Chapter III
"There's a franklin in the wilds of Kent, hath brought three hundred marks with him in gold … a kind of auditor."
It was quite late when Britt-Mitchell arose like a giant refreshed. First ringing for breakfast, he bathed and shaved and arrayed himself carefully in glad habiliments of quiet taste and cut, in which he bore slight resemblance to the rough-and-ready Britt of Elmsdale.
Sitting indolently sideways to the table, his feet on a chair, he discussed an excellent breakfast leisurely, as one at peace with the world. His paper was propped before him; he chuckled as he read. Breakfast finished, he pulled his coffee over, lit a cigar and puffed luxuriously. Not till then did he open the letter taken from the discarded coat of yesterday. It read:
Well, old man, I am sending you an easy one. Crack him hard for me. He's the rankest sucker yet. I was going to work the Scholar's Gambit on him, but he'll get his hooks on a whole bunch of money when he gets down town, so I turn him over to you. 'Fifty thou. to be paid him by Atwood, Strange & Atwood. You know of them—Mining Engineers and Experts, 25 Broad. Let him get the boodle and hand him a sour one.
Name, Steve Thompson, en route to New York. Section 5, Sleeper Tonawanda, Phoebe Snow. Brown, smooth-shaved, hand-me-down suit, cowboy hat. From Butte, Montana. Has sold his mine, the Copper-bottom (on right of trail northeast of Anaconda). Former partner, Frank Short, killed by powder explosion at Bozeman, two years ago. Appendix subjoined with partial list of his friends, details about his mine, his ten years of unsuccessful prospecting, etc. Am not so explicit as usual, because he is such a big-mouthed damfool he'll tell you all he knows before you get to Hoboken. Also I am in some haste. I am to take him to Niagara with me to give you time to get this and join him at Binghamton, if you are there as planned. If not, I have wired Jim to meet train at Hoboken and keep in touch with him till you come, scraping acquaintance if necessary. Then he can disappear and leave you to put the kibosh on him. Jim is all right, but he lacks your magnetism, and your light, firm touch. You can beat us all putting up a blue front.
RUBE.
Mr. Mitchell rose to instant action. In a very few minutes his trunk was packed, his bill paid. He then hied him in haste to the Carnegie Library, where, till train time, he fairly saturated himself with information concerning Butte and vicinity.
When the train pulled out from Binghamton, Mitchell sat across the aisle from Thompson, deep in his paper. A visorless black cap adorned his head, beneath which flowed his reverend white hair; rimless eye-glasses imparted to his unimpeachable respectability an eminently aristocratic air. These glasses he wiped carefully from time to time with a white silk handkerchief, which he laid across his ample knees, resuming his reading, oblivious to all else.
The paper was laid aside and the big man became immersed in a magazine. The handkerchief slipped from his knees into the aisle. Thompson politely restored it.
"Thank you, young man, thank you," said Britt. Then a puzzled look came over his brow. Polishing the glasses he took another sharp look. He leaned across the aisle.
"I beg your pardon," he said, with stately courtesy. "But I am sure I have met you somewhere. No, don't tell me. Pardon an old man's harmless vanity, but it is my weakness to make my memory do its work unaided, when possible. I have a famous memory generally, and yours is not a face to be easily forgotten. Let me see—not in New York, I think—Philadelphia—Washington? No—you would be from the West, by your hat. Um-m-Omaha—Chicago, St. Louis?—Butte!" he said, with a resounding thwack on his knee. "Butte! 'Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile'!"
"Right you are," said the Westerner, well pleased. "I seem to remember you, too."
"I have it!" said Mitchell. "Don't remember your name—but you're the very man Judge Harney pointed out to me as the unluckiest prospector in Montana. Said you could locate a claim bounded on all sides by paying property and gopher through to China without ever striking ore."
"May I come over there and talk?" said Steve. "Mighty glad to see some one from my town. You didn't live there though, or I should have met you."
"Certainly," said Mitchell, making room. "Glad to have you. Live there? Oh, no, I only made a couple of trips. Some associates of mine were in with Miles Finlen—you know him, I reckon?—on the Bird's-eye proposition, and I took a flyer with them," he explained. "I lost out. Dropped several dollars," His face lit up with comfortable good-humor. "It was a good mine, but it got tied up in the courts. Let me see—what did Harney call you—Townsend, Johnson?"
