FATE ARRANGES FOR J. RUFUS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MANUFACTURE SALES RECORDERS
It was not until their train had passed beyond the last suburb that Wallingford, ensconced in the sleeper drawing room, was able to resume his accustomed cheerfulness.
"Sure you have that bundle of American passports all right, Fanny?" he inquired.
"They're perfectly safe, but I'm glad to be rid of them," she answered listlessly, and opening her hand bag she emptied it of its contents, then, with a small penknife, loosened the false bottom in it. From underneath this she drew a flat package of thousand-dollar bills and handed them to him.
"Forty of them!" gloated Wallingford, counting them over. Then he pounded upon his knees and laughed. "I can see Starvation Neil when he has to tell his jay delegates that I drew out every cent the day after I lost my bank book. I'd been missing too many things that never turned up again. I fixed them to-night, too. Although I didn't need to do it to be on the law's safe side, I hustled out before we started and swore to a notary that I signed that check under coercion; and they'll get that affidavit before the check and the injunction!"
Mrs. Wallingford did not join him in the shoulder-heaving laugh which followed.
"I don't like it, Jim," she urged. "You're growing worse all the time, and some day you'll overstep the bounds. And have you noticed another thing? Our money never does us any good."
"You'll wake up when we get settled down some place to enjoy ourselves. I don't believe you know how well you like fine dresses and diamonds, and to live on the fat of the land. You know what this little bundle of comfort means? That we're the salt of the earth while it lasts; that for a solid year we may have not only all the luxuries in the world, but everybody we meet will try to make life pleasant for us."
To that end Wallingford secured a suite of rooms at two hundred dollars per week the moment they landed in New York, and began to live at a corresponding rate. He gave himself no regret for yesterday and no care for to-morrow, but let each extravagant moment take care of itself. It was such intervals as this, between her husband's more than doubtful "business" operations, that reconciled Mrs. Wallingford to their mode of life, or, rather, that numbed the moral sensibilities which lie dormant in every woman. While they were merely spending money she was content to play the grande dame, to dress herself in exquisite toilettes and bedeck herself with brilliant gems, to go among other birds of fine feathers that congregated at the more exclusive public places, though she made no friends among them, to be surrounded by every luxury that money could purchase, to have her every whim gratified by the mere pressing of a button. As for Wallingford, to be a prince of spenders, to find new and gaudy methods of display, to have people turn as he passed by and ask who he might be; these things made existence worth while.
Only one thing—his restless spirit—kept him from pursuing this uneventful path until all of his forty thousand dollars was gone. After two months of slothful ease, something more exciting became imperative, and just then the racing season began and supplied that need. Every afternoon they drove out to the track, and there Wallingford bet thousands as another man might bet fives. There could be but one end to this, but he did not care. What did it matter whether he spent his money a trifle more or less quickly? There was plenty of it within his broad hunting grounds, and when what he had was gone he had only to go capture more; so it was no shock one morning to count over his resources and find that he had but a fragment left of what he had laughingly termed his "insurance fund." Upon that same morning an urgent telegram was delivered to him from "Blackie" Daw. He read it with a whistle of surprise and passed it over to his wife without comment.