That part of town is now given over to warehouses and junk-shops. The dirty, draughty hallways of the Turner Building are very empty and melancholy. They used to be handsomely carpeted with cocoa-matting, and in the odd corners one came upon little pyramids of tin spittoons piled up handily by the janitor, either just washed or in need of washing. The place was as busy as an anthill that morning when Doctor Vardaman paced along the cocoa-paths on his way out. Near the top of the stairs—which were generally preferred to the elevator—he encountered Colonel Pallinder ushering from his office somebody with a shawl and bonnet and fat black umbrella, whose outlines in the semi-obscurity appeared vaguely familiar to the old gentleman's casual glance.
"Is that you, Doctor? Come in, come in, sir," said the colonel, promptly relinquishing his client ("In point of fact, he dropped her like a hot potato," the doctor said afterwards), when he saw who was approaching. And, overriding the doctor's demurrer, "Oh, nonsense, I say come in, sir! Why, we've got a little business together, forgot that, hey?" He smote Doctor Vardaman a light, humorous, affectionate blow on the shoulder and pushed him into the office. "I don't want to interrupt you——" the doctor began, accepting at last the handsome leather chair his host pulled forward. He glanced about curiously, rolling the colonel's excellent Havana between his fingers. The Pallinders possessed the secret of a delightful spontaneous and whole-souled hospitality; the stranger within their gates was unaffectedly welcome to the best they had—and the best they had was very good indeed; self-denial was a virtue they never needed to practise, apparently. The atmosphere of their house was always kind, gay, care-free, and they themselves highly ornamental. Colonel Pallinder bustled about the doctor with a dozen pleasant little attentions, yet contrived somehow never to be officious. It is a strange thing, and a depressing instance of the inborn tendency to evil of the human race, that it has been within the experience of everyone of us, I think, to lodge with and suffer the kindnesses of many virtuous families to whom the name and the habits of the Pallinders would be anathema—and we shrink from remembering how incredibly we were bored thereby!
The office was a rich, comfortable place. Everything was new; the colonel's mahogany roll-top desk, the leather lounge, which, Doctor Vardaman noted inwardly, had the air of being pretty constantly in use, the brilliantly glazed maps of "Phosphate" territory gleaming on the walls. A great accumulation of mail loaded the desk; the colonel's correspondence was evidently something colossal. There were numberless pamphlets, circulars, prospectuses, and newspaper clippings with rows of figures accompanied by at least half-a-dozen ciphers printed conspicuously at the top. "The ARKANSAS CONSOLIDATED PHOSPHATE, COAL, AND IRON COMPANY, CAPITAL AND SURPLUS $4,455,000.00." "EL PASO & RIO GRANDE EXTENSION is the BEST ZINC STOCK on the market at the price. EL PASO MINES have paid over $172,000,000.00 in dividends. We strongly recommend this STOCK for INVESTMENT. Ballard & Co., Wall St., N. Y. William Pallinder, Agt." Doctor Vardaman surveyed these and like documents with a kind of satirical interest. "Of course," he used to explain, "I had had more than a suspicion for a good while that 'Phosphate' and 'Zinc' and the colonel's capitalist friends were all more or less mythical. You can't be as intimate as I was with a man like that for two years and not 'get a line on him,' as the boys say. And then there was Steven and that terrific flare-up he had with Gwynne about the rent in my own library. Latterly I had begun to have a pretty well-defined notion that Pallinder was in a tight place—getting near the end of his rope in our town, at least. Along in the fall sometime he had borrowed fifty dollars of me on some pretext; and I not unnaturally supposed that he wanted to corner me into lending him another fifty, or maybe thought that with my hazy ideas about business he might make a sale of 'Phosphate.' I was a good deal interested to see how he would go about it; I'd quite made up my mind not to do either, you know—lend him the fifty, or buy any stock, I mean."
What then was the doctor's astonishment when Colonel Pallinder impressively brought out an elegant dark green Russia-leather purse and card-case combined, with "W. B. P." intertwined in a gold monogram on one side, and from a thick layer of greenbacked bills therein selected a fifty-dollar one and laid it on the old gentleman's knee! Doctor Vardaman stared at it as if it had been a specimen from the flora of another planet.
"Now, now, now, no objections! I insist," said the colonel, rather unnecessarily in view of the doctor's dumb surprise. "It's a matter of principle with me, even about such paltry sums as this, that short settlements make long friends," he continued, conveniently oblivious of the fact that he had been in the other's debt for this particular paltry sum more than six months. "Never could understand, sir, how a man can go on owing and owing people simply because he knows they're his friends and won't dun him. That's a queer idea of honesty, seems to me," said the colonel, looking Doctor Vardaman in the eye with a frank and open smile. "You don't come down this way very often, Doctor. I suppose you think all this—" he waved his hand around—"market-place—beasts at Ephesus, hey?"
"I'm a—I'm a little out of place, I fear," the doctor stammered, still in a confusion. "I hope I didn't drive your client away."
