Chapter IX

IN WHICH J. RUFUS HEARS OF SOME EGYPTIANS WORTH SPOILING

It was in a spirit of considerable loneliness that Wallingford came back from seeing Blackie Daw to the midnight train, for he had grown to like Blackie very well indeed. Moreover, his friend from Georgia was gone, and quite disconsolate, for him, he stood in front of the hotel wondering about his next move. Fate sent him a cab, from which popped a miniature edition of the man from Georgia. The new-comer, who had not waited for the cab door to be opened for him, immediately offered to bet his driver the price of the fare that the horse would eat bananas. He was a small, clean, elderly gentleman, of silvery-white hair and mustache, who must have been near sixty, but who possessed, temporarily at least, the youth and spirits of thirty; and he was one of that sort of looking men to whom one instinctively gives a title.

"Can't take a chance, Governor," said the driver, grinning. "I might as well go jump off the dock as go back to the stand without them four dollars. I'm in bad, anyhow."

"I'll bet you the tip, then," offered the very-much-alive elderly gentleman, flourishing a five-dollar bill.

"All right," agreed the driver, eying the money. "Nothing or two dollars."

"No, you don't! Not with Silas Fox, you don't!" promptly disputed that gentleman. "First comes out of the dollar change two bits for bananas, and then the bet is nothing or a dollar and a half that your horse'll eat 'em. Why, any horse'll eat bananas," he added, turning suddenly to Wallingford. With the habit of shrewdness he paused for a thorough inspection of J. Rufus, whose bigness and good grooming and jovial pinkness of countenance were so satisfactory that Mr. Fox promptly made up his mind the young man could safely be counted as one of the pleasures of existence.

"I'll bet _you_ this horse'll eat bananas," he offered.

"I'm not acquainted with the horse," objected Wallingford, with no more than reasonable caution. "I don't even know its name. What do you want to bet?"

"Anything from a drink to a hundred dollars."

J. Rufus threw back his head and chuckled in a most infectious manner, his broad shoulders shaking and his big chest heaving.

"I'll take you for the drink," he agreed.

Two strapping big fellows in regulation khaki came striding past the hotel, and Mr. Fox immediately hailed them.

"Here, you boys," he commanded, with a friendly assurance born of the feeling that to-night all men were brothers; "you fellows walk across the street there and get me a quarter's worth of real ripe bananas."

The soldiers stopped, perplexed, but only for an instant. The driver of the cab was grinning, the door-man of the hotel was grinning, the prosperous young man by the curb was grinning, and the well-dined and wined elderly gentleman quite evidently expected nothing in this world but friendly complaisance.

"All right, Senator," acquiesced the boys in khaki, themselves catching the grinning contagion; and quite cheerfully they accepted a quarter, wheeled abreast, marched over to the fruit stand, bought the ripest bananas on sale, wheeled, and marched back.

Selecting the choicest one with great gravity and care, Mr. Silas Fox peeled it and prepared for the great test. The driver leaned forward interestedly; the two in khaki gathered close behind; the large young man chuckled as he watched; the horse poked forward his nose gingerly, then sniffed--then turned slowly away!

Mr. Fox was shocked. He caught that horse gently by the opposite jaw, and drew the head toward him. This time the horse did not even sniff. It shook its head, and, being further urged, jerked away so decidedly that it drew its tormentor off the curb, and he would have fallen had not Wallingford caught him by the arm.

"I win," declared the driver with relief, gathering up his lines.

"Not yet," denied Mr. Fox, and stepping forward he put his arm around the horse's neck and tried to force the banana into its mouth.

This time the horse was so vigorous in its objection that the man came near being trampled underfoot, and it was only on the unanimous vote of the big man and the two in khaki that he profanely gave up the attempt.

"Not that I mind losing the bet," announced Mr. Fox in apology, "but I'm disappointed in the be damned horse. That horse loves bananas and I know it, but he's just stubborn. Here's your money," and he gave the driver his five-fifty; "and here's the rest of the bananas. When you get back to the barn you try that horse and see if he won't eat 'em, after he's cooled down and in his stall."

"All right," laughed the driver, and started away.

As he turned the corner he was peeling one of the bananas. The loser looked after the horse reluctantly, and sighed in finality.

"Come on, young man, let's go get that drink," he said.

Delighted to have found company of happy spirit, Wallingford promptly turned with the colonel into the hotel bar.

"Can you beat it?" asked one big soldier of the other as both looked after the departing couple in pleased wonder.

At about the same second the new combination was falling eagerly and vigorously into conversation upon twelve topics at once.

