IV
Towards the close of the business day, Joe Kaplan dropped in at Harry Bannerman’s little office on Nassau street. He had been there before. In his sphere, Harry occupied much the same relation to Mr. Gore that Joe did in his. It had been no part of Mr. Gore’s plans to make his two favorites known to each other, but they had in a way of speaking smelled each other out. No doubt it had occurred to Harry, as it certainly had to Joe, that an alliance would be useful. How else could they keep tab on each other? It had greatly amused Joe to watch Harry’s face when he had unexpectedly come into Mr. Gore’s office one day to find Joe seated by the millionaire’s desk. Joe could imagine Harry going to Dobereiner for information; and Dobereiner getting off his innocent spiel about the clever young man whom Mr. Gore was educating! How Harry must have been tormented by the sums in cash he was forced to draw every week! Well, now, unknown to Mr. Gore and Dobereiner, Harry and Joe had become “intimate” friends. That was funny, too!
“ ’Lo, Harry!” said Joe. He allowed a shadow to appear on his brow, and rolled his Eden perfecto moodily between his lips.
“This is out o’ sight!” cried Harry. “I’ll be through directly. We’ll go out and have something.”
Behind this parade of heartiness, Joe perceived the glitter of hatred, and exulted. He dropped on a chair, and extending his elegantly trousered legs plucked at the creases. A sickly look appeared in Harry’s eyes. Don’t he wish he was me! thought Joe.
Joe said, gloomily: “I need a drink!”
“What’s the matter, old fel’?” asked Harry.
Joe, observing the spring of eager malice in his eyes, thought: He’s a smart fellow; but I’m smarter. I can play on him like the piano. I can surround him all about, and be ready for him to move in any direction! Joe said: “You’ve got me in a hole, that’s what!”
“I?” said Harry, opening his china blue eyes, candid for once in his astonishment.
Joe chuckled inwardly; and looking Harry over, made him wait for the explanation. Harry was a young man, but not so young as he looked. He made a business of being a young man. He was slender; yet somehow he gave the impression of being soft and plump. A dimple in one cheek contributed to that effect. From the neck up he had a naked look, though his head was furnished with a sufficient quantity of hair. It was one of those heads of hair that suggest a wig. He even had a small, stiff mustache, every hair of which was laid in order. Just the same his face had a naked look.
“How could I get you in a hole?” he asked.
“I been talkin’ too much about you up at the flat,” said Joe. “About our gettin’ to be friends, and goin’ around together, and all.”
“Has she told him?” asked Harry sharply.
“Nah! That kid is wise. She don’t tell the old man anything but what he wants to hear.”
“What’s the trouble then?”
Joe scowled. “Aah! She wants me to bring you up there while the old man’s out of town.”
Harry quickly lowered his lids—not so quickly, though, but that Joe perceived what was under them. It was funny! Harry of course, was out of his mind with curiosity concerning the flat on Fifty-Eighth street, and it’s occupant. “Well . . . why not?” said Harry with a shrug.
“Good God! man!” cried Joe. “Suppose the old man got on to it?”
“Why should he get on to it, if the girl is on the level with us?”
“Suppose she was to get stuck on you?” said Joe. “Where would I be?”
Harry fiddled among the papers on his desk. “Oh, you can leave that to me,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not going to let her . . . I might ask you the same question. Where would I be if she did?”
“I don’t see how you could help yourself,” said Joe. “If you attempted to discourage her, it would only make her worse. I tell you frankly, after a certain point I can’t handle her.”
“What did she say?” Harry asked, keeping his face averted from Joe—but Joe marked the deepening dimple.
“Said she was bored, seeing nobody but the old man and me.”
“Well . . . you’re not old,” suggested Harry.
“Oh, I’m like her brother,” said Joe. “We scrap all the time.”
“I mean, what did she say about me?”
“Said if I didn’t bring you up, she’d come down here.”
“So this has been going on some time?”
“Oh, a couple of weeks.”
“Well . . . it’s up to you,” said Harry. “You’re running that show.”
“Do you want to come?” asked Joe.
“Oh, I’m only human,” said Harry, shrugging. “I’m curious to see what the old man’s taste is. . . . But it makes no real difference. I have other interests as you know.”
Joe grinned inwardly. Does he think he’s taking me in, the jay-bird! He said, grumblingly: “Well, I suppose I’ll have to take you. I’ll get no peace until I do! . . . Look here, if there should be any trouble, can I count on you to do the right thing by me? Suppose the old man should get on to something, will you tell him it wasn’t my fault?”
“Why, sure!” said Harry, with a reproachful look. “You ought to know me better than that, Joe! . . . Make your mind, easy. There isn’t going to be any trouble. I’m the quietest little pot of tea that ever brewed on the back of the stove!”
