The Come-On

Front matter

By A. M. Chisholm Author of "No Wedding Bells," "The Mother Lode" Etc.

"The man who knows it all" is usually an insufferable acquaintance, with his cock-sureness, his air of condescending superiority. However, he is good plucking, yes, the very best, for a man who knows more and doesn't brag about it. Promoters, sharpers and schemers of all sorts like to gel hold of this know-it-all kind of man. Chisholm tells us of such a case in his characteristically humorous fashion.

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Chapter 1

I.

THE soft light of an April evening bathed Ardendale tenderly. In its gentle purity the pale green of the new leafage was the color of the sea. Down the quiet streets the orderly rows of horse-chestnuts and maples were beginning to put on foliage and in the gardens the lilac buds were bursting; through the black, moist earth of the flower-beds tiny snowdrops pushed their way and the spear-bladed leaves of tulips stood stiffly upright.

In the library of Mr. Thomas P. Hooper's residence on one of the most exclusive streets of Ardendale, his daughter, Miss Maisie Hooper, sat with her fiancé, Mr. J. Addison Mortimer.

"But twenty-five thousand dollars would be plenty for us to marry on, Ad," she said. "And you arc so clever that with your education you could get a good salary anywhere. I'm sure that pa would help you to a position here."

"I don't want a position." replied Mortimer. He was an exceedingly modern young man, inclined to stoutness as to person, and supercilious as to expression. A widely advertised college had thrown an education at him and some fragments of it had stuck: in common with many others he made the mistake of assuming that a degree was of intrinsic value; and he held strongly to the belief that he was a thoroughly shrewd man of the world. He continued:

"Twenty-five thousand isn't so much. I know plenty of men who have half of that a year, and they think they're poor. Of course, if we were satisfied to settle down in a little house in this back-number village and vegetate we could get along, but it won't do for me. I regard this legacy simply as a nest-egg. You watch me make it hatch a clutch of dollars. We'll live in a real town, Maisie, with a couple of autos and a yacht, and diamonds for you. I tell you I'll make some of these old fogies who salt down their coin into five per cent. farm mortgages sit up and take notice. I'll be worth a million in ten years."

"1 hope so, Ad," said Maisie admiringly. "I know how clever you are, but I don't like the idea of your going West to that mining place you spoke of. It's so far away."

"Railways and telegraph-lines have cut down the circumference of the world many times," said Mr. Mortimer with an air of superiority. "The West is the place to make money, and in the new mining-town, Galena, I will find all sorts of opportunities. Why, young Hackett told me that his father, the senator, often buys a claim for five hundred dollars and sells it for a cool hundred thousand. It's capital that's wanted. Here's how it is. Say I strike some old miner with a good property. I buy half his interest for thousand dollars. Then we form a joint stock-company with a capital of million. Of this I have five hundred thousand shares worth a dollar each. Say I sell them at fifty per cent. of their par value, there's a quarter of a million. Or, if I let them go at twenty-five per cent. even, they would bring me one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars."

"My!" exclaimed Maisie in admiration. "Could you do it, Ad? It's an awfully big profit."

"It's the way all big money is made nowadays," said Mortimer complacently. "I'm just giving you the bare outline and putting it simply so that you can understand it. Joint stock-companies are the basis of modern finance. I've given you one example, And then I know a dozen other ways of making a killing. I won't touch anything that doesn't look like big money."

"You'll know about mines, of course," said Maisie innocently. "You studied geology, didn't you?"

"A little," admitted Mortimer modestly "But you don't need to know anything about mines to make money out of them; it's not the mining that there's money in—it's the manipulating the stock."

A week later J. Addison Mortimer took the train for the West.

Chapter 2

II.

THE brakeman announced Galena City in a weird language of his own, and immediately thereafter the air set friction to the flying heels of Number 97, west-bound. As she slackened way Mr. J. Addison Mortimer arose and followed an obsequious porter bearing his grip.

"Which is the best hotel here?" he asked the ebony one as they stood together in the vestibule. The porter scratched his tight-wooled poll apologetically.

"Ah dunno, suh," he said, doubtfully. "Dey's diff'unt f'om hotels back East. An Ah'se new on de run."

For which shortcoming he received but a measly two bits instead of the expected half-dollar, and in consequence dumped the grip with slight ceremony on the station-platform, leaving its owner to shift for himself.

