Clover flushed a trifle.

"But you got rid of nearly sixty thousand dollars of your own stock," he charged bitterly. It still rankled in him that Wallingford had "handed the lemon" to him. _Him!_ Monstrous that a man should be so dishonorable! "You played me for a mark. When you handed out my certificates you instructed every man to send them in for transfer, but when you peddled your own you said nothing about that, and only the few yaps who happened to know about such things sent them in. You're nearly all sold out, and I'm holding the bag."

"Right you are," admitted Wallingford, openly amused. "I have a few shares left in my desk, though, and I'll make you a present of them. I'm going out of the company, you know."

"You're not!" exclaimed Clover, smiting his fist upon his desk. "We were in this thing together, half and half, and I want my share!"

Wallingford laughed.

"I told you once," he informed his irate partner, "that I never give up any money. My action is strictly legal. Now, don't choke!" he added as he saw Clover about to make another objection. "You've not a gasp coming. When I took hold here you were practically on your last legs.

You have had a salary of one hundred dollars a week since that time. In addition to that I have handed you five thousand dollars, and you have nearly sixty thousand dollars' worth of stock left. You can do just what I have been doing: sell your stock and get out. As for me I _am_ out, and that's all there is to it! I have all I want and I'm going to quit!"

The door had opened and Neil stood on the threshold.

"You bet you're going to quit!" said Neil. His face was pale but his eyes were blazing and his fists were clenched. "You're both going to quit, but not the way you think you are! Come out here. Some of my friends are in the waiting room, and they want to see you right away!"

Clover had turned a sickly, ashen white, but Wallingford rose to his feet.

"You tell them to go plumb to h.e.l.l!" he snarled.

His eyes were widened until they showed the whites. He was fully as much cowed by the suggestion as Clover, but he would "put up a front" to the last.

"Come in, boys!" commanded Neil loudly.

They came with alacrity. They crowded into the small room, packing it so snugly that Neil and Wallingford and Clover, forced into the little s.p.a.ce before Clover's desk, stood touching.

"What does this mean?" demanded Wallingford, glaring at the invaders.

He stood almost head and shoulders above them, and where he met a man's eyes those eyes dropped. Some of them who had not removed their hats hastily did so. His lordliness was still potent.

"You can't bluff me!" shrieked Neil, who, standing beside him, shook his fist in Wallingford's face. The contrast between the sizes of the two men would have been ludicrous, had it not been for Neil's intensity, which seemed to expand him, to make him and his pa.s.sionate purpose colossal. "I know you, and these men don't!" he went on, his neck chords swelling with anger. "Why, think of it, gentlemen, in the four months that he has been here, this man has taken sixty thousand dollars from the hard-working members of this Order, has stuffed it in his pocket and is making ready to leave! The little girl out there, who is getting us up a statement for to-morrow, figured him out for the dog he is while I was still groping for the facts. He tried to take her for a fool, but she--she--" His voice broke and he smacked his fist in his palm to loosen his tongue. "You're a smart man, Mr. Wallingford, but you made a few mistakes. One of them was in sending me on the road so you could--so you--" again his voice broke and he sank his nails into his palms for control. "You thought this meeting was a mere jolly for our members, didn't you? It's not. These men are here solely as representatives of the business interests of their friends. We're going to put this Order back upon a sound basis, and the first thing we're going to do is to cut out graft. Why, you unclean whelp, you have spent over fourteen thousand dollars in the four months you have been here, and you have--or had, up to a week ago--forty-five thousand dollars in the Second National--all of poor men's money! How do I know? You lost your bank book which had just been balanced. As for you, Clover, you're a clog upon the business, too!" Clover had brought this upon himself by darting at Wallingford a glance of hate, which Neil caught. "Now this is what _you're_ going to do, James Clover. For having fathered the Order you're to be allowed to keep the five thousand dollars you got for the sale of stock. Your remaining stock you're going to transfer over to our treasury, and then you're going to step down and out. As for you, Mr. J.

Rufus Wallingford, you're going to write a check for forty-five thousand dollars, payable to the company."

"What you are asking of me is unjust--and absurd," whined Wallingford.

"Write that check!" Neil almost screamed. "We know you're slick enough to keep your tricks within legal bounds, and that's why these men are here."

The brow of Wallingford contracted and he tried to look angry, but his breath was coming short and there was a curious pallor around the edge of his lips and around his eyes.

"This is coercion!" he charged with dry mouth.

"Put it that way if you want to," agreed Neil hotly.

"We'll break your infernal neck, that's what we'll do!" put in a spokesman back toward the door, and there was a general pressing forward. Neil had lashed them into fury, and one rawboned fellow, a blacksmith, wedged through them with purple face and upraised fist. So heavily that he knocked the breath out of Clover with his chair back, Wallingford plumped down at the desk and whipped out his check book.

