He was venal, was the head waiter, and he remembered the pleasant, velvety rustle of a bill in his palm.
"That joke"s good enough for a minstrel show," Clover declared. "Why, man, even if that stock could be sold, Gabriel"s horn would catch us still struggling to pay our first dividend."
Mr. Wallingford lit a cigarette and smiled in pity.
"Oh, well, if you figure on staying in the business till you drop dead I won"t wake you up," he stated. "But I thought you wanted money."
Mr. Clover shook his head.
"We have laws in my State, Mr. Wallingford."
"I should hope so," returned that gentleman. "If it wasn"t for good, safe, solid laws I never would make a cent. Why, the law"s on my side all the time, and the police are the best friends I"ve got. They show me the way home at night."
Mr. Clover looked incredulous.
"I"m afraid you don"t understand the fraternal insurance business," he insisted. "It takes a lot of hard, patient work to build up an order."
"_You_ don"t understand the business," retorted the other. "What, for instance, are you going to do with that thousand dollars you"re taking back home?"
"Give it to the widow of Mr. Henry L. Bishop, of course," said Mr.
Clover, expanding his chest and pursing his mouth virtuously. "The widows and orphans who look to the n.o.ble Order of Friendly Hands for protection shall not look in vain."
"That will look well in a prospectus," admitted Mr. Wallingford with a knowing twinkle of his eyes; "but I"m not going to take out any insurance so you could notice it. Suppose I show you how to have Mrs.
Bishop hand you back that thousand with sobs of grat.i.tude? Do I get two hundred and fifty of it?"
"If you can do that legitimately," said Mr. Clover, leaning forward and surprised into sudden warm eagerness, "I"ll accept your price for a half interest."
"I"ll go with you to-night--if I can get the drawing-room on your train," decided Wallingford, and arose.
The Supreme Exalted Ruler gazed up at him with profound admiration. He looked so much like actual cash. He might be a "smooth article," but was not one Clover also "smooth"? He could guard the gold in his own teeth, all right.
"You"re a wonder, Jim," said Mr. Daw to his friend when they were alone for a few minutes; "but where are you going to get that two thousand?"
"Out of the business--if I pay it at all," replied Mr. Wallingford.
"Trust your Uncle Rufus."
CHAPTER IX
MR. WALLINGFORD SHOWS MR. CLOVER HOW TO DO THE WIDOWS AND ORPHANS GOOD
Mrs. Bishop, a small, nervous-looking woman of forty-five, with her thin hair drawn back so tightly from her narrow forehead that it gave one the headache to look at her, was in her dismal "front room" with her wrinkled red hands folded in her lap when Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Clover called. It was only the day after the funeral, and she broke into tears the moment they introduced themselves.
"Madam," declaimed Mr. Clover in his deepest and most sympathetic voice, "it is the blessed privilege of the n.o.ble Order of Friendly Hands to dry the tears of the widows and orphans, and to shed the light of hope upon their disconsolate pathway. It is our pleasure to bring you, as a testimonial of your husband"s affection and loving care, this check for one thousand dollars."
Mrs. Bishop took the check and burst into uncontrollable sobs, whereat Mr. Wallingford looked distinctly annoyed. If he could help it, he never, by any possibility, looked upon other than the most cheerful aspects of life.
Mr. Clover cleared his throat.
"But the broad paternal interest of the n.o.ble Order of Friendly Hands does not stop here," he went on, turning for a glance of earned approval from J. Rufus Wallingford. "The family of every member of our Order becomes at once a ward of ours, and they may look to us for a.s.sistance, advice, and benefit in every way possible. We are a group of friends, banded together for mutual aid in time of trouble and sorrow."
Mr. Wallingford judged this magnificent flight to be a quotation from the ritual of the n.o.ble Order of Friendly Hands, and he was correct; but, as Mrs. Bishop had ventured to look up at them, he nodded his head gravely.
"It is about that thousand dollars you hold in your hand, Mrs. Bishop,"
Clover continued, resuming his oratorical version of the lesson he had carefully learned from Wallingford; "and we feel it our duty to remind you that, unless it is wisely used, the plans of your thoughtful husband for your safe future will not have been carried out. How had you thought of investing this neat little sum?"
