The Gentle Grafter

by O. Henry

  A TEMPERED WIND

  The first time my optical nerves was disturbed by the sight ofBuckingham Skinner was in Kansas City. I was standing on a corner whenI see Buck stick his straw-colored head out of a third-story window ofa business block and holler, "Whoa, there! Whoa!" like you would inendeavoring to assuage a team of runaway mules.

  I looked around; but all the animals I see in sight is a policeman,having his shoes shined, and a couple of delivery wagons hitched toposts. Then in a minute downstairs tumbles this Buckingham Skinner,and runs to the corner, and stands and gazes down the other street atthe imaginary dust kicked up by the fabulous hoofs of the fictitiousteam of chimerical quadrupeds. And then B. Skinner goes back up to thethird-story room again, and I see that the lettering on the window is"The Farmers' Friend Loan Company."

  By and by Straw-top comes down again, and I crossed the street to meethim, for I had my ideas. Yes, sir, when I got close I could see wherehe overdone it. He was Reub all right as far as his blue jeans andcowhide boots went, but he had a matinee actor's hands, and the ryestraw stuck over his ear looked like it belonged to the property manof the Old Homestead Co. Curiosity to know what his graft was got thebest of me.

  "Was that your team broke away and run just now?" I asks him, polite."I tried to stop 'em," says I, "but I couldn't. I guess they're halfway back to the farm by now."

  "Gosh blame them darned mules," says Straw-top, in a voice so goodthat I nearly apologized; "they're a'lus bustin' loose." And then helooks at me close, and then he takes off his hayseed hat, and says, ina different voice: "I'd like to shake hands with Parleyvoo Pickens,the greatest street man in the West, barring only Montague Silver,which you can no more than allow."

  I let him shake hands with me.

  "I learned under Silver," I said; "I don't begrudge him the lead.But what's your graft, son? I admit that the phantom flight of thenon-existing animals at which you remarked 'Whoa!' has puzzled mesomewhat. How do you win out on the trick?"

  Buckingham Skinner blushed.

  "Pocket money," says he; "that's all. I am temporarily unfinanced.This little coup de rye straw is good for forty dollars in a town ofthis size. How do I work it? Why, I involve myself, as you perceive,in the loathsome apparel of the rural dub. Thus embalmed I am JonasStubblefield--a name impossible to improve upon. I repair noisilyto the office of some loan company conveniently located in thethird-floor, front. There I lay my hat and yarn gloves on the floorand ask to mortgage my farm for $2,000 to pay for my sister's musicaleducation in Europe. Loans like that always suit the loan companies.It's ten to one that when the note falls due the foreclosure will beleading the semiquavers by a couple of lengths.

  "Well, sir, I reach in my pocket for the abstract of title; but Isuddenly hear my team running away. I run to the window and emit theword--or exclamation, which-ever it may be--viz, 'Whoa!' Then I rushdown-stairs and down the street, returning in a few minutes. 'Dangthem mules,' I says; 'they done run away and busted the doubletree andtwo traces. Now I got to hoof it home, for I never brought no moneyalong. Reckon we'll talk about that loan some other time, gen'lemen.'

  "Then I spreads out my tarpaulin, like the Israelites, and waits forthe manna to drop.

  "'Why, no, Mr. Stubblefield,' says the lobster-colored party in thespecs and dotted pique vest; 'oblige us by accepting this ten-dollarbill until to-morrow. Get your harness repaired and call in at ten.We'll be pleased to accommodate you in the matter of this loan.'

  "It's a slight thing," says Buckingham Skinner, modest, "but, as Isaid, only for temporary loose change."

  "It's nothing to be ashamed of," says I, in respect for hismortification; "in case of an emergency. Of course, it's smallcompared to organizing a trust or bridge whist, but even the ChicagoUniversity had to be started in a small way."

  "What's your graft these days?" Buckingham Skinner asks me.

  "The legitimate," says I. "I'm handling rhinestones and Dr. OleumSinapi's Electric Headache Battery and the Swiss Warbler's Bird Call,a small lot of the new queer ones and twos, and the Bonanza Budget,consisting of a rolled-gold wedding and engagement ring, six Egyptianlily bulbs, a combination pickle fork and nail-clipper, and fiftyengraved visiting cards--no two names alike--all for the sum of 38cents."

