Mr. Geldenstein and Henry Quig came to Mr. Wallingford with another proposition. Did he intend to build the new opera house, or would he care to dispose of the property he had secured with that end in view? As a favor to them he would dispose of it. With the money he had received from Mr. Battles he had already taken up his option on this and other property, and he let the opera-house syndicate have it for three thousand, four times what it had cost him. In the papers of Paris, London, Dublin, Berlin, Rome, these things were retold, and the temperature of those places went up another degree or two. Keeping his fingers carefully upon the pulse of the town, Wallingford began to draw upon his capital and close in his options. Men whose property he had been holding in leash, accepted that money with wailing and gnashing of teeth, but, within a week, whatever of selfish bitterness they might have held was forgotten in the fever of speculation; for by the end of that time there appeared on the hill just east of town a gang of men with horses and scrapers—and they began chipping off the top of that hill! Wallingford was out there every morning in his buckboard and yellow leggings and yellow leather cap. The Battlesburg Blade and all the other papers from Lewisville to Elliston blazed with the fact that actual construction work had begun upon the L., B. & E., and the time when trolleys would begin to whiz through the main streets of a dozen villages was calculated to a second. Supply men, the agents of street car shops, of ironworks, of electrical machinery and the like, began flocking to Battlesburg until even Pete Parsons woke up and raised his hotel rates; and the arrival of each one of them was heralded in Colonel Wallingford's invaluable adjunct, the Evening Blade. From these men Wallingford secured "cuts," which he distributed gratis, and pictures of the palatial L., B. & E. cars appeared in all the papers along its right of way; photographs of the special wheat cars, of the freight and express cars, even of the through sleeping cars which would traverse the L., B. & E., carrying passengers from the western limit of the Midland Valley traction system to the most eastern point of the Golden West traction system.
Ground for the opera house and the hotel was broken within a month, and, immediately upon this, small gangs of men were set to work grading near half a dozen different towns at once upon the projected route. The supreme moment of Wallingford's planning had arrived, for now leaped into devouring flame the blaze that he had kindled. What had at first been a quickening of business became a craze. At a rapidly accelerating pace property began to change hands, with a leap in value at every change. Men thought by day and dreamt by night of nothing but real estate speculation. A hundred per cent. could be made in a day by a lucky trade. A mere "suburban" lot that was purchased in the morning for two hundred and fifty dollars, by night could be sold for five hundred, and every additional transaction added fuel to the flames. The papers chronicled these deals as examples of the wonderful wealth that had suddenly descended upon their respective towns. Money, long hoarded, leaped forth from its hiding places. Everybody had money, everybody was making money. Even the farmers made real estate purchases in the towns, not to hold, but to turn over. The craze for speculation had at last seized upon them all, and it was now that Wallingford began to reap his harvest. A sale here, a sale there, with an occasional purchase to offset them, and he gradually began to unload, making it a rule never to close a deal that did not net him ten times the amount that he had invested. He was on the road constantly now, first in one village and then in another, ostensibly to look after details of the building of his route, but in reality to snap up money that was certain to be offered him for this or that or the other piece of property that he held.
And all this time the people to whom he sold were raving of the wealth that he had made for them! Battlesburg nor any other town stopped for a moment to consider that he had brought it not one cent of new wealth; that the money they were passing so feverishly from hand to hand was their own; that the values he had created for them were purely artificial. They would only realize this after he had gone, and then would come gradually the knowledge that, in place of creating wealth, he had lost it to them in the exact amount that he carried away. Never in all his planning had it crossed his mind really to build a traction line. Throughout a stretch of a hundred miles he had succeeded in starting a mad, unreasoning scramble for real estate, and he, having bought first to sell last, was the principal gainer. He was unloading now at flood-tide from one end of the line to the other, and the ebb would see all these thousands of people standing dazed and agape upon the barren beach of their hopes. Some few shrewd ones would be ahead, but for the most part the "investors" would find themselves with property upon their hands bought at an absurd valuation that could never be realized.
At no time did Wallingford talk to his wife about his plans and intentions. She, like the rest of them, saw the work apparently pushing forward, and gave herself up to the social triumphs that were hers at last. She was supremely happy, and her lawn reception upon the twenty-first was, to quote the Battlesburg Blade, "the most exclusive and recherché al fresco function of a decade," and Wallingford, hurrying in late from the road, scarcely recognized his wife as, in a shimmering white gown, she moved among her guests with a flush upon her cheeks that heightened the sparkling of her eyes. The grounds had been wired, and electric lights of many colors glowed among the trees. On the porch an orchestra, recruited from the ranks of the Battlesburg band, discoursed ambitious music, and Wallingford smiled grimly as he thought of the awakening that must come within a week or so. He had reached the house unobserved, and paused for a moment outside the fence to view the scene as a stranger might.
"I made it myself," he mused, with a strange perversion of pride. "I'm the Big Josh, all right; but it will be a shame to kick the props out from under all this giddy jubilee."
His wife discovered him and came smiling to meet him, and on his way into the house to change his clothing Tim Battles met him at the porch steps with a cordial handshake.
"Well, how goes it, Colonel?" asked the mayor. "We're listening now for the hum of the trolleys almost any day."
"Maybe you're deaf," retorted Wallingford enigmatically, and laughed. "What will you do if the golden spike is never pounded in?"
"Drop dead," replied the other promptly. "Every cent I could lay my hands on is invested in property for which I'm refusing all sorts of fancy prices, and I'm not going to sell any of it until your first car whizzes through Main Street. Lucky you got back to-night. You'd regret it if you didn't hear my speech at the fountain dedication to-morrow."
"Is it up?" inquired Wallingford perfunctorily.