CHAPTER IX.

I Go Aboard and We Unfurl the Jolly Roger.

"We must act, and act at once!" said the Captain, his voice thrilling with intensity. "This piece of property will be gone befo' night! All it takes is a paltry three thousand dolla's, and within ninety days--no man can say what its value will be. We can plat it, and within ten days we may have ouah money back. Allow me to draw on you fo' three thou--"

"But," said I, "I can make no move in such a matter at this time without conference with Mr.--"

"Very well, suh, very well!" said the Captain, regarding me with a look that showed how much better things he had expected of me. "Opportunity, suh, knocks once--By the way, excuse me, suh!"

And he darted from the office, took the trail of Mr. Macdonald, whom he had seen pa.s.sing, brought him to bay in front of the post-office, and dragged him away to some doom, the nature of which I could only surmise.

This took place on the morning of my first day with Elkins & Barslow. I was to take up the office work.

"That will be easy for you from the first," said Jim. "Your experience as rob-ee down there in Posey County makes you a sort of specialist in that sort of thing; and pretty soon all other things shall be added unto it."

The Captain's onslaught in the first half-hour admonished me that a good deal was already added to it. On that very day, too, we had our first conference with Mr. Hinckley. We wanted to handle securities, said Mr.

Elkins, and should have a great many of them, and that was quite in Mr.

Hinckley's line. To carry them ourselves would soon absorb all our capital. We must liberate it by floating the commercial paper which we took in. Mr. Hinckley's bank was known to be strong, his standing was of the highest, and a trust company in alliance with him could not fail to find a good market for its paper. With an old banker's timidity, Hinckley seemed to hesitate; yet the prospects seemed so good that I felt that this consent was sure to be given. Jim courted him a.s.siduously, and the intimacy between him and the Hinckley family became noticeable.

"Jim," said I, one day, "you have an unerring eye for the pleasant things of life. I couldn't help thinking of this to-day when I saw you for the twentieth time spinning along the street in Miss Hinckley's carriage, beside its owner. She's one of the handsomest girls, in her flaxen-haired way, that I know of."

"Isn't she a study in curves and pink and white?" said Jim. "And she understands this trust company business as well as her father."

The trust company's stock, he went on to explain, ignoring Antonia, seemed to be already oversubscribed. Our firm, Hinckley, and Jim's Chicago and New York friends, including Harper, all stood ready to take blocks of it, and there was no reason for requiring Hinckley to put much actual money in for this. He could pay for it out of his profits soon, and make a fortune without any outlay. Good credit was the prime necessity, and that Mr. Hinckley certainly had. So the celebrated Grain Belt Trust Company was begun--a name about which such mighty interests were to cl.u.s.ter, that I know I should have shrunk from the responsibility had I known what a gigantic thing we were creating.

As the days wore on, Captain Tolliver's dementia spread and raged virulently. The dark-visaged Cornish, with his air of mystery, his habits so at odds with the society of Lattimore, was in the very focus of attention.

For a day or so, the effect which Mr. Giddings's report attributed to his invasion failed to disclose itself to me. Then the delirium became manifest, and swept over the town like a were-wolf delusion through a medieval village.

Its immediate occasion seemed to be a group of real-estate conveyances, announced in the _Herald_ one morning, surpa.s.sing in importance anything in the history of the town. Some of the lands transferred were acreage; some were waste and vacant tracts along Brushy Creek and the river; one piece was a suburban farm; but the ma.s.s of it was along Main Street and in the business district. The grantees were for the most part strange names in Lattimore, some individuals, some corporations. All the sales were at prices. .h.i.therto unknown. It was to be remarked, too, that in most cases the property had been purchased not long before, by some of the group of newer comers and at the old modest prices. Our firm seemed to have profited heavily in these transactions, as had Captain Tolliver also. We of the "new crowd" had begun our mock-trading to "establish the market." Prices were going up, up; and all one had to do was to buy to-day and sell to-morrow. Real values, for actual use, seemed to be forgotten.