"I ask one thing of you," he said, as he picked up the pen with a curious trembling grimace that was almost like a smile, but was not.

"You must leave me at least a thousand dollars to get away from here."

There was a moment of silence.

"That's reasonable," granted Neil, after careful consideration. "Give us the check for forty-four thousand."

Wallingford wrote it and then he put it in his pocket.

"I have the check ready, gentlemen," he announced, "but I'll give it to you at the entrance of my home--to a committee consisting of Neil and any two others you may select. If I hand it to you before I pa.s.s out at that door, some of you are liable to--to lose your heads."

He was positively craven in appearance when he said this, and with an expression of contempt Neil agreed to it. Wallingford's car was still waiting on the street below, and into it piled the four. Before the rich building where J. Rufus had his apartments, Neil and one of the other men got out first; but if they had antic.i.p.ated any attempt at escape on Wallingford's part they were mistaken. Without a word he handed the check to Neil and waited while they inspected it to see that it was correctly drawn and signed.

"Now, Mr. Slippery Eel," said Neil exultantly as he put the check in his pocket, "it won't do any good to try to stop this check, for if I can't draw it you can't. I shall be there in the morning when the bank opens.

I secured an injunction this afternoon that will tie up your account,"

and his voice swelled with triumph.

Wallingford laughed. With his hand upon the k.n.o.b he held the vestibule door open, and he felt safe from violence, which was all he feared.

"Well," said he philosophically, "I see I'm beaten, and there's no use crying over spilled milk."

Neil looked after him dubiously, as he swaggered into the hall.

"I didn't expect it would be so easy," he said to the men. "I knew the fellow was a physical coward, but I didn't know he was such a big one.

My lawyer told me he could even beat us on that injunction."

Mr. Wallingford did not go directly to his apartments. He went into the booth downstairs, instead, and telephoned his wife. Then he went out. He was gone for about half an hour, and, when he came back, Mrs.

Wallingford, wastefully leaving a number of expensive acc.u.mulations that were too big to be carried as hand luggage, and abandoning the rich furniture to be claimed by the deluded dealers, had four suit cases packed.

CHAPTER XII

FATE ARRANGES FOR J. RUFUS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MANUFACTURE SALES RECORDERS

It was not until their train had pa.s.sed beyond the last suburb that Wallingford, ensconced in the sleeper drawing room, was able to resume his accustomed cheerfulness.

"Sure you have that bundle of American pa.s.sports all right, f.a.n.n.y?" he inquired.

"They're perfectly safe, but I'm glad to be rid of them," she answered listlessly, and opening her hand bag she emptied it of its contents, then, with a small penknife, loosened the false bottom in it. From underneath this she drew a flat package of thousand-dollar bills and handed them to him.

"Forty of them!" gloated Wallingford, counting them over. Then he pounded upon his knees and laughed. "I can see Starvation Neil when he has to tell his jay delegates that I drew out every cent the day after I lost my bank book. I'd been missing too many things that never turned up again. I fixed them to-night, too. Although I didn't need to do it to be on the law's safe side, I hustled out before we started and swore to a notary that I signed that check under coercion; and they'll get that affidavit before the check and the injunction!"

Mrs. Wallingford did not join him in the shoulder-heaving laugh which followed.

"I don't like it, Jim," she urged. "You're growing worse all the time, and some day you'll overstep the bounds. And have you noticed another thing? Our money never does us any good."

"You'll wake up when we get settled down some place to enjoy ourselves.

I don't believe you know how well you like fine dresses and diamonds, and to live on the fat of the land. You know what this little bundle of comfort means? That we're the salt of the earth while it lasts; that for a solid year we may have not only all the luxuries in the world, but everybody we meet will try to make life pleasant for us."

To that end Wallingford secured a suite of rooms at two hundred dollars per week the moment they landed in New York, and began to live at a corresponding rate. He gave himself no regret for yesterday and no care for to-morrow, but let each extravagant moment take care of itself. It was such intervals as this, between her husband's more than doubtful "business" operations, that reconciled Mrs. Wallingford to their mode of life, or, rather, that numbed the moral sensibilities which lie dormant in every woman. While they were merely spending money she was content to play the _grande dame_, to dress herself in exquisite toilettes and bedeck herself with brilliant gems, to go among other birds of fine feathers that congregated at the more exclusive public places, though she made no friends among them, to be surrounded by every luxury that money could purchase, to have her every whim gratified by the mere pressing of a b.u.t.ton. As for Wallingford, to be a prince of spenders, to find new and gaudy methods of display, to have people turn as he pa.s.sed by and ask who he might be; these things made existence worth while.