As Mortimer stood uncertainly on the platform in the falling rain, jostled by muddy and unkempt men. he presented much the air of a sleek, pert young spaniel suddenly shot into a company of lean, sinewy sled-dogs. He was carefully dressed with an effect of studied negligée eminently proper for a mining-town. His clothes of rough tweed fitted him well: his head was covered by an expensive pearl-gray soft felt hat, and his shoes were tan, heavily soled and quite unsoiled; as a great concession to the free-and-easy spirit of the West his collar was a full half-inch lower than usual. But his air of cock-sureness was quite intact.

He picked up his grip and walked up the station-platform. A lanky individual stood watching the receding train. A stained and worn pony hat was tilted over his eyes, his trousers were tucked into mini-spattered boots, and he sucked on a ragged cigar. To him Mortimer turned tor information.

"Excuse me!" he began politely.

The lanky man slowly withdrew his eyes from the vanishing coaches and surveyed his interlocutor. The eyes were a cold blue, expressionless and calm.

"Sure," he replied. "But don't do it again."

Mortimer was uncertain whether he had offended unconsciously or whether the other was making fun of him. "Can you direct me to a good hotel?" he said with dignity.

This simple request seemed to surprise the lanky man.

"You wouldn't want a quiet boardin'-house with the advantages an' refinements of a Christian home, would you?" he asked.

"I said a hotel," said Mortimer, with added dignity.

"A high-grade, modern, first-class house, caterin' to the best trade?" suggested the other.

"Yes," replied Mortimer.

"Young feller," said the stranger solemnly, "this here is Galena City—not heaven nor Bosting, nor yet Noo York nor Chi. If you're of a contented disposition, so's you can thank God for a chance to shake dice for a third share in a one-man bed and three squares of air-tights a day, go to the Palace; if you're partic'lar, build a hotel for yourself."

Mortimer went to the Palace, where his modest demand for a room and bath was met by a counter-proposition of a billiard-table and sufficient whisky to insure sound slumber thereon or thereunder. The house was crowded, but he finally secured a room in common with a stranger, and thought himself in luck to do so.

For some days he looked about him seeking an opportunity for investment. Investments there were in plenty; not a man but was ready to put a figure on anything he owned or might acquire. But the figures were invariably high and Mortimer was looking for a gilt-edged proposition—one that would yield him one hundred per cent. profit and show it on its face. Modest gambles on quarter interests in unproved claims he passed up as too risky and too slow.

His first unfavorable impressions of Galena City were confirmed. The town was raw and hopelessly vulgar, as well as exceedingly dirty. It rained without intermission—a slow, soaking drizzle of needlelike streams that turned the yellow and red clays to clinging paste which gripped boots with a despairing clutch.

On the principle that so much water without needed a corrective within, the entire white population of Galena, male and female after their kind, imbibed freely of more or less undiluted alcohol. The only workers appeared to be Swedes and Chinamen, lowly amphibians unaffected by the prevailing damp.

Naturally disputes, liquor-born and otherwise, took place. One gun-fight of which Mortimer chanced to be a witness occurred in a combined saloon and gambling-house. Until he dies peacefully in an Ardendale immaculate bed with nurses, physicians, and offspring unto the second generation in attendance Mortimer will remember it—the sudden hush of voices; the cold, deliberate, whip-lash word flung across the silence; following it vengefully the staccato bang of the guns, the upward leap of their muzzles, the wild stampede of the onlookers for safety. And then the coughing man who dropped to his knees beneath the pistol-spread haze, dying as he fell. Five minutes after every game was going full-blast.

All this was different from Ardendale, from college, from the East. It was raw, unrefined, shocking. Nevertheless Mortimer filled ten pages, letter-size, and sent them to Maisie Hooper. Two of the pages bore his impressions of Galena; two more described the fight and ingeniously explained his presence thereat; three contained an appreciation of the peril in which he had stood from stray bullets and speculated on the feelings of his correspondent if he had been accidentally killed; and the other three were of a private, personal nature—the kind that men curse and burn in after years if they have the luck to reclaim them, and women treasure in secret places for the term of their natural lives. Maisie cried a little as she read, and kissed the signature.

Chapter 3

III.

IT was on the day after the gun-fight that Mortimer, mounting three flights of stairs to his room in the Palace, disgusted with Galena and pondering the advisability of leaving for the East, found a stranger in possession of the apartment. He surveyed him with an unfriendly eye.

