Mrs. Bishop, a small, nervous-looking woman of forty-five, with her thin hair drawn back so tightly from her narrow forehead that it gave one the headache to look at her, was in her dismal "front room" with her wrinkled red hands folded in her lap when Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Clover called. It was only the day after the funeral, and she broke into tears the moment they introduced themselves.

"Madam," declaimed Mr. Clover in his deepest and most sympathetic voice, "it is the blessed privilege of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands to dry the tears of the widows and orphans, and to shed the light of hope upon their disconsolate pathway. It is our pleasure to bring you, as a testimonial of your husband's affection and loving care, this check for one thousand dollars."

Mrs. Bishop took the check and burst into uncontrollable sobs, whereat Mr. Wallingford looked distinctly annoyed. If he could help it, he never, by any possibility, looked upon other than the most cheerful aspects of life.

Mr. Clover cleared his throat.

"But the broad paternal interest of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands does not stop here," he went on, turning for a glance of earned approval from J. Rufus Wallingford. "The family of every member of our Order becomes at once a ward of ours, and they may look to us for assistance, advice, and benefit in every way possible. We are a group of friends, banded together for mutual aid in time of trouble and sorrow."

Mr. Wallingford judged this magnificent flight to be a quotation from the ritual of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands, and he was correct; but, as Mrs. Bishop had ventured to look up at them, he nodded his head gravely.

"It is about that thousand dollars you hold in your hand, Mrs. Bishop," Clover continued, resuming his oratorical version of the lesson he had carefully learned from Wallingford; "and we feel it our duty to remind you that, unless it is wisely used, the plans of your thoughtful husband for your safe future will not have been carried out. How had you thought of investing this neat little sum?"

Mrs. Bishop gazed at the check through her tears and tried to comprehend that it was real money, as it would have been but for the astuteness of Mr. Wallingford. Mr. Clover had proposed to bring her ten new, crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, but his monitor had pointed out that if she ever got that money between her fingers and felt it crinkle she would never let go of it. A check was so different.

"Well," she faltered, "my daughter Minnie wanted me to get us some clothes and pay some down on a piano and lay in the winter coal and provisions and put the rest in a bank for a rainy day. Minnie's my youngest. She's just quit the High School because she wants to go to a commercial college. But my oldest daughter, Hattie, wouldn't hear to it. She says if Minnie'll only take a job in the store where she works they can run the family, and for me to take this thousand dollars and finish paying off the mortgage on the house with it. The mortgage costs six per cent. a year."

"Your daughter Hattie is a very sensible young lady," said Mr. Wallingford with great gravity. "It would be folly to expend this thousand dollars upon personal luxuries; but equally wrong to lose its earning power."

It was the voice of Wall Street, of the Government Mint, of the very soul and spirit of all financial wisdom, that spoke here, and Mrs. Bishop felt it with a thrill.

"Madam," orated Mr. Clover, "the Noble Order of Friendly Hands has provided a way for the safe and profitable investment of the funds left to the widows and orphans under its protection. It has set aside a certain amount of high-dividend-bearing stock in the Order itself, or rather in its operating department, of which, by the way, I am the president, and of which the eminent capitalist and philanthropist, Mr. J. Rufus Wallingford, is a leading spirit." His sweeping gesture toward that benevolent multi-millionaire, and Mr. Wallingford's bow in return, were sights worth beholding. "The benevolent gentlemen who organized this generous association have just made possible this further beneficence to its dependents. The stock should pay you not less than twelve per cent. a year, and your original capital can be withdrawn at any time. With this income you can pay the interest on your mortgage, and have a tidy little sum left at the end of each quarter. Think of it, madam! Money every three months, and your thousand dollars always there!"

Mrs. Bishop glanced at him in slow comprehension. The figures that he gave her did not, as yet, mean so much, but the sight of Mr. Wallingford did. He was so big, so solid looking, so much like substantial prosperity itself. A huge diamond glowed from his finger. It must be worth several hundred dollars. Another one gleamed from his scarf. His clothing was of the latest cut and the finest material. Even his socks, in the narrow rim which showed above his low-cut shoes, were silk; she could see that clear across the room.

