“Yes-sir-ee.”
“A certain property was put up here for sale?”
“Yes-sir-ee.”
“Well, I bought it,” said John. “Now I want to pay for it. Is that clear? I want to pay for it in cash. Does that make it any clearer? Whom shall I pay? That’s all I want to know.”
The auctioneer saved his ego with a gesture of being exceedingly bored. He turned to the bailiff at his side and wearily tore from his hands a large legal document. “I’ll read this,” he said. “Take him in to the clerk.” Then he resumed—“A nail mill as is a mill, gentlemen, particularly described, if we may read without further interruption, in terms as follows:—”
Half an hour later John walked out of the courthouse with title to a mill he had never seen, guaranteed by the bankruptcy court to exist in Twenty-ninth Street and to contain tools, machines, devices, etc., pertaining to the manufacture of cut iron nails. It was one of four nail mills sold that day on the court house steps.
“Can’t be much of a mill,” mused John. “Still, it doesn’t take much of a mill to be worth thirty-three hundred dollars.”
Not until long afterward, and then not very hard, did the incongruity of this transaction strike his sense of humor. And in fact it was not as irrational as it might seem. He had to have a mill of some sort in which to place Thane. Nail mills were very cheap because they had increased too fast and were falling into bankruptcy. The other bidders undoubtedly were men who not only had examined the mill but who knew the state of the nail industry. It was not likely that they would over-value the property; and he paid only one hundred dollars more than they had been willing to give for it.
The next thing he did was to visit a lawyer whom he favorably remembered from slight acquaintance. That was Jubal Awns,—two small black eyes in a big round head and a pleasant way of saying yes.
John drew a slip of paper from his pocket. He wished to incorporate a company, to be styled the North American Manufacturing Company, Ltd., with an authorized capital of a quarter of a million dollars and three incorporators,—himself, the lawyer Awns and a man named Thane.