"Thought so!" snorted the other. "Dolt! Imbecile! a.s.s! I'll apply for a guardian. Fix you out this time!" He whipped out fountain pen and checkbook. "National Trust Company (guess I've got enough _there_).

Pay to J.C. Mendenhall & Co.--how much was that?"

He took the check from the unresisting Mendenhall, spread it out on the desk with a sprawling gesture, tore it to strips with the same impetuous vehemence, and threw it in the waste-basket. After this brief outburst of anger his good humor returned. "Twelve-fifty. Here you are. No mistake this time. Say, old man, that's the drinks on me--come along!"

"Thank you, I never drink," returned Mendenhall primly. He had not relished the roughness with which the other had s.n.a.t.c.hed the check from him, though making allowance for the natural annoyance of one who had been betrayed into a mortifying mistake.

"All the better, all the better. Seldom do myself, but sometimes--Have a cigar? No? Well, I must toddle along!"

It may here be mentioned that during his moment of impulsive vexation Mr. Britt had inconsiderately subst.i.tuted for the "Commercial" check another, precisely similar save for the important particular that it lacked the Mendenhall indors.e.m.e.nt. The original had slipped between the leaves of Britt's check book, under cover of his large hands.

Those hands were most expert in various amusing and adroit feats of legerdemain, though Mr. Britt's modesty led him to a becoming, if unusual, reticence in this regard. The subst.i.tute, as we have seen, was in the waste-basket.

Just before three Britt ran heavily up the steps of the First National, puffing down the corridor, c.o.c.king a hasty eye at the clock as he came.

"Hey, there, sonny! I was almost too late, wasn't I?" was his irreverent greeting to the cashier. "Time to cash this before closing up?" he demanded breathlessly, but with unabated cheerfulness. He flopped the check over. "Mendenhall's indors.e.m.e.nt. Hi! Mr. President!

Just a minute! I'm a stranger here, but if you'll let us slip in at a side door I'll trot around and fetch Mendenhall. Need this money to-night."

The president took the check from the indignant young cashier, nodded at the familiar signature with the cabalistic peculiarities which attested its authenticity, glanced indulgently at the bobbing white head in window, with difficulty suppressing a smile.

"It will not be necessary, Mr.--Mr. Britt," he said courteously. "Not necessary at all. You have an account here, I believe?"

"It won't be here long," retorted Britt, with garrulous good nature.

"Draw it all out next week. Eleven, twelve--_and_ fifty. Thanks to _you_. There goes the clock. Good day!"

"Quite an odd character, that Mr. Britt?" said the president casually at the club that night. "Boyish old chap."

"Yes, isn't he?" said Mendenhall, folding his paper. "I sold him a pretty stiff bill of goods this morning. Warmish, I take it. He's going to settle here."

"Friend of yours?"

"Oh, no, I never saw him before."

"Why, you indorsed his check for twelve hundred and fifty," said the president, interested, but not alarmed. Doubtless the man had references. Besides, his face was a letter of credit in itself.

"Oh, yes," said Mendenhall unsuspiciously, thinking of the check sent to the Farmers' and Citizens' Bank. The president, thinking of the other, was fully rea.s.sured, and was about to pa.s.s on. Here the matter might have dropped, and would in most cases. But Mendenhall, a methodical and careful man, wished to vindicate his business prudence by explaining that he had taken no risk in indorsing for a stranger, since he retained possession of the goods.

The rest is too painful.

"I do not rhyme for that dull wight" who does not foresee that New York, Chicago and Denver checks were returned in due course, legibly inscribed with the saddest words of tongue or pen, "No funds." Or that Mr. Britt fully justified his self-given reputation for absence of mind by neglecting to call for his furniture.

Meanwhile, Mr. Britt unostentatiously absented his body as well, taking the trolley for an inland village. At the time of Mendenhall's interview with the president he was speeding southward across country in a livery rig, catching the Lackawanna local for Binghamton about the time the wires were working and he was being searched for on all Lehigh Valley trains.

"h.e.l.lo, Kirkland!" he said to the night clerk at the Arlington. "Back again, like a bad sixpence! Have my trunk sent up, will you? No--no supper!"

"Letter for you, Mr. Mitch.e.l.l. Just came," said the clerk respectfully. "So we were expecting you. Haven't seen you for a long time."

Britt-Mitch.e.l.l thrust the letter in his pocket unopened. "It'll keep till morning. I'm for bed. Good-night, Frank."

He turned in, weary with his exertions to be sure, but with the pleasing consciousness that

..._some one done Has earned a night's repose_.

Elmsdale never learned these particulars, however. His genial and expansive smile and the un.o.btrusive manner of his fading away are there vaguely a.s.sociated with Cheshire Puss, of joyful memory, whose disappearance, like his, began with the end of the tale.

