Jack and the Check Book

IV

THE GOLDEN FLEECE

There was once a miller who was very poor, but he had a beautiful daughter. There were a great many people who said that if he had not had so beautiful a daughter he would not have been so poor, and it may be that these were right, for beautiful daughters are not infrequently a source of considerable expense to their parents, and I fear me that Gasmerilda was no exception to this rule.

She had a great passion for rare furs and for opera and lingerie cloaks, and the thousand and one other dainty things that appeal to the heart of beautiful young maidenhood, and it seemed to make no difference how many millions of bushels of corn passed through her father's mill day after day, the returns from the grinding wheels were always thirty or forty dollars a month lower than the total aggregate of Gasmerilda's bills from milliners, furriers, jewelers, and others too numerous to mention.

Of course, this thing could not go on indefinitely. There comes a time when even the blindest of creditors will insist upon the liquidation of a miller's account, and the poor man found himself getting deeper and deeper into debt as the months passed along, and was now at last at his wits' ends to devise new excuses for the non-payment of Gasmerilda's indebtedness. Indeed, he had now come to a point where there was but one refuge from the ultimate of financial disaster that should force him into a public declaration of his bankruptcy, and that was to be seen associating in public places with well-known malefactors of great wealth.

What awful agony of mind this cost him – for he was an honest miller, as had always been evidenced by his willingness to promise to pay his debts even when he knew he could not – the world will never know, but he swallowed his pride, and for a time gained immunity from the pressure of his creditors with their threatened judgments by being seen walking down Fifth Avenue in the morning alongside of Colonel John W. Midas, the president of the Pactolean Trust Company, a savings institution formed primarily for the purpose of lending its depositors' money to members of its own board of directors, taking their checks dated two months ahead and indorsed by their office-boys and stenographers for security.

It is true that anybody who was ever seen speaking to Colonel Midas in public was, by orders of the district attorney, immediately snap-shotted by the Secret Service Camera Squad attached to that gentleman's office, and the resulting negatives filed away for future reference in case Justice should ever, by some odd chance, peep over the top of her bandage for a moment and fix her eagle eye upon the Colonel's doings; but, on the other hand, there were countless thousands of worthy people, and among them were the miller's creditors, who believed that association with such a person as Colonel Midas was pretty good evidence either of a man's solvency or of his immunity to the lash of the law. Consequently, when for five successive mornings the furriers, the jewelers, the milliners, and others, to whom the unfortunate miller owed vast unpayable sums of money for sundries purchased from time to time by the beautiful Gasmerilda, saw their debtor walking down-town alongside of the great Pactolean magnate, they called off their collectors and attorneys, and sent the beautiful girl extra notifications through the mails of their new fall and winter importations; to which, in due course of time, the lovely maid responded, to the consequent swelling of the already over-large accounts due. If these persons had only known that these walks upon the avenue were silent walks, and that from the Plaza down to Madison Square Colonel Midas, though accompanied by the miller, was utterly unaware of the latter's presence, being too deeply absorbed in certain operations of great magnitude upon the Street to notice anything that was going on around him, they would doubtless have acted differently; but they did not know this, and it soon passed about among the tradesmen that the miller was the friend of Midas, and thereby was his credit greatly expanded.

On the morning of the sixth day's promenade, however, Colonel Midas, having solved the particular problem upon which his mind had been set for the past week or ten days, became more observant, and, after the miller had walked at his side for several blocks, he remarked the fact, and with emotions that were not altogether pleasant. Wherefore, he quickened his footsteps in order that he might leave the intruder behind, but the miller quickened his also and remained alongside. Colonel Midas stopped short in his walk before an art-shop window, and gazed in at the paintings therein displayed.

The miller likewise, his head cocked knowingly to one side like that of a connoisseur, paused and gazed in at the marvels of the brush. The Colonel, with a sudden jerky turn, leaped from the window to the gutter-curb and boarded a moving omnibus with surprising agility for a man of his years. But he was not too quick for his pursuer, for the miller, though scarcely able to afford the expense, immediately sprang aboard the same vehicle and took the seat beside him. Then for the first time the Colonel addressed him, and, there being no ladies upon the omnibus at that early hour, in terms rather more forcible than polite.

"What do you think you are doing?" he demanded, frowning upon his pursuer.

"Riding in a 'bus," replied the miller, with a pleasant smile.

"Are you trying to shadow me?" roared the Colonel.

"I'd make a mighty poor eclipse for you, Colonel Midas," said the miller, suavely, "but to tell you the truth," he added, a sudden idea having flashed across his mind, which in the absence of anything else to say in explanation of his conduct seemed as good as any other excuse he could invent, "there is a little matter I'd like to bring to your attention."