"Thompson," said Steve, smiling. "Steve Thompson."
"So it was—so it was. Well, I was getting close. Glad to meet you, Mr. Thompson. That is my name." He handed over a bit of pasteboard, inscribed;
MR. J.F. MITCHELL
"On Vesey Street now, just south of Barclay Street Ferry. I'll jot down the number—you want to come round and look me up. Sorry I can't ask you to use my house for headquarters. Wife's away to Bar Harbor for the summer, and I'm camping out in a hotel. Tell you what, though—you put up at my caravanserai—the Cornucopia—good house, treat you well. I'll be busy a day or so catching up after my trip up-state, but after that I'll show you around. But perhaps you've been here before?"
"Not I," said Steve. "My first trip. Haven't been out of Montana since
I was a kid. I'm sure glad to meet a friend so soon."
"Lots of Montana people here," said Mitchell cheerily. "We'll look 'em up. Probably find some of your old friends. People here from everywhere. Say—Judge Harney got into a bad mix-up, didn't he? That young Charley Clark is a devil. I've met him up here." With this he launched into a discussion of Butte, with inquiries as to various figures of local prominence, from which Steve was fain to escape by turning the talk on his final good luck, the sale of his mine and his rosy prospects. For Mitchell had "crammed up" on Butte industriously. Steve lacked his facilities, his sole source of information being certain long-past campfire tales of Neighbor Jones.
"Made it at last, did you? Glad to hear it. Can't keep a good man down, as the whale said to Jonah," said Mitchell heartily. "'But with all thy getting, get understanding,'" he quoted with unctuous benevolence. "The city is full of traps for the unwary. You can't be too careful, young man. Don't be drawn into gambling, or drinking, or fast company, or you'll be robbed before you know it. Watch out for pickpockets, and, above all, be chary of making acquaintance with strangers. They're sly down here, my boy—devilish sly. Have you any friends in town? If you have, get them to go around with you till you learn the ropes."
"Don't know a soul but you," said Steve truthfully. "But I have a letter here to the people who are putting the sale through. Do you know these people?"
"Atwood, Strange & Atwood," Mitchell read. "A good, reliable firm. I don't know them, but I know of 'em. They will advise you just as I do."
"But," objected Steve, "I want to see a good time. That's what I come for. For instance, I want to see the races. And naturally, I want to put up a few dollars to make it interesting."
"Bad business—bad business," admonished the elder man wisely. "I don't object to a quiet game of cards myself, among friends, and for modest stakes. But I can't afford to do anything to hurt my business reputation. Let a man of small means, like myself, play the ponies, or affect shady company, and what happens? All the banks know it at once, and shut down on loans instanter. They keep tab on all business men religiously."
"What's your line?" said Steve, impressed.
"Mainly buying on commission for Mexican and South American trade—though I handle a good many orders for country dealers, too," replied Mitchell. "My specialty is agricultural implements, barbed wire, machinery and iron stuff generally, for the export trade. There's things about it would surprise you. Why, such things, farm machinery more especially, retail in Buenos Ayres at from 40 to 60 per cent, of what they do here, after paying freight charges and a snug commission to me."
"How can they do it?" asked Steve, interested.
Mitchell plunged into an explanation of the workings of the tariff and its effect on home prices. He had it at his fingers' end. Under his skillful hands the dry subject became really interesting, embellished with a wealth of illustration and anecdote. He was still deep in his exposition, when, beyond Scranton, a hand was laid on his arm. A dapper, little, dark man, with twinkling, black eyes and pointed black beard, stood in the aisle.
"Well, Mitchell!" he said, with an affectionate pat. "Still riding your hobby?"
The fat man jumped up, beaming. "Loring! by all that's holy! Let me make you acquainted with my friend. Mr. Thompson—Mr. Loring. Mr. Loring is one of our rising young artists."
"The rising young artist," said Loring with a flash of white teeth, "is trying to get up a whist game, to pass away the time. Will you gentlemen assist?" He turned aside in a paroxysm of coughing.
