"Wall Street, eh?" he muttered. "Ha! Hum! Methinks the financial stringency is over if this little old coat holds out! I seem to detect the odor of money."
He mounted the steps to the street, and wandered aimlessly down the great financial highway until he found himself standing before the gorgeous facade of the famous Urban National Bank. Here he paused a moment, and curiosity as much as anything else led him to enter its portals, and there within lay spread before his famished financial eyes, separated from his hands only by a slight bit of steel grillwork, countless packages, huge of bulk, of bank-notes, in all denominations, any one of which, once in his possession, would serve to put him at ease for the remainder of the year. Monte Cristo himself had no such stores of wealth within his reach in the treasure-caves of his wondrous island.
The teller behind the grill was counting the contents of his safe, and as he bent over to foot up a column of figures Jack stopped in front of the little window and said:
"Good-morning!"
He did this not so much for the fun of it as for a precautionary test of his invisibility, for a great scheme had entered his mind. The teller looked up, craned his neck in every direction, and peered around to see who had addressed him.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "THERE MUST BE SOMETHING THE MATTER WITH MY NERVES"]
"There must be something the matter with my nerves this morning," he said, scratching his head in bewilderment. "I was sure somebody spoke to me."
Jack had all he could do to keep from laughing outright, but safety bade him restrain the impulse, and in a moment he had climbed over the steel grillwork and entered the sacred precincts of Ready Money. Once within the teller"s cage his heart began to thump so violently that it seemed impossible for him to escape detection, but so busy were all the bank people with the duties of the day that no one seemed to hear. And then our hero began. Within five minutes he had stowed away within the capacious pockets of his invisible cloak as many of the packages of bills, green-backed and yellow, as he could possibly carry there, and then, slipping out through the little door at the rear of the cage, he walked calmly out of the bank with them. Arrived on Broadway, he removed his coat and, hanging it over his arm, took a taxicab back to the Redmere.
He could hardly wait until he reached his apartment to count up the results of his morning"s work, but his caution stood by him, and it was not until he had locked his door and barricaded it with the bureau rolled in front of it that he opened the various packages. There were ten of them altogether, and Jack"s eyes nearly popped out of his head with wonder as he saw so much real money spread out before him. Three of the packages held one thousand dollars each in twenty-dollar bills, four of them held five hundred dollars each in five-dollar bills, and the other three totalled fifteen hundred dollars in ones and twos--sixty-five hundred dollars altogether.
"Mike!" he cried, going to the dumbwaiter shaft, and calling down, vociferously, "turn on the heat, and tell the boss to send a truck around here for his rent."
Hiding the money under the mattress of his bed, Jack removed the invisible cloak and hung it in the closet, taking care to lock the door thereof, and then he started to shave. His hand trembled too much for this, however, and after he had snipped off two or three pieces of his cheek he abandoned the effort, but his brief trial before the gla.s.s had a distinct moral influence upon him, for as his eye caught its own reflection in the mirror, and Jack came to look himself squarely in the face for the first time since his removal of the money from the bank, he found that he could not do it. His eye faltered and fell, and the question flashed across his mind as to the honesty of his morning"s work.
"Hum!" he muttered, sitting down suddenly on his bed and staring at a hole in the carpet, "I hadn"t thought of that before! What would my poor but honest parents think about this?"
He scratched the end of his nose thoughtfully.
"It isn"t any too straight, even in these days of frenzied finance," he went on; "that is, it isn"t unless I regard this thing as a loan! Of course if it"s a loan--yes, it must be. Otherwise I"m no better than any other--"
His brow cleared as the idea entered his mind.
"I"ll make it O. K. in a jiffy," he said.
He went to his writing-desk, and wrote to the cashier of the Urban National Bank as follows:
NEW YORK, _December 12, 1910_.
_Cashier, the Urban National Bank,_ _New York City:_
DEAR SIR,--I think it only proper to inform you that, unknown to yourself or any other person in your bank, I have this morning negotiated a loan with your inst.i.tution for six thousand five hundred dollars. I have a temporary need for this accommodation, and in order that the transaction may appear a trifle less informal, I beg to hand you herewith my six-months note for the amount borrowed, together with one hundred and ninety-five dollars in cash to cover discount charges, reckoned on a six-per-cent. basis. Please acknowledge receipt of the same in the Personal Column of the New York _Morning Gazoo_.
