"Oh, we have to! This is lodge night, and I am a patriarch. I haven't missed a night for twenty years, and Eddy, here, has an office, too--his first one. We've got ten candidates to-night." "I see," said Mr.

Wallingford gravely. "It is more or less in the line of a sacred duty.

Nevertheless, we will not go home to dinner. I'll get you at the lodge door at half past eight. Will that be early enough?"

Mr. Jasper put his hands upon his knees and turned to his friend.

"I guess we can work our way in, can't we, Eddy?" he chuckled, and Eddy, with equally simple pleasure, replied that they could.

"Very well. Back to the house, chauffeur." And, in a moment more, they were sailing back to the decrepit little cottage, where Lamb jumped out to carry the news to Ella. She was just coming out of the kitchen door in her sunbonnet to run over to the grocery store as Edward came up the steps. He grabbed her by both shoulders and dragged her out.

"Come on; we're going to take you along!" he threatened, and she did not know why, but, at the touch of his hands, she paled slightly. Her eyes never faltered, however, as she laughed and jerked herself away.

"Not much, you don't! I'm worried enough as it is with father in there--and you, of course."

He told her that they would not be home to supper, and, for a second time, she wistfully saw them driving away in the big red machine.

Mr. Wallingford talked with the chauffeur for a few moments, and then the machine leaped forward with definiteness. Once or twice Mr.

Wallingford looked back. The two in the tonneau were examining the cloth-topped tacks, and both were talking volubly. Mile after mile they were still at it, and the rich man felt relieved of all responsibility.

The less he said in the matter the better; he had learned the invaluable lesson of when not to talk. So far as he was concerned, the Universal Covered Carpet Tack Company was launched, and he was able to turn his attention to the science of running the car, a matter which, by the time they had reached their stopping point, he had picked up to the great admiration of the expert driver. For the last five miles the big man ran the machine himself, with the help of a guiding word or two, and when they finally stopped in front of the one pretentious hotel in the small town they had reached, he was so completely absorbed in the new toy that he was actually as nonchalant about the new company as he would have wished to appear. His pa.s.sengers were surprised when they found that they had come twenty miles, and Mr. Wallingford showed them what a man who knows how to dine can do in a minor hotel. He had everybody busy, from the proprietor down. The snap of his fingers was as potent here as the clarion call of the trumpet in battle, and David Jasper, though he strove to disapprove, after sixty years of somnolence woke up and actually enjoyed pretentious luxury.

There were but five minutes of real business conversation following the meal, but five minutes were enough. David Jasper had called his friend Eddy aside for one brief moment.

"Did he give you any references?" he asked, the habit of caution a.s.serting itself.

"Sure; more than half a dozen of them."

"Have you written to them?"

"I wrote this morning."

"I guess he wouldn't give them to you if he wasn't all right."

"We don't need the references," urged Lamb. "The man himself is reference enough. You see that automobile? He bought it this morning and didn't pay a cent on it. They didn't ask him to."

It was a greater recommendation than if the man had paid cash down for the machine; for credit is mightier than cash, everywhere.

"I think we'll go in," said Dave. Think he would go in! It was only his conservative way of expressing himself, for he was already in with his whole heart and soul. In the five minutes of conversation between the three that ensued, David Jasper agreed to be one of the original incorporators, to go on the first board of directors, and to provide three other solid men to serve in a like capacity, the preliminary meeting being arranged for the next morning. Mr. Wallingford pa.s.sed around his black cigars and lit one in huge content as he climbed into the front seat with the chauffeur, to begin his task of urging driver and machine back through the night in the time that he had promised.

That was a wonderful ride to the novices. Nothing but darkness ahead, with a single stream of white light spreading out upon the roadway, which, like a fast descending curtain, lowered always before them; a rut here, a rock there, angle and curve and dip and rise all springing out of the night with startling swiftness, to disappear behind them before they had given even a gasp of comprehension for the possible danger they had confronted but that was now past. Unconsciously they found themselves gripping tightly the sides of the car, and yet, even to the old man, there was a strange sense of exhilaration, aided perhaps by wine, that made them, after the first breathless five miles, begin to jest in voices loud enough to carry against the wind, to laugh boisterously, and even to sing, by-and-by, a nonsensical song started by Lamb and caught up by Wallingford and joined by the still firm voice of David Jasper. The chauffeur, the while bent grimly over his wheel, peered with iron-nerved intensity out into that mysterious way where the fatal snag might rise up at any second and smite them into lifeless clay, for they were going at a terrific pace. The hoa.r.s.e horn kept constantly hooting, and every now and then they flashed by trembling horses drawn up at the side of the road and attached to "rigs," the occupants of which appeared only as one or two or three fish-white faces in the one instant that the glow of the headlight gleamed upon them.

