"Well?" inquired Burns, as William burst into the office an hour later. "Was it a breach-of-promise suit?"
"Ye-ah. But we settled it out of court, and here's the alimony." William flourished the check. "Say, I renig. That uncle of mine was no crab; he was pure goldfish."
"Well, I'm dinged! Nearly thirty thousand, huh? Fine work, son, fine work. And now I'm going to tell you the secret. I knew all about it. The lawyers were here pumping me, and you bet I told 'em you were a little angel. I didn't say anything, because I wanted you to get all the fun out of it. And now what are you going to do with it?"
"I was thinking maybe I could buy an interest in the firm here."
Burns scrubbed his chin. "It's a thriving shop, Bill. I wouldn't think of selling any of my interest."
"I know it's a good business. That's why I wanted to get inside," said William, regretfully.
"Say, wait a minute. Mrs. Dolan has a twenty-thousand-dollar interest. It pays her between six and seven per cent. Last winter she talked a good deal about wanting to pull out and go back to her folks in Ohio. Suppose I make a stab and see if she's of the same idea now? You come up to the house to-night and I'll let you know how matters stand. I'd like to have a young hustler about." Burns reached for his hat. "I'll take you over to the Corn Exchange and identify you."
"The Lincoln 'll do that. I got eight hundred up there."
"Keep it there and let 'er grow. Whenever you get a few dollars you don't feel like spending, slap 'em into the Lincoln. That 'll be the real rainy-day cash, son. When a man has two bank accounts he's got two good crutches."
"You're the doctor."
"Come along. If we can bring Mrs. Dolan around, you can buy out her interest, and I'll put you over the contract work. With your increased salary and your income you'll have something like four thousand a year."
"Me and John D., huh? Honest, Mr. Burns, my head feels like my foot was asleep."
"I understand. But you're awake." Burns slapped William soundly on the back. "Feel that? Come on. Better keep a couple of hundred in your pocket when you leave the bank. Bad luck to draw against an account the minute you open it."
So, with two hundred and fifty-six dollars and thirty-one cents in his pocket, William, upon being left to his own devices, wandered over into Broadway and took an up-town car. He got off at Forty-second Street, which he knew to be the city axis—that is, if you had money.
What should he do by way of celebrating this momentous event? It certainly had to be celebrated. A glass of beer and a cigar? He laughed. He could see William Grogan, his elbow crooked on the polished bar of yonder great hotel, drinking beer and confiding to the blasé bartender that he had just deposited a fortune in the Corn Exchange and was aching to find some congenial soul to help him to spend it. He laughed, blew a kiss toward the hotel, and went on.
Nevertheless, he celebrated. A few doors south from the hotel he ran afoul a pipe-shop. He had always wanted a real meerschaum pipe; a lump of clay as big as your fist, with flowing mermaids emerging at various angles. The pipe was worth seven dollars in money and not a picayune in utility. Human teeth weren't grown that could stand the drag of that pipe. I know; I have seen it. I suppose it was not the pipe really; the fun lay in the fact that something he had always coveted and could not afford was now his for the mere physical effort of paying out the money. I believe the feel of that pipe in his pocket convinced him as much as anything that he was truly awake.
Pipe in pocket and peace in heart, he stepped forth into the sunshine again. Well, here was little old Broadway, famed in story-books and theater magazines and Sunday newspapers, the home of provincial millionaires and chorus-girls, Fort Lobster and Fort Champagne and Fort Tip. William had the native New-Yorker's tolerant contempt for the thoroughfare. He called it the "collar on the beer," the rat-trap for "boobs" and "hicks" and "come-ons," the coal-chute for papa's money. No doubt his prejudice had been sown and nurtured by the Sunday newspapers. Dutifully each Sunday they recorded the Broadway exploits of this torn-fool or that. The Great White Way: waste, extravagance, wild-oats, cold-blood and old-blood and lack-mercy. On the other hand, he admired the physical beauty of it; at night he knew it had no counterpart in all the wide world.
"Some old highway," he murmured, aloud, "but it 'll never dig a nickel out of my jeans."
He wandered on, peering into this window and that, full of lively interest in everything he saw. By and by he summoned a carpet. It carried his spirit in one direction, while his feet led him in another, toward his destiny. Without realizing it, he turned off Broadway and crossed over to Fifth Avenue. Here the fashionable curio-shops attracted him. There were art-galleries, too, and windows full of strange-looking carpets and rugs. Presently he paused before a window which had an art-gallery air, but wasn't. Printers' ink instead of oil ruled. There were great ships going down to sea, tropical isles, the Nile country, India, China, Japan; Arabs, camels, elephants, rickshaws, and bewildering temples. He looked up at the sign overhead.
"Well, what do you know about that?" he murmured. "Little ol' Thomas Cook and Willie Grogan! Well, say!"
But he did not move on. With one hand propping an elbow and the other hand stroking his chin, he continued to stare at the brilliant lithographs and strange coins and paper money. Suddenly he knew what it was he wanted. He drew out his bank-book and eyed the deposit: $28,500.
"Sure, Mike!"
He chuckled and stepped into the office of Thos. Cook & Son, who are agents for Bagdad carpets. A dozen persons were scattered about, interviewing clerks. There was one idle clerk, and boldly William approached him. He hadn't the least idea where he was going, but he knew he was going somewhere, that he was going to tie himself up in such a manner as to prevent caution from overcoming this marvelously likable impulse. All his life he had held himself on the leash, and now bang! went the leather. He swallowed two or three times; his throat was still dry from the fever he had acquired at the law offices of Hargreave, Bell & Davis. The clerk smiled reassuringly.
"Anything I can do for you, sir?"
"I want to take a trip around the world," said William. The words went down-hill rapidly, due to his inability to project them in a level tone.
If the clerk had turned upon him scornfully with a "Beat it, bo, while the beating's good!" William would have faded from the scene like one of those double-exposures which still mystified him at the movies. But the clerk continued to smile, and said, affably, "This is the right place for that."
Eventually, William decided upon the ship Ajax. The boat left harbor on August 15th for a six months' cruise of the world, landing at San Francisco some time along in February. The fare included all travel on land and water. It offered the tail-end of summer in Italy and the fall and winter in the Orient.
"That's the dope for me," declared William, calming himself. "But say, I haven't got the cash with me. How'll I fix it?"
"Make a deposit of one hundred," said the clerk, still smiling. William certainly did not look like a tour of the world, but this clerk had seen many a celluloid collar, and they were deceiving things.
The joy of taking a roll of money out of your pocket, money that was absolutely and wholly yours, money that did not legally belong to creditors, honest money! To pay out one hundred dollars for the first time in your life! To consummate a bargain that was to carry you to the far ends of the world, just by the
