"A twenty-five-thousand-dollar stock company: two hundred and fifty shares at a hundred dollars each."

"I might take a share or two," said Sam.

"You'll take twenty," declared Wix, quite sure of himself. "I want four incorporators besides myself, and I want you to be one of them."

"Is that getting me the stock any cheaper?"

"Fifty per cent.; two thousand dollars' worth for a thousand. After we five incorporators are in we'll raise the price to par and not sell a share for a cent less."

"How much do you get out of this?" Sam asked, with a leer of understanding.

"Ten per cent. for selling the stock, and have the new company buy over the present one for ten thousand dollars' worth of shares."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Sam," he said, "I want you to invest"]

"I thought so," said Glidden with a grin. "Fixtures, established business and good will, I suppose."

Wix chuckled.

"You put it in the loveliest words," he admitted.

"You're a bright young man," said Glidden admiringly. "You'd better pay for those fixtures and put in the whole business at five hundred."

"What do you suppose I'm enlarging the thing for, except to increase my income?" Wix demanded. "With ten thousand dollars' worth of stock I'd get only two-fifths of the profit, when I've been getting it all heretofore. As a matter of fact, I'm doing pretty well not to try to capture the majority."

They both laughed upon this, and Glidden capitulated. Within forty-eight hours Wix had his four directors, all ex-traders who would rather make money than gamble, and each willing to put in a thousand dollars. As soon as they were incorporated they paid Wix his hundred shares for the old business, and that developing financier started out to sell the balance of the stock, on commission.

It was an easy task, for his fellow-directors did all the advertising for him. Practically all he had to do was to deliver the certificates and collect. It was while he was engaged in this pleasant occupation that he went to Gilman with a blank certificate for twenty-five shares.

"I think you said, Gilman, that if you could get your remaining twenty-five hundred dollars out of the La Salle you'd be satisfied, didn't you?"

"Satisfied!" gasped Gilman. "Just show me how it can be done!"

"Here's twenty-five hundred dollars' worth of stock in the new company I've incorporated from the old one, and it's selling--at par--like beer at a German picnic."

"That would ruin me," Gilman protested in a panic. "You must sell it for me or I'm gone. Why, Wix, this new state bank inspection law has just gone into effect, and there may be an inspector at the bank any day."

"I see," said Wix slowly, looking him straight in the eye, "and they may object to Smalley's having loaned you that money on insufficient security. Well, I'll see what I can do."

Nevertheless, he let Gilman's stock lie while he sold the treasury shares, and, the market being still so eager that it seemed a shame not to supply it, _he sold his own_!

There was now time for Gilman, and Wix, with an artistic eye for dramatic propinquities, presented his proposition to no less a person than Smalley, grinning, however, as he went in.

"I couldn't think of such a thing, sir," squeaked that gentleman.

"I'll have nothing to do with gambling in any way, shape or form."

"No," agreed Wix, and carefully closed the door of Smalley's private office. "Well, this isn't gambling, Mr. Smalley. It's only the people outside who gamble. The La Salle doesn't propose to take any chances; it only takes commissions," and he showed to Mr. Smalley, very frankly, a record of his transactions, including the one disastrous period for the purpose of pointing out the flaw which had brought it about.

Smalley inspected those figures long and earnestly, while Wix sat back smiling. He had penetrated through that leathery exterior, had discovered what no one else would have suspected: that in Smalley himself there ran a long-leashed gambling instinct.

"But I couldn't possibly have my name connected with a matter of this sort," was Smalley's last citadel of objection.

"Why should you?" agreed Wix, and then a diabolical thought came to him, in the guise of an exquisite joke. He had great difficulty in repressing a chuckle as he suggested it. "Why not put the stock in Gilman's name?"

"It might be a very bad influence for the young man," protested Smalley virtuously, but clutching at the suggestion. "He is thoroughly trustworthy, however, and I suppose I can explain it to him as being a really conservative investment that should have no publicity. I think you said, Mr. Wix, that there are only twenty-five shares remaining to be sold."

"That's all," Wix a.s.sured him. "You couldn't secure another share if you wanted it."

"Very well, then, I think I shall take it."

"I have the certificate in my pocket," said Wix, and he produced the identical certificate that he had offered Gilman some days before. It had already been signed by the complacent Sam Glidden as secretary.

"Make this out to Gilman, shall I?" asked Wix, seating himself at Smalley's desk, and poising his pen above the certificate.

"I believe so," a.s.sented Smalley, pursing up his lips.

With a smile all of careless pleasure with the world, Wix wrote the name of Clifford M. Gilman, and signed the certificate as president.

"Now, your check, Mr. Smalley, for twenty-five hundred, and the new La Salle Company is completely filled up, ready to start in business on a brand-new basis."

With his lips still pursed, Smalley made out that check, and Wix shook hands with him most cordially as he left the room. Outside the door he chuckled. He was still smiling when he walked up to the cashier's wicket, where young Gilman sat tense and white-faced. Wix indorsed the check, and handed it through the wicket.

"Here's your twenty-five hundred, Cliff," said he. "You can turn it over on the books of the bank as soon as you like."

Gilman strove to voice his great relief, but his lips quivered and his eyes filled, and he could only turn away speechless. Wix had gone out, and Gilman was still holding in his nerveless fingers the check that had saved him, when Smalley appeared at his side.

"Ah," said Smalley; "I see you have the check I gave Mr. Wix. Did he deposit?"

"No, sir," replied Gilman, in a low voice; "he took currency."

Mr. Smalley visibly winced.

"A bill of exchange might have done him just as well," he protested.

"No non-employing person has need of actual currency in that amount.

I'm afraid young Wix is very extravagant--very. By the way, Mr.

Gilman, I have been forced, for protection and very much against my will, to take some stock in an enterprise with which I can not have my name a.s.sociated for very obvious business reasons; so I have taken the liberty of having the stock made out in your name," and, before young Gilman's eyes, he spread his twenty-five-share certificate of The La Salle Grain and Stock Brokerage Company.

Gilman, pale before, went suddenly ghastly. The blow of mockery had come too soon upon the heels of his relief.

"I can't have it," he managed to stammer through parched lips. "I must refuse, sir. I--I can not be connected in any way with that business, Mr. Smalley. I--I abhor it. Never, as long as I live--"

Suddenly the fish-white face and staring eyes of Gilman were not in the line of Mr. Smalley's astonished vision, for Gilman had slid to the floor, between his high stool and his desk. Sam Glidden, coming into the bank a moment after, found Smalley working feverishly over the prostrate form of his feebly reviving clerk.

CHAPTER V

JONATHAN REUBEN WIX CASTS ASIDE HIS ONLY HANDICAP AND DISAPPEARS FOR EVER