"Bombs?" asked the Colonel, moving away apprehensively, noticing that the miller had put his hand into his pocket, and fearing that he had, perhaps, encountered a crank who designed to do him harm.

"No, indeed," laughed the miller. "Not in such close quarters as this. When I throw a bomb at anybody I shall take care to provide a safety net for myself."

"Ha!" ejaculated the Colonel, with a deep sigh of relief. "Book-agent?"

"Nothing in it," said the miller. "Work too heavy for the profits. No, sir, I am neither a book-agent nor an anarchist. I am nothing but a poor miller with an ingrowing income, but I have a beautiful daughter who – "

"Oh yes," interrupted Midas, with a nod. "I remember now. I've heard of you. You preferred to remain independent instead of selling out to the Trust. You tried to discount some of your notes at the Pactolean Trust Company, of which I am president, the other day."

"Yes," said the miller, "and you refused them."

"Naturally," laughed Midas. "A beautiful daughter, Mr. Miller, is a lovely possession, but she's mighty poor security for a loan. About the worst in the market. Especially yours. I've seen Miss Miller at the opera several times and have wondered how you managed it. It would cost more than the face value of your notes to support the security for one week in the style to which she is accustomed."

"That's true enough," said the miller, "and nobody knows it better than I do. Nevertheless, you made a mistake. You have possibly never heard of her wonderful gift."

"No," said the magnate. "I was not aware that the young lady had any other gifts than beauty and a father with a little credit left."

"Well, be that as it may," retorted the miller, "she has one great gift. She can spin straw into gold."

"What?" cried Midas, becoming interested at once.

"Yes, sir," the miller went on. "She has marvellous powers in that direction. If she hadn't I'd have been up a tree long ago."

"I had heard of her father's ability to turn hot air into Russian sables and diamond necklaces, but this straw business is something new," said Midas.

"I thought you would so regard it," said the miller, confidently, "and that is why I have been trying to get a word with you for the past week. You are the only man I know in the financial world who is known to have the enterprise and the courage to go into a little gamble that other people would laugh at. You have that prime quality of success, Colonel Midas, that is known to mankind as nerve. You are always willing to sit in any kind of a game that shows a glimmer of profit in the perspective, and that is why I bring this matter to you instead of to my friend Rockernegie, a man utterly without imagination and blind to many a sure thing because he can't understand it."

The Colonel, who was not unsusceptible to flattery, was visibly impressed by this tribute. He scratched his head thoughtfully for a moment.

"See here, Mr. Miller," he said, after a brief communion with himself, "if this story is true, why are you trying to discount your notes at the Pactolean Trust Company? Why don't you get a bale of straw and have your daughter turn it over a few times?"

"I will be perfectly frank with you, Colonel," said the miller. "It is a humiliating confession to make, sir, but I'm everlastingly busted. Just plain down and out and I couldn't buy a lemonade straw if they were going at a cent a ton, much less a bale."

The Colonel looked at him sympathetically, and then, giving his knee a resounding whack, he cried: "By Jove, Miller, I'll back you! I rather like your nerve, and, as you have so charmingly put it, I am the sort of man to take a long shot. Yes, sir, and I wouldn't have had seven cents to my name to-day if I hadn't been. Come with me to the Pactolean Trust Company and we'll discount your demand note, suitably indorsed, right off, with the understanding, however, that your daughter gives us an immediate demonstration of her powers. We'll furnish the straw."

The miller's heart leaped with joy, but he deemed it well not to show himself over-anxious lest he lose the whole advantage.

"It is very good of you, Colonel," he observed quietly, "but I don't know a soul in this bright, beautiful world who would indorse my note for any sum, large or small."

"Oh, that will be all right," laughed the Colonel. "We've got a rubber stamp in the office for just such emergencies."

So the miller and his new-found friend went to the offices of the Pactolean Trust Company, where, in a short while, he found relief from his pressing woes by the exchange of his demand note for five thousand dollars, indorsed most appropriately by a man of straw, for four crisp one-thousand-dollar treasury notes and the balance, less six months' interest, in yellow-backs of a denomination of fifty dollars each.

"Tell your daughter to come down here to-morrow morning," said the Colonel, as the miller pocketed the money. "I'll summon the board of directors and she can give us a demonstration of her gift in the private office. We'll have a couple of bales of straw all ready for her."

"You will have to excuse me, Colonel," said the miller, with that calmness which a man is likely to show when he has five thousand dollars in good money in his purse, "but that will be impossible. Gasmerilda has always refused to exercise her gift in the presence of anybody else, and I am quite sure she will make no exception in this case. Even as a child she would not let either her mother or myself see how she did it."

"But she must," said the Colonel, firmly, "or I shall be under the painful necessity of calling that note at once."