Mrs. Bishop gazed at the check through her tears and tried to comprehend that it was real money, as it would have been but for the astuteness of Mr. Wallingford. Mr. Clover had proposed to bring her ten new, crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, but his monitor had pointed out that if she ever got that money between her fingers and felt it crinkle she would never let go of it. A check was so different.
"Well," she faltered, "my daughter Minnie wanted me to get us some clothes and pay some down on a piano and lay in the winter coal and provisions and put the rest in a bank for a rainy day. Minnie"s my youngest. She"s just quit the High School because she wants to go to a commercial college. But my oldest daughter, Hattie, wouldn"t hear to it.
She says if Minnie"ll only take a job in the store where she works they can run the family, and for me to take this thousand dollars and finish paying off the mortgage on the house with it. The mortgage costs six per cent. a year."
"Your daughter Hattie is a very sensible young lady," said Mr.
Wallingford with great gravity. "It would be folly to expend this thousand dollars upon personal luxuries; but equally wrong to lose its earning power."
It was the voice of Wall Street, of the Government Mint, of the very soul and spirit of all financial wisdom, that spoke here, and Mrs.
Bishop felt it with a thrill.
"Madam," orated Mr. Clover, "the n.o.ble Order of Friendly Hands has provided a way for the safe and profitable investment of the funds left to the widows and orphans under its protection. It has set aside a certain amount of high-dividend-bearing stock in the Order itself, or rather in its operating department, of which, by the way, I am the president, and of which the eminent capitalist and philanthropist, Mr.
J. Rufus Wallingford, is a leading spirit." His sweeping gesture toward that benevolent multi-millionaire, and Mr. Wallingford"s bow in return, were sights worth beholding. "The benevolent gentlemen who organized this generous a.s.sociation have just made possible this further beneficence to its dependents. The stock should pay you not less than twelve per cent. a year, and your original capital can be withdrawn at any time. With this income you can pay the interest on your mortgage, and have a tidy little sum left at the end of each quarter. Think of it, madam! Money every three months, and your thousand dollars always there!"
Mrs. Bishop glanced at him in slow comprehension. The figures that he gave her did not, as yet, mean so much, but the sight of Mr. Wallingford did. He was so big, so solid looking, so much like substantial prosperity itself. A huge diamond glowed from his finger. It must be worth several hundred dollars. Another one gleamed from his scarf. His clothing was of the latest cut and the finest material. Even his socks, in the narrow rim which showed above his low-cut shoes, were silk; she could see that clear across the room.
The door opened, and a girl of seventeen or eighteen came in. That she was unusually pretty was attested by the suddenly widening eyes of Mr.
Wallingford.
"And is this your daughter Minnie?" asked the benevolent gentleman, all his protecting and fostering instincts aroused.
Mrs. Bishop, in a flutter, presented her younger daughter to the fortune-bringing gentlemen, and Minnie fluttered a bit on her own account. She knew she was pretty; she read in the eyes of the wealthy-looking, perfectly groomed Mr. Wallingford that she was pretty; she saw in the smile of Mr. Clover that she was pretty, and her vanity was pleased inordinately.
A sudden brilliant idea came to Mr. Wallingford.
"I have the solution to your problem, Mrs. Bishop," he said. "We shall need more help in our offices, and your daughter shall have the place.
She can soon earn more money than she ever could in a store, and can secure as good a training as she could in a business college. How would you like that, Miss Bishop?"
"I think it would be fine," replied the young lady, with a large-eyed glance toward Mr. Wallingford.
The glance was more of habit than intent. Minnie"s mirror and what she had heard from her boy friends had given her an impulse toward coquetry.
It was pleasant to feel her power, to see what instantaneous impression she could make upon grown men. Such a friendly party it was! Everybody was pleased, and in the end Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Clover walked away from the house with Mrs. Bishop"s check and her receipt and her policy in their pockets.
Mr. Clover was lost in profound admiration.
"It worked, all right!" he said exultantly to Mr. Neil, as soon as they returned to the dingy little office. "Here"s the thousand dollars," and he threw down the check. "Good Lord! I couldn"t believe but that thousand was gone; and then if another man died he would put us on the toboggan."
Mr. Neil was a thin young man whose forehead wore the perpetual frown of slow thought. Also his cuffs were ragged. He was the Supreme Exalted Secretary.
"Now may I have fifty?" he inquired in an aside to Clover. "My board bill, you know."