Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford

CHAPTER XIII

MR. WALLINGFORD OFFERS UNLIMITED FINANCIAL BACKING TO A NEW ENTERPRISE

The hotel at which Mr. Wallingford had elected to stop was only four blocks from the depot, but he rode there in a cab, and, having grandly emerged after a soul-warming handshake with Mr. Klug, paid liberally to have his friend the inventor taken to his destination. His next step, after being shown to one of the best suites in the house, was to telephone for a certain lawyer whose address he carried in his notebook, and the next to make himself richly comfortable after the manner of his kind. When the lawyer arrived, he found Wallingford, in lounging jacket and slippers and in fresh linen, enjoying an appetizer of Roquefort and champagne by way of resting from the fatigue of his journey. He was a brisk young man, was the lawyer, with his keen eyes set so close together that one praised Nature's care in having inserted such a hard, sharp wedge of nose to keep them apart. He cast a somewhat lingering glance at the champagne as he sat down, but he steadfastly refused Mr. Wallingford's proffer of a share in it.

"Not in business hours," he said, with over-disdain of such weak indulgence. "In the evening some time, possibly," and he bowed his head with a thin-lipped smile to complete the sentence.

"All right," acquiesced J. Rufus; "maybe you will smoke then," and he pointed to cigars.

One of them Mr. Maylie took, and Wallingford was silent until he had lit it.

"How is this town?" he then asked. "Is the treasury full, or are the smart people in power?"

The young man laughed, and, with a complete change of manner, drew his chair up to the table with a jerk.

"Say; you're all right!" he admiringly exclaimed, and – shoved forward the extra glass. "They're in debt here up to their ears."

"Then they'd rather have the bail than the man," Wallingford guessed, as he performed the part of host with a practiced hand.

"Which would you rather have?" asked Maylie, pausing with the glass drawn half way toward him.

"The man."

"Then everybody's satisfied," announced the lawyer. "If the authorities once get hold of that five thousand dollars cash bail and the man leaves town, they'll post police at every train to warn him away if he ever comes back."

"That's what I thought when I looked at the streets. You can even get the bond reduced."

"I don't know," replied the other, shaking his head doubtfully. "I've tried it."

"But you didn't go to them with the cash in your hand," Wallingford smilingly reminded him, and from an envelope in his inside vest pocket he produced a bundle of large bills. "This is a purchase, understand, and it's worth while to do a little dickering. Hurry, and bring the goods back with you."

"Watch me," said Mr. Maylie, taking the money with alacrity, but before he went out he hastily swallowed another glass of wine.

He was gone about an hour, during which his distinguished client was absorbed in drawing sketch after sketch upon nice, clean sheets of hotel stationery; and every sketch bore a strong resemblance to some part of Mr. Klug's pneumatic sales recording device. Mr. Wallingford was very busy indeed over the problem of selling Mr. Klug's patent.

"Come in," he called heartily in answer to a knock at the door.

It opened and the voice of Mr. Maylie announced: "Here's the goods, all right." And he ushered in a tall, woe-begone gentleman, who, except for the untidiness of black mustache and hair, and the startlingly wrinkled and rusty condition of the black frock suit, bore strong resemblance to a certain expert collector and disseminator of foolish money – one "Blackie" Daw!

Mr. Wallingford, who, in his creative enthusiasm, had shed his lounging coat and waistcoat, and had even rolled up his shirt sleeves, lay back in his chair and laughed until he shook like a bowl of jelly. Mr. Daw, erstwhile the dapper Mr. Daw, had gloomily advanced to shake hands, but now suddenly burst forth in a volley of language so fervid that Mr. Maylie hastily closed the door. His large friend, with the tears streaming down his face, thereupon laughed all the more, but he managed to call attention to a frost-covered silver pail which awaited this moment, and while Mr. Daw pounced upon that solace, Mr. Maylie, smiling unobtrusively as one who must enjoy a joke from the outside, proceeded to business.

"I got him for four thousand," he informed Mr. Wallingford and laid down a five-hundred-dollar bill. The remainder, in hundreds, he counted off one at a time, more slowly with each one, and when there were but two left in his hand Mr. Wallingford picked up the others and stuffed them in his pocket.

"That will about square us, I guess," he observed.

"Certainly; and thank you. Now, if there's anything else – "

"Not a thing – just now."

"Very well, sir," said Mr. Maylie with a glance at the enticing hollow-stemmed glasses; but it was quite evident that this was a private bottle, and he edged himself out of the door, disappearing with much the effect of a sharp knife blade being closed back into its handle.

