Balcomb whistled. “Worse than drink,” he reflected, and went up to his own office.
Balcomb’s mind seethed with schemes these days. He sought to give an air of seriousness to his business by carrying in the daily press an advertisement which read, “J. Arthur Balcomb, Investment Broker,” and he inscribed the same legend on his stationery. The solid business men of Mariona regarded him a little warily; but he had carried through several enterprises with considerable dash, and, as he cultivated the reporters, his name frequently appeared in the newspapers. The building of interurban trolley lines was bringing the surrounding towns more and more into touch with the capital. The country banker and the small capitalist were now much seen in the streets of Mariona. They were learning the lingo of metropolitan business; many of them had found it convenient to enroll themselves as non-resident members of the Commercial Club, and Jack Balcomb’s office proved a pleasant rendezvous. Here they could use his stenographers, and the long-distance telephone was theirs to command. The banks and trust companies were a trifle large for these interurban capitalists; but Jack Balcomb accommodated himself to great and small. Prosperous farmers, who were finding it pleasant to run into the capital, now that the street car passed their door, learned much from Balcomb, who had the rosy imagination and sublime zeal that they lacked. Balcomb had organized the Patoka Land and Improvement Company to give the interurbanites a chance to taste the sweets of large enterprises.
Balcomb found a group of men waiting for him in his office and he sent them into his private room while he dictated in a loud tone to one of his stenographers. It was a letter to a famous Wall Street banking house and referred in large figures to a certain or uncertain bond deal which, from the terms of the letter, the New York house and Balcomb were carrying on together. It was, to be sure, a letter that would never encumber the mails, but this made no difference to Balcomb, who gave it what he called the true commercial literary finish.
He left the stenographers to themselves with the solemn injunction that he was not to be disturbed; then he entered his private office briskly and was soon talking breathlessly to half a dozen auditors.
“We haven’t merely to crowd in every modern improvement, gentlemen; we’ve got to anticipate improvements! There’s nothing so stale and unprofitable as an old flat. The crowd follows the newest thing. We must have novel features,—all we can get. If it’s likely to be a good thing to pipe the house for buttermilk, all right; we’ll fix it that way. If roof gardens are getting common we’ll not have any. Just at present I’m for a library on the top floor, with splashing fountains concealed by palms in the center; and a ball-room with a stage where they can have amateur theatricals and a big Christmas tree and that sort of thing. It’ll waste room, of course, but we’ll make the tenants pay for it. Rent it? Well, I guess yes! We’ll get tired of putting names on the waiting list!”
He stood with a pile of architect’s sketches before him, disclosing to his associates of the Patoka Land and Improvement Company his scheme for an ideal flat. Jack Balcomb always wore good clothes; they added to his air of plausibility. His Vandyke beard was certainly becoming and his brown eyes were handsome, albeit a trifle restless and unsteady.
“Now,” said Balcomb, standing away from the drawings, “I don’t want you gentlemen to drop dead of heart disease or any little thing like that; but I’ve got my principal idea to spring.”
He produced a box of cigars and passed it round and then carried a lighted match from one to the other with deferential courtesy. He liked to make them wait—to tease their curiosity. He lighted his own cigar deliberately and smoothed the blue prints on the table carefully as he continued:
“You gentlemen will admit that there are plenty of apartment houses down-town. Every old corner is getting one. Every lone widow in the community takes her life insurance money and blows it into a flat and thinks it safer than government bonds. But I’ve got an idea worth two of the best of them. I wish to thunder we could copyright it, it’s so good.”
He let a dreamy look come into his eyes while the grave incorporators of the Patoka Land and Improvement Company smoked and listened. He had dropped the “we” in a casual way, but it had reached the right spot in the breasts of the interurbanites.