“Even his $80,000,000, if he has them in money, might disarrange our plans,” said Gray.
“He has plown them all in, puilding plocks for glerks ont poor people, ont he disgriminates against Hebrews, or his trustees do. A Jew knows a goot thing when he fints it, ont there were eighteen thousant applications from Jew glerks for the prifilege of renting apartments in the Morning Blocks, ont the committee made up a mean drick to get rit of them. They requiret every man who applied for rooms to answer whether it was easier to fill to a bob-tail flush or a sequence, ont those who answered the question they refused to pass, on the grount that they knew too much apout draw poker to haf goot moral characters.”
“I do not see,” said Claybank, after the laughter at Wolf’s indignation had subsided, “that we need take Mr. Morning into consideration as a disturbing element in our present plans. If the present output of his mine shall continue, it must, by and by, greatly advance prices of stocks and all other property, but that is in the future.”
“Have we anything further to consider?” said Gray.
“I think,” replied Claybank, rising, “that we understand each other perfectly. I will have triplicate memorandums made of our agreement, which we can execute in my office to-morrow morning at nine o’clock, where we will have our stocks brought at the same time. This Burgundy is the genuine article, Clos Voguet, vintage of 1875. I propose as a parting toast, ‘Success to our enterprise.’”
And the phonograph needle in the adjoining room wrote in mystic scratches upon the wax, “Success to our enterprise.” Then came the shuffling of feet, the sound of a closing door, and the faint buzz of the electric motor until it ceased, and silence reigned.
CHAPTER XVIII.
“Uncle Sam to the rescue!”
David Morning returned to New York three days after the dinner party described in the last chapter. His typewriters were in attendance as usual, and he began opening his accumulated correspondance, when his secretary knocked at the door communicating with the next room, and, entering, said to his employer:—
“Mr. Morning, pardon me for disturbing you, but will you please step into the phonograph room. There is a good deal of matter on the cylinders which has been placed there by others in your absence, and, I judge, placed there inadvertently. I think you had better hear it yourself before it is transcribed.”
Morning walked into the other room and was for half an hour an interested auditor of the revelations of the wonderful phonograph. He directed his secretary to remove, label, and lock up the cylinders containing the dinner-party conversation, and said in conclusion:—