Half an hour later a feeble old man, in a long, thin overcoat and wearing a soft, black hat with a wide brim, was helped upon a Broadway car by a young man with dark spectacles and wearing a cap. The rest of the young fellow’s apparel was a shabby sack suit and a blue necktie under a frayed collar. His shoes were of tan leather and badly scuffed.
The look of the two suggested that they had a little money saved, but were the kind of people who were obliged to watch their nickels carefully.
They found that there were three offices belonging to the Paradise Improvement Company, although only one was open to the public. It was a sort of anteroom, and there were a number of people waiting to see the big man in the inner office when Nick Carter and his assistant forced their way in through the throng.
“Say, chief!” whispered Chick. “There’s Billings!”
Sure enough, Bonesy Billings was there to purchase a lot at Paradise City. He did not care who heard him talk about his business. He was telling a chance acquaintance that his house had caught fire, but that his furniture was all insured, and he had enough money now to go and live in the country, to raise chickens and garden truck and keep a cow. He figured he could make a fair living that way and wouldn’t have to work as he had in New York.
“I’d like to warn him to be careful,” remarked Chick, in a low tone, to his chief. “He’s just the kind of simple fellow to swallow all that is told him, and I don’t like the general look of these offices. They are too gorgeous to be entirely honest, I’m afraid.”
Bonesy Billings went into the inner sanctum, and after about fifteen minutes came out with a quantity of “literature” in his hands. This consisted of booklets, circulars, statements of what had been done to improve the plots to be sold, and plenty of gay-colored pictures.
“Well, I’m going to look it over,” announced Bonesy, to anybody who would listen. “It’s out in the country, all right, and it’s been a private estate for a hundred years. But it’s such a big place that the present owners can afford to have this Paradise City built in one part of it without its ever being seen from the windows of the big house. The folks in that mansion will be neighbors of them that buys in Paradise. I guess I’ll go up there of evenings and hear the daughter of the family—if there is one—play the pianner. Good old ragtime, I hope.”
“Where is the place?” ventured Chick.