When his sorrow had become grief—midway of another bottle—a house detective prevailed upon him to go to bed, leaving young Wallingford to loneliness and to thought—also to settle the bill. This, however, he did quite willingly. The evening had been worth much in an educational way, and, moreover, it had suggested vast, immediate possibilities. These possibilities might have remained vague and formless—mere food for idle musing—had it not been for one important circumstance: while the waiter was making change he picked some folded papers from the floor and laid them at Wallingford’s hand. Opened, this packet of loose leaves proved to be a list of several hundred names and addresses. There could be no riddle whatever about this document; it was quite obviously a membership roster of the defunct building-loan association.
“The judge ought to have a duplicate of this list; a single copy’s so easy to lose,” mused Wallingford with a grin; so, out of the goodness of his heart, he sat up in his room until very late indeed, copying those pages with great care. When he sent the original to Mr. Fox’s room in the morning, however, he very carelessly omitted to send the duplicate, and, indeed, omitted to think of remedying the omission until after Mr. Fox had left the hotel for good.
Oh, well, a list of that sort was a handy thing for anybody to have around. The names and addresses of nine hundred people naive enough to pay a dollar and a quarter a week to a concern of whose standing they knew absolutely nothing, was a really valuable curiosity indeed. It was pleasant to think upon, in a speculative way.
Another inspiring thought was the vision of Doc Turner and Ebenezer Squinch and Tom Fester and Andy Grout and Jim Christmas, with plenty of money to invest in a dubious enterprise. It seemed to be a call to arms. It would be a noble and a commendable thing to spoil those Egyptians; to smite them hip and thigh!
CHAPTER X
INTRODUCING A NOVEL MEANS OF EATING CAKE AND
HAVING IT TOO
Doc Turner and Ebenezer Squinch and Tom Fester, all doing business on the second floor of the old Turner building, were thrown into a fever of curiosity by the tall, healthy, jovial young man with the great breadth of white-waistcoated chest, who had rented the front suite of offices on their floor. His rooms he fitted up regardless of expense, and he immediately hired an office-boy, a secretary and two stenographers, all of whom were conspicuously idle. Doc Turner, who had a long, thin nose with a bluish tip, as if it had been case-tempered for boring purposes, was the first to scrape acquaintance with the jovial young gentleman, but was chagrined to find that though Mr. Wallingford was most democratic and easily approachable, still he was most evasive about his business. Nor could any of his office force be “pumped.”