  "Two months ago," says Buckingham Skinner, "I was doing well down inTexas with a patent instantaneous fire kindler, made of compressedwood ashes and benzine. I sold loads of 'em in towns where they liketo burn niggers quick, without having to ask somebody for a light. Andjust when I was doing the best they strikes oil down there and puts meout of business. 'Your machine's too slow, now, pardner,' they tellsme. 'We can have a coon in hell with this here petroleum beforeyour old flint-and-tinder truck can get him warm enough to perfessreligion.' And so I gives up the kindler and drifts up here to K.C.This little curtain-raiser you seen me doing, Mr. Pickens, with thesimulated farm and the hypothetical teams, ain't in my line at all,and I'm ashamed you found me working it."

  "No man," says I, kindly, "need to be ashamed of putting the skibunkon a loan corporation for even so small a sum as ten dollars, when heis financially abashed. Still, it wasn't quite the proper thing. It'stoo much like borrowing money without paying it back."

  I liked Buckingham Skinner from the start, for as good a man as everstood over the axles and breathed gasoline smoke. And pretty soon wegets thick, and I let him in on a scheme I'd had in mind for sometime, and offers to go partners.

  "Anything," says Buck, "that is not actually dishonest will findme willing and ready. Let us perforate into the inwardness of yourproposition. I feel degraded when I am forced to wear property strawin my hair and assume a bucolic air for the small sum of ten dollars.Actually, Mr. Pickens, it makes me feel like the Ophelia of the GreatOccidental All-Star One-Night Consolidated Theatrical Aggregation."

  This scheme of mine was one that suited my proclivities. By nature Iam some sentimental, and have always felt gentle toward the mollifyingelements of existence. I am disposed to be lenient with the arts andsciences; and I find time to instigate a cordiality for the more humanworks of nature, such as romance and the atmosphere and grass andpoetry and the Seasons. I never skin a sucker without admiring theprismatic beauty of his scales. I never sell a little auriferousbeauty to the man with the hoe without noticing the beautiful harmonythere is between gold and green. And that's why I liked this scheme;it was so full of outdoor air and landscapes and easy money.

  We had to have a young lady assistant to help us work this graft; andI asked Buck if he knew of one to fill the bill.

  "One," says I, "that is cool and wise and strictly business from herpompadour to her Oxfords. No ex-toe-dancers or gum-chewers or crayonportrait canvassers for this."

  Buck claimed he knew a suitable feminine and he takes me around to seeMiss Sarah Malloy. The minute I see her I am pleased. She looked to bethe goods as ordered. No sign of the three p's about her--no peroxide,patchouli, nor peau de soie; about twenty-two, brown hair, pleasantways--the kind of a lady for the place.

  "A description of the sandbag, if you please," she begins.

  "Why, ma'am," says I, "this graft of ours is so nice and refined andromantic, it would make the balcony scene in 'Romeo and Juliet' looklike second-story work."

  We talked it over, and Miss Malloy agreed to come in as a businesspartner. She said she was glad to get a chance to give up her placeas stenographer and secretary to a suburban lot company, and go intosomething respectable.

  This is the way we worked our scheme. First, I figured it out by a kindof a proverb. The best grafts in the world are built up on copy-bookmaxims and psalms and proverbs and Esau's fables. They seem to kind ofhit off human nature. Our peaceful little swindle was constructed onthe old saying: "The whole push loves a lover."

  One evening Buck and Miss Malloy drives up like blazes in a buggy toa farmer's door. She is pale but affectionate, clinging to his arm--always clinging to his arm. Any one can see that she is a peach andof the cling variety. They claim they are elop
ing for to be marriedon account of cruel parents. They ask where they can find a preacher.Farmer says, "B'gum there ain't any preacher nigher than ReverendAbels, four miles over on Caney Creek." Farmeress wipes her hand onher apron and rubbers through her specs.

  She is a peach and of the cling variety.]

