The arrival of Mrs. Wallingford set upon a much higher plane her husband's already well-established reputation as a capitalist of illimitable resources, and had any one of his partners paused to reflect that Mr. Wallingford had secured an active interest in the concern for five hundred dollars, Doctor Feldmeyer's report of the capitalist's charming lady was enough to make that trifling incident forgotten. To Carl Klug and Jens Jensen at Carl's shop, the doctor, without knowing it, did the missionary work that Wallingford had planned for him to do.

"She is a stunner," he declared, with the faintest suggestion of a smirk, "and carries herself like a queen. She wears a fur coat that cost not less than six or seven hundred dollars, and not a woman in this town has such diamonds. We all went to the theater last night, and there were more opera gla.s.ses turned on our box than on the stage. I tell you, our friend Wallingford has the best there is, in women, as well as in wine, and as for wealth, he could buy and sell us all."

"I believe it," said Jens Jensen. "But why should such a rich man go into a little business?"

"Because," said Doctor Feldmeyer, with profound wisdom, "a rich man never overlooks a thousand per cent. like this. That's why they are rich. Why, this man's daily expenses would keep every one of us. He had fine apartments at the hotel himself, but when his wife came he got the best in the house--four fine, big rooms. Last night after the theater he took me to his own dining room, and we had a supper that cost not less than thirty or forty dollars!"

Such gossip would go far to establishing any man's reputation for wealth, especially among such simple natured people as these, and it was quite certain that Otto Schmitt and Henry Vogel and Emil Kessler would hear every sc.r.a.p of it. Had Doctor Feldmeyer heard the conversation that took place after he left the Wallingford suite the night before, his report might have been slightly different.

"Well, Jim," Mrs. Wallingford had asked with a trace of anxiety, "what are you doing this time?"

"The United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey," he replied with a laugh. "You remember how they turned me down a long time ago when I tried to sell them a patent?" She nodded. "You made me go right to them and try what you called 'straight business,' and I got what was coming to a mollycoddle. I'm going to sell them a patent this time, but in the right way, and for a good, big round chunk."

"Whose patent?" she inquired.

"What's the difference?" he queried, and laughed again. "It serves him right for being an inventor."

She did not laugh with him, however. She sat in frowning disquiet, and he watched her curiously.

"What's the matter with you?" he presently complained. "It used to be enough for you that I could not be jailed for having a few dollars."

"We're nearly middle-aged, Jim," she replied, turning to him soberly.

"What will we be like when we are old?"

"Cheer up, f.a.n.n.y, and I will tell you the worst!" he declaimed. "You'll be gray and I'll be bald!"

She was compelled to laugh herself, and gave up the idea of serious conversation with him, for that time at least.

Doctor Feldmeyer, encouraged by Wallingford, became an unofficial attache of the family in the following weeks. Vain, susceptible, and considering himself very much of a ladies' man, he exerted himself to be agreeable, and J. Rufus helped him to opportunities. If he had any ulterior purpose in this he did not confide it to his wife, or even let her suspect it. It would not have been safe. In the meantime the affairs of the Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company moved speedily onward. One entire end of his shop Carl Klug devoted to its affairs, putting in special machinery and hiring as many men as he could use, and here Wallingford reported every day, his suggestions being nearly always sound and inspiring Mr. Klug's respect. He held his standing with the rest of them in a different way. When they called at the shop they found Wallingford's cab always standing outside, and it was soon noised about that this cab was hired by the day! "Blackie" Daw, levying his dubious contributions on a gullible public, was paying for this and wiping out his debt.

But little more than two months had elapsed when Carl had his first lot of recorders ready for the market, and the treasury was depleted. Now it became necessary to have money for marketing, and that meant the remaining three thousand dollars of J. Rufus Wallingford's subscription or an evasion of it. Prepared for this, he took the floor as soon as the matter was mentioned at the meeting which was called to levy this a.s.sessment.

"What is the use?" he demanded to know. "Why use our own money? I understand that Mr. Schmitt must get his three thousand from the building loan a.s.sociation, to which he must pay six per cent. I understand that Mr. Jensen has his now out at five per cent. Let me show you how to finance this concern. I will put in ten thousand at once, and take the company's note. This note I can then discount, and put the money right back into my business, and in that way my ten thousand dollars is doing twenty thousand dollars' worth of work--a bank carrying the burden of both operations."

It was a financial argument entirely new to these men, unused to tricks of money manipulation, and it took them some little time to grasp it.

