"No, you don't," hurriedly interposed Mr. Pickins, losing his nasal drawl for the moment and reaching for the bill, which he put back in the package, snapping a weak rubber band around it. "I reckon I don't let go of one of these bills till I see something in exchange. I--I ain't no greenhorn!"

His nasal drawl had come back, and now seemed to be the cue for all the others to affect laughter.

"To be sure he's not," said Mr. Phelps, reaching over to slap him on the back in all the jovial heartiness with which a greenhorn is supposed to be encouraged. "You're wise, all right, Pickins. We wouldn't do business with you if you weren't. You see, we're putting ourselves in danger of the penitentiary and we have to be careful.

More than that, wise people come back; and, with a dozen or so like Mr. Pickins shoving the queer for us, we put out about all we can make. n.o.body in the business, Mr. Pickins, gets as high a price for green-goods as we do, and n.o.body in the business keeps all their customers as we do. That's because our output is so good."

This, which was one of the rehea.r.s.ed speeches, went off very well, and they began to feel comfortable again.

"That's me, by Jinks!" announced Pickins, slapping his leg. "I'll be one of your steady customers, all right. When'll I get this first twenty thousand?"

"Right away," said Mr. Phelps, rising. "Just wait a moment till I talk it over with the engraver and see if he has the supply ready."

"The supply's all right," declared Wallingford. "These boys will 'tend to the business with you, Mr. Pickins. I'm very glad to have met you.

I'll probably see you to-night at the show. I have to go back and look after a little more engraving just now." And, shaking hands cordially with Mr. Pickins, he rose to go.

"Wait a minute, Mombley," said Phelps amidst a general scowl, and he walked outside with Wallingford. "Fine work, old man," he complimented, keeping his suavity with no little effort. "We can go right in and pick our bunch of posies any minute."

"Go right ahead!" said Wallingford heartily. "I'm glad to have helped you out a little."

Mr. Phelps looked at him in sour speculation.

"Of course you're in on it," he observed with a great air of making a merely perfunctory remark.

"Me?" inquired Wallingford in surprise. "Not on your life. I only played engraver for accommodation. I thought I did a grand little piece of work, too."

"But we can't go through without you," insisted Mr. Phelps desperately, ignoring the other's maddening complacency and sticking to the main point. "It takes twenty thousand and we only have five thousand apiece. We're looking to you for the other five."

Wallingford looked him squarely in the eyes, with an entire change of manner, and chuckled.

"There are four reasons, Phelps, why I won't," he kindly explained.

"The first is, I never do anything in partnership; second, I never pike; third, I won't take a fall out of any game that has the brown-and-white-striped clothes at the end of it; fourth, Billy might not get the satchels switched right; _extra, I won't fool with any farmer that strikes a match on the sole of his boot_!"

The fifth and extra reason was so unexpected and was laid before Mr.

Phelps with such meaning emphasis that that gentleman could only drop his jaw and gape in reply. Wallingford laid both hands on his shoulders and chuckled in his face.

"You're a fiercely unimaginative bunch," he said. "Let's don't try to do any more business together. Just come up to my room to-night and have a friendly game of stud poker."

At last Green-Goods Harry found his tongue.

"You go to h.e.l.l!" said he.

Back in their common sitting-room, Wallingford found Daw studying some gaudy samples of stock certificates. "Blackie, did you tell this gang of yours that they didn't drink enough to suit me?" Wallingford demanded.

Blackie grinned.

"They wanted to know why you wouldn't warm up," he admitted.

"I see the pretty, pretty lights at last," Wallingford chuckled. "I was sure there was something doing when Curly Harry came up here claiming a thirst, and went so far as to drink champagne on top of a highball."

"He's taking stomach and liver dope right now," Blackie guessed. "You see, these Broadway boys are handicapped when they run across a man who still has a lining. They lost theirs years ago."

"They lost everything years ago. I'm disappointed in them, Blackie. I had supposed that these people of the metropolis had Herman the Great looking like a Bowery waiter when it came to smooth work; but they've got nothing but thumbs."

"You do them deep wrong, J. Rufus Wallingford Wix," admonished Blackie. "I've trailed with this crowd four or five years. They're always to be found right here and they always have coin--whether they spend it or not."

"They get it gold-bricking New Yorkers, then," declared Wallingford contemptuously. "They couldn't cold deck anybody on the rural free delivery routes. They wear the lemon sign on their faces, and when one of their kind comes west of the big hills we padlock all our money in our pockets and lock ourselves in jail till they get out of town."

"What have they been doing to you?" asked Blackie. "You've got a regular Matteawan grouch."

"They had the nerve to try to ring me in for the fall guy on a green-goods play, baited up with a stage farmer from One Hundred and Sixtieth Street," a.s.serted Wallingford. "Don't they ever spring a new one here?"

Mr. Blackie Daw only laughed.

"I'm afraid they don't," he confessed. "They take the old ones that have got the money for years, and work in new props and scenery on them, just like they do in the theaters; and that goes for Broadway."

"It don't go for me," declared Wallingford. "If they come after mine again I'll get real peevish and take their flash rolls away from them."

"Go to it," invited Blackie. "They need a tr.i.m.m.i.n.g."

"I think I'll hand it to them," said Wallingford savagely, and started to walk out.

"Where are you going?" asked the other.

"I don't know," said Wallingford, "but I am going to scare up some excitement in the only way possible for a stranger, and that is go out and hunt for it by myself. No New Yorker knows where to go."

In the bar Wallingford found a convivial gentleman from Georgia, lonesome like himself, with whom he became firm friends in an hour, and it was after midnight when, their friendship still further fixed by plenty of liquid cement, he left the Georgian at one of the broad, bright entrances in charge of a door-man. It being but a few blocks to his own hotel, he walked, carrying with complacent satisfaction a burden of a.s.sorted beverages that would have staggered most men.

It was while he was pausing upon his own corner for a moment to consider the past evening in smiling retrospection, that a big-boned policeman tapped him on the shoulder. He was startled for a moment, but a hearty voice rea.s.sured him with:

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Wix, my boy! When did you come to town?"

A smile broke over Wallingford's face as he shook hands with the bluecoat.

"h.e.l.lo, Harvey," he returned. "I never would have looked for you in this make-up. It's a funny job for the ex-secretary of the Filmore Coal Company."

"Forget it," returned Harvey complacently. "There's three squares a day in this and pickings. Where are you stopping?"

Wallingford told him, and then looked at him speculatively.

"Come up and see me when you go off watch," he invited. "But don't ask for me under the name of Wix. It's Wallingford now, J. Rufus Wallingford."

"No!" said Harvey. "What did you do at home?"

"Not a thing," protested Wallingford. "I can go right back to Filmore and play hop-scotch around the county jail if I want to. I just didn't like the name, that's all. But I want to talk with you, Harvey. I think I can throw about a hundred or so in your way."

"Not me," returned Harvey with a grin. "That's the price of a murder in this town."

"Come up, and I'll coax you," laughed Wallingford.