Young Wallingford

CHAPTER V

Just as Jonathan Reuben Wix reached his home, a delivery man was taking in at the front door a fine dresser trunk. On the porch stood a new alligator traveling-bag, and a big, new suit-case of thick sole leather, trimmed profusely with the most expensive knobs and clamps, and containing as elaborate a toilet set as is made for the use of men. In the hall he found five big pasteboard boxes from his tailor. He had the trunk and the suit-case and the traveling-bag delivered up to his room; the clothing he carried up himself.

That morning he had dressed himself in new linen throughout. Now he took off the suit he wore and put on one of the new business suits. He opened half a dozen huge bundles of haberdashery which he had purchased within the past week, and began packing them in his trunk: underwear, shirts, socks, collars, cravats, everything brand new and of the choicest quality. He packed away the other new business suit, the Prince Albert, the tuxedo, the dress suit – the largest individual order his tailor had ever received – putting into his trunk and suit-case and traveling-bag not one thing that he had ever worn before; nor did he put into any of his luggage a single book or keepsake, for these things had no meaning to him. When he was completely dressed and packed he went to his mother’s room and knocked on the door. It was her afternoon for the Women Journalists’ Club, and she was very busy indeed over a paper she was to read on The Press: Its Power for Evil. Naturally, interruptions annoyed her very much.

“Well, what is it, son?” she asked in her level, even tone as he came into the room. Her impatience was very nicely suppressed, indeed.

“I’m going to New York on the six-thirty,” he told her.

“Really, I don’t see how I can spare any money until the fifteenth,” she objected.

“I have plenty of money,” he assured her.

“Oh,” she replied with evident relief, and glanced longingly back at her neatly written paper.

“I can even let you have some if you want it,” he suggested.

“No, thank you. I have sufficient, I am sure, portioned out to meet all demands, including the usual small surplus, up to the fifteenth. It’s very nice of you to offer it, however.”

“You see,” he went on, after a moment’s hesitation, “I’m not coming back.”

She turned now, and faced him squarely for the first time.

“You’d better stay here,” she told him. “I’m afraid you’ll cost me more away from home than you do in Filmore.”

“I shall never cost you a cent,” he declared. “I have found out how to make money.”

She smiled in a superior way.

“I am a bit incredulous; but, after all, I don’t see why you shouldn’t. Your father at least had that quality, and you should have inherited something from him besides” – and she paused a trifle – “his name.” She sighed, and then continued: “Very well, son, I suppose you must carve out your own destiny. You are quite old enough to make the attempt, and I have been anticipating it for some time. After all, you really ought to have very little trouble in impressing the world favorably. You dress neatly,” she surveyed him critically, “and you make friends readily. Shall I see you again before you go?”

“I scarcely think so. I have a little down-town business to look after, and shall take dinner on the train; so I’ll just say good-by to you now.”

He shook hands with her and stooped down, and they kissed each other dutifully upon the cheek. Mrs. Wix, being advanced, did not believe in kissing upon the mouth. After he had gone, a fleeting impression of loneliness weighed upon her as much as any purely sentimental consideration could weigh. She looked thoughtfully at the closed door, and a stirring of the slight maternal instinct within her made her vaguely wistful. She turned, still with that faint tugging within her breast which she could not understand, and it was purely mechanical that her eyes, dropping to the surface of the paper, caught the sentence: “Mental suggestion, unfit for growing minds, is upon every page.” The word “Mental” seemed redundant, and she drew her pen through it, neatly changing the “s” in “suggestion” to a capital.

A cab drove past Wix as he started down the street and he saw Smalley in it. He turned curiously. What was Smalley doing there? He stopped until he saw the cab draw up in front of Gilman’s house. He saw Smalley assist young Gilman out of the cab, and Gilman’s mother run out to meet them. He was thoughtful for a moment over that, then he shrugged his shoulders and strode on.

On the train that night as he swaggered into the dining-car, owning it, in effect, and all it contained, he saw, seated alone at a far table, no less a person than Horace G. Daw, as black and as natty as ever, and with a mustache grown long enough to curl a little bit at the ends.