Colonel Pallinder threw back his head in hearty amusement. "Oh, Lord, that wasn't a client, Doctor, that old creature—what was her name now, MacGonigal, MacGilligan, MacSomething? No, I was trying to get rid of her as gently as might be without hurting her feelings. For after all people like that have feelings, you know; they are worthy of some consideration; hang it, a gentleman has only one kind of manners. I'm glad she came in while my clerks were all out, and saw me instead of any of them—you know what Jack-in-office is. Why, sir, you have no conception of how we are bothered by that kind of person. They watch the stock market for a while, or get to talking with their friends, and then the first thing you know they come in here all agog with their savings—a hundred, two hundred, perhaps three hundred dollars, wanting to invest! It's the hardest thing in the world to make them understand that we can't handle little dabs like that; they're twice as much trouble as other people's tens of thousands. Your small investor is eternally writing and making inquiries about this stock and that stock, wanting to change, wanting to transfer, wanting to sell, wanting to buy, wanting to be reassured perpetually at the slightest fluctuation of the market. 'Do you think my stock is all right? Will it go any higher? Will it go any lower?' Like as not he sees some perfectly worthless stuff advertised broadcast and promptly sit down and writes me, all on fire: 'William Pallinder, Esq., Dear Sir: Would like your opinion about the enclosed clipping relating to Timbuctoo and South Pole Railway shares. Hadn't I better take my dime's worth of Phosphate Preferred and put it into T. &. S. P.? Yours truly, Jack Ass.' Oh, you may laugh, Doctor, but it's no joke. And then, Doctor Vardaman, there's another side to it that I never lose sight of," said the colonel, leaning forward and tapping the old gentleman on the hand with a grave look. "That, sir, is the question of moral obligation. Take the case of that old woman. 'Why, Mrs. Mac-What's-your-name,' says I, 'if I understand you, this is all the money you have'—it was four hundred and odd, I believe—'and you want to put it into Lone Star common. Now,' says I, 'of course that's a perfectly safe investment, solid as United States bonds, non-taxable, pays nine per cent., and will double in value in the natural course of events before another six months; and what you say is quite true, that you will never have another opportunity of getting it as low as forty-five'—she was really a shrewd and intelligent woman for her class, and for a minute I was almost tempted to let her have her way, for, of course, there wasn't the slightest risk. 'Now,' said I, 'if you had two or three thousand or even one thousand to spare, mind you, I say to spare, I should say to you, go ahead, by all means. But,' says I, 'I can't take the responsibility of letting you invest your last cent this way, just on my say-so. I've got my own money in it, but my money and your money are two very different propositions. Go and consult your lawyer, get the advice of your friends, go to another broker for that matter, if you choose. All I would urge is, do it soon, or you may lose a great chance, such as don't come along every day.' She was very reluctant, but I finally persuaded her; she was just going as you came along. Oh, of course, I know very well, nobody better after all my experience, that she may have gone straight off to some other broker as I suggested, and he'll get the commission, not being so—well, so squeamish as I am, but William Pallinder isn't that—kind, Doctor; we can't help the way we're made, and I'm—not—that—kind!"
He spaced the last words out, emphasising them by a gentle blow with a ruler on the palm of his hand, and leaned back, surveying his companion through a haze of cigar smoke, with the expression of one who might have added, were it necessary: "Behold in me a monument of integrity!"
Doctor Vardaman gazed at the El Paso and Rio Grande circulars with a new respect. Was it possible, he asked himself, that he ought to revise his opinion of Pallinder? To be sure, Huddesley had hinted—but what does a servant's chatter amount to? And then there was that business of the unpaid rent—but Gwynne had not seemed to take that very seriously, and surely he should know. As to that flourishing manner of the colonel's, we are prone to associate it with—well, with buncombe, in plain words; yet it was, in fact, entirely natural, the direct result of certain traditions, early environment, and upbringing. He had reached this point in his reflections, smoking silently, when the colonel was most unfortunately inspired to remark:
"I see you're looking at that map of Phosphate territory in Arkansas. It's a wonderful thing the way the Southwest is opening up, wonderful! All due to Northern enterprise and vigour, sir, every bit of it. We'd be nowhere without you. You'll find few men from my section of the country that will acknowledge it, but it's so. I never did believe in keeping up that spirit of mutual distrust and jealousy—waving the bloody shirt and all that; let bygones be bygones, I say; let's all work together for the common good, and give honour where honour is due. Why, sir, it was a Northern man—Lewis Sheister, from some little town up in New York State, that discovered and worked the first phosphate vein in Arkansas. The people down there in the Ozarks were ready to run him and his men out of there with shotguns when he started in—and now I guess they bless the day Sheister turned up. He's worth five hundred thousand dollars to-day, and he's been a factor in enriching that whole State. Yes, sir, there's millions right here." He rose, and, drawing a pencil from his waistcoat pocket, defined a small circle on the shining brittle surface of the map. "Right in that little zone, sir, millions for anyone, even with a very limited capital—ten for one, sir, ten for one is what dozens of my clients are drawing at this moment," said the colonel, pointing with his pencil, like a teacher of mathematics demonstrating at the blackboard, and eying the doctor profoundly. "Ever think of investing, Doctor?" he added, indifferently, resuming his seat, and picking a thread from his coatsleeve as he spoke.