George Chester - Young Wallingford

“Let him!” retorted Larry savagely. “He took it! Twice I gave him aces back to back on my deal, and he turned them down without a bet. On his own deal he bet his head off on a pair of deuces, with not one of us three able to draw out on him; and right there he cops that hundred and fifty himself. He’s too fresh!”

“Well,” said Badger Billy philosophically, “he’ll come for more.”

“Not of mine, he won’t,” snorted the dexterous one. “I can’t do any business against a man that’s next. I hope he chokes.”

“There you go again, letting your temper get the best of you,” protested Mr. Phelps, himself none too pleased. “This fresh lollop has coin, and it ought to be ours.”

“Ought to be? It is ours,” growled Larry. “We’ll get it if we have to mace him, at noon, on Madison Square.”

In the meantime J. Rufus was chuckling himself to sleep. He rose at eleven, breakfasted at one, and was dressing and planning to besiege New York upon his own account, when the telephone advised him that Mr. Phelps was down-stairs with a parched throat, and on the way up to get a drink!

“Fine business!” exclaimed J. Rufus with a cordiality which had nothing whatever to do with the puzzled expression on his brow. “What’ll you have? I’ll order it while you’re on your way up.”

“Nothing stronger than a Scotch highball,” was the reply, whereupon young Wallingford, as soon as the telephone was clear, ordered the materials therefor.

“Fine business,” he repeated to himself musingly as he stood with his hand still on the receiver after he had hung it up; “also rough work. This thirst is too sudden.”

He was still most thoughtful when Mr. Phelps knocked at the door, and had yet more food for contemplation when the caller began talking with great enthusiasm about his thirst, explaining the height and breadth and thickness thereof, its atomic weight, its color and the excellent style of its finish.

“If I just had that thirst outside of me where I could get at it, I could make an airship of it,” he imaginatively concluded.

“Gas or hot air?” inquired young Mr. Wallingford, entirely unmoved, as he poured the highballs and dosed both quite liberally with the Scotch, whereat Mr. Phelps almost visibly winced, though gamely planning to drink with every appearance of enjoyment.

“Where’s Daw?” he asked, after two sips which he tried to make seem like gulps.

“Gone out to a print-shop to locate a couple of gold mines,” announced Wallingford dryly, holding his own opinion as to the folly of Mr. Daw’s methods. They were so unsanctioned of law.

“Sorry for that,” said Mr. Phelps, who was nevertheless relieved to hear it, for Mr. Daw was rather in the way. “We’ve got a great game on; a Reuben right from Reubensville, with five thousand of pa’s money in his jeans. I wanted you fellows to come and look him over.”

“What’s the use?” returned Wallingford. “Come down to the lobby and I’ll show you a whole procession of them.”

“No, but they’re not so liberal as this boy,” protested Phelps laughing. “He just naturally hones and hones and hones to hand us this nice little bundle of kale, and we’re going to accommodate him. You can get in on the split-up if you want to. Daw would have first choice, of course, if he was here, but since he isn’t you might as well come in. Five thousand iron men are hardly worth bending to pick up, I guess.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” objected Wallingford condescendingly. “It would make cigarette money, anyhow, if there are not too many to tear it apart.”

“It takes just four,” Phelps informed him: “look-out, spieler, panel-man and engraver.”

Wallingford shook his head, refusing even to speculate on the duties of the four named actors in the playlet.

“Four makes it hardly union wages,” he objected.

Green-Goods Harry cast at him a look of quick dislike.

“I know, but wait till you see the sample,” he insisted. “The fun’s worth more than the meat. He’s the rawest you ever saw; wants green goods, you know; thinks there really is green-goods, and stands ready to exchange his five thousand of the genuine rhino for twenty of the phoney stuff. Of course you know how this little joke is rimmed up. We count out the twenty thousand in real money and wrap it up in bales before both of his eyes, then put it in a little satchel of which we make Mr. Alfred Alfalfa a present. While we’re giving him the solemn talk about the po-lice Badger Billy switches in another satchel with the same kind of looking bales in it, but made out of tissue-paper with twenties top and bottom; then we all move, and Henry Whiskers don’t dare make a holler because he’s in on a crooked play himself; see?”

“I see,” assented Wallingford still dryly. “I’ve been reading the papers ever since I was a kid. What puzzles me is how you can find anybody left in the world who isn’t hep.”

“There’s a new sucker born every minute,” returned Mr. Phelps airily, whereat Wallingford, detecting that Mr. Phelps held his intelligence and education so cheaply as to offer this sage remark as original, inwardly fumed.

“Come on and look him over, anyhow,” insisted Phelps, rising.

Wallingford arose reluctantly.

“What’s the matter with your highball?” he demanded.

“It’s great Scotch!” said Mr. Phelps enthusiastically, and drank about a tablespoonful with great avidity. “Come on; the boys are waiting,” and he surged toward the door.

Wallingford finished his own glass contemplatively and followed with a trace of annoyance.

Into the back room of a flashy saloon just off Broadway Mr. Phelps led the way, after pausing outside to post Wallingford carefully on all their new names, and here they found Billy Banting and Larry Teller in company with a stranger, one glance at whom raised Wallingford’s spirits quite appreciably, for he was so obviously made up.

He was a raw-boned young fellow who wore an out-of-date derby, a cheap, made cravat which rode his collar, a cheap suit of loud-checked clothes that was entirely too tight for him, and the trousers of which, two inches too short, were rounded stiffly out below the knees, like stove-pipes, by top-boots which were wrinkled about the ankles. Moreover, the stranger spoke with a nasal drawl never heard off the stage.

Wallingford, with a wink from Phelps, was introduced to Mr. Pickins as Mr. Mombley. Then, leaning down to Mr. Pickins with another prodigious wink at Wallingford, Phelps said in a stage-whisper to the top-booted one:

“Mr. Mombley is our engraver. Used to work in the mint.”

“Well, I’ll swan!” drawled Mr. Pickins. “I’d reckoned to find such a fine gove’ment expert a older man.”

With a sigh Wallingford took up his expected part.

“I’m older than I look,” said he. “Making money keeps a man young.”

“I reckon,” agreed Mr. Pickins, and “haw-hawed” quite broadly. “And did you really make this greenback?” he asked, drawing from his vest pocket a crinkled new ten-dollar-bill which he spread upon the table and examined with very eager interest indeed.

“This is one of that last batch, Joe,” Short-Card Larry negligently informed Wallingford, with a meaning wink. “I just gave it to him as a sample.”

“By jingo, it’s scrumptious work!” said Mr. Pickins admiringly.

“Yes, they’ll take that for a perfectly good bill anywhere,” asserted Wallingford. “Just spend it and see,” and he pushed the button. “Bring us a bottle of the best champagne you have in the house,” he directed the waiter, and with satisfaction he noted the startled raising of heads all around the table, including the head of Mr. Pickins .