Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford / A Cheerful Account of the Rise and Fall of an American Business Buccaneer

by George Randolph Chester

But little more than two months had elapsed when Carl had his first lot of recorders ready for the market, and the treasury was depleted. Now it became necessary to have money for marketing, and that meant the remaining three thousand dollars of J. Rufus Wallingford's subscription or an evasion of it. Prepared for this, he took the floor as soon as the matter was mentioned at the meeting which was called to levy this assessment.

"What is the use?" he demanded to know. "Why use our own money? I understand that Mr. Schmitt must get his three thousand from the building loan association, to which he must pay six per cent. I understand that Mr. Jensen has his now out at five per cent. Let me show you how to finance this concern. I will put in ten thousand at once, and take the company's note. This note I can then discount, and put the money right back into my business, and in that way my ten thousand dollars is doing twenty thousand dollars' worth of work—a bank carrying the burden of both operations."

It was a financial argument entirely new to these men, unused to tricks of money manipulation, and it took them some little time to grasp it. When they did, however, they were as pleased as a boy with his first watch, and Wallingford was a dazzling hero, as, with a nonchalant air, after glancing at the clock to make sure that it was after banking hours, he wrote them a check on "his bank in Boston" for ten thousand, and took their note, signed by the Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company and indorsed jointly by all its members.

That night Wallingford drove up in hot haste to Jens Jensen's house.

"Let me see that check I gave you this afternoon," he demanded, with an air of suspecting a good joke on himself. Jens, wondering, produced it from a little tin box. "That's what I thought," said Wallingford as he glanced at it. Then, smiling, he handed it back. "I have made it out on the Fifth National of Boston. They'd probably honor it, but it's the wrong bank. I have a balance there, but am not sure that it is sufficient to cover this check. Just hold that, and I'll wire them in the morning. If my balance isn't large enough I'll give you a check on the First, with which I do most of my business."

"Sure," said Jens, and put back into the tin box the worthless paper which called for ten thousand dollars.

The next morning Wallingford called at one of the local banks and had no difficulty whatever in discounting the quite acceptable note. He gained a full day by forwarding the proceeds, special delivery, to the Fifth National Bank of Boston, where his balance at that moment was considerably less than a hundred dollars; then he told Jensen to deposit the check: that his balance in the Fifth National was all right.

It was financial jugglery of a shrewd order, and the juggler prided himself upon it. He was not yet through, however. Having loaned the company ten thousand dollars of its own money at six per cent. interest, he was now confronted by the necessity of securing money for his own enormous personal expenses. For replenishment, however, he had long planned, and now he went to his new source of income—Doctor Feldmeyer. The time was ripe, for, though Mrs. Wallingford had given him no more encouragement than the ordinary courteous graciousness which is so often misinterpreted by male coquettes, the doctor was aflame with foolish imaginings, and, within the past week or so, had felt guilty upon every meeting with Mr. Wallingford, betraying it as Wallingford had planned that he should, growing nervous at a sharp glance, a sudden movement, an obscure remark. He was as uncomfortable as guilty conscience ever made a coward, and when the big man, on the plea of sudden business and personal needs, went to him almost peremptorily for a loan of rather staggering proportions, the doctor was an easy victim. Thus provided and at ease, Wallingford "consented" to become the salesman for the first output of Pneumatic Sales Recorders, going directly to a list of cities supplied to him by Maylie; and in those cities he went to see certain gentlemen whose names came to him from the same source! Incidentally, he sold a number of sales recorders with a celerity that was most gratifying to the delighted members of the company. Why, even if the United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey did not care to buy them out, a fortune was in sight through the legitimate manufacture and sale of this device! Before the salesman returned from his trip, however, a blow, entirely unexpected by Klug and his friends, fell on them from a clear sky. An injunction and a notice of suit was served, not only upon the company, but upon every purchaser of their contrivance. The injunction restrained the buyers from using and the company from manufacturing or selling any further machines, and the suit was for infringement of patent. The device by which the drawer flew open after the keys had been pressed, the United Sales Recording Machine Company of New Jersey claimed to be modeled upon their own. The news was wired to Wallingford. He had been waiting for it, and he came home at once, where he found that Maylie had been appointed the local legal representative of the big New Jersey concern; but as this had been a matter of Wallingford's own contriving, he was not nearly so much surprised over it as he might have been. He also found direst consternation in the company's ranks, and himself shook his head sadly when questioned, though he spoke bravely.

"What we have to do," he declared, "is to keep a stiff upper lip and fight it."

They did so. Within a couple of months they had the suit decided in their favor, and Carl Klug was vindicated in the eyes of his friends. Again they were jubilant, again they prepared for an era of commercial triumph; but on the very next day another injunction and suit were brought, and from the very start of this proceeding delays were encountered. The weakest case had been brought first, the stubborn one being held back for a longer and more discouraging fight. When that was over there would be a third suit and a fourth. With their millions of capital and their knowledge of such matters, gleaned from vital struggles with others who had demanded either their money or their business life, they could continue such a fight indefinitely, or until the Pneumatic Sales Recorder Company should be choked out of existence.