"But she can't," returned the miller. "You see, sir, it is one of the peculiarities of the gift that she must be alone while at work. It requires such intense concentration of effort. If you insist upon her presence here, why – well, as you intimate, the deal is off between us and I shall have to take it to Rockernegie. There's the money, sir."

With a supreme effort of will the miller tossed the roll of bills back upon the table. It was, of course, an act of sheer bravado, but he carried it off so well that it worked.

"Oh, very well," said the Colonel, gruffly, a shade of disappointment crossing his face. "If she can't, she can't, I suppose. It's worth a try, anyhow. We'll send a bale of straw up to your residence this afternoon, and if by to-morrow morning she has managed to turn it into gold, all well and good. If not – well, we call the note, that's all."

"Can't you make it a week?" pleaded the miller. "She may have some other engagement on for to-night, and – er – well, a week will give her time to turn around."

"Make it five days," said the Colonel. "To-day is Wednesday. Let her make the delivery on Monday morning."

"Done!" said the miller, overjoyed, and he went out.

He had not the slightest notion in the world how his beautiful daughter would be able to fulfil the agreement – indeed, he was fairly certain in his mind that she would be able to do nothing of the sort, but he had the use of five thousand dollars at a critical moment in his career and he knew that if worst came to worst he could shave off his mustache, and, thus disguised, take passage for Europe in the steerage of some one of the many Saturday steamers.

Now, on his return home that evening, the miller was very much embarrassed by a searching inquiry from his beautiful daughter. It seems that when she had tried to telephone to one of her friends that afternoon she had been informed by Central that the service had been discontinued for non-payment of the bill for December, 1906.

"Have we come to such a pass as that, father?" she demanded, her lovely voice quivering with emotion.

"It looks like it," said the miller, with an uneasy laugh. "I have been kept so busy paying for your daily supply of fresh sables that I haven't had a moment for the gas bills or for your conversational accounts. With you to look after, my dear, I find that even talk is not cheap."

The beautiful girl wiped the tears from her eyes with her point-lace handkerchief.

"But," she cried, "what are we going to do? I must have eleven hundred and seventy dollars and fifty-five cents to-morrow morning, father, or I shall be ruined."

The miller's heart sank within him and his face grew ashen.

"Eleven hundred and seventy dollars and fuf-fifty – fuf – five cents?" he stammered. "In Heaven's name what for, Gasmerilda – hairpins?"

"No, father," she trembled. "I have issued three or four pounds of deferred bridge certificates, and they fall due to-morrow. You certainly do not wish me to lose my social position – about the only thing I have left?"

The unhappy man gazed long and anxiously at the pale face before him, and then his heart softened, as it always had done.

"All right, my child," he sighed, as he tossed the exact amount to her across the table. Then his face grew stern.

"Gasmerilda," he said, "your extravagance having brought us to this, I may as well inform you now as at any other time that it is up to you to get us out of trouble, and I have to-day been forced to enter into negotiations with the Pactolean Trust Company by which you are to be capitalized. Hereafter, my child, you are to become a dividend-paying investment instead of twin sister to a sinking fund."

"What can you mean, father?" cried the girl, her face blanching with fear.

The miller thereupon recounted to her in full detail the incidents of the morning, and revealed to her astounded mind the preposterous claims he had made on her behalf.

"But father," she protested, "I have no such gift."

"You will excuse me for refusing to discuss the matter further with you, Gasmerilda," he replied, coldly. "If it so happens that you have no such gift you must devise some method of getting it. I have given my word, and as a dutiful daughter you must make good."

Turning to the butler, the miller asked:

"James, has a bale of straw arrived here to-day from Colonel Midas?"

"Yes, sir," said the butler. "It is down-stairs in the cellar, sir."

"Good!" said the miller. "You will have it carried up to Miss Miller's dressing-room at once."

Rising from the table he kissed his unhappy daughter affectionately, and, bidding her good-night, he went to the club, where he paid his delinquent dues and house charges and set out once more upon a tolerably care-free existence for five days at least.

"A short life and a merry one!" he muttered to himself, as he paid in a hundred dollars for a supply of red and blue chips.

Meanwhile, poor Gasmerilda sat white-faced, and eyes wide with fear and perplexity, staring at that horrible bale of straw that occupied the middle of the floor of her dainty boudoir. She had no more idea of how to spin it into gold than she had of making over her last year's gingham bath-robe into this year's panne-velvet opera gown. Hourly her distress grew, until finally the floodgates of her tears broke, and she burst into a passionate convulsion of weeping. But, even as the tears began to flow, there came a faint golden tinkle on the jeweled 'phone that stood on her escritoire. At first she paid no attention to the unexpected tintinnabulation, but the tinkling soon became more pronounced and so persistent that she finally answered it.