The door opened, and a girl of seventeen or eighteen came in. That she was unusually pretty was attested by the suddenly widening eyes of Mr. Wallingford.

"And is this your daughter Minnie?" asked the benevolent gentleman, all his protecting and fostering instincts aroused.

Mrs. Bishop, in a flutter, presented her younger daughter to the fortune-bringing gentlemen, and Minnie fluttered a bit on her own account. She knew she was pretty; she read in the eyes of the wealthy-looking, perfectly groomed Mr. Wallingford that she was pretty; she saw in the smile of Mr. Clover that she was pretty, and her vanity was pleased inordinately.

A sudden brilliant idea came to Mr. Wallingford.

"I have the solution to your problem, Mrs. Bishop," he said. "We shall need more help in our offices, and your daughter shall have the place. She can soon earn more money than she ever could in a store, and can secure as good a training as she could in a business college. How would you like that, Miss Bishop?"

"I think it would be fine," replied the young lady, with a large-eyed glance toward Mr. Wallingford.

The glance was more of habit than intent. Minnie's mirror and what she had heard from her boy friends had given her an impulse toward coquetry. It was pleasant to feel her power, to see what instantaneous impression she could make upon grown men. Such a friendly party it was! Everybody was pleased, and in the end Mr. Wallingford and Mr. Clover walked away from the house with Mrs. Bishop's check and her receipt and her policy in their pockets.

Mr. Clover was lost in profound admiration.

"It worked, all right!" he said exultantly to Mr. Neil, as soon as they returned to the dingy little office. "Here's the thousand dollars," and he threw down the check. "Good Lord! I couldn't believe but that thousand was gone; and then if another man died he would put us on the toboggan."

Mr. Neil was a thin young man whose forehead wore the perpetual frown of slow thought. Also his cuffs were ragged. He was the Supreme Exalted Secretary.

"Now may I have fifty?" he inquired in an aside to Clover. "My board bill, you know."

"Certainly not!" declared the Supreme Exalted Ruler with loud rectitude. "This thousand dollars belongs in the insurance reserve fund."

"Tut, tut," interposed Wallingford. "Your alarm clock is out of order. You just now paid a death claim with that money, and the reserve fund is out that much. A private individual, however, just now bought a thousand dollars' worth of stock in the reorganized Friendly Hands Trust Company, and you have the pay in advance. Let Mr. Neil have his fifty dollars, and give me a check for my two hundred and fifty; then we'll go out to hunt a decent suite of offices and buy the furniture for it."

"There wouldn't be much of the thousand left after that," objected Mr. Clover, frowning.

"Why not? You don't suppose we are going to pay cash for anything, do you?" returned Wallingford in surprise. "My credit's good, if yours isn't."

His credit! He had not been in town four hours! As Mr. Clover looked him over again, however, he saw where he was wrong. Mr. Wallingford's mere appearance was as good as a bond. He would not ask for credit; he would take it. Mr. Clover, in a quick analysis of this thought, decided that this rich man's resources were so vast that they shone through his very bearing. Mr. Wallingford, at that same moment, after having paid his enormous hotel bill in New York and the expenses of his luxurious trip, had only ten dollars in the world.

"Now then," suggested Mr. Clover as he passed the hypnotically won check to his new partner, "we might as well conclude our personal business. I'll make you over half my stock in the company, and take your two thousand."

"All right," agreed Wallingford very cheerfully, and they both sat down to write.

Mr. Clover transferred to Mr. Wallingford forty-three shares of stock in the Friendly Hands Trust Company, Incorporated, and received a rectangular slip of paper in return. His face reddened as he examined it.

"Why, this isn't a check!" he said sharply. "It's a note for ninety days!"

"Sure!" said J. Rufus Wallingford. "In our talk there wasn't a word said about cash."

"But cash is what I want, and nothing but cash!" exploded the other, smacking his hairy fist upon his desk.