“Hello, old pal,” greeted Daw. “Where now?”

“I’m going out alone into the cold, cold world, to make fortunes and spend them.”

“Half of that stunt is a good game,” commented Mr. Daw.

Wix chuckled.

“Both ends of it look good to me,” he stated. “I’ve found the recipe for doing it, and it was you that tipped off the plan.”

“I certainly am the grand little tipper-off,” agreed Daw, going back in memory over their last meeting. “You got to that three thousand, did you?”

“Oh, no,” said Wix. “I only used it to get a little more. Our friend Gilman has his all back again. Of course, I didn’t use your plan as it laid. It was too raw, but it gave me the suggestion from which I doped out one of my own. I’ve got to improve my system a little, though. My rake-off’s too small. In the wind-up I handled twenty-one thousand dollars, and only got away with eight thousand-odd of it for myself.”

“You haven’t it all with you?” asked Daw, a shade too eagerly.

Wix chuckled, his broad shoulders heaving and his pink face rippling.

“No use, kind friend,” said he. “Just dismiss it from your active but greedy mind. If anybody gets away unduly with a cent of this wad, all they need to do is to prove it to me, and I’ll make them a present of the balance. No, my dark-complected brother, the bulk of it is in a safe place in little old New York, where I can go get it as I need it; but I have enough along to buy, I think. It seems to me you bought last,” and they both grinned at the reminiscence.

“I wasn’t thinking of trying to annex any of that coin,” lied Mr. Daw glibly, and changing entirely his attitude toward Mr. Wix as his admiration grew; “but I was thinking that we might cook up something together. I’ll put up dollar for dollar with you. I’ve just been harvesting, myself.”

Again Wix chuckled.

“Declined with thanks,” he returned. “I don’t mind trailing around a bit with you when we get to New York, and also meeting the carefully assorted selection of dead-sure-thing geniuses who must belong to your set, but I’ll go no further. For one thing, I don’t like the idea of a partner. It cramps me to split up. For another thing, I wouldn’t like to hook up in business with you. You’re not safe enough; you trifle too much with the law, which is not only foolish but unnecessary.”

“Yes?” retorted Daw. “How about this eight thousand or so that you committed mayhem on Filmore to get?”

“Good, honest money,” asserted Wix. “I hate to boast about your present companion, but I don’t owe Filmore a cent. I merely worked up a business and sold my share in it. Of course, they didn’t know I was selling it, but they’ll find out when they go over the records, which are perfectly straight. If, after buying the chance to go into business, they don’t know what to do with it, it isn’t my fault.”

A traveling man who had once been in the office of The La Salle Grain and Stock Brokerage Company for an afternoon’s flyer, and who remembered the cordial ease with which Wix had taken his money, came over to the table.

“Hello, Wix; how’s tricks?” he hailed.

Wix looked up at him blankly but courteously.

“Beg pardon,” he returned.

The face of the traveling man fell.

“Aren’t you Mr. Wix, of Filmore?”

“I’m afraid not,” replied Wix, smiling with great cordiality. “Sorry to disappoint you, old man.”

“Really, I beg your pardon,” said the traveling man, perplexed. “It is the most remarkable resemblance I ever saw. I would have sworn you were Wix. He used to run a brokerage shop in the Grand Hotel in Filmore.”

“Never was in the town,” lied Wix.

The man turned away. Daw looked after him with an amused smile.

“By the way, Wix, what is your name now?”

“By George, I haven’t decided! I was too busy getting rid of my only handicap to think up a substitute. I’ll tell you in a minute,” and on the spur of the moment he invented a quite euphonious name, one which was to last him for a great many years.

“Wallingford,” he announced. “How does that hit you? J. Rufus Wallingford!”

CHAPTER VI

They were glad to see Blackie Daw back on Broadway – that is, in the way that Broadway is glad; for they of the Great White Way have no sentiments and no emotions, and but scant memories. About Blackie’s companion, however, they were professionally curious.

“Who is this large, pink Wallingford person, and where did you get it?” asked Mr. Phelps, whose more familiar name was Green-Goods Harry.

