Mr. Clover was lost in profound admiration.
"It worked, all right!" he said exultantly to Mr. Neil, as soon as they returned to the dingy little office. "Here's the thousand dollars," and he threw down the check. "Good Lord! I couldn't believe but that thousand was gone; and then if another man died he would put us on the toboggan."
Mr. Neil was a thin young man whose forehead wore the perpetual frown of slow thought. Also his cuffs were ragged. He was the Supreme Exalted Secretary.
"Now may I have fifty?" he inquired in an aside to Clover. "My board bill, you know."
"Certainly not!" declared the Supreme Exalted Ruler with loud rectitude. "This thousand dollars belongs in the insurance reserve fund."
"Tut, tut," interposed Wallingford. "Your alarm clock is out of order. You just now paid a death claim with that money, and the reserve fund is out that much. A private individual, however, just now bought a thousand dollars' worth of stock in the reorganized Friendly Hands Trust Company, and you have the pay in advance. Let Mr. Neil have his fifty dollars, and give me a check for my two hundred and fifty; then we'll go out to hunt a decent suite of offices and buy the furniture for it."
"There wouldn't be much of the thousand left after that," objected Mr. Clover, frowning.
"Why not? You don't suppose we are going to pay cash for anything, do you?" returned Wallingford in surprise. "My credit's good, if yours isn't."
His credit! He had not been in town four hours! As Mr. Clover looked him over again, however, he saw where he was wrong. Mr. Wallingford's mere appearance was as good as a bond. He would not ask for credit; he would take it. Mr. Clover, in a quick analysis of this thought, decided that this rich man's resources were so vast that they shone through his very bearing. Mr. Wallingford, at that same moment, after having paid his enormous hotel bill in New York and the expenses of his luxurious trip, had only ten dollars in the world.
"Now then," suggested Mr. Clover as he passed the hypnotically won check to his new partner, "we might as well conclude our personal business. I'll make you over half my stock in the company, and take your two thousand."