to the soundness of his business judgment; but, the vital point which Mrs. Cartwright overlooked was that Mr. Prindivale was quite in the habit of counting his gain, while some one else was tabulating corresponding loss. The suburban banker, to be extremely charitable, was not governed by any exalted rules of ethics, and, except for the rich cloak of respectability that he had wrapped about him, one might have been tempted to charge, in the plainest of words, that he was a crook. Other bankers and business men were accustomed to scrutinize carefully the commas, semicolons, and periods of all papers and documents which involved them in any sort of transaction with Mr. Prindivale.
The financial genius of the somewhat fashionable suburb had been one of the prime movers in the organization of the Monotrack Transit Company. As new corporations are allowed twenty percent of their capital for the floating of their stock and organization purposes, Mr. Prindivale had purchased two thousand shares at a generous discount. It had, in fact, cost him only twenty dollars per share, while others not in on the ground floor, were forced to write their checks for its par value of a hundred dollars.
For a time Mr. Prindivale shared the optimism of the scheme’s other promoters, that Monotrack was going to be a bonanza, but his shrewd little gimletlike eyes, accustomed to looking considerable distances into the future, soon saw the handwriting of the city’s big financiers across the resplendent, gilt-sealed Monotrack certificates, and he read: “Nothing doing.”
At almost precisely the same moment he recalled the sixty thousand dollar balance on the books of his bank, to the credit of Mrs. Clara Cartwright, the full amount of her check from the life insurance company. The very same day Mrs. Cartwright, in her widow’s weeds, happened into the bank, and Mr. Prindivale, in his soft, suave voice, painted a glowing and enticing picture of the wealth that was to be made out of Monotrack Transit. So cleverly did he bait his gold hook that Mrs. Cartwright was pleading with him to be allowed to invest.
And, “only because your husband was such a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Cartwright,” Mr. Prindivale permitted the widow to write him a check for sixty thousand dollars. The price was fixed by a simple process of multiplication; two thousand shares at thirty dollars per share equals sixty thousand dollars—and sixty thousand dollars was all she had.
So Cyrus Prindivale was in actual cash some twenty thousand dollars richer as a result of his almost disastrous dream concerning the success of Monotrack Transit. But there was one thing which Mr. Prindivale did not know; Mrs. Clara Cartwright was a first cousin of Mr. Amos Clackworthy.
III.
On the nineteenth floor of the Great Lakes Building was a most elegantly furnished office suite of two rooms. The lettering on the corridor door informed one that it was occupied by the “Atlas Investment Company.” In the outer room a very pretty young woman was seated before a mahogany typewriter desk; she was reading a popular novel, but the drawer of the desk was conveniently open, ready to conceal this evidence of her lack of occupation; there was also a sheet of paper in the machine, for instant use. The fetching typist was none other than Mrs. George Bascom, wife of one of Mr. Amos Clackworthy’s lieutenants.
A draftsman’s board stood conspicuously in one corner; it held some half completed drawings, bearing the words, “Monotrack Transit Company.” Seated in front of the draftsman’s board was George Bascom, who, at the present moment, was using the point of his dividers to clean his ring, which, in truth, was about the only use he could make of them.
Within the inner room, the door of which was marked “private,” a tall, businesslike man with a superbly trimmed Vandyke beard was seated at his massive mahogany desk; it was, of course, Mr. Clackworthy.
The Early Bird, who had deserted his own desk in the outer office, was seated in the private office, and his eyes roved admiringly about.
“Some joint!” he ejaculated. “Yeah, I’ll say it’s some joint.”
“James,” remonstrated Mr. Clackworthy, “your idiomatic English is most refreshing—on occasions; but it becomes my duty to remind you that you are now the private secretary of a most conservative investment broker, and, as such, you must speak with more refinement.”
“Don’t worry th’ old think-box into a headache,” retorted The Early Bird. “I’ll can th’ lowbrow chatter when th’ lamb appears for shearin’. Huh! I’ll twist th’ old tongue around so’s this bird’ll lamp me and say: ‘Ha-vard, eh?’”
Mr. Clackworthy selected a fresh cigar.
“James,” he mused, “human nature is very contradictory. How often do we reject the truth and yet receive falsehood with childish credulity.”
“Th’ bottomless pit’s only knee-deep compared with your lingo,” mourned The Early Bird, not without admiration for Mr. Clackworthy’s rhetorical facility.
“Here is an example of my philosophy,” continued Mr. Clackworthy. “If I went to the Blackmere Hotel with seventeen trunks and a valet, and announced that I was a millionaire, no one would believe me; yet if I went to the same hotel with the same trappings and denied that I was a millionaire, every one would be quite convinced that I was.
“Well, James, that is the philosophy upon which our present little venture is founded. I do not think that it can fail.”
IV.
Mr. Cyrus Prindivale tilted back in his swivel-chair, and his heavy eyebrows over his beady little eyes contracted into a puzzled frown. Five separate and distinct times he digested the contents of the letter. Carefully he crinkled the edge of the heavy vellum parchment between his critical fingers, and caressed the unimpeachably engraved letters which announced “Atlas Investment Company, 1924-26, Great Lakes Building.” The letterhead was dignified, bespeaking taste and refinement.
“Never heard of ’em,” muttered Mr. Prindivale. “It may amount to something, though.” The letter read:
We are given to understand that you are the owner of two thousand shares of stock in the Monotrack Transit Company. We are delegated by a client of ours to purchase a controlling amount of this stock in order that he may acquire the plans and specifications which belong to the company. We are empowered to offer you the present market price of ten dollars per share. As you are well aware, the revival of the company is a financial impossibility, and our client has no other reason for acquiring this stock than to become the owner in fee simple of its drawings, which, he hopes, may be an asset at some future time.
“Humph!” grunted Mr. Prindivale. “They’re too darn emphatic about wanting ‘only the plans and specifications.’ There is, I suspect, a fox in the henhouse; this is well worth looking into.”
Being, himself, a man of devious methods it was natural that he should look with cautious suspicion on the all too positive frankness of others. With a frown he remembered that he was no longer the possessor of two thousand shares of Monotrack Transit, but, remembering the frantic expostulations of Mrs. Clara Cartwright upon her discovery that her sixty thousand dollars’ worth of elaborate certificates was utterly worthless, he anticipated no difficulty in buying it back for, say, ten dollars a share.
Mr. Prindivale pressed the button on his desk and summoned Dawes, the cashier, who was widely acquainted with many details of the city’s financial circle.
“Dawes,” said Mr. Prindivale, “just who are the Atlas Investment Company?”
Running his fingers through his thin hair, Dawes turned to the “A” compartment of his card-indexed mind, but shook his head.
“Name
