Without a word she handed him her purse. A few small bills were in it.

She handed him another small black leather case which he took slowly. He opened it, and from the velvet depths there gleamed up at him the old standby--her diamonds. He could get a couple of thousand dollars on these at any time. He put the case in his pocket, but without any gleam of satisfaction, and sat down heavily in one of the huge leather-padded chairs.

"f.a.n.n.y," said he savagely, "never preach to me again! I have tried a straight-out legitimate deal and it dumped me. Hereafter, be satisfied with whatever way I make money, just so long as I have the law on my side. Why," and his indignation over this last reflection was beyond expression, "I've coaxed a carload of money out of the farmers of this country, and I don't get away with a cent of it! A thief got it! _A thief and a grafter!_"

Mrs. Wallingford did not answer him. She was crying. It was not so much that they had lost all of this money, it was not that he had spoken harshly to her for almost the first time since he had come into her life, but the shattering once more of certain hopeful dreams that had grown up within her since their sojourn in Battlesburg. Of course, he was instantly regretful and made such clumsy amends as he could, but the sting, not of bitterness but of sorrow, was there, and it remained for long after; until, in fact, she came to realize how much to heart her husband had taken his only real defeat. For the first time in his life he became despondent. The height to which he had aspired and had almost reached, looked now so utterly unattainable that the contemplation of it took out of him all ambition, all initiative, all life. He seemed to have lost his creative faculty. Where his fertile brain had heretofore teemed with plans and projects, crowding upon each other, clamoring for fulfilment, now he seemed incapable of thought, and fell into an apathy from which he could not arouse himself no matter how hard he tried.

Parting company with Blackie Daw, who seemed equally rudderless, they moved aimlessly about from city to city, p.a.w.ning Mrs. Wallingford's diamonds as they needed the money, but the man's spirit was gone, and no matter how often he changed his environment or brought himself into contact with new fields and new opportunities, no plan for getting back upon his feet seemed to offer itself. He was too much disheartened, in fact, even to try. To husband their fast waning resources they even descended to living in boarding houses, where the brief gratification of exciting awe among the less impressive boarders was but small compensation for the loss of the luxury to which they had been used.

It was the sight of a miserable dinner in one of these boarding houses that proved the turning point for him. His chair was drawn back from the table for him when he suddenly shoved it to its place again, and with a darkening brow stalked out of the dining room, followed by the bewildered Mrs. Wallingford.

"I can't stand this thing, f.a.n.n.y," he declared. "I've insulted my stomach with that sort of fodder until it's too late for an apology."

"What are you going to do?" she asked in concern.

"Go where the good steaks grow," he answered emphatically. "We're going to pack up and move to the best hotel in town and eat ourselves blue in the face, and to-morrow J. Rufus is going to go back on the job. I haven't the money in my pocket to pay for it, and we haven't another thing we can soak, but if I run up a hotel bill I'll have to get out and dig to pay it, and that's what I need. I'm lazy."

It was a positive elation to him to dash up in a cab to a palatial hotel, to walk into its gilded and marble corridors with a deferential porter carrying his luggage, to loom up before a suave clerk in his impressive immensity and sign his name with a flourish, to demand the best accommodations they had in the house and to be shown into apartments that bathed him once more in a garish atmosphere where everything tasted and felt and smelled of money. It was like the prodigal son coming home again, and instantly his spirits arose with a bound. He began as of old to live like a lord, and though the long sought idea did not come to him for almost two weeks, he held to the untroubled tenor of his way with all his old arrogance, blessed with a cheerful belief that some lucky solution of his difficulties would be found.

One thing alone bothered him toward the last, and that was the rapid disappearance of such little ready money as he needed for tips when he was in the hotel, and for drinks and cigars when he found himself away from it. He was sensitive about ordering inferior goods in good places, and when away from his source of credit supplies, took to turning in at obscure cigar stores, preferring to buy the best they had rather than to taking a second grade in a better place. It was in one of these obscure little establishments that the elusive inspiration at last came to him.

"The government is rotten!" the stoop-shouldered cigar maker had complained just a moment before, rasping the air of his dingy little store with a high-pitched voice that was almost a whine. "It fosters consolidations. Big profits for rich men and bankruptcy for poor men, that's what we have come to!"

The stoop-shouldered cigar maker had no chin worth mentioning, and grew a thin, down-pointed mustache which accentuated that lack. He wore a green eye-shade and an ap.r.o.n of bed ticking, and he held in his hand a split mold, gripping the two parts together while he feebly and hopelessly groped for an inspiration in the mending line. The flabby man in the greasy vest, who was playing solitaire with a pack of cards so grimy that it took an experienced eye to tell whether the backs or the faces were up, did not raise his head, nor did the apathetic young man with the chronic dent in his time-yellowed Derby, who, sitting motionless with his crossed arms resting on his knees, had been making a business of watching the solitaire game in silence.

"That's right," agreed the flabby man, laying the trey of diamonds carefully upon the four of clubs and peeping to see what the next card would have been; "all the laws are against the poor man, and we're ground right down."

A pimple-faced youngster, clearly below the legal age, came in and bought two cigarettes for a cent, and the cigar maker waited upon him in sour-visaged nonchalance; neither the solitaire expert nor his interested watcher raised his eyes; a young man with a flashy tie and a soiled collar bought three stogies for a nickel and still apathy reigned; then Wallingford's huge bulk darkened the open doorway and everybody woke up.

