“Talleyrand?” he asked, puzzled. “Oh, one of those book characters you admire so much, I s’pose. Yes, he was all right in that proposition. But a lot of times the truth will hide a man’s thoughts even better. It was by telling the truth I got out of the worst hole I ever was in. Ever tell you the mix-up I had with the Mountain State Coal Company?”
“Coal Company? I didn’t know there was any coal in the Mountain State.”
“No more there is. Only I didn’t know it then. A chap came along and interested me in the deal. He said he’d struck a rich coal vein up in Jericho County. Showed me specimens. Got ’em somewhere in Pennsylvania, I s’pose. And got me to float a company. Well, the stuff they took out of the measly shaft was a sort of porous black slate or shale or something, and it wouldn’t burn if you put it in a white-hot blast furnace. One look showed me that. And there I was with a company capitalized at $300,000—half of it my own money—and suckers subscribing for the stock and all that, and a gang of a couple of hundred Ginneys and Svensks at work in the pit. It wasn’t that I minded the cash loss so much as I minded being played for a jay, and the black eye it would give any companies I might float in the future.
“I’ll tell you, I was pretty sore. I was younger in those days, you see. I ran up to Jericho to look over the wreck. Next day was pay day for the hands, and I hadn’t enough cash with me for half of ’em. I sat in my hotel that night thinking of the row and smashup there’d be next morning, and just wishing I had a third foot to kick myself with. The lamp got low, and I called for the landlord to fill it. Some of the kerosene leaked out while he was doing it and spilled over a handful of the ore that was lying on the table. That porous stuff soaked it up like a sponge. The mess made me sick, and I picked up the samples of near-coal and slammed ’em into the fireplace. They blazed like a Sheeney clothing store.”
“I thought you said it wouldn’t burn.”
“The pieces were soaked in kerosene, and of course they burned, just as a lamp would if you threw it in the fire. But it gave me the tip I wanted. I bolted out of that hotel and hunted up a couple of my own crowd. We had the busiest night on record. No use bothering you with details. A shed, three barrels of kerosene and a half a ton of ore. Then early next morning I wandered into the hotel office and did a despairful scream. I’d seen to it that the editor of the local paper was there, and I knew a bunch of the ‘big guns’ of the place always congregated in the office for an after-breakfast gossip. Well, I groaned pretty loud and hectic about the way I’d been stuck on the ore.
“‘What’s the matter with it?’ asked one of my two pals. ‘Won’t the stuff burn?’
“‘Burn!’ I yells. ‘It won’t do a thing but burn. It burns so hot, it’ll ruin any grate it’s put in. Why, heat like that is worse than none at all. It’ll burn out the best grate or furnace in a week. Nobody’ll be fool enough to buy such stuff. The company’s smashed!’
“They all stared at me as if I were looney. Then I made out I was mad clear through.
“‘Don’t believe me, eh?’ says I. ‘Then look at this.’