"How foolish!" chided J. Rufus smilingly. "I see I'll have to teach you a lot about business. Draw up your chairs and get my plan in detail. If, after that, Clover, you do not want my note, you may give it back and go broke in your own way. Here's what we will do. We will organize a new operating company for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in twenty-five-dollar shares. We will buy over the old ten-thousand-dollar company for one hundred and fifty thousand in stock of the new company. Dividing this pro rata, you and I, Clover, will each have nearly twenty-six hundred shares. Mr. Neil, in place of his present ten shares, will have six hundred, and we shall have left four thousand shares of treasury stock. These we will sell among your members. We will reduce your present insurance rate one fourth, and use the hundred thousand dollars we take in on stock sales to get new members to whom to sell more stock. In the meantime, we'll see money every day. You and I, Clover, will each draw a hundred a week, and I think Mr. Neil will be pretty well satisfied if he drags down fifty."

The pleased expression upon Mr. Neil's face struggled with the deepening creases on his brow. Fifteen dollars a week was the most he had ever earned in his life, but he was so full of fraternal insurance figures that his skin prickled.

"But how about the insurance end of it?" he interposed. "How will we ever keep up at that ridiculously low rate? That might do for a while, but as our membership becomes older the death rate will increase on us and we can't pay it. Why, the mortality tables – " and he reached for the inevitable facts and figures.

"Who's talking about insurance?" demanded Wallingford. "I'm talking about how to get money. Put up the little red dope-book. Clover, you get busy right away and write a lot of circus literature about the grand work your members will be doing for the widows and orphans by buying this stock; also how much dividend it will pay them. When the treasury stock is sold, and we have a big enough organization to absorb it, we will begin to unload our own shares and get out. If you clean up your sixty-four thousand dollars in this year, I guess you will be willing to let the stockholders elect new officers and conduct their own Friendly Hands Trust Company any way they please, won't you?"

Mr. Clover quietly folded Mr. Wallingford's note and put it in his pocket.

"Let's go out and rent some new offices," he said.

He came back, at Mr. Neil's call, to write out that fifty-dollar check, and incidentally made out one for himself in a like amount.

"What do you think of him, anyhow?" asked Neil with a troubled countenance.

"Think of him?" repeated Clover with enthusiasm. "He's the greatest ever! If I had known him five years ago I'd be worth a million to-day!"

"But is this scheme on the level?" asked Neil.

"That's the beauty of it," said Clover, exulting like a schoolboy. "The law can't touch us any place."

"Maybe not," admitted Neil; "but somehow I don't quite like it."

"I guess you'll like your fifty a week when it begins to come in, and your fifteen thousand when we clean up," retorted Clover.

"You bet!" said Neil, but he began to do some bewildered figuring on his own account. His head was in a whirl.

CHAPTER X
AN AMAZING COMBINATION OF PHILANTHROPY AND PROFIT IS INAUGURATED

Minnie Bishop came to work for the Noble Order of Friendly Hands on the day that they moved into offices more in keeping with the magnificence of Mr. Wallingford, and she was by no means out of place amid the mahogany desks and fine rugs and huge leather chairs.

"Her smile alone is worth fifty dollars a week to the business," Clover admitted, but they only paid her five at the start.

She had more to recommend her, however, than white teeth and red lips. Wallingford himself was surprised to find that, in spite of her apparently frivolous bent, she had considerable ability and was quick to learn. From the first he assumed a direct guardianship over her, and his approaches toward a slightly more than paternal friendship she considered great fun. At home she mimicked him, and when her older sister tried to talk to her seriously about it she only laughed the more. Clover she amused continually, but Neil fell desperately in love with her from the start, and him she flouted most unmercifully. Really, she liked him, although she would not admit it even to herself, charging him with the fatal error of being "too serious."