Wallingford was so large that he seemed to crowd the little shop and absorb all its light, and he approached the cigar case doubtingly, surveying its contents with the eye of a _connoisseur_. A brand or two that he knew quite well he pa.s.sed over, for the boxes were nearly empty and no doubt had been reeking for a long time in that sponge-moistened a.s.sortment of flavors, but finally he settled upon a newly opened box from which but two cigars had been sold, and tapped his finger on the gla.s.s above it. The cigar maker reached in for that box with alacrity, for they were two-for-a-quarter goods, and as he brought them forth he gave to the buyer the appreciative scrutiny due one of so impressive appearance. He did not know that under his inspection the big man winced. In the fine scarf there should have glowed a huge diamond; the scarf itself had two or three frayed threads; the binding of the hat brim was somewhat worn; the cuffs were a little ragged. Wallingford felt that all the world saw this unwonted condition, but still he smiled richly; and the cigar dealer saw only richness. Probably the imposing customer would have left the store in the same silence in which he had made his purchase, but, as he stopped to fastidiously cut the tip from one of his cigars, an undersized but pompous young collector bustled in and threw down a bill.

"Hundred Blue Rings," he announced curtly.

With a mechanical curiosity, Wallingford glanced into the case where a box of cigars with cheap blue bands was displayed. The cigar maker opened his money drawer and slowly counted out a pile of small silver.

"Three fifty," he lifelessly whined as he shoved it over, and the collector receipted the bill, dashing out with the same absurd self-a.s.sertiveness with which he had come in.

"Thirty-five a thousand," observed Wallingford incredulously. "That price is claimed for every nickel cigar on earth, but I always thought it was phoney. It's a stiff rate, isn't it?"

"It's a hold up," snarled the other, "but I got to keep 'em. I make a better cigar myself but people don't know anything about tobacco. They only smoke advertising. Here's my cigar," and he set a box on the case; "Ed Nickel's Nickelfine. There's a piece of real goods."

The big man picked one out of the box, and twirled it in his deft fingers with a scrutiny that betokened keen judgment of all small articles of manufacture.

"It's well made," he admitted; "but what's the use? I could deliver your week's output in my pocket, and on the way back could spend the money getting my shoes shined; all because you haven't the wherewith to advertise."

"I got a little money," insisted the other aggressively, touched on a point of pride; "money I saved and pinched and sc.r.a.ped together; but it ain't enough to push a cigar. Some of these big manufacturers spread around a fortune on a new brand before they sell a single box. There's John Crewly & Company. They spent a hundred thousand dollars advertising Blue Rings."

"And you small dealers have handed it back to them," laughed Wallingford. "You pay that advertising difference above what the cigar is worth."

"Ten times over!" exploded Mr. Nickel. "The houses that buy in big quant.i.ties get them for below twenty-eight, I've heard. But that's where the government is rotten! It's fixed so the little man always gets it in the neck. Combines and trusts eat us up. Every man that joins a consolidation ought to get ten years at hard labor."

"Don't grouch," advised Wallingford, grinning; "consolidate. If all the small dealers in this town formed a consolidation, they could buy their supplies in quant.i.ty for spot cash and get the lowest price going."

Ed Nickel looked out of the window at the clanging street cars and digested this palatable new idea.

"I reckon they could," he mused, "if there was any way to work it so they wouldn't all spike each other trying to get the best of it," and J.

Rufus chuckled as he recognized this business anarchist's willingness to undergo an instant change of opinion about consolidation.

The door opened, and a tall, thin man, with curly gray hair and a little gray goatee, strode nervously in and threw a half dollar on the case.

"Two packs of Kiosks," he demanded.

Almost in the same breath he saw Wallingford, whose face was at that moment illuminated by the lighter to which he held his cigar.

"J. Rufus, by Heck!" he exclaimed.

Before Wallingford could give voice to his amazement the strangely altered Blackie Daw was shaking hands eagerly with him.

"You probably don't remember me," went on Blackie with an expansive grin. "Rush is the name. I. B. Rush, and I never was so bug-house glad to see anybody in my life!"

The eyes of Wallingford twinkled.

"Well, well, well, Mr. Rush! How you have changed!" he declared.

Blackie shook his head warningly.

"Nix on the advertis.e.m.e.nt," he cautioned. "Wallingford, you're the long-sought message from home! Feel in your vest pocket and see if there isn't an overlooked hundred or two down in the corner."

J. Rufus was cheerful, nay, happy, complaisance itself.

"Certainly, Mr. Rush," he said heartily; "a thousand if you want it.

Just step over to the bank with me till I draw the money," and they walked out of the door.

With a sigh the flabby man laid the long-suspended jack of hearts upon the queen of spades.

"Hear the big guy tossin' over a thousand like it was car fare," he observed. "If I had a piece of lead pipe I'd follow him."

"What do you suppose his graft is?" queried the watcher at the game.

"He's made his money off poor people; that's what!" announced Ed Nickel.

"How else does a man get rich?"

CHAPTER XXVI

J. RUFUS SCENTS A FORTUNE IN SMOKE AND LETS MR. NICKEL SEE THE FLAMES