  Then, lo and look ye! Up the road from the other way jogs ParleyvooPickens in a gig, dressed in black, white necktie, long face, sniffinghis nose, emitting a spurious kind of noise resembling the long meterdoxology.

  "B'jinks!" says farmer, "if thar ain't a preacher now!"

  It transpires that I am Rev. Abijah Green, travelling over to LittleBethel school-house for to preach next Sunday.

  The young folks will have it they must be married, for pa is pursuingthem with the plow mules and the buckboard. So the Reverend Green,after hesitating, marries 'em in the farmer's parlor. And farmergrins, and has in cider, and says "B'gum!" and farmeress sniffles abit and pats the bride on the shoulder. And Parleyvoo Pickens, thewrong reverend, writes out a marriage certificate, and farmer andfarmeress sign it as witnesses. And the parties of the first, secondand third part gets in their vehicles and rides away. Oh, that was anidyllic graft! True love and the lowing kine and the sun shining onthe red barns--it certainly had all other impostures I know about beatto a batter.

  [So the Reverend Green, after hesitations, marries 'em in thefarmer's parlor.]

  I suppose I happened along in time to marry Buck and Miss Malloy atabout twenty farm-houses. I hated to think how the romance was goingto fade later on when all them marriage certificates turned up inbanks where we'd discounted 'em, and the farmers had to pay them notesof hand they'd signed, running from $300 to $500.

  On the 15th day of May us three divided about $6,000. Miss Malloynearly cried with joy. You don't often see a tenderhearted girl or onethat is bent on doing right.

  On the 15th day of May us three divided about $6,000.]

  "Boys," says she, dabbing her eyes with a little handkerchief, "thisstake comes in handier than a powder rag at a fat men's ball. It givesme a chance to reform. I was trying to get out of the real estatebusiness when you fellows came along. But if you hadn't taken me in onthis neat little proposition for removing the cuticle of the rutabagapropagators I'm afraid I'd have got into something worse. I was aboutto accept a place in one of these Women's Auxiliary Bazars, wherethey build a parsonage by selling a spoonful of chicken salad and acream-puff for seventy-five cents and calling it a Business Man's Lunch.

  "Now I can go into a square, honest business, and give all them queerjobs the shake. I'm going to Cincinnati and start a palm reading andclairvoyant joint. As Madame Saramaloi, the Egyptian Sorceress, Ishall give everybody a dollar's worth of good honest prognostication.Good-by, boys. Take my advice and go into some decent fake. Getfriendly with the police and newspapers and you'll be all right."

  So then we all shook hands, and Miss Malloy left us. Me and Buck alsorose up and sauntered off a few hundred miles; for we didn't care tobe around when them marriage certificates fell due.

  With about $4,000 between us we hit that bumptious little town off theNew Jersey coast they call New York.

  If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is thatYaptown-on-the-Hudson. Cosmopolitan they call it. You bet. So's a pieceof fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pulltheir feet out of the sticky stuff. "Little old New York's good enoughfor us"--that's what they sing.

  There's enough Reubs walk down Broadway in one hour to buy up aweek's output of the factory in Augusta, Maine, that makes KnaughtyKnovelties and the little Phine Phun oroide gold finger ring thatsticks a needle in your friend's hand.

  You'd think New York people was all wise; but no. They don't get achance to learn. Everything's too compressed. Even the hayseeds arebaled hayseeds. But what else can you expect from a town that's shutoff from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on theother?

  It's no place for an honest grafter with a small capital. There's toobig a protective tariff on bunco. Even when Giovanni sells a quartof warm worms and chestnut hulls he has to hand out a pint to aninsectivorous cop. And the hotel man charges double for everything inthe bill that he sends by the patrol wagon to the altar where the dukeis about to marry the heiress.

  But old Badville-near-Coney is the ideal burg for a refined piece ofpiracy if you can pay the bunco duty. Imported grafts come prettyhigh. The custom-house officers that look after it carry clubs, andit's hard to smuggle in even a bib-and-tucker swindle to work Brooklynwith unless you can pay the toll. But now, me and Buck, havingcapital, descends upon New York to try and trade the metropolitanbackwoodsmen a few glass beads for real estate just as the Vans did ahundred or two years ago.