In the meantime the affairs of the concern progressed delightfully. For the regulation fee, the Secretary of State, after some perfunctory inquiries, permitted the "Trust Company" to increase its capitalization to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Even before the certificates were delivered from the printer's, however, that month's issue of "The Friendly Hand" bore the news to the five hundred members of the Order and to four thousand five hundred prospective members, of the truly unprecedented combination of philanthropy and profit. Somewhere the indefatigable Wallingford had secured a copy of a most unusual annual statement of a large and highly successful insurance company, of the flat-rate variety and of a similar sounding name. In the smallest type to be found he had printed over this:

READ THIS REPORT OF THE PROVIDENT FRIENDS TO ITS STOCKHOLDERS

Then followed direct quotations, showing that the Provident Friends had a membership of a quarter of a million; that it had paid out in death claims an enormous amount; that it had a surplus fund expressed in a staggering array of figures; that its enrollment had increased fifty thousand within the past year. Striking sentences, such as:

WE HAVE JUST DECLARED A THIRTY PER CENT. DIVIDEND

were displayed in big, black type, the whole being spread out in such form that readers ignorant of such matters would take this to be a sworn statement of the present condition of the Order of Friendly Hands; and they were invited to subscribe for its golden stock at the rate of twenty-five dollars a share! The prudent members who were providing for their families after death could now also participate in the profits of this commendable investment during life, and at a rate which, while not guaranteed, could be expected, in the light of past experience, to pay back the capital in a trifle over three years, leaving it still intact and drawing interest.

But this, dear friends and coworkers in a noble cause, was not just a hard, money-grinding proposition. The revenue derived from the sale of stock was to be expended in the further expansion of the Order, until it should blanket the world and carry the blessings of protection to the widows and orphans throughout the universe! Never before in the history of finance had it been made possible for men of modest means to further a charitable work, a noble work, a work appealing to all the highest aspirations of humanity and creditable to every finest instinct of the human heart, and at the same time to reap an enormous profit! And the price was only twenty-five dollars a share – while they lasted!

Wallingford had secured the data and supplied the human frailty ideas for this flaming announcement, but Clover had put it together, and, as he examined the proof sheet, the latter gentleman leaned back in his chair with profound self-esteem.

"That'll get 'em!" he exulted. "If that don't bring in the money to make this the greatest organization in the business, I don't want a cent!"

"You spread it on too much," objected Neil. "Why can't we do just as well or better by presenting the thing squarely? It seems to me that any man who would be caught by the self-evident buncombe of that thing would be too big a sucker to have any money."

Wallingford looked at him thoughtfully.

"You're right, in a way, Neil," he admitted. "The men who have real money wouldn't touch it, but the people we're appealing to have stacked theirs up a cent at a time, and they are afraid of all investments – even of the banks. When you offer them thirty per cent., however, they are willing to take a chance; and, after all, I don't see why, with the money that comes in from this stock sale, we should not be able to expand our organization to even larger proportions than the Provident Friends. If we do that, what is to prevent a good dividend to our stockholders?"

Clover glanced at his partner in surprise. From that overawing bulk there positively radiated high moral purpose, and Neil shriveled under it. When they were alone, Clover, making idle marks with his pencil, looked up at Wallingford from time to time from under shaggy brows, and finally he laughed aloud.

"You're the limit," he observed. "That's a fine line of talk you gave Neil."

"Can't we buy him out?" asked Wallingford abruptly.

"What with? A note?" inquired Clover. "Hardly."

"Cash, then."

"Will you put it up?"

"I'll see about it, for if I have him gauged right he will be hunting for trouble all along the line."

Wallingford went to the window and looked out; then he got his hat. As he stepped into the hall Neil came from an adjoining room.

"Do you want to sell your stock, Neil?" asked Clover.

"To whom?" asked Neil slowly. Wallingford had shaken his slow deductions, had suggested new possibilities to ponder, and he was still bewildered.

"To Wallingford."

"Say, Clover, has he got any money?" demanded Neil.

"If he hasn't he can get it," replied the other. "Come here a minute."