"You can't do anything without you have a pull," was Silas Fox's fallacious theory of life, as summed up in the intimate friendship of the second bottle. "That's why I left New Jersey. I had a National Building and Loan Association organized down there that would have been a public benefactor and a private joy; in business less than six months, and already nine hundred honest working-men paying in their dollar and a quarter a week; eleven hundred and fifty a week for us to handle, and the amount growing every month."

"That's a pretty good start," commented J. Rufus, considering the matter carefully as he eyed the stream of ascending bubbles in his hollow-stemmed glass. "No matter what business you're in, if you have a package of clean, new, fresh dollars every week to handle, some of it is bound to settle to the bottom; but there mustn't be too many to swallow the settlings."

"Six of us on the inside," mused the other. "Doc Turner, who sells real estate only to people who can't pay for it; Ebenezer Squinch, a lawyer that makes a specialty of widows and orphans and damage claims; Tom Fester, who runs the nicest little chattel-mortgage company that ever collected a life income from a five-dollar bill; Andy Grout, who has been conducting a prosperous instalment business for ten years on the same old stock of furniture; and Jim Christmas, who came in from the farm ten years ago to become a barber, shaving nothing but notes."

Young Wallingford sat lost in admiration.

"What a lovely bunch of citizens to train a growing young dollar; to teach it to jump through hoops and lay down and roll over," he declared. "And I suppose you were in a similar line, Judge?" he ventured.

"Nothing like it," denied the judge emphatically. "I was in a decent, respectable loan business. Collateral loans were my specialty."

"I see," said J. Rufus, chuckling. "All mankind were not your brothers, exactly, but your brothers' children."

"Making me the universal uncle, yes," admitted Mr. Fox, then he suddenly puffed up with pride in his achievements. "And I do say," he boasted, "that I could give any Jew cards and spades at the game and still beat him out on points. I reckon I invented big casino, little casino and the four aces in the pawn brokerage business. Let alone my gage of the least a man would take, I had it fixed so that they could slip into my place by the front door, from the drug-store on one side, from the junk-yard on the other, from the saloon across the alley in the rear, and down-stairs, from the hall leading to Doc Turner's office."

Lost in twinkling-eyed admiration of his own cleverness he lapsed into silence, but J. Rufus, eager for information, aroused him.

"But why did you blow the easy little new company?" he wanted to know. "I could understand it if you had been running a local building-loan company, for in that the only salaried officer is the secretary, who gets fifty cents a year, and the happy home-builders pile up double compound interest for the wise members who rent; but with a national company it's different. A national building-loan company's business is to collect money to juggle with, for the exclusive benefit of the officers."

"You're a bright young man," said Mr. Fox admiringly. "But the business was such a cinch it began to get crowded, and so the lawmakers, who were mostly stock-holders in the three biggest companies, had a spasm of virtue, and passed such stringent laws for the protection of poor investors that no new company could do any business. We tried to buy a pull but it was no use; there wasn't pull enough to go round; so I'm going to retire and enjoy myself. This country's getting too corrupt to do business in," and Mr. Fox relapsed into sorrowful silence over the degeneracy of the times.

When his sorrow had become grief--midway of another bottle--a house detective prevailed upon him to go to bed, leaving young Wallingford to loneliness and to thought--also to settle the bill. This, however, he did quite willingly. The evening had been worth much in an educational way, and, moreover, it had suggested vast, immediate possibilities. These possibilities might have remained vague and formless--mere food for idle musing--had it not been for one important circumstance: while the waiter was making change he picked some folded papers from the floor and laid them at Wallingford's hand. Opened, this packet of loose leaves proved to be a list of several hundred names and addresses. There could be no riddle whatever about this document; it was quite obviously a membership roster of the defunct building-loan association.

"The judge ought to have a duplicate of this list; a single copy's so easy to lose," mused Wallingford with a grin; so, out of the goodness of his heart, he sat up in his room until very late indeed, copying those pages with great care. When he sent the original to Mr. Fox's room in the morning, however, he very carelessly omitted to send the duplicate, and, indeed, omitted to think of remedying the omission until after Mr. Fox had left the hotel for good.

Oh, well, a list of that sort was a handy thing for anybody to have around. The names and addresses of nine hundred people naive enough to pay a dollar and a quarter a week to a concern of whose standing they knew absolutely nothing, was a really valuable curiosity indeed. It was pleasant to think upon, in a speculative way.

Another inspiring thought was the vision of Doc Turner and Ebenezer Squinch and Tom Fester and Andy Grout and Jim Christmas, with plenty of money to invest in a dubious enterprise. It seemed to be a call to arms. It would be a noble and a commendable thing to spoil those Egyptians; to smite them hip and thigh!