Mr. Daw, standing for the moment with Mr. Phelps at the famous old cheese-and-crackers end of the Fifth Avenue bar, grinned.

“He’s an educated Hick,” he responded, “and I got him out of the heart of the hay-fever district, right after he’d turned a classy little trick on the easy producers of his childhood home. Sold ’em a bankrupt bucket-shop for eight thousand, which is going some!”

Mr. Phelps, natty and jaunty and curly-haired, though shifty of eye, through long habit of trying to watch front and back doors both at once, looked with a shade more interest across at the imposing white vest of young J. Rufus where he stood at the bar with fat and somber Badger Billy. There was a cocksure touch to the joviality of young Wallingford which was particularly aggravating to an expert like Mr. Phelps. Young Wallingford was so big, so impressive, so sure of pleasing, so certain the world was his oyster, that it seemed a shame not to give his pride a tumble – for his own sake, of course.

“Has he got the eight thousand on him, do you think?” asked the green-goods one, his interest rapidly increasing.

“Not so you could notice it,” replied Daw with conviction. “He’s a wise prop, I tell you. He’s probably lugging about five hundred in his kick, just for running expenses, and has a time-lock on the rest.”

“We might tinker with the lock,” concluded Harry, running his fingers through his hair to settle the curls; “it’s worth a try, anyhow.”

“You’ll bounce right off,” declared Mr. Daw. “I tried to put a sweet one over in his home town, and he jolted the game so quick he made its teeth rattle.”

“Then you owe him one,” persisted Mr. Phelps, whom it pained to see other people have money. “Do you mean to say that any pumpkin husker can’t be trimmed?”

“Enjoy yourself,” invited Mr. Daw with a retrospective smile, “but count me out. I’m going to Boston next week, anyhow. I’m going to open a mine investment office there. It’s a nice easy money mining district.”

“For pocket mining,” agreed his friend dryly.

Young Wallingford, in his desire for everybody to be happy, looked around for them at this juncture, and further conversation was out of the question. The quartet lounged out of the Fifth Avenue bar and across Broadway in that dull way peculiar to their kind. At the Hoffman House bar they were joined by a cadaverous gentleman known to the police as Short-Card Larry, whose face was as that of a corpse, but whose lithe, slender fingers were reputed to have brains of their own, and the five of them sat down for a dull half-hour. Later they had dull dinner together, strolled dully into four theaters, and, still dull, wound up in the apartments of Daw and J. Rufus.

“What do you think of them?” asked Blackie in their first aside moment.

“They give me the pip,” announced J. Rufus frankly. “Why do they hate themselves so? Why do they sit in the darkest corners and bark at themselves? Can’t they ever drink enough to get oiled happy?”

“Not and do business with strangers on Broadway,” Daw explained. “Phelps has been shy about thin glassware for five years, ever since he let an Indiana come-on outdrink him and steal his own money back; Billy Banting stops after the third glass of anything, on account of his fat; the only time Larry Teller ever got pinched was for getting spifflicated and telling a reporter what police protection cost him.”

“If I wasn’t waiting to see one of them bite himself and die of poison I’d cut ’em out,” returned Mr. Wallingford in the utmost disgust. “Any one of them would slung-shot the others for the price of a cigarette. Don’t they ever get interested in anything?”

“Nothing but easy marks,” replied Mr. Daw with a grin. “The way they’re treating you is a compliment. They’re letting you just be one of them.”

“One of them! Take it back, Blackie!” protested Wallingford. “Why, they’re a bunch of crooks!”

In deep dejection young Wallingford, rejoining his guests, ordered three lemonades and a quart of champagne. There was a trifle more of animation among them now, however, since they had been left alone for a few moments. They told three or four very hilarious stories, in each of which the nub of the joke hinged on an utter disregard of every human decency. Then, quite casually and after a lull, Badger Billy smoothed down his smart vest and cleared his throat.

“What do you fellows say to a little game of stud?” he proposed.

“Sure!” agreed Wallingford with alacrity. “That’s the first live noise I’ve heard to-day,” and he went to the ’phone at once to order up some cards and chips.