  At an East Side hotel we gets acquainted with Romulus G. Atterbury, aman with the finest head for financial operations I ever saw. It wasall bald and glossy except for gray side whiskers. Seeing that headbehind an office railing, and you'd deposit a million with it withouta receipt. This Atterbury was well dressed, though he ate seldom; andthe synopsis of his talk would make the conversation of a siren soundlike a cab driver's kick. He said he used to be a member of the StockExchange, but some of the big capitalists got jealous and formed aring that forced him to sell his seat.

  Atterbury got to liking me and Buck and he begun to throw on thecanvas for us some of the schemes that had caused his hair toevacuate. He had one scheme for starting a National bank on $45 thatmade the Mississippi Bubble look as solid as a glass marble. He talkedthis to us for three days, and when his throat was good and sore wetold him about the roll we had. Atterbury borrowed a quarter from usand went out and got a box of throat lozenges and started all overagain. This time he talked bigger things, and he got us to see 'emas he did. The scheme he laid out looked like a sure winner, and hetalked me and Buck into putting our capital against his burnished domeof thought. It looked all right for a kid-gloved graft. It seemed tobe just about an inch and a half outside of the reach of the police,and as money-making as a mint. It was just what me and Buck wanted--aregular business at a permanent stand, with an open air spieling withtonsilitis on the street corners every evening.

  So, in six weeks you see a handsome furnished set of offices downin the Wall Street neighborhood, with "The Golconda Gold Bond andInvestment Company" in gilt letters on the door. And you see in hisprivate room, with the door open, the secretary and treasurer, Mr.Buckingham Skinner, costumed like the lilies of the conservatory, withhis high silk hat close to his hand. Nobody yet ever saw Buck outsideof an instantaneous reach for his hat.

  And you might perceive the president and general manager, Mr. R. G.Atterbury, with his priceless polished poll, busy in the main officeroom dictating letters to a shorthand countess, who has got pomp and apompadour that is no less than a guarantee to investors.

  Busy in the main office room dictating lettersto a shorthand countess.]

  There is a bookkeeper and an assistant, and a general atmosphere ofvarnish and culpability.

  At another desk the eye is relieved by the sight of an ordinary man,attired with unscrupulous plainness, sitting with his feet up, eatingapples, with his obnoxious hat on the back of his head. That manis no other than Colonel Tecumseh (once "Parleyvoo") Pickens, thevice-president of the company.

  "No recherche rags for me," I says to Atterbury, when we wasorganizing the stage properties of the robbery. "I'm a plain man,"says I, "and I do not use pajamas, French, or military hair-brushes.Cast me for the role of the rhinestone-in-the-rough or I don't go onexhibition. If you can use me in my natural, though displeasing form,do so."

  "Dress you up?" says Atterbury; "I should say not! Just as you areyou're worth more to the business than a whole roomful of the thingsthey pin chrysanthemums on. You're to play the part of the solid butdisheveled capitalist from the Far West. You despise the conventions.You've got so many stocks you can afford to shake socks. Conservative,homely, rough, shrewd, saving--that's your pose. It's a winner in NewYork. Keep your feet
on the desk and eat apples. Whenever anybodycomes in eat an apple. Let 'em see you stuff the peelings in a drawerof your desk. Look as economical and rich and rugged as you can."

  I followed out Atterbury's instructions. I played the Rocky Mountaincapitalist without ruching or frills. The way I deposited applepeelings to my credit in a drawer when any customers came in madeHetty Green look like a spendthrift. I could hear Atterbury saying tovictims, as he smiled at me, indulgent and venerating, "That's ourvice-president, Colonel Pickens . . . fortune in Western investments. . . delightfully plain manners, but . . . could sign his check forhalf a million . . . simple as a child . . . wonderful head . . .conservative and careful almost to a fault."

  "That's our vice-president, Colonel Pickens."]