When they did, however, they were as pleased as a boy with his first watch, and Wallingford was a dazzling hero, as, with a nonchalant air, after glancing at the clock to make sure that it was after banking hours, he wrote them a check on "his bank in Boston" for ten thousand, and took their note, signed by the Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company and indorsed jointly by all its members.

That night Wallingford drove up in hot haste to Jens Jensen's house.

"Let me see that check I gave you this afternoon," he demanded, with an air of suspecting a good joke on himself. Jens, wondering, produced it from a little tin box. "That's what I thought," said Wallingford as he glanced at it. Then, smiling, he handed it back. "I have made it out on the Fifth National of Boston. They'd probably honor it, but it's the wrong bank. I have a balance there, but am not sure that it is sufficient to cover this check. Just hold that, and I'll wire them in the morning. If my balance isn't large enough I'll give you a check on the First, with which I do most of my business."

"Sure," said Jens, and put back into the tin box the worthless paper which called for ten thousand dollars.

The next morning Wallingford called at one of the local banks and had no difficulty whatever in discounting the quite acceptable note. He gained a full day by forwarding the proceeds, special delivery, to the Fifth National Bank of Boston, where his balance at that moment was considerably less than a hundred dollars; then he told Jensen to deposit the check: that his balance in the Fifth National was all right.

It was financial jugglery of a shrewd order, and the juggler prided himself upon it. He was not yet through, however. Having loaned the company ten thousand dollars of its own money at six per cent. interest, he was now confronted by the necessity of securing money for his own enormous personal expenses. For replenishment, however, he had long planned, and now he went to his new source of income--Doctor Feldmeyer.

The time was ripe, for, though Mrs. Wallingford had given him no more encouragement than the ordinary courteous graciousness which is so often misinterpreted by male coquettes, the doctor was aflame with foolish imaginings, and, within the past week or so, had felt guilty upon every meeting with Mr. Wallingford, betraying it as Wallingford had planned that he should, growing nervous at a sharp glance, a sudden movement, an obscure remark. He was as uncomfortable as guilty conscience ever made a coward, and when the big man, on the plea of sudden business and personal needs, went to him almost peremptorily for a loan of rather staggering proportions, the doctor was an easy victim. Thus provided and at ease, Wallingford "consented" to become the salesman for the first output of Pneumatic Sales Recorders, going directly to a list of cities supplied to him by Maylie; and in those cities he went to see certain gentlemen whose names came to him from the same source! Incidentally, he sold a number of sales recorders with a celerity that was most gratifying to the delighted members of the company. Why, even if the United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey did not care to buy them out, a fortune was in sight through the legitimate manufacture and sale of this device! Before the salesman returned from his trip, however, a blow, entirely unexpected by Klug and his friends, fell on them from a clear sky. An injunction and a notice of suit was served, not only upon the company, but upon every purchaser of their contrivance. The injunction restrained the buyers from using and the company from manufacturing or selling any further machines, and the suit was for infringement of patent. The device by which the drawer flew open after the keys had been pressed, the United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey claimed to be modeled upon their own. The news was wired to Wallingford. He had been waiting for it, and he came home at once, where he found that Maylie had been appointed the local legal representative of the big New Jersey concern; but as this had been a matter of Wallingford's own contriving, he was not nearly so much surprised over it as he might have been. He also found direst consternation in the company's ranks, and himself shook his head sadly when questioned, though he spoke bravely.

"What we have to do," he declared, "is to keep a stiff upper lip and fight it."

They did so. Within a couple of months they had the suit decided in their favor, and Carl Klug was vindicated in the eyes of his friends.

Again they were jubilant, again they prepared for an era of commercial triumph; but on the very next day another injunction and suit were brought, and from the very start of this proceeding delays were encountered. The weakest case had been brought first, the stubborn one being held back for a longer and more discouraging fight. When that was over there would be a third suit and a fourth. With their millions of capital and their knowledge of such matters, gleaned from vital struggles with others who had demanded either their money or their business life, they could continue such a fight indefinitely, or until the Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company should be choked out of existence.

There never was a more discouraged lot of men than those who met in Carl Klug's shop upon the day after notice of this second suit was brought.

Wallingford was the most inconsolable of all. Of course, if the others felt like putting in any more money to fight this company with its millions they could do so; in fact, they ought to do so, but his own business affairs were in such shape that, at the present moment, he could not spare a dollar. He said this in such a hesitant way, with a five-hundred-dollar diamond gleaming from his finger and another from his scarf, that they felt sure he had plenty of capital, but would not risk it further in such a losing fight; and it helped them to realize that all the capital they could command would be but as a wisp of straw to be brushed aside by this formidable giant, which not only could crush them, but had the disposition to do so.

