Young Wallingford.

by George Randolph Chester.

CHAPTER I

WHEREIN JONATHAN REUBEN WIX BEGINS TO THINK

"A natural again!" exulted Jonathan Reuben Wix, as the dice bounded from his plump hand and came to rest upon the billiard-table in Leiniger's Select Cafe, with a five and a deuce showing. "Somebody ring the bell for me, because I'm a-going to get off."

He was a large young man in every dimension, broad of chest and big and pink of face and jovial of eye, and he chuckled as he pa.s.sed the dice to his left-hand neighbor. There was a hundred dollars on the table and he gathered it up in a wad.

"Good-by, boys, and many merry thanks for these kind contributions,"

he bantered as he stuffed the money into his pocket. "It's me for Bunkville-amidst-the-ferry-boats, on the next Limited."

He was back in less than three days, having spent just twenty-four hours in New York. The impulsively decided journey was nothing unusual for him, but it had an intimate bearing upon his future in that it forced upon him the confidence of secretive Clifford Gilman, who lived next door.

"Home so soon?" inquired Gilman in surprise. "They must have robbed you!"

"Robbed!" laughed Wix. "I should say not. I didn't waste a cent.

Railroad ticket, sleepers, meals and extra fare on the Limited cost twenty-five each way. That left fifty. My room at the hotel cost five dollars. Breakfast was two dollars; morning drive through Central Park, four; lunch, three-fifty; matinee ticket, with cab each way, five; dinner, eight, with the ordinary champagne of commerce; theater and cab hire, five-fifty; supper, twelve, including a bottle of real champagne at eight dollars, and the balance in tips."

Clifford gasped as he hungrily reviewed these luscious items.

Young Gilman was not one of those who had been in the game by which Wix had won a hundred. He never played dice, did young Gilman, nor poker, nor bet on a horse race, nor drank, nor even smoked; but wore curly, silken sideburns, and walked up the same side of Main Street every morning to the bank, with his lunch in a little imitation-leather box. He walked back down the same side of Main Street every evening. If he had happened to take the other side on any morning, before noon there would have been half a dozen conservative depositors to ask old Smalley, who owned the bank, why Clifford had crossed over.

Young Gilman was popularly regarded as a "sissy," but that he had organs, dimensions and senses, and would bleed if p.r.i.c.ked, was presently evidenced to Mr. Wix in a startling proposition.

"Look here, Wix," said Gilman, lowering his voice to a mystery-fraught undertone, "I'm going to take a little trip and I want you to come along."

"Behave!" admonished Wix. "It would be awful reckless in me to go with a regular little devil like you; and besides, sarsaparilla and peanuts tear up my system so."

"I've got three hundred dollars," stated Gilman calmly. "Does that sound like sarsaparilla and peanuts?"

"I'm listening," said Wix with sudden interest. "Where did you get it, mister?"

Gilman looked around them nervously, then spoke in an eager whisper, clutching Wix by the arm.

"Saved it up, but like you do. I saw the wisdom of your way long ago.

Old Smalley makes me put half my salary in the bank, but I pinch out a little more than that, and every time I get twenty dollars on the side, I invest it in margin wheat, by mail. Most often I lose, but when I do win I keep on until it amounts to something. Of course, I'm laying myself open to you in this. If old Smalley found it out he'd discharge me on the spot."

Wix chuckled.

"I know," he agreed. "My mother once wanted me to apply for that job.

I went to see old Smalley, and the first thing he did was to examine my fingers for cigarette stains. 'You won't find any,' I told him, 'for I use a holder,' and I showed him the holder. Of course, that settled my case with Smalley; but do you know that he smokes after-dinner cigarettes away from home, and has beer and whisky and three kinds of wine in his cellar? I've got his number, all right, but I didn't have little Clifford's. Where do you hide it?"

"In the bank and here at home," returned Gilman with a snarl; "and I've been at it so long I'm beginning to curdle. You've worked in every mercantile establishment, factory and professional office in town, and never cared to hold a job. Yet everybody likes you. You drink, smoke, gamble and raise the d.i.c.kens generally. You don't save a cent and yet you always manage to have money. You dress swell and don't amount to a tinker's cuss, yet you're happy all day long. Come along to the Putnam County Fair and show me how."

"The Putnam County Fair!" repeated Wix. "Two hundred miles to get a drink?"

"I can't take one any closer, can I?" demanded Gilman savagely. "But the real reason is that Uncle Thomas lives there. I can go to visit Uncle Thomas when I wouldn't be allowed to 'go on the cars alone'

anywhere else. But uncle is a good fellow and his wife don't write to my mother. He tells me to go ahead; and I don't need go near him unless I'm in trouble."

"Some time I'll borrow your Uncle Tom," laughed Wix. "He sounds good to me."

Mrs. Gilman came to the door. She was a thin, nervous, little woman, with a long chin and a narrow forehead.

