Wallingford had good cause to survey his friend with amused wonder.

"How you have aged, Blackie," he chuckled. "What has turned you gray in a single month?"

"Beating it," replied Blackie, hoa.r.s.ely. "Did you see that guy just now look around and give me the X-ray stare?"

"He was only admiring your handsome make-up," retorted J. Rufus. "What's got your nerve all of a sudden?"

"Nerve!" scorned the other. "Say, J. Rufus, when I cut my finger I bleed yellow, and the mere sight of a bra.s.s b.u.t.ton gives me hydrophobia.

They're after me, dear friend of my childhood days, for going into the oil-well industry without any oil wells, and you're the first human being I've seen in three weeks that didn't look like he had the iron bracelets in his pocket. Even you're a living frost. For a minute you gave me that glad feeling, but when you said to come around to the bank and I could have a thousand, I knew it was all off. If you'd had it, nothing but paralysis would have stopped you from putting your hand in your pocket and making a flash with the two hundred I wanted. I have to make a quick get-away from this town or have the door of a nice steel bedroom locked from the outside!"

Solemnly J. Rufus drew from his pocket his total supply of earthly wealth, a ten-dollar bill and the change he had received at the cigar store.

"I'll give you the ten," he offered, "although I'm glued to the floor myself."

"I can see it, for your sparks are gone," said Mr. Daw, glumly looking his friend over from head to foot as he pocketed the ten. "How did the beans get spilled? I thought there was a fresh crop of your particular breed of come-ons every morning."

"I'm overtrained," explained J. Rufus with cheerful resignation. "I used to be able to jump into a town with ten dollars in my pocket, and have to lock myself in my room to keep 'em from forcing money on me faster than I could take it; but I've lost my winning ways, I guess. The fact of the matter is, Blackie, I need an oculist. I can't see small enough since the big blow-up. I had climbed too high, and when I tumbled off the perch I fell so hard I couldn't see anything but stars. A dollar is small as a pea now, and perfectly silent, and it takes at least a thousand to emit even a faint click. I can't learn to pike again."

"I wish I could learn anything else," complained Mr. Daw in disgust.

"Why, blind-men's tincups look like fat picking to me, and my yellow streak shows through so strong that I cross the street every time I see a push cart; I'm afraid the banana men will make a mistake and pull my fingers off. Say! See that mug over there on the corner with his back to us? Well, that's a plain-clothes man. I know him all right and he knows me. It's Jimmy Rogers and I can't hand him a sou to plug his memory!"

Blackie was visibly distressed and edged around the corner.

"I should say you had developed a saffron streak," observed J. Rufus, eying him with a trace of contempt. "I wouldn't have known you till you spoke. Come on and we'll go right straight past Jimmy Rogers."

He put his hand behind Blackie's elbow to take him in that direction, but to his surprise Daw shrank back.

"Not for mine!" he declared. "I know I'm due, but I won't go till they come after me. Why, J. Rufus, do you know we're all that's left of the old bunch? Billy Riggs, Tommy Rance, d.i.c.k Logan, Pit Hardesty--all put away, for stretches of from five to twenty years! And Jim, mind what I say; our turn's next! There, he's turning this way! I'm on the lope. Me for the first train out of town. Good-by, old man."

He shook hands hastily and, drawn-chested, plunged down the side street at a swift pace. Wallingford looked after him and involuntarily expanded his own broad chest as he turned in the direction of his hotel. He looked back at Ed Nickel's cigar store after a few steps, and hesitated as if he might return, but he did not. On the way he counted five such establishments, and he peered keenly into each one of them. They were all of a little better grade than the one he had visited, but none of them was stocked in such manner as to tell of wholesale purchases and cash discounts. Suddenly he chuckled. At last he had the detail for his heretofore vague idea, and it was a draught of strong wine to him. He had been the high jester of finance, always, and once more the bells upon his cap jingled merrily. Inspired, he walked into his hotel with a swaggering a.s.surance entirely out of keeping with the lonely two dollars in his pocket. The clerk had been instructed to look after Wallingford, for though he had been an extravagant guest for within a day of two weeks, no one but the bellboys and waiters had seen a penny of his money--and his bill was nearly two hundred dollars. The clerk firmly intended to call to him if he strode past on the far side of the lobby, as had been his custom in the past two or three days; but he did not need to call, for J. Rufus approached the desk without invitation, beaming as he turned toward it, but growing stern as he neared it.

"The wine I had served in my rooms last night was vile," he charged. "If I cannot get the brand of champagne I want, have it perfectly frappe when it gets to my apartments, and secure better service all around, I shall pay my bill and leave!"

The clerk touched a bell instantly.

"Very sorry, Mr. Wallingford," said he. "I shall speak to the wine steward about the matter at once."

J. Rufus grunted in acknowledgment of this apology, and with a feeling of relief the clerk surveyed that broad back as it retreated in immeasurable dignity. There was no need to worry about the money of a man who took that att.i.tude. On the way to his suite, however, J. Rufus, as he handed the elevator boy a quarter with one hand, drew down his cuff furtively with the other, under the impulse of a sudden idea, and, grinning, looked at his cuff b.u.t.ton. It was diamond studded, and he ought to be able to raise at least twenty-five apiece on the pair.