  Atterbury managed the business. Me and Buck never quite understood allof it, though he explained it to us in full. It seems the company wasa kind of cooperative one, and everybody that bought stock shared inthe profits. First, we officers bought up a controlling interest--wehad to have that--of the shares at 50 cents a hundred--just what theprinter charged us--and the rest went to the public at a dollar each.The company guaranteed the stockholders a profit of ten per cent. eachmonth, payable on the last day thereof.

  When any stockholder had paid in as much as $100, the company issuedhim a Gold Bond and he became a bondholder. I asked Atterbury one daywhat benefits and appurtenances these Gold Bonds was to an investormore so than the immunities and privileges enjoyed by the commonsucker who only owned stock. Atterbury picked up one of them GoldBonds, all gilt and lettered up with flourishes and a big red sealtied with a blue ribbon in a bowknot, and he looked at me like hisfeelings was hurt.

  "My dear Colonel Pickens," says he, "you have no soul for Art. Thinkof a thousand homes made happy by possessing one of these beautifulgems of the lithographer's skill! Think of the joy in the householdwhere one of these Gold Bonds hangs by a pink cord to the what-not, oris chewed by the baby, caroling gleefully upon the floor! Ah, I seeyour eye growing moist, Colonel--I have touched you, have I not?"

  "You have not," says I, "for I've been watching you. The moistureyou see is apple juice. You can't expect one man to act as a humancider-press and an art connoisseur too."

  Atterbury attended to the details of the concern. As I understand it,they was simple. The investors in stock paid in their money, and--well, I guess that's all they had to do. The company received it, and--I don't call to mind anything else. Me and Buck knew more aboutselling corn salve than we did about Wall Street, but even we couldsee how the Golconda Gold Bond Investment Company was making money.You take in money and pay back ten per cent. of it; it's plain enoughthat you make a clean, legitimate profit of 90 per cent., lessexpenses, as long as the fish bite.

  Atterbury wanted to be president and treasurer too, but Buck winks aneye at him and says: "You was to furnish the brains. Do you call itgood brain work when you propose to take in money at the door, too?Think again. I hereby nominate myself treasurer ad valorem, sinedie, and by acclamation. I chip in that much brain work free. Me andPickens, we furnished the capital, and we'll handle the unearnedincrement as it incremates."

  It costs us $500 for office rent and first payment on furniture;$1,500 more went for printing and advertising. Atterbury knew hisbusiness. "Three months to a minute we'll last," says he. "A daylonger than that and we'll have to either go under or go under analias. By that time we ought to clean up $60,000. And then a moneybelt and a lower berth for me, and the yellow journals and thefurniture men can pick the bones."

  Our ads. done the work. "Country weeklies and Washington hand-pressdailies, of course," says I when we was ready to make contracts.

  "Man," says Atterbury, "as its advertising manager you would cause aLimburger cheese factory to remain undiscovered during a hot summer.The game we're after is right here in New York and Brooklyn and theHarlem reading-rooms. They're the people that the street-car fendersand the Answers to Correspondents columns and the pickpocket noticesare made for. We want our ads. in the biggest city dailies, top ofcolumn, next to editorials on radium and pictures of the girl doinghealth exercises."

  Pretty soon the money begins to roll in. Buck didn't have to pretendto be busy; his desk was piled high up with money orders and checksand greenbacks. People began to drop in the office and buy stock everyday.

  Most of the shares went in small amounts--$10 and $25 and $50, anda good many $2 and $3 lots. And the bald and inviolate cranium ofPresident Atterbury shines with enthusiasm and demerit, while ColonelTecumseh Pickens, the rude but reputable Croesus of the West, consumesso many apples that the peelings hang to the floor from the mahoganygarbage chest that he calls his desk.

  Just as Atterbury said, we ran along about three months without beingtroubled. Buck cashed the paper as fast as it came in and kept themoney in a safe deposit vault a block or so away. Buck never thoughtmuch of banks for such purposes. We paid the interest regular on thestock we'd sold, so there was nothing for anybody to squeal about. Wehad nearly $50,000 on hand and all three of us had been living as highas prize fighters out of training.