The charming ease and promptness with which this transaction was put through have given me a more than friendly feeling for your bank, and now that I have used one package of your money I take pleasure in saying that I shall not only recommend it to my friends, but shall hereafter use no other.
Cordially yours, A FRIEND IN NEED.
This written, Jack purchased a blank promissory note at a stationery store on the corner and filled it in.
$6,500. NEW YORK, _December 12, 1910_.
Six months after date I promise to pay to the order of the Urban National Bank Six thousand five hundred dollars at the Urban National Bank, New York City. Value received.
ME.
Both these interesting doc.u.ments he now inclosed in an envelope, with one hundred and ninety-five dollars in bills, sending the whole by special-delivery mail to the cashier of the bank.
"There!" said Jack, when he had completed this righteous act. "I can now look myself in the eye again."
From this time on Jack wore his invisible cloak nearly all the time. He found it very convenient, especially when he wished to go to the theatre, or to ride on any of our vehicles of public transportation.
Once he seriously contemplated a trip to Europe in it, but this was postponed by a sudden important development which called for his attention nearer home. While seated in the back of Colonel Midas"s box at the Metropolitan Opera House one night, listening to the dreamy numbers of "La Boheme," utterly un.o.bserved, of course, by any of the other occupants of the box, thanks to his magic cloak, Jack overheard Colonel Midas engaged in a strenuous conversation with one of his male relatives, who had asked the eminent financier for some kind of a tip that would make a rich man of him.
"If you"ll tell me whether the San Francisco, Omaha & Mott Haven is going to buy the K., T. & W. or not, Colonel," the man had said, "I can make a million or two."
"Of course you could, Jim," said the Colonel, "but I can"t tell you now what will be done in that matter. I don"t know myself whether we"ll buy K., T. & W. or build our own connecting line. We haven"t decided. If we do buy, the stock will go jumping up ten, twenty, thirty points at a time. If we don"t, the bottom will drop out of it. It"s the turn of a hand which way that cat will jump, but I"ll do this for you: As soon as I do know I"ll give you twenty-four hours" start with the inside information. We have a secret meeting to-morrow at my office to discuss the matter, and when we come to a definite understanding I"ll give you the tip. What I can tell you now is that the new line into Buffalo is going to run through Rocky Corners, and anybody who gets hold of old Hiram b.u.mpus"s farm up there under a hundred thousand will clear half a million without getting out of bed."
"Why don"t you go in and buy it yourself?" demanded the other.
"Because I"m not wasting my gray matter on piking little half-million-dollar deals, that"s why," retorted Midas, with a glance of scorn at his guest.
Bursting with this valuable information, Jack immediately left the Opera House and dispatched a rush telegram to Hiram b.u.mpus at Rocky Corners offering him fifty thousand dollars for his farm.
The answer came back the next morning:
Price of farm seventy-five thousand, cash. No checks taken.
HIRAM b.u.mPUS.
To which Jack immediately replied: "Price satisfactory. Will arrive Thursday with money."
This done, our hero proceeded to camp on the front doorstep of Colonel Midas, and when that distinguished financier appeared to take his motor down to his office Jack, still wearing his invisible cloak, climbed in alongside of him, and hardly daring to breathe lest he should betray his presence in the car, rode down to the offices of the Midas Trust Company with the magnate himself. Here Midas descended from the car, and Jack, close upon his heels, followed him into that holy of financial holies, the private office.
"Any word from Rockernegie?" asked the Colonel of his secretary, as he seated himself at his desk, Jack meanwhile having perched himself on the mantelpiece.
"Here at ten," returned the secretary, laconically. They did not even waste breath in that office.
"Moneypenny?"
"Wires, here ten-fifteen."
"Asterbilt?"
"Yachting. Mediterranean. Leaves all to you."
"Good!" said Midas. "When they come show them in, and I"m out to everybody else."
And then it was that Jack had his first glimpse of really great men in action. By ten-thirty all the magnates of finance, with the exception of Mr. Asterbilt, were on hand, and the secret meeting of the rulers of the San Francisco, Omaha & Mott Haven Transcontinental Railway System was on. They came down to business without any preliminaries.
"Is it buy or build?" asked Midas.
"Buy," said Rockernegie.