Mrs. Wallingford was sewing when her capable husband came in. Something in the very movement of the door caused her to look up with an instant knowledge that he brought good news, and a sight of his face confirmed the impression. She smiled at him brightly, and yet with a trace of apprehension. There had come over her a curious change of late. Her color was as clear as ever, even clearer, for it seemed to have attained a certain pure transparency, but there seemed, too, a slight pallor beneath it, and her eyes were strangely luminous.

"I got the fog out of my conk to-day, f.a.n.n.y," he said exultantly. "It seemed as if I never would be able to frame up a good business stunt again, but it hit me at last. How do you like this place?"

"I can't tell," she slowly returned. "I haven't seen much of it, you know."

"You will," he laughed. "You may pick out any part of it you like, because I think I'll settle down here for good."

She looked up with a little gasp.

"Then you're going into a--a _real_ business?" she faltered.

"A hundred of them," he boasted. "I've just decided to rake off half the profits of all this town's cigar stores, except a few of the best ones, and stay right here to collect. The hundred or more ought to yield me one or two dollars a day apiece. Looks good, don't it?"

"I'm so glad," she said simply. It never occurred to either of them to doubt that he could do what he had planned, and just now she was less inclined than ever to inquire into details. She sat, her hands folded in the fluffy white goods upon her lap, with a deepening color in her cheeks.

"I'll tell you why I'm glad we are to settle down at last and have a real home," she said suddenly, and, arising, advanced to him and shook out the dainty article upon which she had been sewing, holding it outstretched before him so that he could gather its full import.

"What?" he gasped.

She nodded her head, half crying and half laughing, and suddenly buried her head upon his shoulder, sobbing. He clasped her in his arms, tiny white garment and all, and looked on over her head, out of the window at the gathering dusk in the sky where it stretched down between the tall buildings. For just one fleeting second a trace of the Eternal Mystery came to awe him, but it pa.s.sed and left him grinning.

"I'd just been figuring on a new house," he observed, "but I guess I'll have to plan it all over now."

He led her to a chair presently, and went back to the window, where he stood until the darkness warned him that it was time to dress for dinner. The meal finished, he sat down to write, tearing up sheet after sheet of paper and crumpling it into the waste basket until far into the night, and later he sent down for a city directory, making out a list of cigar stores, dropping out those that were printed in black-face type; but whatever he did he paused once in a while to turn toward that tiny white garment upon the table and survey it with smiling wonder.

In the morning he called upon a job printer of reputation, and then he went again to Ed Nickel's cigar store; but this time he dashed up to the door in a showy carriage drawn by two good horses. The same flabby man sat in the corner playing solitaire as if he had never left off, and the same apathetic young man with the dent in his hat was watching him.

The split cigar mold had not yet grown together, though Ed Nickel still held its two parts matched tightly in his left hand. Upon the entrance of Wallingford the magnificent, however, the three graven figures, glancing first upon him and then upon the carriage, inhaled the breath of life. The solitaire player suddenly pushed his cards together and began shuffling them over and over and over and over, though he had not yet exhausted the possibilities of the previous game. The apathetic young man stood up to yawn but changed his mind after he had his mouth open. Ed Nickel bowed, smiled and hurried behind his counter.

"What will you take for your business, Mr. Nickel?" asked J. Rufus, throwing a coin on the case and tapping his finger over the box from which he had purchased the cigars the night before. Freshly shaven, he wore a new collar, a new shirt with fine, crisp cuffs, and a new silk lavender tie--also plain new cuff b.u.t.tons.

Ed Nickel's ears heard the astounding question, but Ed Nickel's mind did not grasp it, for Ed Nickel's hand went on mechanically into the case after the designated cigars. It secured the box, it brought it partly out--and then dropped it just inside the sliding door. The hand came out and its fingers twined with those of the other hand.

"What did you say?" asked Mr. Nickel's mouth.

"How much will you take for your business?" repeated J. Rufus.

Mr. Nickel looked slowly around his walls, past the dust-hung wire screen to the dingy back room, under the counter, into the case, over the spa.r.s.ely filled shelves.

"I don't know," he said, his eyes roving back to those of J. Rufus.

"Besides the stock and fixtures, there's the good will, the trade I've worked up, and the call for my Nickelfine and the Double Nickel, my leading ten-cent cigar. I'd have to take an invoice to set a price on this business."

"I know," laughed J. Rufus with a wink, "but you can invoice it with your eyes shut and we can lump the rest of it. Say five hundred for the stock and fixtures and three hundred for the good will, which is crowding it some."

Ed Nickel's cupidity gave a thump. Eight hundred was a good price for his business, especially in this location. He had often thought of moving. In a better location he would do a better business; he was sure of that, like every other unsuccessful merchant; but of course he objected.

"Make it a thousand and I'll listen," he proposed.

J. Rufus looked about the place coldly.

"No," he decided. "I'd be cheating the consolidation."

Mr. Nickel immediately woke up another notch.

"What consolidation?" he wanted to know.

"The one I spoke to you about yesterday," said the prospective buyer, and picking up the coin he had tossed down he tapped with it on the gla.s.s.

Thus reminded, the benumbed one brought out the delayed box and Mr.

Wallingford lit one of the cigars.