Mr. Wallingford, gazing straight ahead, made no intelligible answer, but he was muttering under his breath.
"Your colored gentleman tried to stop 'em," Billy went on with enthusiasm, delighted to be the bearer of good or ill tidings so long as it was startling, "but the conductor cussed an' said he had orders to stop here and take on private car 'Theodore,' an' he was goin' to do it. Number Two didn't even stop at the depot. It jus' backed on to the sidin' an' took your private car an' whizzed out, an' the conductor stood on the back platform damnin' Dave Walker till he was plumb out o' hearin'!"
Mrs. Wallingford smiled. Mr. Daw chuckled. Mrs. Daw laughed hilariously.
"Ain't that the limit?" she demanded. "Let's all be happy!"
"I jus' thought I'd come on out and tell you, 'cause you might want to know," went on Billy expectantly.
For the first time Mr. Wallingford looked at him, and the next minute his hand went in his pocket. Billy Ricks drew a long breath. Two half dollars for officious errands in one day was a life record, and he trotted behind that carriage all the way to the depot, where Mr. Wallingford, with the aid of Dave Walker, immediately began to "burn up the wires." It seemed that the management of the P. D. S. positively refused to haul the "Theodore" back to Battlesburg. It was not their fault that the passengers had not been aboard at the time they were warned Number Two would stop for them. They would hold the car at the end of that division, and instruct their agent at Battlesburg to issue transportation to the four on the next west bound train; and that was all they would do!
The only west bound train that night was a local freight; the only west bound train in the morning was the accommodation which had brought them to Battlesburg; then came Number Two, the next afternoon. They drove straight to the Palace Hotel and met the only man in Battlesburg who was not impressed by the high honor that a lucky accident had bestowed upon the city and upon his hostelry. Suspicion, engendered by thirty years of contact with a traveling public which had invariably either insulted his accommodations or tried to cheat him—and sometimes both—had soured the disposition of the proprietor of the Palace and cramped his soul until his very beard had crinkled. Suspicion gleamed from his puckered eyes, it was chiseled in the wrinkles about his nose, it rasped in his voice; and the first and only thing he noted about Mr. J. Rufus Wallingford and his splendid company was that they had no luggage! Whereupon, even before the multi-millionaire had finished inscribing the quartette of names upon his register, he had demanded cash in advance.
Judge Lampton, who had edged up close to the register, was shocked by this crass demand, and expected to see the retired capitalist give Pete Parsons the dressing down of his life. Instead, however, Mr. J. Rufus Wallingford calmly abstracted, from a pocketbook bulging with such trifles, a hundred-dollar bill which he tossed upon the desk, and went on writing. As impassive as Fate, Pete Parsons turned to his safe, slowly worked the combination, and still more slowly started to make change. In this operation he suddenly paused.
"Billy," said he to the ever-present Ricks, "run over to the bank with this hundred-dollar bill and see if Battles'll change it."
For just one instant the small eyes of Wallingford narrowed threateningly, and then he smiled again.