Once there was a quick swerve out of the road and back into it again, where the rear wheel hovered for a fraction of a second over a steep gully, and not until they had pa.s.sed on did the realization come to them that there had been one horse that had refused, either through stubbornness or fright, to get out of the road fast enough. But what is a danger past when a myriad lie before, and what are dangers ahead when a myriad have been pa.s.sed safely by? The exhilaration became almost an intoxication, for, in spite of those few moments when mirth and gayety were checked by that sudden throb of what might have been, the songs burst forth again as soon as a level track stretched ahead once more.

"Five minutes before the time I promised you!" exclaimed Mr. Wallingford in jovial triumph, jumping from his seat and opening the door of the tonneau for his pa.s.sengers just in front of the stairway that led to their lodge-rooms.

They climbed out, stiff and breathless and still tingling with the inexplicable thrill of it all.

"Eleven o'clock in the morning, remember, at Carwin's," he reminded them as they left him, and afterward they wondered why such a simple exertion as the climbing of one flight of stairs should make their hearts beat so high and their breath come so deep and harsh. It would have been curious, later that night, to see Edward Lamb buying a quart of champagne for his friends, and protesting that it was not cold enough!

Mr. Wallingford stepped back to the chauffeur. "What's your first name?" he inquired.

"Frank, sir."

"Well, Frank, when you go back to the shop you tell them that you're to drive my machine hereafter when I call for it, and when I get settled down here I want you to work for me. Drive to the hotel now and wait."

Before climbing into the luxury of the tonneau he handed the chauffeur a five-dollar bill.

"All right, sir," said Frank.

At the hotel, the man of means walked up to the clerk and opened his pocketbook.

"I have a little more cash than I care to carry around. Just put this to my credit, will you?" and he counted out six one-hundred-dollar bills.

As he turned away the clerk permitted himself that faint trace of a smile once more. His confidence was justified. He had known that somebody would pay Mr. Wallingford's acrobatic bill. His interesting guest strode out to the big red automobile. The chauffeur was out in a second and had the tonneau open before the stately but earnestly willing doorman of the hotel could perform the duty.

"Now, show us the town," said Wallingford as the door closed upon him, and when he came in late that night his eyes were red and his speech was thick; but there were plenty of eager hands to see safely to bed the prince who had landed in their midst with less than a hundred dollars in his possession.

He was up bright and vigorous the next morning, however. A cold bath, a hearty breakfast in his room, a half hour with the barber and a spin in the automobile made him elastic and bounding again, so that at eleven o'clock he was easily the freshest man among the six who gathered in Mr.

Carwin's office. The incorporators noted with admiration, which with wiser men might have turned to suspicion, that Mr. Wallingford was better posted on corporation law than Mr. Carwin himself, and that he engineered the preliminary proceedings through in a jiffy. With the exception of Lamb, they were all men past forty, and not one of them had known experience of this nature. They had been engaged in minor occupations or in minor business throughout their lives, and had gathered their few thousands together dollar by dollar. To them this new realm that was opened up was a fairyland, and the simple trick of watering stock that had been carefully explained to them, one by one, pleased them as no toy ever pleased a child. They had heard of such things as being vague and mysterious operations in the realms of finance and had condemned them, taking their tone from the columns of editorials they had read upon such practices; but, now that they were themselves to reap the fruits of it, they looked through different spectacles. It was a just proceeding which this genius of commerce proposed; for they who stood the first brunt of launching the ship were ent.i.tled to greater rewards than they who came in upon an a.s.sured certainty of profits, having waited only for the golden cargo to be in the harbor.

As a sort of sealing of their compact and to show that this was to be a corporation upon a friendly basis, rather than a cold, grasping business proposition, Mr. Wallingford took them all over to a simple lunch in a private dining room at his hotel. He was careful not to make it too elaborate, but careful, too, that the luncheon should be notable, and they all went away talking about him: what a wonderful man he was, what a wonderful business proposition he had permitted them to enter upon, what wonderful resources he must have at his command, what wonderful genius was his in manipulation, in invention, in every way.