The most memorable moment in this first, acutest stage in our development was one bright day, within a week or so of our coming. The lawns were taking on their summer emerald, robins were piping in the maples, and down in the cottonwoods and lindens on the river front crows and jays were jargoning their immemorial and cheery lingo. Surveyors were running lines and making plats in the suburbs, peeped at by gophers, and greeted by the roundelays of meadow-larks. But on the street-corners, in the offices of lawyers and real-estate agents, and in the lobbies of the hotels, the trading was lively.

Then for the first time the influx of real buyers from the outside became noticeable. The landlord of the Centropolis could scarcely care for his guests. They talked of blocks, quarter-blocks, and the choice acreage they had bought, and of the profits they had made in this and other cities and towns (where this same speculative fever was epidemic), until Alice fled to the Trescott farm--as she said, to avoid the mixture of real estate with her meals. The telegraph offices were gorged with messages to non-resident property owners, begging for prices on good inside lots. Staid, slow-going lot-owners, who had grown old in patiently paying taxes on patches of dog-fennel and sand-burrs, dazedly vacillated between acceptance and rejection of tempting propositions, dreading the missing of the chance so long awaited, fearing misjudgment as to the height of the wave, dreading a future of regret at having sold too low.

One of these, an old woman, toothless and bent, hobbled to our office and asked for Mr. Elkins. He was busy, and so I received her.

"It's about that quarter-block with the Donegal ruin on it," said Jim; "the one I showed you yesterday. Offer her five thousand, one-fourth down, balance in one, two, and three years, eight per cent."

"I wanted to ask Mr. Elkins about me home," said she. "I tuk in washin'

to buy it, an' me son, poor Patsy, G.o.d rist 'is soul, he helped wid th'

bit of money from the Brotherhood, whin he was kilt betune the cars. It was sivin hundred an' fifty dollars, an' now Thronson offers me four thousan'. I told him I'd sell, fer it's a fortune for a workin' woman; but befure I signed papers, I wanted to ask Mr. Elkins; he's such a fair-spoken man, an' knowin' to me min-folks in Peoria."

"If you want to sell, Mrs. Collins," said I, "we will take your property at five thousand dollars."

She started, and regarded me, first in amazement, then with distrust, shading off into hostility.

"Thank ye kindly, sir," said she; "I'll be goin' now. I've med up me moind, if that bit of land is wort all that money t' yees, it's wort more to me. Thank ye kindly!" and she fled from the presence of the tempter.

"The town is full of Biddy Collinses," commented Jim. "Well, we can't land everything, and couldn't handle the catch if we did. In fact, for present purposes, isn't it better to have her refuse?"

This incident was the hint upon which our "Syndicate," as it came to be called, acted from time to time, in making fabulous offers to every Biddy Collins in town. "Offer twenty thousand," Jim would say. "The more you bid the less apt is he to accept; he's a Biddy Collins." And whatever Mr. Elkins advised was done.

There were eight or ten of us in the "Syndicate," dubbed by Jim "The Crew," among whom were Tolliver, Macdonald, and Will Lattimore. But the inner circle, now drawing closer and closer together, were Elkins, our ruling spirit; Hinckley, our great force in the banking world; and myself. Soon, I was given to understand, Mr. Cornish was to take his place as one of us. He and Jim had long known each other, and Mr. Elkins had the utmost confidence in Mr. Cornish's usefulness in what he called "the thought-transference department."

Elkins & Barslow kept their offices open night and day, almost, and the number of typewriters and bookkeepers grew astoundingly. I became almost a stranger to my wife. I got hurried glimpses of Miss Trescott and her mother at the hotel, and knew that she and Alice were becoming fast friends; but so far the social prominence which the _Herald_ had predicted for us had failed to arrive.