"Certainly, certainly—that is, if Mr. Thompson plays.——That's a bad cough you've got there, Loring."
"Yes—caught cold fishing," said the artist. "Will you join us, Mr.
Thompson?"
"Glad to," said that worthy. "Only my game is bumble-puppy. You can hardly call it whist. Who's the fourth?"
"Yet to be found," laughed Loring. After a few rebuffs they picked up a drummer, and adjourned to the smoker, buying a deck from the train boy. The little dark man and Steve played against the other two, a suitcase on their knees serving as a table. They played a rubber. Steve verified his statements as to his style of play.
"Well, that's enough—nearly in," said Loring, as they drew near their destination.
"Yes, indeed. I must go back to my car. We've had a pleasant game," said the fourth man, taking his leave.
"Have a smoke—you'll find these A 1," said the artist. "Say, Mitchell, I've learned a new trick to illustrate the old saying that the hand is quicker than the eye." Sticking a cigar in the corner of his mouth, he ran over the cards swiftly, took out the two red jacks, and held them up, one in each hand, backs toward himself, faces to Mitchell and Steve.
"Now," he said, "you can put these two jacks in the deck wherever you wish, shuffle them all you please, let me give them just one riffle, and you'll find them both together." He put his handkerchief to his lips and turned away to cough, laying the two jacks face downward on the table.
With a nudge to Steve, Mitchell threw the jack of hearts under Loring's seat, where it lay, face up, substituting therefor the five of clubs from the top of the deck.
Loring held the cards up again. "There are the two jacks, gentlemen: the two inseparable jacks. Put them in for yourselves, and watch me—close!"
Steve took the five of clubs and put it in the middle. Mitchell put in the jack of diamonds. Both shuffled. Loring cut the pack into two equal parts, using only the extreme tip ends of his fingers, and shoved them together in the same fashion. Balancing the deck on the open palm of his left hand, he turned the cards carefully with his right thumb and forefinger, keeping up a running fire of comment.
"Now watch me! This trick won't work with any other cards but the jacks. The reason is easy to see. Where you find one knave there's always another close by. 'Birds of a feather flock together,' you know. Ah! here we are!" He turned over the knave of diamonds, and laid the deck down. "Now," he said to Mitchell, "what'll you bet the next card isn't the knave of hearts?" Here he was again attacked by that excruciating cough.
As he turned away Mitchell slyly turned up the corner of the next card, winking at Steve. It was the five of clubs. Evidently Loring had done the trick right, except for the substituted card.
"I'll bet you five hundred dollars!" said Mitchell jubilantly. He drew out a billbook and shook a handful of notes at the artist. "A thousand, if you like!"
"Nobody wants to rob you, Mitchell," laughed Loring. "Put up your money. I don't need it. I'll do the trick, of course." Steve was laughing immoderately.
"Rob me! Go ahead! You're welcome!" said Mitchell, riotously radiant. He waved the bills before Loring's eyes. "Money talks! Yah! You haven't the nerve to bet on it," he taunted, his knee touching Steve's under the table.
Loring's black eyes snapped maliciously. "Oh, well, you insist on it," he said. "I've warned you now, remember! No rebate on this. How much?" He pulled out a fat rubber-banded roll and began stripping bills from the outside.
"A thousand—all you want!" shouted Mitchell, in high glee. "Getting on, Thompson?"
Steve, still laughing, shook his head. "I'll be stakeholder," he said in a choking voice.
The black-eyed man shot a malevolent glance at him as they put up the money in his hands. For he had a supernumerary jack of hearts, neatly palmed, to turn up if Steve "bit." This quickly disappeared, however, or rather did not appear at all. With an expectant smile the artist turned up from the top of the deck the five of clubs. He looked at it in stupefied amazement, which, if not real, was well invented.
Mitchell roared and pounded the suitcase. "Oh, Loring!" he gasped, drying his eyes. "You will teach an old dog new tricks, will you? My stars, but you're easy!" Retook the cash from the grinning stakeholder, counted out Loring's half and pushed it over to that much discomfited gentleman. "I don't want to rob you!" he quoted mockingly. "But if I had time I'd have kept you on the anxious seat a while. There's your jack of hearts, under your feet!"