"Is that you, Gasmerilda?" came a quaint little voice over the wire.

"Yes," she sobbed. "Who is this?"

"There are tears in your voice, Gasmerilda," came the quaint little voice.

"They are all over the place," wept the unhappy girl.

"And I know why," said the little voice, sympathetically. "I am your fairy godmother, Gasmerilda, and I have not ceased to watch over you. Your father has negotiated a loan on your remarkable gift of spinning straw into gold, has he not?"

"Yes," sobbed Gasmerilda, "and I have no such gift."

"Well, don't worry, my child," said the little voice. "When you were a baby you once offered a part of your school orange to a starving kitten, and she has not forgotten it. I was that kitten and I have kept my eye on you ever since, and now I am going to help you out. If you will do exactly what I tell you to do all will be well."

Gasmerilda, with a great sigh of relief, promised to be faithful to her fairy godmother's instructions.

"Oh, you dear!" she cried, impulsively.

"Go to-morrow, the first thing in the morning," said the fairy godmother, "to the United States Assay Office on Wall Street, taking with you the money your father gave you this evening at dinner, and buy a one-thousand-dollar bar of gold."

"But, Fairy Godmother," Gasmerilda interrupted, "I – I must use that money to pay off my bridge I O. U.'s to-morrow."

"I have arranged for all that," laughed the fairy godmother. "Those I. O. U.'s will never be presented. Transforming myself into a mouse, I have entered the escritoires of the ladies holding your notes of hand, and have eaten every single one of them."

Gasmerilda's heart leaped with joy.

"Oh, Fairy Godmother!" she cried. "Can't you get rid of father's note in the same way?"

"No, my dear," sighed the little voice. "That note, unfortunately, is stored away in a steel vault, and my teeth are not strong enough to nibble through that. I have a more business-like method to get you both out of your troubles. After you have purchased the bar of gold, take it home with you and devise some convenient means of getting rid of the straw without anybody seeing you do it. The best way to do this will be to carry an armful of it at a time up on to the roof of your house and let it blow away; and then, when next Monday comes, and your father is required to deliver the first consignment of the precious metal to Colonel Midas, go with him to the Colonel's office, yourself, taking the gold bar with you, and see that it is really delivered. Wear your most bewitching hat, and don't fail to remember what a woman's eyes were given her for."

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" cried Gasmerilda, a great wave of happiness sweeping over her. "If I could get at you, dear Fairy Godmother, over the 'phone, I should hug you to death."

"That is all right, child. My reward will come later," replied the fairy godmother. "When your profits begin to come in you may pay me a commission of ten per cent. on all you get."

"Gladly. I'll make it fifteen per cent.," cried the grateful girl. "But how shall you be paid?"

"By check, dear, drawn to the order of The Fairy's Aid Society of America, of which I am the president," was the answer. "The address is just Wall Street, New York. And now, sweet dreams, my beloved ward. The sun of your troubles has set, and the dawn of prosperity is here."

With a happy smile Gasmerilda wished her kindly friend good-night, and retired to her couch and slept the sleep of a weary child. Bright and early the next morning, with her little gold-chain purse containing the necessary funds dangling from her chatelaine, she appeared at the assay office, and purchased there a shining bar of the lustrous metal, returning to her home in time for luncheon.

"Well, daughter," said the miller, as he met her in the hallway, "how does the good work proceed?"

"Very well, indeed, father," she said, with a cheery smile. "I'm a little out of practise, but I managed to spin about ninety-eight dollars' worth last night before going to bed."

The miller blinked amazedly at his daughter. This answer was indeed the most extraordinary substitute for the floods of tears he had expected to greet his question.

"You – you – you dud – don't – m – m – mean to sus – say – " he stammered.

"Father, dear, did you ever try to cut calves-foot jelly with a steel knife?" she asked.

"Yes, child, yes – but what of that?" he demanded, completely nonplussed.

"Well, dear," she answered, kissing him on the tip end of his nose, "that is hard labor compared to spinning gold out of straw."

She ran from him, laughing merrily as she hurried up the stairs to her room, while he, staggering back against the newel-post of the staircase, leaned on it, breathing heavily.

"If that's the case," he said, as with trembling hands he took a set of false whiskers and a steerage ticket for Naples from his pocket, "I shall not need these."

Nevertheless, prudence bade him wait until he had seen the gold before destroying the paraphernalia of his possible flight, and oh, the joy of that Saturday morning, when Gasmerilda, having, by an almost super-human effort, having rid herself of the straw as her fairy godmother had bade her to do, led her trembling father into her boudoir and showed him the glittering bar!