Wallingford left them in this hopeless spirit, and went "back East to look after his other business." That business took him directly to the offices of the United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey, and into an immediate conference with the man who had charge of all its patent affairs.

"I have come to sell you the Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company," said Wallingford, by way of introduction.

"The Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company?" repeated Mr. Priestly vaguely, trying to convey the impression that the name was unfamiliar to him, and he looked into his desk file. "Oh, yes; we have a suit pending against them."

"Exactly," agreed his caller. "Suit number two is now pending. We won suit number one. We will win suits number two, three, four, five and six, if need be, but it is such a waste of money on both sides. You might just as well buy us out now as later."

Mr. Priestly shook his head without a smile. He was almost gloomy about it, even. He was a small man with gray mutton-chop whiskers, and nothing could exceed his deep gravity. From another file he produced a copy of the patent taken out by Mr. Klug, and of the one just issued to Mr. Wallingford, a.s.signor to Mr. King's company.

"The Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company," he stated, tossing down the papers as if they were too trifling to examine after he had found them, "has nothing whatever that we wish to purchase."

"Oh, yes, it has," Wallingford insisted. "It has two patents, and the absolute certainty of a business that in three years will take trade enough and profits enough away from you to buy the company several times over."

Again Mr. Priestly shook his head sadly.

"We shall have to wait three years to determine that," he hinted, with no sinister intonation whatever to go with the veiled threat. "We must defend our very existence here every day of our lives. If we did not we would have been put out of the business years ago."

"Exactly," again agreed the other. "In your files you have comprehensive reports on Mr. Carl Klug, Mr. Jens Jensen, Mr. Otto Schmitt and the others of the company. You know their small resources to a penny, and you can figure almost to the day how long they can last. But that, Mr.

Priestly, is where you have made your error, for these men will soon be out of the game. I have here another list about which you will not need to collect any information, for you have it even in memory, no doubt."

He laid before Mr. Priestly a neatly-typewritten slip, containing barely over half a dozen names. In spite of his excellent facial command, Mr.

Priestly could not repress a start of surprise, and he shot across at Mr. Wallingford one quick little glance, which had in it much more of respect than he had hitherto shown.

"_J. B._ Hammond," read Mr. Priestly, clutching at a straw. "The last name is familiar, but the initials are not."

"No," agreed Wallingford. "By the terms under which he sold out to you, Mr. W. A. Hammond is not to go into the sales recorder business at all.

Allow me to read you a letter," and from a pocketbook he took a folded paper.

"My dear Mr. Wallingford," he read. "Under no circ.u.mstances could I partic.i.p.ate in the manufacture of sales recorders; but my son, Mr. J.

B. Hammond, is quite convinced that the Klug patent is both practical and tenable, and he advises me that he is willing to invest up to two hundred thousand dollars, provided a company of at least one million _bona fide_ capitalization can be formed."

"It is a curious coincidence," added Wallingford, pa.s.sing over this letter with a smile, "that two hundred thousand dollars is exactly the price you paid William Hammond for his business, after five years of very bitter litigation. The son, no doubt, would take a keen personal interest in regaining the losses of the father through a company that has so excellent a chance to compete with yours. You see, a company with a million dollars, composed of men who know all about the sales recorder business, would set aside these suits of yours in a jiffy, because they are untenable, and you know it, although I do not expect you to admit it just now. Mr. Keyes, whose name is next on the list, had nothing left to sell after losing almost a quarter of a million in fighting you, and so is unbound. It just happens, however, that he has been left quite a comfortable legacy, and would like nothing so much as to sink part of it in our company. Here is the letter from Mr. Keyes," and he spread the second doc.u.ment in the case before Mr. Priestly, who now laid down the first letter and, readjusting his gla.s.ses, took up the second one in profound silence.

Mr. Wallingford lit a cigar in calm content and waited until Mr.

Priestly had finished reading the letter of Mr. Keyes, when he produced another one.

"Mr. Rankley," he observed, "has never been in the sales recorder business, but he apparently has his own private and personal reasons for wishing to engage in it," and at the mention of Mr. Rankley's name Mr.

Priestly broke the toothpick he was holding and threw it away.

Mr. Rankley, as he quite well knew, was Mr. Alexander's bitterest enemy, and Mr. Alexander was practically the United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey. Wallingford went on down the list in calm joy. It was composed entirely of men of means, who would put into this enterprise not only experience and shrewd business ability, but a particularly energetic hatred of the big corporation and its components.