Mr. Daw had tossed three bumpers of the champagne down his throat without stopping to taste them, and without setting down the bottle. Now he poured one for Mr. Wallingford.

"Laugh, confound you; laugh!" he snarled. "Maybe I look like the original comic supplement, but I don't feel like a joke. Think of it, J. Rufus! Four days in an infernal cement tomb, with exactly seventeen iron bars in front of me! I counted them twenty hours a day, and I know. Seven-teen!"

He glanced down over his creased and wrinkled and rusty clothing with a shudder, and suddenly began to tear them off, not stopping until he had divested himself of coat, vest and trousers, which he flung upon a chair. Then he rushed to the telephone, ridiculously gaunt in his unsheathed state, and ordered a valet and a barber.

"Give me one of those hundreds, Jim, quick! I want it in my hand. Maybe I'll believe it's real money after a while."

Mr. Wallingford chuckled again as he passed over one of the crisp bills. "Cheer up, Blackie," he admonished his friend. "See how calm I am. Have a smoke."

Mr. Daw seized eagerly upon one of the cigars that were proffered him; but he was still too much perturbed to sit down, and stalked violently about the room like a huge pair of white tongs.

"I notice you turn every seven feet," observed Wallingford with a grin. "That must have been the size of your cell. Well, you never know your luck. Why, out here, Blackie, your occupation is called swindling, and it's a wonder they didn't hang you. You see, in these harvest festival towns there's not a yap over twenty-five who hasn't been fanged on a fake gold mine or something of the sort, and when twelve of these born boobs get a happy chance at a vaselined gold brick artist like you, nothing will suit them but a verdict of murder in the first degree."

Mr. Daw merely swore. The events of the past four days had dampened him so that he was utterly incapable of defense. There was a knock at the door. In view of his déshabillé the lank one retreated to the other room, but when the caller proved to be only the valet, he came prancing out with his clothes upon his arm. "I want these back in half an hour," he demanded, "and have this bill changed into money I can understand. I feel better already," he added when the valet had gone. "I've ordered somebody to do something, and he stood for it."

Wallingford brought from his closet a bath-robe in which Mr. Daw could wrap himself two or three times, and continued his lecture.

"It's too bad you don't understand your profession," he went on, still amused. "Sometimes I think I'll buy you another acre of Arizona sand and start a new mining company with you, just to show you how the stock can be sold safely and legally."

For the first time Mr. Daw was able to grin.

"Who's that clattering down the street?" he exclaimed with fine dramatic effect. "Why, it's me! Notice how my coat tails snap as I top yon distant hill. See how pale my face as I turn to see if I am still pursued. Oh, no, J. Rufus. We've been friends too long. I'd hate to think of us losing sleep every night, trying to figure how to give each other the double cross."

"I got you at a bargain just now, and I ought to be able to sell you cheap," retorted the other. "By the way, it's a mighty lucky thing for you that Fanny had some money soaked away from that insurance deal of mine. I had to all but use a club to get it, too. She don't think very much of you. She thinks you might lead me astray some time."

"Can limburger smell worse?" growled Mr. Daw, but there he stopped. Four days in jail had taken a lot of his gift of repartee away. When barber and bootblack and valet had restored him to his well-groomed ministerial aspect, however, his saturnine sense of humor came back and he was able to enjoy the elaborate midday luncheon which his host had served in the room.

"Amuse yourself, Blackie," invited Wallingford after luncheon. "Get orey-eyed if you want to, and don't mind me, for I'm laying the wires to locate here."

"Don't!" advised his friend. "This is a poison town. Every dollar has a tag on it, and if you touch one they examine the thumb marks and pinch you."

"Not me! My legitimate methods will excite both awe and admiration." And he set to work again.

Not caring to show himself in daylight, Mr. Daw read papers and took naps and drank and smoked until his midnight train; but, no matter what he did, Mr. Wallingford sat steadily at the little desk, sketching, sketching, sketching. Along about closing time he went down to make friends with the bartender, and before he went to bed he had secured an unused sales recording machine which was kept on hand for use during conventions, and this he had taken up to his rooms for leisurely study and comparison. In the morning he drove out to Carl Klug's clean little model making shop in the outskirts of the town, and here he found an interested group gathered about the pneumatic device that he had seen the day before. On a bench lay the patent – a real United States Government patent with a seal and a ribbon on it!

"Different from all the four hundred and twelve patents, every place!" Mr. Klug had just a shade pompously reiterated before Wallingford came.

"So-o-o-o!" commented big Otto Schmitt, the market gardener, as he pushed down the dollar key and then the forty-five-cent key with a huge, earth-brown finger that spread out on the end like a flat club. "And how much does it cost to make it?"

