“I see,” said Lockwood, with heavy foreboding. Louise was watching his face anxiously.
“Do you know much about the well?”
“Shorely we do. We know all about it.” He went into the next room and brought back a bundle of papers. “Look yere. Photografts of it, from their first drillin’ up to now. Here’s the story of the whole thing, tellin’ how much oil there is, an’ everything. Take this stuff away with you an’ read it, if you wanter.”
Lockwood glanced over the badly printed prospectus, and the pictures, which might have been pictures of an oil derrick anywhere.
“So Mr. Hanna got you in on the ground floor, did he?” he said slowly. “Have you got much stock in it?”
“Well, that’s the worst of it. We couldn’t git enough. Only fifty shares, five thousand dollars. Hanna’s got a wad of it, near three thousand shares, I reckon. Oh, it’s all right—don’t have no suspicion about that, sir. Why, it’s payin’ dividends right now. Yes, sir! Five per cent every quarter—twenty per cent a year. We’ve got back already near a thousand of what we put in.
“And that ain’t all! We could git double for our shares what we paid for ’em. I know we could. I’ve had letters askin’ me to sell, offerin’ all sorts of prices. I sold once. Yes, sir, just to see that it was genuine I sold one of my hundred-dollar shares, an’ got two hundred dollars for it. What do you think about that? Some investment, eh?”
“Yes, it does sound good,” said Lockwood. “But, Tom, if I were you I’d go down there and see the oil wells myself, before I put any more money into the thing.”
“I did speak to Hanna about going down,” said Tom. “He didn’t seem to want to go much. Say,” he added, with an inspiration. “Supposin’ you an’ me go, eh? We’ll stop in Mobile, an’ have a hell of a time. It won’t cost you a cent. You know all about Mobile, I reckon?”
“I know it a little.”