  One morning, as me and Buck sauntered into the office, fat andflippant, from our noon grub, we met an easy-looking fellow, with abright eye and a pipe in his mouth, coming out. We found Atterburylooking like he'd been caught a mile from home in a wet shower.

  "Know that man?" he asked us.

  We said we didn't.

  "I don't either," says Atterbury, wiping off his head; "but I'll betenough Gold Bonds to paper a cell in the Tombs that he's a newspaperreporter."

  "What did he want?" asks Buck.

  "Information," says our president. "Said he was thinking of buyingsome stock. He asked me about nine hundred questions, and every oneof 'em hit some sore place in the business. I know he's on a paper.You can't fool me. You see a man about half shabby, with an eye likea gimlet, smoking cut plug, with dandruff on his coat collar, andknowing more than J. P. Morgan and Shakespeare put together--if thatain't a reporter I never saw one. I was afraid of this. I don't minddetectives and post-office inspectors--I talk to 'em eight minutes andthen sell 'em stock--but them reporters take the starch out of mycollar. Boys, I recommend that we declare a dividend and fade away.The signs point that way."

  Me and Buck talked to Atterbury and got him to stop sweating and standstill. That fellow didn't look like a reporter to us. Reporters alwayspull out a pencil and tablet on you, and tell you a story you'veheard, and strikes you for the drinks. But Atterbury was shaky andnervous all day.

  The next day me and Buck comes down from the hotel about ten-thirty.On the way we buys the papers, and the first thing we see is a columnon the front page about our little imposition. It was a shame the waythat reporter intimated that we were no blood relatives of the lateGeorge W. Childs. He tells all about the scheme as he sees it, in arich, racy kind of a guying style that might amuse most anybody excepta stockholder. Yes, Atterbury was right; it behooveth the gaily cladtreasurer and the pearly pated president and the rugged vice-presidentof the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company to go away realsudden and quick that their days might be longer upon the land.

  Me and Buck hurries down to the office. We finds on the stairs and inthe hall a crowd of people trying to squeeze into our office, which isalready jammed full inside to the railing. They've nearly all gotGolconda stock and Gold Bonds in their hands. Me and Buck judgedthey'd been reading the papers, too.

  We stopped and looked at our stockholders, some surprised. It wasn'tquite the kind of a gang we supposed had been investing. They alllooked like poor people; there was plenty of old women and lots ofyoung girls that you'd say worked in factories and mills. Some was oldmen that looked like war veterans, and some was crippled, and a goodmany was just kids--bootblacks and newsboys and messengers. Some wasworking-men in overalls, with their sleeves rolled up. Not one of thegang looked like a stockholder in anything unless it was a peanutstand. But they all had Golconda stock and looked as sick as youplease.

 
But they all had Golconda stock and looked assick as you please.]

  I saw a queer kind of a pale look come on Buck's face when he sized upthe crowd. He stepped up to a sickly looking woman and says: "Madam,do you own any of this stock?"

  "I put in a hundred dollars," says the woman, faint like. "It was allI had saved in a year. One of my children is dying at home now and Ihaven't a cent in the house. I came to see if I could draw out some.The circulars said you could draw it at any time. But they say now Iwill lose it all."

  There was a smart kind of kid in the gang--I guess he was a newsboy."I got in twenty-fi', mister," he says, looking hopeful at Buck's silkhat and clothes. "Dey paid me two-fifty a mont' on it. Say, a mantells me dey can't do dat and be on de square. Is dat straight? Do youguess I can get out my twenty-fi'?"

  Some of the old women was crying. The factory girls was plumbdistracted. They'd lost all their savings and they'd be docked for thetime they lost coming to see about it.

  There was one girl--a pretty one--in a red shawl, crying in a cornerlike her heart would dissolve. Buck goes over and asks her about it.

  "It ain't so much losing the money, mister," says she, shaking allover, "though I've been two years saving it up; but Jakey won't marryme now. He'll take Rosa Steinfeld. I know J--J--Jakey. She's got $400in the savings bank. Ai, ai, ai--" she sings out.

  "Jakey won't marry me now. He'll take Rosa Steinfeld."]