With his back turned, the three lemonade drinkers exchanged pleased smiles. It was too easy! Mr. Daw let them smile, and reposed calmly upon the couch, entirely disinterested. Professional ethics forbade Mr. Daw to interfere with the “trimming” of the jovial Mr. Wallingford, and the instincts of a gentleman, with which, of course, they were all perfectly provided, prevented him from taking any part in that agreeable operation. To his keen amusement the game was very brief – scarcely more than twenty minutes.

It was Short-Card Larry who, with a yawn, discovered suddenly how late it was and stopped the game. As he rose to go, young Wallingford, chuckling, was adding a few additional bills to the plethoric roll in his pocket.

“What made you chop the game, Larry?” asked Green-Goods Harry in impatient wonder. “We’d ought to strung it along a while. What made you let him have that hundred and fifty so quick?”

“Let him!” retorted Larry savagely. “He took it! Twice I gave him aces back to back on my deal, and he turned them down without a bet. On his own deal he bet his head off on a pair of deuces, with not one of us three able to draw out on him; and right there he cops that hundred and fifty himself. He’s too fresh!”

“Well,” said Badger Billy philosophically, “he’ll come for more.”

“Not of mine, he won’t,” snorted the dexterous one. “I can’t do any business against a man that’s next. I hope he chokes.”

“There you go again, letting your temper get the best of you,” protested Mr. Phelps, himself none too pleased. “This fresh lollop has coin, and it ought to be ours.”

“Ought to be? It is ours,” growled Larry. “We’ll get it if we have to mace him, at noon, on Madison Square.”

In the meantime J. Rufus was chuckling himself to sleep. He rose at eleven, breakfasted at one, and was dressing and planning to besiege New York upon his own account, when the telephone advised him that Mr. Phelps was down-stairs with a parched throat, and on the way up to get a drink!

“Fine business!” exclaimed J. Rufus with a cordiality which had nothing whatever to do with the puzzled expression on his brow. “What’ll you have? I’ll order it while you’re on your way up.”

“Nothing stronger than a Scotch highball,” was the reply, whereupon young Wallingford, as soon as the telephone was clear, ordered the materials therefor.

“Fine business,” he repeated to himself musingly as he stood with his hand still on the receiver after he had hung it up; “also rough work. This thirst is too sudden.”

He was still most thoughtful when Mr. Phelps knocked at the door, and had yet more food for contemplation when the caller began talking with great enthusiasm about his thirst, explaining the height and breadth and thickness thereof, its atomic weight, its color and the excellent style of its finish.

“If I just had that thirst outside of me where I could get at it, I could make an airship of it,” he imaginatively concluded.

“Gas or hot air?” inquired young Mr. Wallingford, entirely unmoved, as he poured the highballs and dosed both quite liberally with the Scotch, whereat Mr. Phelps almost visibly winced, though gamely planning to drink with every appearance of enjoyment.

“Where’s Daw?” he asked, after two sips which he tried to make seem like gulps.

“Gone out to a print-shop to locate a couple of gold mines,” announced Wallingford dryly, holding his own opinion as to the folly of Mr. Daw’s methods. They were so unsanctioned of law.

“Sorry for that,” said Mr. Phelps, who was nevertheless relieved to hear it, for Mr. Daw was rather in the way. “We’ve got a great game on; a Reuben right from Reubensville, with five thousand of pa’s money in his jeans. I wanted you fellows to come and look him over.”

“What’s the use?” returned Wallingford. “Come down to the lobby and I’ll show you a whole procession of them.”

“No, but they’re not so liberal as this boy,” protested Phelps laughing. “He just naturally hones and hones and hones to hand us this nice little bundle of kale, and we’re going to accommodate him. You can get in on the split-up if you want to. Daw would have first choice, of course, if he was here, but since he isn’t you might as well come in. Five thousand iron men are hardly worth bending to pick up, I guess.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” objected Wallingford condescendingly. “It would make cigarette money, anyhow, if there are not too many to tear it apart.”

“It takes just four,” Phelps informed him: “look-out, spieler, panel-man and engraver.”

Wallingford shook his head, refusing even to speculate on the duties of the four named actors in the playlet.