“All right,” said Joe. “We’ll go on up, after we’ve had a drink. We can have dinner sent in from outside.”
Shortly after midnight Joe and Harry issued out of the house on Fifty-Eighth street. Apparently there was nothing to choose between them for mellowness; but Joe was not as mellow as he was making out to be. He linked his arm affectionately within Harry’s.
“You’re a damn good fellow, Harry! I think the world of you! . . . Just the same there’s going to be trouble as a result of this night’s work!”
“You’re foolish!” said Harry, dimpling. “She didn’t care. . . .”
“I know her!” said Joe significantly. “She wasn’t going to let anything on to you, of course. And me being there, too. . . .”
“Well,” said Harry expansively, “even so! Need the heavens fall? . . . Oh my God! what a skin! Like old white velvet. . . . What the old man don’t know won’t hurt him!”
“Look at the position it puts me in!”
“You don’t need to know, either.”
“Aah . . . !” Joe grew vague. “Well, I can’t help it. . . . ’S too soon to go home, old fellow.”
“My club is near here,” said Harry. “Come in for a nightcap.”
Nested in a deep leather chair, with a fresh cigar between his lips, Joe’s gaze at the dying fire appeared to become slightly rapt. “Look here, Harry, you’re the best friend I’ve got. I can talk to you. God! the life we lead, we never get a chance to open up. You don’t dare to let yourself go with any ordinary guy. . . . I want to tell you something, Harry. I suppose to you I appear just a fly kid; happy-go-lucky, and all that. But that ain’t the real me. I hate the position I’m in. You’re a whole lot better off than me; still, it’s much the same. I don’t see how you can stand it either!”
“Stand what?” asked Harry sharply.
“Sucking up to that —— —— ——!”
“Well, there are good pickings!” said Harry with a sickly smile.
“To hell with pickings! Are you going to be satisfied with his droppings all your life? Not me! . . . We only have to look around us. Everybody on the inside is making pots of money right now, pots! There’s never been anything like it. Why shouldn’t we? Wouldn’t you like to have money enough of your own to tell that old swell-front to go to hell, and close the door as he went out?”
Harry twisted in his chair without answering.
“Well, I mean to,” said Joe. “I want a pile, and I’m going to grab it.”
“How?” asked Harry.
“Well, I been picking up quite a bit about the ways of the Street, one place and another,” said Joe. “I make the old man talk about it, without his getting on to how much he’s giving away. All the talk is of mergers now. The air is full of it. That is how the money is made. Millions in a stroke of the pen!”
“Everything is merged, now,” said Harry.
“Not quite everything. I’ll tell you about a cunning little merger that I have in mind. These electric cabs that have increased so fast the last two or three years. You see them everywhere now. There are five small companies operating them. The damn things are so expensive, and they break down so often, the companies are all bankrupt, and only keep going by selling more stock all the time. You can always stick the public with a new thing like that. How about merging all the New York cab companies?”
“But if they’re all bankrupt . . . ?”
Joe wagged his hand. “What do I care about that? Think of the publicity! Everybody is interested in cabs. Cabs are romantic. Cabs are always associated with going on the loose. And horseless cabs have news value. Look here! First you go round to the different companies and make an agreement with each one. Oh, it ain’t much of an agreement. They simply agree to come in if the others do, see? Anybody will agree to that. But the five agreements make a good-looking bunch of documents to shake in a sucker’s face, see? He won’t read ’em. Then you incorporate. There’s regular men you can get for incorporators. I’m going to call it the Consolidated Cab Co. Con. Cab ’ll look good on the ticker. . . .”
“It’s a con, all right,” said Harry.
“By God! that’s right!” said Joe pulled up short. “A cheap josh might ruin us. Well, call it the Manhattan Cab Company, then. Man. Cab on the ticker. . . . Soon as you’re incorporated, you let loose your publicity. ‘Big Corporation formed to take over all New York cabs!’ That’s news, see? You don’t have to pay for it. It’s good for a front page spread. Then you place an order for a thousand new cabs. That’s another news story. Then you get an option on an abandoned car-barn, and announce a super-garage, see? And so on. You tell how wonderful the new service is going to be, and quote the reduced rates. The papers will eat it up.
“When you get the public appetite sharpened, you begin to put out your stock on the curb in a small way. You must have real nice engraved certificates; none of your filled-in stuff. Of course the wise guys know there is nothing behind it but hot air, but some of them will take a chance on it. They always do. Hundred dollar shares will sell for four or five or six on the curb. That’s enough when you can issue all you want. It’ll pay expenses. You hire a nice office—nothing showy; and engage a polite old geezer with white hair to take in the visitors’ cards. And so on. Then I’ll have Amasa Gore approached. . . .”