"Not twenty-five dollars apiece," claimed Carl; "and the United Sales Recording Machine Company sells them for two and three hundred dollars. We can sell these for one hundred, and when we get a good business they must buy us out or we take all their trade away from them. That's the way to sell a patent. Because they don't do this way is why inventors never get rich."

"Sure!" agreed Henry Vogel, the lean, rawboned carpenter. "When they buy us out, that's where we make our money."

"Sure!" echoed Carl, and the three of them laughed. It was such a pleasant idea that they would be able to wrest some of its hoarded thousands from a big monopoly.

"It is a good business," went on Carl. "When I showed this machine to this Mr. Wallingford I told you about, he said right away he would come in. He is one of these Eastern money fellows, and they are all smart men."

Over in the corner sat Jens Jensen, with a hundred shrewd wrinkles in his face and a fringe of wiry beard around his chin from ear to ear. Up to now he had not said a word. He was a next door neighbor to Carl, and he had seen the great patent over and over.

"It is foolishness," declared Jens. "He is a skinner, maybe; and, anyhow, if there's money to be made we should keep it at home."

Big Otto Schmitt pushed down the two-dollar key. The dollar ticket and the forty-five-cent ticket disappeared, the two-dollar ticket came up with a click, the drawer popped open and a little bell rang. It was wonderful.

"I say it too," agreed Otto. His face was broad and hard as granite, his cheekbones were enormous and the skin over them was purple.

The four men were near the front windows of the shop, and it was at this moment that Wallingford's cab whirled up to the door. It was a new looking cab, its woodwork polished like a piano, the glass in it beveled plate. The driver sprang down and opened the door. Out of that small opening stepped the huge promoter, resplendent in a new suit of brown checks, and wearing a brown Derby, brown shoes and brown silk hose, all of the exact shade to match, while from his coat pocket peeped the fingers of brown gloves.

"That's him," said Carl.

"I knew it," announced Jens Jensen. "He is a skinner."

Nothing could exceed the affability of Mr. Wallingford. He shook hands with Mr. Klug, with Mr. Schmitt, with Mr. Vogel, with Mr. Jensen; he smiled upon them in turns; he made each one of them feel that never in all his life had he been afforded a keener delight than in this meeting.

"You have a fine little shop, Mr. Klug," he said, looking about him with an air of pleased surprise. "There is room right here to manufacture enough machines to scare the United Sales Recording Machine Company into fits. Gentlemen, if no one else cares for a share in Mr. Klug's splendid invention, I am quite willing to back him myself with all the capital he needs."

This was an exceptionally generous offer on Mr. Wallingford's part, particularly as the six hundred dollars he had in his pocket was all the capital he controlled in the world. In justice to him, however, it must be said that he expected to have more money – shortly. The prospects seemed good. They looked him over. Twenty-five thousand, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand dollars; it was easy to see that the gentleman could supply any or all of these sums at a moment's notice.

"No!" said Jens Jensen, voicing the suddenly eager sentiment of all. "We're all going in it, and another man."

"Two other men," corrected Carl. "Doctor Feldmeyer and Emil Kessler."

Otto Schmitt shook his head dubiously.

"Emil owes on his building loan," he observed.

"Emil's coming in," firmly repeated Carl Klug. "He is a friend of mine. I will lend him the money and he pays me when we sell out."

Mr. Wallingford glanced out of the window at the shining cab and smiled. With business people like these he felt that he could get on.

"When, then, do we form the partnership?" he asked.

"To-morrow!" Jens promptly informed him. "We all put in what money we want to, and we take out according to what we put in."

Jens, who had condemned Mr. Wallingford at sight as a "skinner," now kept as close to him as possible, and beamed up at him all the time; one cordial handshake from the man of millions had won him over.

"Carl," he suggested, "you must take Mr. Wallingford over to the cellar."

"Oh, we all go there," said big Otto Schmitt, and they all laughed, Carl more than any of them.

"Come on," he said.

Right at the side of the shop stood Mr. Klug's brick house, in the midst of a big garden that was painfully orderly. Every tree was whitewashed to exactly the same height, and everything else that could be whitewashed glared like new-fallen snow. The walks were scrubbed until they were as red as bricks could be made, and all in between was velvet-green grass. There were flowers everywhere, and climbing vines were matted upon the porch trellises and against the entire front of the house. In the rear garden could be seen all sorts of kitchen vegetables in neat rows and beds. Down into the front basement the five men crowded and sat on rough wooden benches. Jens Jensen hastened to spread a clean newspaper on the bench where Mr. Wallingford was to sit. Carl disappeared into another part of the cellar and presently came out again with a big jug and five glasses, all of different shapes and sizes. Out of the jug he poured his best home-made wine, and they settled down for a jovial half hour, in which they admitted the guest of honor to full fellowship.