"Come in, Cliffy," she urged in a shrill, wheedling voice. "You must have a good, long night's rest for your trip in the morning." In reality she was worried to have her Clifford talking with the graceless Wix--though secretly she admired Jonathan Reuben.

"I must go in now," said Gilman hastily. "Go down to the train in the morning and get in on the other side, so mother won't see you. And don't tell your mother where you've gone."

"She won't ask," responded Wix, laughing. "Nothing ever worries mother except our name. I don't like it myself, but I don't worry over it. It isn't my fault, and it was hers."

If Wix felt any trace of bitterness over his mother's indifference he never confessed it, even to himself. Mrs. Wix, left a sufficient income by the late unloved, lived entirely by routine, with a separate, complacent function for every afternoon of the week. She was very comfortable, and plump, and placid, was Mrs. Wix, and Jonathan Reuben was merely an excrescence upon her scheme of life. Jonathan Reuben, however, had no lack of feminine sympathy. Quite a little clique of dashing young matrons, with old or dryly preoccupied husbands, vied with the girls to make him happy.

In the present instance, young Wix was quite right about his mother's indifference. He called to her as he went down to early breakfast that he might not be back for a few days, and she sleepily answered. "All right." So Clifford and his instructor went to the fair, and the more experienced spendthrift showed the amateur how to get rid of his money, to their mutual gratification.

Back of the Streets of Cairo, on the closing day, Wix and Gilman, hunting a drink, found a neat young man with piercing black eyes and black hair, who upon the previous days had been making a surrept.i.tious hand-book on the races. Just now he was advising an interested group of men that money would not grow in their pockets.

"If your eye is quicker than my hand you get my dollars," he singsonged as he deftly shifted three English walnut sh.e.l.ls about on a flimsy folding stand. "If my hand is quicker than your eye, I get your dollars. Here they go, three in a row. They're all set, and here's a double sawbuck for some gentleman with a like amount of wealth and a keen eye and a little courage. Where, oh, where, is the little pea?"

The location of the little pea was so obvious that it seemed a shame to take the black-eyed young man's money, for just as he had stopped moving the sh.e.l.ls, Wix and Gilman, pressing up, saw that the edge of the left-hand sh.e.l.l had rested upon the rubber "pea" and had immediately closed over it. Notwithstanding this slip on the part of the operator, there seemed some reluctance on the part of the audience to invest; instead, with what might have seemed almost suspicious eagerness, they turned toward the new-comers. Gilman, flushed of face and muddy of eye, and hiccoughing slightly--though Wix, who had drunk with him drink for drink, was clean and normal and his usual jovial, clear-eyed self--hastily pressed in before any one else should take advantage of the golden chance.

"Don't, Gilman," cautioned Wix, and grabbed him by the arm, but Clifford, still eager, jerked his arm away; and it was strange how all those who had been packed around the board made room for him.

"Here's the boy with the nerve and the money," commented the black-eyed one as he took Mr. Gilman's twenty and flaunted it in the air with his own. "Now lift up the little sh.e.l.l. If the little pea is under it you get the twin twenties. Lovely twins!" He laughed and kissed them lightly. "It's only a question," he shouted loudly, as Gilman prepared to make his choice, "of whether your eye is quicker than my hand."

Confidently Mr. Gilman picked up the left-hand sh.e.l.l, and a ludicrously bewildered look came over his face as he saw that the pellet was not under it. There was a laugh from the crowd. They had been waiting for another victim. Gilman looked hastily down at the trampled ma.s.s of straw and gra.s.s and muddy, black earth.

"The elusive little pea is not on the ground," explained the brisk young man. "The elusive little pea is right here on the board in plain sight."

To prove it he lifted up the center sh.e.l.l and displayed the pellet!

There was another laugh. Not one person in that crowd had seen the dexterous movement of his little finger, so quick and certain that it was scarcely more than a quiver; but, to make sure that his "quickness of hand" had not been detected, he scanned every face about him swiftly and piercingly. In this inspection his eye happened to light on that of Jonathan Reuben Wix, and met a wink so knowing, and withal so bubbling with gleeful appreciation, that he was himself forced to grin.

"How you've wasted your young life," commented Wix as he led away his still dazed companion. "I thought everybody knew that trick by this time, but I guess postmasters and bank clerks are always exempt."

"But how did he do it?" protested Gilman. "I saw that little ball under the left-hand sh.e.l.l as plain as day."

"That's what he meant you to see," returned Wix with a grin. "He let that one stop under the edge as if he were awkward, then he flipped it into the crook of his little finger. When he lifted the middle sh.e.l.l he shoved the ball under it. At the time you picked yours up there wasn't a ball under any of the three sh.e.l.ls. There never is."

"I guess it's too late for me to get an education," sighed the other plaintively. "Smalley won't give me a chance. I don't even dare buy a new suit of clothes too often. I'd never see a bit of life if it wasn't for this wheat speculation."

Wix turned to him slowly.

"You want to let that game alone," he cautioned.

"Oh, I'm cautious enough," returned Gilman.