“Beg pardon for being so brusque, old fellow,” he remarked, “but really you took the ground from under my feet. What on earth led you to give your money to a man who is as mad as a March hare?”
“I’ve asked myself that same question many times since the thing happened,” answered Reggie drearily, “and the only answer I can find is that I must have been the more insane of the two.
“It’s only fair to say, though,” he went on, “that at the time I ran across him there wasn’t a trace of insanity about him. He seemed to me to be one of the cleverest men I ever met. Others thought so too, so perhaps I’m not so very much to blame after all.”
“Where and when did you first meet him?” asked Joe.
“At the Goldsboro Country Club,” answered Reggie. “You know that our folks have membership there and I run out very often. I was out there one day watching a tennis tournament when this Tabbs came strolling along and spoke to me. There seemed to be something familiar about his face and yet I couldn’t quite place him until he said he had met me one time at Morgan & Company’s in New York. Then I remembered him perfectly. I had gone down to the city on a trip with my father, and as he had business with the Morgan people, he took me along with him. Tabbs was holding an important position with the firm at the time, and he seemed to take quite a liking to me. Took me out to lunch with him and then showed me around the city. That was two or three years ago, and I hadn’t seen him since until he came to me at the Country Club.
“Of course, it was up to me to give him as good a time as I could, in return for what he had done for me in New York, and I did. Introduced him to lots of the best people in Goldsboro, took him home with me and had him stay with me for a day or two, and whizzed him about the country in my automobile. To tell the truth, it wasn’t hard to entertain him, for he was a bright and amusing talker and seemed in every way to be an all-around good fellow.”
“How did he happen to be so far away from New York City and right in the busy season, too?” asked Joe.
“That struck me as rather queer,” replied Reggie, “but he explained by saying that he was on a secret mission for his firm. Awfully mysterious and all that, don’t you know. Of course, the more mysterious he was the more curious I became. I suppose he figured on that. Anyway, after a lot of hinting and fencing about, he came right out one day and said that he was going to take me into his confidence, that I was too good a fellow to leave on the outside when I might get in on the ground floor, and a lot of rot like that, don’t you know.”
“I know, all right,” said Joe, with a smile. “I’ve had lots of tips about big things that were going to be pulled off and been urged to get aboard while there was time. Ball players are known to get good salaries, and they’re deluged with circulars and market tips of all kinds. But I never yet tried to beat Wall Street at its own game. You know what they say of it, that ‘it’s a crooked street with a graveyard at one end of it and a river at the other.’”