  Buck looks all around with that same funny look on his face. And thenwe see leaning against the wall, puffing at his pipe, with his eyeshining at us, this newspaper reporter. Buck and me walks over to him.

  "You're a real interesting writer," says Buck. "How far do you mean tocarry it? Anything more up your sleeve?"

  "Oh, I'm just waiting around," says the reporter, smoking away, "incase any news turns up. It's up to your stockholders now. Some ofthem might complain, you know. Isn't that the patrol wagon now?" hesays, listening to a sound outside. "No," he goes on, "that's Doc.Whittleford's old cadaver coupe from the Roosevelt. I ought to knowthat gong. Yes, I suppose I've written some interesting stuff attimes."

  "You wait," says Buck; "I'm going to throw an item of news in yourway."

  Buck reaches in his pocket and hands me a key. I knew what he meantbefore he spoke. Confounded old buccaneer--I knew what he meant. Theydon't make them any better than Buck.

  "Pick," says he, looking at me hard, "ain't this graft a little out ofour line? Do we want Jakey to marry Rosa Steinfeld?"

  "You've got my vote," says I. "I'll have it here in ten minutes." AndI starts for the safe deposit vaults.

  I comes back with the money done up in a big bundle, and then Buck andme takes the journalist reporter around to another door and we letourselves into one of the office rooms.

  "Now, my literary friend," says Buck, "take a chair, and keep still,and I'll give you an interview. You see before you two grafters fromGraftersville, Grafter County, Arkansas. Me and Pick have sold brassjewelry, hair tonic, song books, marked cards, patent medicines,Connecticut Smyrna rugs, furniture polish, and albums in every townfrom Old Point Comfort to the Golden Gate. We've grafted a dollarwhenever we saw one that had a surplus look to it. But we never wentafter the simoleon in the toe of the sock under the loose brick in thecorner of the kitchen hearth. There's an old saying you may have heard--'fussily decency averni'--which means it's an easy slide from thestreet faker's dry goods box to a desk in Wall Street. We've took thatslide, but we didn't know exactly what was at the bottom of it. Now,you ought to be wise, but you ain't. You've got New York wiseness,which means that you judge a man by the outside of his clothes.That ain't right. You ought to look at the lining and seams and thebutton-holes. While we are waiting for the patrol wagon you might getout your little stub pencil and take notes for another funny piece inthe paper."

  And then Buck turns to me and says: "I don't care what Atterburythinks. He only put in brains, and if he gets his capital out he'slucky. But what do you say, Pick?"

  "Me?" says I. "You ought to know me, Buck. I didn't know who wasbuying the stock."

  "All right," says Buck. And then he goes through the inside door intothe main office and looks at the gang trying to squeeze through therailing. Atterbury and his hat was gone. And Buck makes 'em a shortspeech.

  "All you lambs get in line. You're going to get your wool back. Don'tshove so. Get in a line--a _line_--not in a pile. Lady, will youplease stop bleating? Your money's waiting for you. Here, sonny,don't climb over that railing; your dimes are safe. Don't cry, sis;you ain't out a cent. Get in _line_, I say. Here, Pick, come andstraighten 'em out and let 'em through and out by the other door."

  Buck takes off his coat, pushes his silk hat on the back of his head,and lights up a reina victoria. He sets at the table with the boodlebefore him, all done up in neat packages. I gets the stockholdersstrung out and marches 'em, single file, through from the main room;and the reporter man passes 'em out of the side door into the hallagain. As they go by, Buck takes up the stock and the Gold Bonds,paying 'em cash, dollar for dollar, the same as they paid in. Theshareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company can'thardly believe it. They almost grabs the money out of Buck's hands.Some of the women keep on crying, for it's a custom of the sex to crywhen they have sorrow, to weep when they have joy, and to shed tearswhenever they find themselves without either.

  The shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond andInvestment Company can't hardly believe it.]

  The old women's fingers shake when they stuff the skads in the bosomof their rusty dresses. The factory girls just stoop over and flaptheir dry goods a second, and you hear the elastic go "pop" as thecurrency goes down in the ladies' department of the "Old DomesticLisle-Thread Bank."

