all right!" he said exultantly to Mr. Neil, as soon as they returned to the dingy little office. "Here's the thousand dollars," and he threw down the check. "Good Lord! I couldn't believe but that thousand was gone; and then if another man died he would put us on the toboggan."
Mr. Neil was a thin young man whose forehead wore the perpetual frown of slow thought. Also his cuffs were ragged. He was the Supreme Exalted Secretary.
"Now may I have fifty?" he inquired in an aside to Clover. "My board bill, you know."
"Certainly not!" declared the Supreme Exalted Ruler with loud rectitude. "This thousand dollars belongs in the insurance reserve fund."
"Tut, tut," interposed Wallingford. "Your alarm clock is out of order. You just now paid a death claim with that money, and the reserve fund is out that much. A private individual, however, just now bought a thousand dollars' worth of stock in the reorganized Friendly Hands Trust Company, and you have the pay in advance. Let Mr. Neil have his fifty dollars, and give me a check for my two hundred and fifty; then we'll go out to hunt a decent suite of offices and buy the furniture for it."
"There wouldn't be much of the thousand left after that," objected Mr. Clover, frowning.
"Why not? You don't suppose we are going to pay cash for anything, do you?" returned Wallingford in surprise. "My credit's good, if yours isn't."
His credit! He had not been in town four hours! As Mr. Clover looked him over again, however, he saw where he was wrong. Mr. Wallingford's mere appearance was as good as a bond. He would not ask for credit; he would take it. Mr. Clover, in a quick analysis of this thought, decided that this rich man's resources were so vast that they shone through his very bearing. Mr. Wallingford, at that same moment, after having paid his enormous hotel bill in New York and the expenses of his luxurious trip, had only ten dollars in the world.
"Now then," suggested Mr. Clover as he passed the hypnotically won check to his new partner, "we might as well conclude our personal business. I'll make you over half my stock in the company, and take your two thousand."
"All right," agreed Wallingford very cheerfully, and they both sat down to write.
Mr. Clover transferred to Mr. Wallingford forty-three shares of stock in the Friendly Hands Trust Company, Incorporated, and received a rectangular slip of paper in return. His face reddened as he examined it.
"Why, this isn't a check!" he said sharply. "It's a note for ninety days!"
"Sure!" said J. Rufus Wallingford. "In our talk there wasn't a word said about cash."
"But cash is what I want, and nothing but cash!" exploded the other, smacking his hairy fist upon his desk.
"How foolish!" chided J. Rufus smilingly. "I see I'll have to teach you a lot about business. Draw up your chairs and get my plan in detail. If, after that, Clover, you do not want my note, you may give it back and go broke in your own way. Here's what we will do. We will organize a new operating company for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in twenty-five-dollar shares. We will buy over the old ten-thousand-dollar company for one hundred and fifty thousand in stock of the new company. Dividing this pro rata, you and I, Clover, will each have nearly twenty-six hundred shares. Mr. Neil, in place of his present ten shares, will have six hundred, and we shall have left four thousand shares of treasury stock. These we will sell among your members. We will reduce your present insurance rate one fourth, and use the hundred thousand dollars we take in on stock sales to get new members to whom to sell more stock. In the meantime, we'll see money every day. You and I, Clover, will each draw a hundred a week, and I think Mr. Neil will be pretty well satisfied if he drags down fifty."
The pleased expression upon Mr. Neil's face struggled with the deepening creases on his brow. Fifteen dollars a week was the most he had ever earned in his life, but he was so full of fraternal insurance figures that his skin prickled.
"But how about the insurance end of it?" he interposed. "How will we ever keep up at that ridiculously low rate? That might do for a while, but as our membership becomes older the death rate will increase on us and we can't pay it. Why, the mortality tables – " and he reached for the inevitable facts and figures.
"Who's talking about insurance?" demanded Wallingford. "I'm talking about how to get money. Put up the little red dope-book. Clover, you get busy right away and write a lot of circus literature about the grand work your members will be doing for the widows and orphans by buying this stock; also how much dividend it will pay them. When the treasury stock is sold, and we have a big enough organization to absorb it, we will begin to unload our own shares and get out. If you clean up your sixty-four thousand dollars in this year, I guess you will be willing to let the stockholders elect new officers and conduct their own Friendly Hands Trust Company any way they please, won't you?"
Mr. Clover quietly folded Mr. Wallingford's note and put it in his pocket.
"Let's go out and rent some new offices," he said.
He came back, at Mr. Neil's call, to write out that fifty-dollar check, and incidentally made out one for himself in a like amount.
"What do you think of him, anyhow?" asked Neil with a troubled countenance.
"Think of him?" repeated Clover with enthusiasm. "He's the greatest ever! If I had known him five years ago I'd be worth a million to-day!"
"But is this scheme on the level?" asked Neil.