There was a week now in which to act, and Mr. Wallingford wasted no time. He picked out his house in the exclusive part of Gildendale, and when it came to paying the thousand dollars down, Mr. Wallingford quietly made out a sixty-day note for the amount.

"I beg your pardon," hesitated the agent, "the first payment is supposed to be in cash."

"Oh, I know that it is supposed to be," laughed Mr. Wallingford, "but we understand how these things are. I guess the house itself will secure the note for that length of time. I am going to be under pretty heavy expense in fitting up the place, and a man with any regard for the earning power of money does not keep much cash lying loose. Do you want this note or not?" and his final tone was peremptory.

"Oh, why, certainly; that's all right," said the agent, and took it.

Upon the court records appeared the sale, but even before it was so entered a firm of decorators and furnishers had been given _carte blanche_, following, however, certain artistic requirements of Mr.

Wallingford himself. The result that they produced within the three days that he gave them was marvelous; somewhat too garish, perhaps, for people of good taste, but impressive in every detail; and for all this he paid not one penny in cash. He was accredited with being the owner of a house in the exclusive suburb, Gildendale. On that accrediting the furnishing was done, on that accrediting he stocked his pantry shelves, his refrigerator, his wine cellar, his coal bins, his humidors, and had started a tailor to work upon half a dozen suits, among them an automobile costume. He had a modest establishment of two servants and a chauffeur by the time his wife arrived, and on the day the final organization of the one-thousand-dollar company was effected, he gave a housewarming for his a.s.sociates of the Universal Covered Carpet Tack Company. Where Mr. Wallingford had charmed, Mrs. Wallingford fascinated, and the five men went home that night richer than they had ever dreamed of being; than they would ever be again.

CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH AN ASTOUNDING REVELATION IS MADE CONCERNING J. RUFUS

The first stockholders' meeting of the Tack Company was a cheerful affair, held around a table that was within an hour or so to have a cloth; for whenever J. Rufus Wallingford did business, he must, perforce, eat and drink, and all who did business with him must do the same. The stockholders, being all present, elected their officers and their board of directors: Mr. Wallingford, president; Mr. Lamb, secretary; Mr. Jasper, treasurer; and Mr. Lewis, David Jasper's nearest friend, vice president, these four and Mr. Nolting also const.i.tuting the board of directors. Immediately after, they adopted a stock, printed form of const.i.tution, voted an increase of capitalization to one hundred thousand dollars, and then adjourned.

The president, during the luncheon, made them a little speech in which he held before them constantly a tack with a crimson top glued upon a roughened surface, and alluded to the invaluable services their young friend, Edward Lamb, had rendered to the completion of the company's now perfect and flawless article of manufacture. He explained to them in detail the bigness of the Eureka Tack Manufacturing Company, its enormous undivided profits, its tremendous yearly dividends, the fabulous price at which its stock was quoted, with none for sale; and all this gigantic business built upon a simple tack!--Gentlemen, not nearly, not _nearly_ so attractive and so profitable an article of commerce as this perfect little convenience held before them. The gentlemen were to be congratulated upon a bigger and brighter and better fortune than had ever come to them; they were all to be congratulated upon having met each other, and since they had been kind enough, since they had been trusting enough, to give him their confidence with but little question, Mr. Wallingford felt it his duty to rea.s.sure them, even though they needed no rea.s.surance, that he was what he was; and he called upon his friend and their secretary, Mr. Lamb, to read to them the few letters that he understood had been received from the Mexican and Rio Grande Rubber Company, the St. John's Blood Orange Plantation Company, the Los Pocos Lead Development Company, the Sierra Cinnabar Grant, and others.

Mr. Lamb--Secretary Lamb, if you please--arose in self-conscious dignity, which he strove to taper off into graceful ease.

"It is hardly worth while reading more than one, for they're all alike,"

he stated jovially, "and if anybody questions our president, send him to his friend Eddy!" Whereupon he read the letters.

According to them, Mr. Wallingford was a gentleman of the highest integrity; he was a man of unimpeachable character, morally and financially; he was a genius of commerce; he had been sought, for his advice and for the tower of strength that his name had become, by all the money kings of Boston; he was, in a word, the greatest boon that had ever descended upon any city, and all of the gentlemen who were lucky enough to be a.s.sociated with him in any business enterprise that he might back or vouch for, could count themselves indeed most fortunate.