Chapter III

"_There's a franklin in the wilds of Kent, hath brought three hundred marks with him in gold ... a kind of auditor_."

It was quite late when Britt-Mitch.e.l.l arose like a giant refreshed.

First ringing for breakfast, he bathed and shaved and arrayed himself carefully in glad habiliments of quiet taste and cut, in which he bore slight resemblance to the rough-and-ready Britt of Elmsdale.

Sitting indolently sideways to the table, his feet on a chair, he discussed an excellent breakfast leisurely, as one at peace with the world. His paper was propped before him; he chuckled as he read.

Breakfast finished, he pulled his coffee over, lit a cigar and puffed luxuriously. Not till then did he open the letter taken from the discarded coat of yesterday. It read:

Well, old man, I am sending you an easy one. Crack him hard for me.

He's the rankest sucker yet. I was going to work the Scholar's Gambit on him, but he'll get his hooks on a whole bunch of money when he gets down town, so I turn him over to you. 'Fifty thou. to be paid him by Atwood, Strange & Atwood. You know of them--Mining Engineers and Experts, 25 Broad. Let him get the boodle and hand him a sour one.

Name, Steve Thompson, en route to New York. Section 5, Sleeper Tonawanda, Phoebe Snow. Brown, smooth-shaved, hand-me-down suit, cowboy hat. From b.u.t.te, Montana. Has sold his mine, the Copper-bottom (on right of trail northeast of Anaconda). Former partner, Frank Short, killed by powder explosion at Bozeman, two years ago. Appendix subjoined with partial list of his friends, details about his mine, his ten years of unsuccessful prospecting, etc. Am not so explicit as usual, because he is such a big-mouthed damfool he'll tell you all he knows before you get to Hoboken. Also I am in some haste. I am to take him to Niagara with me to give you time to get this and join him at Binghamton, if you are there as planned. If not, I have wired Jim to meet train at Hoboken and keep in touch with him till you come, sc.r.a.ping acquaintance if necessary. Then he can disappear and leave you to put the kibosh on him. Jim is all right, but he lacks your magnetism, and your light, firm touch. You can beat us all putting up a blue front.

RUBE.

Mr. Mitch.e.l.l rose to instant action. In a very few minutes his trunk was packed, his bill paid. He then hied him in haste to the Carnegie Library, where, till train time, he fairly saturated himself with information concerning b.u.t.te and vicinity.

When the train pulled out from Binghamton, Mitch.e.l.l sat across the aisle from Thompson, deep in his paper. A visorless black cap adorned his head, beneath which flowed his reverend white hair; rimless eye-gla.s.ses imparted to his unimpeachable respectability an eminently aristocratic air. These gla.s.ses he wiped carefully from time to time with a white silk handkerchief, which he laid across his ample knees, resuming his reading, oblivious to all else.

The paper was laid aside and the big man became immersed in a magazine. The handkerchief slipped from his knees into the aisle.

Thompson politely restored it.

"Thank you, young man, thank you," said Britt. Then a puzzled look came over his brow. Polishing the gla.s.ses he took another sharp look.

He leaned across the aisle.

"I _beg_ your pardon," he said, with stately courtesy. "But I am sure I have met you somewhere. No, don't tell me. Pardon an old man's harmless vanity, but it is my weakness to make my memory do its work unaided, when possible. I have a famous memory generally, and yours is not a face to be easily forgotten. Let me see--not in New York, I think--Philadelphia--Washington? No--you would be from the West, by your hat. Um-m-Omaha--Chicago, St. Louis?--_b.u.t.te_!" he said, with a resounding thwack on his knee. "b.u.t.te! 'Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile'!"

"Right you are," said the Westerner, well pleased. "I seem to remember you, too."

"I have it!" said Mitch.e.l.l. "Don't remember your name--but you're the very man Judge Harney pointed out to me as the unluckiest prospector in Montana. Said you could locate a claim bounded on all sides by paying property and gopher through to China without ever striking ore."

"May I come over there and talk?" said Steve. "Mighty glad to see some one from my town. You didn't live there though, or I should have met you."

"Certainly," said Mitch.e.l.l, making room. "Glad to have you. Live there? Oh, no, I only made a couple of trips. Some a.s.sociates of mine were in with Miles Finlen--you know him, I reckon?--on the Bird's-eye proposition, and I took a flyer with them," he explained. "I lost out.

Dropped several dollars," His face lit up with comfortable good-humor.

"It was a good mine, but it got tied up in the courts. Let me see--what did Harney call you--Townsend, Johnson?"

"Thompson," said Steve, smiling. "Steve Thompson."