"Twenty-four thousand dollars," announced the doctor roundly, whereupon Mr. Wallingford arose.
"Gentlemen," said he, "there is no use to have idle capital. This is more money than we shall need for some time to come, and that is not good business. I therefore propose that the total assessment from any one member at this time be restricted to two thousand dollars. That will allow Mr. Schmitt and Mr. Jensen, Doctor Feldmeyer and myself each to keep three thousand dollars of our money in our savings banks, building associations and other places where it is earning good interest, until the company needs it, which may perhaps be a matter of six months. I would like to have a vote upon this proposition."
There could be but one answer to this. Interest! The savings of all these men throughout their lives had been increased at three, four and scarcely to exceed five per cent. rates, and they had grown to reverence interest almost more than capital. He was a smart man, this Wallingford, to think of the interest!
Money was already appearing from deep pockets when the crabby little lawyer, as if it gave him pain to volunteer information, wrenched from himself the fact that before any money could be paid in some one must be appointed to receive it. Thereupon, though not a corporate association, they held an election, and, naturally, Mr. Klug was made president. Mr. Wallingford firmly declined the vice presidency and also the secretaryship. He might even have had the post of treasurer, but he was too modest, also too busy, to hold office. No, he kindly stated, he would be a mere investor, ready to aid them with what little advice and experience he could give them, and ready to back them to any extent if the time should ever arise when their own finances would prove insufficient to carry the Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company on to the undoubted success which awaited it! Thereupon the treasurership was voted to Jens Jensen, and Emil Kessler proposed that they pay in their respective assessments and adjourn. He had two thousand dollars of Carl Klug's money in his pocket, and it made him a trifle uncomfortable.
"I forbid anybody to leave this room," laughingly announced Mr. Wallingford, and gave a nod to the waiter, who disappeared. "We'll pay in our money, but we have some other very important business."
Doctor Feldmeyer also became jolly, to show that he was in the secret. He drew a fountain pen and a check book from his pocket.
"Mr. Wallingford wants us to eat, drink and make merry on the United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey," he told them as he wrote.
The joke was thoroughly appreciated. It was a commendable and a holy thing to conspire to get the money of a monopoly away from it, as every newspaper proved to them. In pleasant pursuance of this idea, the United Company, by methods that should proceed in comfort and ease and entire absence of worry, such as was foreshadowed by this luxurious dining room and by the personal grandeur of Mr. Wallingford, was to be brought suppliantly to its knees; so, with the utmost cheerfulness, each of these men paid over his subscription. Doctor Feldmeyer was the only man among them who paid by check. The rest was in cash, but the host, busy with his hospitable duties, held back his payment until the waiters brought in a luncheon which was a revelation in the way of "cold snacks." It was during this appetite-whetting, gayety-promoting confusion that Wallingford quietly paid over his five hundred dollars—this, with the fifteen hundred dollars' credit on the coming patent, making his contribution total to two thousand, the same amount as that put in by every other member of the company except Carl Klug. This done, the clever gentleman surreptitiously wiped his brow and sighed a little sigh all to himself. It had taken him three days to figure how to fasten upon Mr. Klug's patent and prospects with as little money as five hundred dollars!
It was a happy crowd that dispersed an hour later—a crowd upon which Fortune already beamed; but the last of them had scarcely left the room when their princely entertainer telephoned for his own lawyer.
"I want you," said Wallingford to Mr. Maylie, when he arrived, "to find out all you can for me about the United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey. I want to know the outcome of every suit they have brought against infringers of their patents, and the present addresses of the people with whom they fought; also all about the companies they have been forced to buy out. Got that?"