"You must come over to church to-night," Jens Jensen insisted as they came away. "We have a raffle and Doctor Feldmeyer will be there. He is a swell. He will be glad to know you. There will be plenty to eat and drink. Look; you can see the church from here," and he pointed out its tall spire.

Mr. Wallingford shook hands with Mr. Jensen impulsively.

"I'll be there!" he declared with enthusiasm.

When he had gone, Carl Klug asked:

"Well, what do you think of him?"

"He is a swell," said Jens, and no voice dissented.

CHAPTER XIV

SHOWING HOW FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS MAY DO THE WORK OF FIVE THOUSAND

At a total cost of twenty-five dollars, Mr. Wallingford made himself a Prince of the Blood at the church raffle that night, throwing down bills and refusing all change, winning prizes and turning them back to be raffled over again, treating all the youngsters to endless grabs in the "fish pond"; and Jens Jensen proudly introduced him to everybody, beginning with the minister and Emil Kessler – the latter a thin, white-faced man with a high brow, who looked like a university professor and was a shoe-maker – and ending with Doctor Feldmeyer, who came late. Wallingford's eyes brightened when he saw this gentleman. He was more or less of a dandy, was the doctor, and had great polish and suavity of manner. He had not been with Mr. Wallingford five minutes until he was talking of Europe. Mr. Wallingford had also been to Europe. The doctor was very keen on books, on music, on art, on all the refinements of life, also he was very much of a ladies' man, he delicately insinuated, and not one expression of his face was lost upon the Eastern capitalist. It transpired that the doctor was living at Mr. Wallingford's hotel, and they went home together that night, leaving behind them the ineffaceable impression that the rich Mr. Wallingford was an invaluable acquisition to Mr. Klug and his friends, to the community, to the city, to any portion of the globe which he might grace with his presence. But when the invaluable acquisition was left alone in his rooms he penned a long letter to his wife.

"My dear Fanny," he wrote, "come right away. I have in sight the biggest stake I have made yet, in a clean, legitimate deal; and I need your smiling countenance in my business."

He meant more by that than he would have dared to tell her, but he laughed and mused on Doctor Feldmeyer as he sealed the letter; then he sent it out to be mailed and turned his earnest attention to the inside of his sales recorder. This time he found the one little point for which he had been looking: the thing that he knew must be there, and the next morning, bright and early, he drove out to Mr. Klug's shop.

"Mr. Klug, you are in bad," he said with portentous gravity. "Look here." And he pointed out the long, spring-actuated bar which kept all the tickets from dropping back when they sprang up, and released them as others were shot into place. "This is an infringement of the United Sales Recording Machine Company's machine," he declared.

"Nothing like it!" indignantly denied the inventor, bristling and reddening and puffing his cheeks.

"The identical device is in every machine they manufacture," insisted Wallingford; "and I would bet you all you expect to make that before you're on the market two days they will have an injunction out against you on that very point. Now let me show you how we can get around it."

Mr. Klug reluctantly and protestingly followed his mechanical idea, a logical application of the pneumatic principle, as he made it plain by sketches and demonstration on the machine.

"Another thing," went on Mr. Wallingford. "It occurs to me that all these little pistons multiply the chances of throwing your machine out of order. Why don't you make one compressible air chamber to actuate all the ticket pistons and to be actuated by all the keys, the keys also opening valves in the ticket pistons? It would save at least five dollars on each machine, make it simpler and much more practical. Of course, I'll have to patent this improvement, but I'll turn it over to you at practically no cost to the company."

Mr. Klug merely blinked. Six long years he had worked on this invention, following the one idea doggedly and persistently, and he had thought that he had it perfect. He had all the United Company's patents marked in his copies of the patent record, and now he went through the more basic ones one after the other.

"It is not there," he said in triumph, after an hour's search, during which Wallingford patiently waited. One book he had held aside, and now he put his finger quietly upon a drawing in it.

"No," he admitted, "not in the form that you have used it; but here is the trick that covers the principle, and this patent still has four years to run."

Carl examined it silently. In form the device was radically different from his own, but when he came to analyze it he saw that Wallingford was probably right; the principle had been covered, at least nearly enough to leave a loophole for litigation, and it worried him beyond measure.

"Don't look at it that way," comforted Wallingford. "Only be glad that we found it out in time. I'll apply for this patent right away and assign it to you. All I'll want for it will be a slight credit on the books of the company; say fifteen hundred."