This, to be sure, was our own fault. Miss Addison soon gave us up as not available for the church and Sunday-school functions to which she devoted herself. Her family connections would have made her _the_ social leader had it not been for the severity of her views and her a.s.sumption of the character of the devotee--in spite of which she protestingly went almost everywhere. Antonia Hinckley, however, was frankly fond of a good time, and with her dashing and almost hoydenish character easily took the leadership from Miss Addison; and Miss Hinckley sought diligently for means by which we could be properly launched. As I left the office one day, a voice from the curb called my name. It was Miss Hinckley in a smart trap, to which was harnessed a beautiful horse, standard bred, one could see at a glance. I obeyed the summons, and stepped beside the equipage.

"I want to scold you," said she. "Society is being defrauded of the good things which your coming promised. Have you taken a vow of seclusion, or what?"

"I've been spinning about in the maelstrom of business," I replied. "But do not be uneasy; some time we shall take up the matter of inflicting ourselves, and pursue it as vigorously as we now follow our vocation."

"Wouldn't you like to get into the trap, and take a spin of another sort?" said she. "I'll deposit you safely with Mrs. Barslow in time for tea."

I got in, glad of the drive, and for ten minutes her horse was sent at such a pace that conversation was difficult. Then he was slowed down to a walk, his head toward home. We chatted of casual things--the scenery, the horse, the splendid color of the sunset. I was becoming interested in her.

"I had almost forgotten that there were such things in Lattimore," said I, referring to the topics of our talk. "I have become so saturated with lands and lots."

"I don't know much about business," said she, "and I think I'll improve my opportunity by learning something. And, first, aren't men sometimes losers by the dishonesty of those who act for them--agents, they are called, aren't they?"

Such, I admitted, was unfortunately the case.

"I should be sorry for--any one I liked--to be injured in such a way....

Now you must understand how the things you men are interested in permeate the society of us women. Why, mamma has almost forgotten the enslavement of our s.e.x, in these new things which have changed our old town so much; so you mustn't wonder if I have heard something of a purely business nature. I heard that Captain Tolliver was about to sell Mr. Elkins the land where the old foundry is, over there, for twenty thousand dollars. Now, papa says it isn't worth it; and I know--Sadie Allen and I were in school together, and she comes over from Fairchild several times a year to see me, and I go there, you know; and that land is in her father's estate--I know that the executor has told Captain Tolliver to sell it for ever so much less than that. And it seemed so funny, as the Captain was doing the business for both sides--isn't it odd, now?"

"It does seem so," said I, "and it is very kind of you. I'll talk with Mr. Elkins about it. Please be careful, Miss Hinckley, or you'll drop the wheel in that washout!"

She reined up her horse and began speeding him again. I could see that this conversation had embarra.s.sed her somehow. Her color was high, and her grip of the reins not so steady as at starting. This attempt to do Jim a favor was something she considered as of a good deal of consequence. I began to note more and more what a really splendid woman she was--tall, fair, her tailor-made gown rounding to the full, firm curves of her figure, her fearless horsemanship hinting at the possession of large and positive traits of character.

"We women," said she, "might as well abandon all the things commonly known as feminine. What good do they do us?"

"They gratify your sense of the beautiful," suggested I.

"You know, Mr. Barslow," said she, "that it's not our own sense of the beautiful, mainly, that we seek to gratify; and if the eyes for which they are intended are looking into ledgers and blind to everything except dollar-signs, what's the use?"

"Go down to the seash.o.r.e," said I, "where the people congregate who have nothing to do."

"Not I," said she; "I'll go into real estate, and become as blind as the rest!"

Jim paid no attention to my chaffing when I spoke of his conquest, as I called Antonia. In fact, he seemed annoyed, and for a long time said nothing.

"You can see how the Allen estate proposition stands," said he, at last.

"To let that sell for less than twenty thousand might cost us ten times that amount in lowering the prevailing standard of values. The old rule that we should buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest is suspended. Base is the slave who pays--less than the necessary and proper increase."