  Some of the stockholders that had been doing the Jeremiah act theloudest outside had spasms of restored confidence and wanted to leavethe money invested. "Salt away that chicken feed in your duds, andskip along," says Buck. "What business have you got investing inbonds? The tea-pot or the crack in the wall behind the clock for yourhoard of pennies."

  When the pretty girl in the red shawl cashes in Buck hands her anextra twenty.

  "A wedding present," says our treasurer, "from the Golconda Company.And say--if Jakey ever follows his nose, even at a respectfuldistance, around the corner where Rosa Steinfeld lives, you are herebyauthorized to knock a couple of inches of it off."

  When they was all paid off and gone, Buck calls the newspaper reporterand shoves the rest of the money over to him.

  "You begun this," says Buck; "now finish it. Over there are the books,showing every share and bond issued. Here's the money to cover, exceptwhat we've spent to live on. You'll have to act as receiver. I guessyou'll do the square thing on account of your paper. This is the bestway we know how to settle it. Me and our substantial but apple-wearyvice-president are going to follow the example of our reveredpresident, and skip. Now, have you got enough news for to-day, or doyou want to interview us on etiquette and the best way to make over anold taffeta skirt?"

  "News!" says the newspaper man, taking his pipe out; "do you think Icould use this? I don't want to lose my job. Suppose I go around tothe office and tell 'em this happened. What'll the managing editorsay? He'll just hand me a pass to Bellevue and tell me to come backwhen I get cured. I might turn in a story about a sea serpent wigglingup Broadway, but I haven't got the nerve to try 'em with a pipe likethis. A get-rich-quick scheme--excuse me--gang giving back the boodle!Oh, no. I'm not on the comic supplement."

  "You can't understand it, of course," says Buck, with his hand on thedoor knob. "Me and Pick ain't Wall Streeters like you know 'em. Wenever allowed to swindle sick old women and working girls and takenickels off of kids. In the lines of graft we've worked we took moneyfrom the people the Lord made to be buncoed--sports and rounders andsmart Alecks and street crowds, that always have a few dollars tothrow away, and farmers that wouldn't ever be happy if the graftersdidn't come around and play with 'em when they sold their crops. Wenever cared to
fish for the kind of suckers that bite here. No, sir.We got too much respect for the profession and for ourselves. Good-byto you, Mr. Receiver."

  "Here!" says the journalist reporter; "wait a minute. There's a brokerI know on the next floor. Wait till I put this truck in his safe. Iwant you fellows to take a drink on me before you go."

  "On you?" says Buck, winking solemn. "Don't you go and try to make 'embelieve at the office you said that. Thanks. We can't spare the time,I reckon. So long."

  And me and Buck slides out the door; and that's the way the GolcondaCompany went into involuntary liquefaction.

  If you had seen me and Buck the next night you'd have had to go to alittle bum hotel over near the West Side ferry landings. We was in alittle back room, and I was filling up a gross of six-ounce bottleswith hydrant water colored red with aniline and flavored withcinnamon. Buck was smoking, contented, and he wore a decent brownderby in place of his silk hat.

  "It's a good thing, Pick," says he, as he drove in the corks, "that wegot Brady to lend us his horse and wagon for a week. We'll rustle upthe stake by then. This hair tonic'll sell right along over in Jersey.Bald heads ain't popular over there on account of the mosquitoes."

  Directly I dragged out my valise and went down in it for labels.

  "Hair tonic labels are out," says I. "Only about a dozen on hand."

  "Buy some more," says Buck.

  We investigated our pockets and found we had just enough money tosettle our hotel bill in the morning and pay our passage over theferry.

  "Plenty of the 'Shake-the-Shakes Chill Cure' labels," says I, afterlooking.

  "What more do you want?" says Buck. "Slap 'em on. The chill season isjust opening up in the Hackensack low grounds. What's hair, anyway, ifyou have to shake it off?"

  We pasted on the Chill Cure labels about half an hour and Buck says:

  "Making an honest livin's better than that Wall Street, anyhow; ain'tit, Pick?"

  "You bet," says I.