"That's all right," she reassured me. "It's not necessary for you to know anything about running banks in order to hold the position I have in mind. All you have to do is to follow my instructions—and you'll soon be wearing as many diamonds as I am."
A half hour before I should have thought it the height of absurdity for any one to suggest my engaging in a wild-cat banking scheme with Carrie Morse. Yet now I sat spellbound by her magnetic power—patiently listening to details which were all Greek to me and getting from every word she uttered renewed confidence in the reality of the financial castles in the air which were to make us both millionaires.
What a business woman Carrie Morse would have made! With her personal charms, her eloquence, and her quick ingenuity she had no need to depend on crime for a living—she could have accumulated a fortune in any legitimate line of work.
I ENTER "HIGH FINANCE"
The upshot of it all was that I agreed heart and soul to Carrie Morse's plans for taking a short cut to fortune. First, she had excited my avarice by her stories of the ease with which money could be made; then she dazed me by her apparent familiarity with the intricacies of finance. At last I became as credulous as any farmer is when he comes to the city to exchange a few hard earned dollars for ten times their value in green goods.
I accompanied Carrie to the door of her hotel. The fact that she was staying at the fashionable Brunswick, while I was finding it hard work to raise the price of a room at a modest hotel farther down town, proved another argument in favor of my following the leadership of my new found friend.
"Meet me at 9 o'clock to-morrow," Carrie had said, "at No. —— West Twenty-third street." I was on hand a few minutes before the appointed hour. The address she had given me was a three-story brownstone-front house just beyond the business section of the street. But I was barely able to see it through the clouds of mortar dust raised by a gang of workmen who were busily engaged in tearing out the whole front of the building.
"Yes, this is No. ——," said one of the workmen to whom I addressed a rather startled inquiry. "We're making it over into offices." I was convinced that I had made a mistake in the address and was just on the point of turning away when I saw Carrie Morse coming down the steps.
"Good morning," she called cheerily. "This is the new bank—or, rather, it will be when these workmen get it finished. And you, my dear, are no longer Sophie Lyons, but Mrs. Celia Rigsby, the president of this rich and prosperous institution for the amelioration of the finances of the women of New York."