"Why, you fat, old swindler! You white-headed outrage—you—you Foxy Grandpa!" cried Loring in blushing chagrin—not wholly dissembled, either. "I ought to make you eat it. Come, have a drink." He led the way, the others following with gibe and jeer.
"Why didn't you bet with him, Thompson?" demanded Mitchell, still shaking with Homeric laughter. "Say, I should have kept his money, by good rights. 'Twould have been the joke of the season!"
Steve raised his glass. "I would," he replied innocently, "but I knew you'd give it back, anyhow, so what's the use—among friends? If it had been a stranger, now, I'd 'a' hopped on the band-wagon too quick. I like a little easy money as well as anybody. Well, here's to our next meeting!"
"Hello!" said Mitchell. "Here's the tunnel and Hoboken. Let's go back to our belongings. Now, Thompson, business first and pleasure after, you know. You take the Barclay Street boat. If I don't get time to see you before noon to-morrow you run up to the office and see me. It's only a block from the Cornucopia. I've got to go the other way, and so does Loring—at least his studio's uptown. I say, Loring, tell Mr. Thompson what's doing at the theatres. That's in your line."
Loring named several plays, recommending one as particularly good. In the waiting-room they parted with warm handshakings and great good-will.
"Do you suppose he's wise?" said Loring, on the ferry.
Mitchell guffawed. "That bumpkin? Not he. The poor, dumb idiot took it all as a practical joke among friends. Naturally, just as he said, he thought I'd give you your money back. Glad you had presence of mind enough to go on through with the five-spot. It's fine business to be able to think on your feet, especially for us moon-minions. Good thing it turned out the way it did. He's got perfect confidence in me now—he's seen me tried, and knows I'm straight. We'll get more out of him in the long run." He explained Steve's mining expectations at length.
"I don't like it much," said Loring. "It's a bad sign. My experience is that it's hard to overreach a man that isn't on the hog himself. When they're eager to annex something dishonestly you get 'em every time. Maybe you'll lose him. Why didn't you stay with him? He may not go to the Cornucopia at all."
"Oh, yes, he will!" said Mitchell confidently. "I am going to play him for all he's worth, and I want him to feel sure I'm O.K. It might make him suspicious if I kept at his coat tails. Plenty of time. I won't even look him up to-morrow. Rig the old joint as my office, and wait there till he hunts me up. Let him make all the advances, d'ye see? Teach him bridge, on the square, at night. Let him win a little—just enough to keep him satisfied with himself—you'll see. Wait till he draws his wad, and we'll throw the gaff in him to the queen's taste. If he won't nibble at one hook try another. But, I say, Billy, you'll have to furnish the scads for bait, in case he don't? rise to something easy. I know you're flush from that Manning job."
* * * * *
Meantime, with unspoiled and sparkling eye, the inlander saw, broad sweeping before him, mist-bordered, dream-vast, dim-seen beneath the lowering sky, the magic city whose pulsings send and call a nation's life-blood.
The salt tang of the sea was in his nostrils; greetings, many-keyed, hoarse-whistled by plying craft, were in his ears; creamy-foamed wakes of turbulent keels, swift-sent or laboring, boiled their swirling splendor against the black water. Mysterious, couchant, straining, the bulwarked city rode the waves; a mighty ship, her funnels the great buildings beyond, where sullen streamers of smoke trailed motionless and darkling; the indescribable, multitudinous hum of the city's blended voices for purring of monster engines, deep in her hold; bold and high, her restless prow swung seaward in majestic curve, impatient to beat to open main.
This simple young man actually found impressiveness, glamour, even beauty, in this eye-filling canvas; the crowding of crashing lights and interwoven shadows, massed, innumerable, bewildering; the turmoil of confused and broken line, sprawled with tremendous carelessness for a giant's delight.
Plainer proof of his utter unsophistication could not be. For it is traditional with, all "correct" and well-informed folk that New York is hopelessly ugly. It gives one such a superior air to disprize with easy scorn this greatest of the Gateways of the World.