He drew Neil to the window and they looked down into the street. Standing in front of the office building was a huge, maroon-colored automobile with a leather-capped chauffeur in front. As they watched, Mr. Wallingford came out to the curb and the chauffeur saluted with his finger. Mr. Wallingford took from the rear seat a broad-checked ulster, put it on, and exchanged his derby for a cap to match. Then he climbed into the auto and went whirring away.

"That looks like money, don't it?" demanded Clover.

"I give up," said Neil.

"How much do you want for your stock?" inquired Clover, again with a smile.

"Par!" exclaimed Neil, once more satisfied. "Nothing less!"

"Right you are," agreed Clover. "This man Wallingford is the greatest ever, I tell you! He's a wonder, a positive genius, and it was a lucky day for me that I met him. He will make us all rich."

His admiration for Wallingford knew no bounds. He had detected in the man a genius for chicanery, and so long as he was "in with it" Wallingford might be as "smooth" as he liked. Were they not partners? Indeed, yes. Share and share alike!

That night Clover and Neil dined with Mr. and Mrs. Wallingford at their hotel, and if Neil had any lingering doubts as to Mr. Wallingford's command of money, those doubts were dispelled by the size of the check, by the obsequiousness shown them, and by the manner in which Mrs. Wallingford wore her expensive clothing. After dinner Wallingford took them for a ride in his automobile, and at a quiet road house, a dozen miles out of town, over sparkling drinks and heavy cigars, they quite incidentally discussed a trifling matter of business.

"You fellows go ahead with the insurance part of the game," Wallingford directed them. "I don't understand any part of that business, but I'll look after the stock sales. That I know I can handle."

They were enthusiastic in their seconding of this idea, and after this point had been reached, the host, his business done, took his guests back to town in the automobile upon which he had not as yet paid a cent, dropping them at their homes in a most blissful state of content.

Proceeding along the lines of the understanding thus established, within a few days money began to flow into the coffers of the concern. Mr. Wallingford's method of procedure was perfectly simple. When an experimentally inclined member of any one of the out-of-town "Circles" sent in his modest twenty-five dollars for a share of stock, or even inquired about it, Wallingford promptly got on a train and went to see that man. Upon his arrival he immediately found out how much money the man had and issued him stock to the amount; then he got introductions to the other members and brought home stock subscriptions to approximately the exact total of their available cash. There was no resisting him. In the meantime, with ample funds to urge it forward, the membership of the organization increased at a rapid enough rate to please even the master hand. New members meant new opportunities for stock sales, and that only, to him, and to Clover, the world, at last, was as it should be. Money was his for the asking, and by means which pleased his sense of being "in" on a bit of superior cleverness. Quite early in the days of plenty he saw a side investment which, being questionable, tempted him, and he came to Wallingford – to borrow money!

"I'll sell some of your stock," offered Wallingford. "I want to sell a little of my own, anyhow."

In all, he sold for Clover five thousand dollars' worth, and the stock was promptly reported by the purchasers for transfer on the books of the company. Some of Wallingford's also came in for transfer, although a much less amount; sufficient, however, it seemed, for he took the most expensive apartments in town, filled them with the best furnishings that were made, and lived like a king. Mrs. Wallingford secured her diamonds again and bought many more. Clover also "took on airs." Neil worried. He had made a study of the actual cost of insurance, and the low rate that they were now receiving filled him with apprehension.

"We're going on the rocks as fast as we can go," he declared to Clover. "According to the tables we're due for a couple of deaths right now, and the longer they delay the more they will bunch up on us. Mark what I say: the avalanche will get you before you have time to get out, if that's what you plan on doing. I wish the laws governed our rate here as they do in some of the other States."

"What's the matter with the rate?" Clover wanted to know. "When it's inadequate we'll raise it."

"That isn't what we're promising to do," insisted Neil. "We're advertising a permanent flat rate."

"Show me where," demanded Clover.

Neil tried to do so, but everywhere, in their policies, in their literature, or even in their correspondence, that he pointed out a statement apparently to that effect, Clover showed him a "joker" clause contradicting it.

