"I want nothing but your proposition, so that I may get out of this den as speedily as possible," he was saying. "I am not a man to beat about the bush, and I realize that you have got me. What is it you demand?"
"First and foremost, civility," said Aladdin, boldly, a sense of his own power sweeping over him and giving him confidence. "I guess you'll find that harder to negotiate than a check for a considerable sum, Major Bondifeller, cash being a commoner commodity with you than civility. Now, as a matter of fact, sir," the lad went on, "I had your daughter carried in here out of that raging blizzard so that my mother could give her the attention she needed. You I brought in also with no more knowledge of who you were, and with no more idea of financially profiting by your accident, than if you had been one of those unfortunate tramps out on the Bowery there. But now that you have put the idea in my mind that, perhaps, after all, nobody ever does anything unselfishly in this world, I will make certain demands of you. To begin with, you may pay me two hundred and fifty dollars for those eggs, and as a mere act of ordinary generosity, you may tip the handsome waiter fifty dollars. I understand, too, sir, that you are the proprietor of these ten city blocks in which I and about twenty thousand of my neighbors are housed?"
"I believe I do own considerable property hereabouts," said the millionaire, sullenly, "though I can't say offhand whether I do or not. My agents look after my smaller investments."
"Well," said Aladdin, "it don't make any difference to me whether you remember what you own or not. The results so far as you are concerned will be the same. You will have these ten blocks of houses torn down and replaced by model tenements, turning the alternate blocks into city parks for the children to play in."
"But suppose I don't own 'em?" protested Bondifeller.
"What you don't own, Major Bondifeller," returned Aladdin, "is too trifling a detail for us to worry over. So long as you don't own me I don't care a pickled herring what you do own. If it turns out upon investigation that any of these pig-pens on these ten city squares belong to anybody else, buy 'em."
"Buy 'em?" snarled Bondifeller. "How can I buy 'em if the other man won't sell?"
"With money," said Aladdin; "the same stuff you always use to buy anything else you happen to want, from an oil-painting or a Japanese porcelain up to a State legislature or a man's conscience."
"And if I don't agree?" demanded the old man, a truculent glare in his eye, an eye before which the so-called powerful men of the earth had trembled more than once in the past.
Aladdin returned the gaze unflinchingly. Once more he rubbed the lamp, and the genie appeared as before.