“Do you think for a moment you’re going to sting him?” said Harry.
“Nothing like it! He’ll be invited to share in the profits! . . . Suppose the stock is selling on the curb at six, see? He’ll be offered a thousand shares out of the treasury, or as much as he wants, at three, see? Then it will be announced that Amasa Gore is taking an active interest in Manhattan Cab, and will be elected as vice-president at the next directors’ meeting. The stock will jump to ten or twelve then, and he’ll sell out on the q.t. You know he does that all the time. He told me so himself.”
“And when it becomes known that he has sold?” said Harry.
“Oh, anybody that wants, can have Manhattan Cab then,” said Joe with a grin. “I’ll be short on the stock, myself.”
“Where will you get yours?” asked Harry.
“After the company’s incorporated, I’ll have a set of directors of course. I’ll have them vote me a thousand shares out of the treasury stock for my services in promoting the company. Then I mean to put some real money into it, too. When the stock is first put out on the curb, I’ll be the buyer, see? To create a market. I’ll get it cheap. I’ll have two or three thousand shares when the time comes to sell.”
“It listens good,” said Harry.
“Oh, I’ve only given you the rough outlines. I’ve got the details all planned out.”
“But you’re not nineteen yet,” objected Harry. “Your face is too smooth. You couldn’t command attention.”
“Lord! what do you think I am!” said Joe. “I’m not going to appear in this personally. It would queer me, after. This isn’t going to be my last deal on the street. I’ll get fellows to act for me. You don’t think I’d undertake to sell Amasa Gore any stock, do you? He don’t look on me in that light. And you know how sore it makes him when anybody disarranges his ideas. . . . No, I want you to put me onto somebody who will take on the promotion of the company, after I’ve got my thousand shares. I want a young fellow with plenty of vim and go; enthusiastic, but not too smart. What they call idealistic, see? It’ll be my job to fire up his steam. A fellow with a name that is known in the street, if possible.”
“There is Silas Moore Bristed,” suggested Harry.
“That’s a good-sounding name. I’ve heard it before.”
“Sure, you have. He’s grandson to the first Silas Moore Bristed, the famous inventor, whose name is borne by several big corporations. But it’s all passed out of the family. Young Silas is as poor as a church mouse. He’s a salesman in a bond house.”
“A good sort of fellow?” asked Joe, conveying a certain intimation.
“Innocent as a lamb,” said Harry.
“Well, I’ll look him over.”
“I’ll introduce you.”
“No you don’t! Just tell me where he’s to be found, and I’ll get next him. He mustn’t know of any connection between you and me, because later, he’ll have to come to you, when he wants to make his proposition to Amasa Gore.”
“Oh, I see!” said Harry with a thin smile.
There was a silence.
“Well . . . I suppose I got to go,” said Joe, smothering a yawn.
“Look here,” said Harry in a voice that showed strain, “what is there in this for me?”
Joe clapped him affectionately on the shoulder. “Why, you’ll be right in on the ground floor, old fel’! I’ll tell you the exact right moment when to buy and when to sell. You ought to clean up a nice little pile on it!”
“How about a little treasury stock for me, too?”
“What for?” asked Joe with a cold stare.
“You really need me in this,” said Harry. “You’ve got ideas, I grant, but I’ve got the experience. You and I ought to be working together shoulder to shoulder in the background.”
“I certainly am grateful for any help you can give me,” said Joe, “but I hadn’t counted on regularly taking anybody in with me. There isn’t enough in it for two.”
“Oh hell!” said Harry, “what’s a few shares of treasury stock more or less. Issue me a thousand shares, and I’ll guarantee to get Amasa Gore into it. You know what influence I have there.”
“Is that a threat?” asked Joe calmly.
Harry appeared to be wounded to the quick. “What do you think I am!” he cried. He looked around him as much as to say: In my own club, too!
“Because, if it is,” said Joe, coolly, “there’s nothing to it. Whether you get any treasury stock or not, you have a chance to make thousands buying and selling the stock on the curb. You’re not going to queer that!”
“If you think that way about me, I can’t talk to you,” said Harry, with dignity.
Joe looked at him quizzically. “Aah! climb down!” he said.
There was a silence. At length Harry said: “Well, do I get the thousand shares?”
“You do not!” said Joe promptly. “This is my scheme. You can’t expect to come in on the same basis as me!”
“Well, five hundred, then,” said Harry.
“Oh hell!” said Joe, “I can’t Jew a friend down! I want you in with me, Harry; that’s a fact! I look up to you, Harry. You’ve taught me a lot. I’ll make it five hundred shares. . . .”