"You see, Neil, you're too hasty in jumping at conclusions," he expostulated. "You know that the law will not permit us to claim a flat rate without a sufficient cash provision, under State control, to guarantee it, and compels us to be purely an assessment company. When the time comes that we must do so, we will do precisely what other companies have done before us: raise the rate. If it becomes prohibitive the company will drop out of business, as so many others have; but we will be out of it long before then."

"Yes," retorted Neil, "and thousands of people who are too old to get fresh insurance at any price, and who will have paid for years, will be left holding the bag."

"The trouble with you, Neil, is that you have a streak of yellow," interrupted Clover impatiently. "Don't you like your fifty a week?"

"Yes."

"Don't you like your fifteen thousand dollars' worth of stock?"

"It looks good to me," confessed Neil.

"Then keep still or sell out and get out."

"I'm not going to do that," said Neil deliberately. He had his slow mind made up at last. "I'm going to stick, and reorganize the company when it goes broke!"

When Clover reported this to Wallingford that gentleman laughed.

"How is he on ritual work?" he asked.

"Fine! He has a streak of fool earnestness in him that makes him take to that flubdubbery like a duck to water."

"Then send him out as a special degree master to inaugurate the new lodges that are formed. He's a nuisance in the office."

In this the big man had a double purpose. Neil was paying entirely too much attention to Minnie Bishop of late, and Wallingford resented the interference. His pursuit of the girl was characteristic. He gave her flowers and boxes of candy in an offhand way, not as presents, but as rewards. As the business grew he appropriated her services more and more to his own individual work, seating her at a desk in his private room, and a neat balance-sheet would bring forth an approving word and an offhand:

"Fine work. I owe you theater tickets for that."

The next time he came in he would bring the tickets and drop them upon her desk, with a brusque heartiness that was intended to disarm suspicion, and with a suggestion to take her mother and sister along. Moreover, he raised her salary from time to time. The consideration that he showed her would have won the gratitude of any girl unused to such attentions and unfamiliar with the ways of the world, but under them she nevertheless grew troubled and thoughtful. Noticing this, Wallingford conceived the idea that he had made an impression, whereupon he ventured to become a shade more personal.

About this time another disagreeable circumstance came to her attention and plunged her into perplexity. Clover walked into Mr. Wallingford's room just as the latter was preparing to go out.

"Tag, you're it, Wallingford," said Clover jovially, holding out a piece of paper. "I've just found out that your note was due yesterday."

"Quit joking with me on Wednesdays," admonished Wallingford, and taking the note he tore it into little bits and threw them into the waste basket.

"Here! That's two thousand dollars, and it's mine," Clover protested.

Wallingford laughed.

"You didn't really think I'd pay it, did you? Why, I told you at the time that it was only a matter of form; and, besides that, you know my motto: 'I never give up money,'" and, still chuckling, he went out.

"Isn't he the greatest ever?" said Clover admiringly, to Minnie.

But Minnie could not see the joke. If Wallingford "never gave up money," and Clover subscribed to that clever idea with such enthusiasm that he was willing to be laughed out of two thousand dollars, what would become of her mother's little nest-egg? A thousand dollars was a tragic amount to the Bishops. That very evening, as Wallingford went out, he ventured to pinch and then to pat her cheek, and shame crimsoned her face that she had brought upon herself the coarse familiarities which now she suddenly understood. Neil, who had come in from a trip that afternoon, walked into the office just after Wallingford had gone, and found her crying. The sight of her in tears broke down the reserve that she had forced upon him, so that he told her many things; told them eloquently, too, and suddenly she found herself glad that he had come – glad to rely upon him and confide in him. Naturally, when she let him draw from her the cause of her distress, he was furious. He wanted to hunt Wallingford at once and chastise him, but she stopped him with vehement earnestness.

"No," she insisted, "I positively forbid it! When Mr. Wallingford comes here to-morrow, I want him to find me the same as ever, and I do not want one word said that will make him think I am any different. But I want you to walk home with me, if you can spare the time. I want to talk with you."