The newcomer, who was bending over a grip, rose at his entrance. He was some years Mortimer's senior, of medium height but remarkably well built; his face was shrewd and alert wd deeply tanned; he wore a neatly rimmed pointed beard, and his clothes, as Mortimer noted with grudging approval, fitted him to perfection.

"Sorry to intrude," said the stranger. "I tried to get a room to myself, but such a thing wasn't to be had. I won't incommode you more than I can help. And I'm clean, anyway."

"It's all right," said Mortimer rather more cordially than he had intended, there was something likable about the stranger. He seemed to be a gentleman, at any rate. "I've had a room-mate of some sort ever since I came. Some of them2" he ended the sentence with a gesture of disgust.

"Rather impossible. I guess," said the stranger with a genial laugh. "Galena and misfortune make strange bed-fellows. "But then you have probably seen worse layouts than this in your experience, and so have I. A man can't travel extensively without running into some queer things."

J. Addison Mortimer's traveling experiences might have been compressed into a small leaflet, but he was not displeased at being taken for a seasoned traveler. He said:

"Yes, that's so. The people who stay at home don't see much life."

Having thus accomplished an informal acquaintance they observed the formalities by exchanging cards. That which Mortimer received bore the name Charles Anson Collingwood. Mr. Collingwood's address was Chicago, but the card gave no indication of the busies of its owner.

Collingwood, changing to clothes irreproachable in cut but plainly intended for hard service, shrugged himself into worn yellow slicker and disappeared, nor did Mortimer see him till evening, when he reappeared mud-stained and dripping from an afternoon apparently spent about the mines.

Mortimer watched his ablutions from the bed on which he lay.

"Been seeing the town?" he asked.

"Town be hanged!" Collingwood rubbed his hair into fluffy dryness with a rough towel. "No, I've been chasing about in half a dozen properties, sizing them up."

Mortimer digested this information. Collingwood looked the part of a mining expert, and it occurred to him that his acquaintance might be worth cultivating. If the latter knew of any good thing he might get in on the ground floor.

"You are a mining man, then?" he queried.

Collingwood smiled and shrugged his broad shoulders.

"I am an investment specialist," he said. "Never heard of that particular line of business before, I dare say?"

Mortimer confessed that he had not.

"I'll have to qualify it a little," said Collingwood. "Of course there are a number of fields of investment of which I have no knowledge—no one man can cover everything. My specialties are rather restricted, but mining happens to be one of them. People back East have gone crazy over Galena, and I am here to look at the ground for some of them."

"There ought to be good chances for investment," said Mortimer tentatively.

"Plenty of chances to sink money," returned Collingwood skeptically. "The good things can't be bought with much profit."

"But there are plenty of claims and prospects," said Mortimer. He was curious to ascertain the specialist's opinion of this class of investment, for up to date it had been the only sort offered him.

" 'A prospect is a hole in the ground owned by an infernal liar. quoted Collingwood with conviction. "I never touch them. My business reputation wouldn't stand it. What I want to find is a good mine in need of capital, and that's a hard matter."

"I'm looking for an investment myself," said Mortimer importantly, "but so far I've seen nothing that commends itself to my judgment."

The next day they became better acquainted. On the second night they dined together, and by some magic Collingwood was a able to obtain a far better meal than Mortimer had yet eaten at the Palace. Wine followed and cigars, both paid for by Coilingwood.

"No, no—nonsense!" he said when Mortimer insisted weakly on being allowed to "hold up his 'end. You're out here for your own hand, and while the size of your pile is none of my business, it's a good bet that the people behind me can afford to pay for a little sparkle better than either of us. Heavens, man, I've bathed old Swedes in champagne and they thought it was cider—all in the way of business. And I've paid for a few days' bender for half a dozen wild and woolly gentlemen, and the bill ran into the thousands. What little we can drink and smoke will cut no ice in my expense-money."

Mortimer sipped his champagne critically. His acquaintance with the beverage was not extensive, being confined to an occasional modest pint by way of celebration; but he would not have this easy-going, high-priced investment specialist, who was plainly used to the best, suspect that expensive wines were a rarity with him. The cigars, too, were of a better quality than he had thought it possible to obtain in Galena; certainly he had never seen them in the hotel show-case, and they evidently cost much more than his ordinary smokes.

When one bottle was finished another succeeded it. At the end of an hour Mortimer was talking freely and boastfully. He was of that class for whom liquor smooths away all difficulties of accomplishment, who esteem the thing desired as already done. His modest twenty-five thousand dollars expanded into an indefinite sum of large dimensions and he hinted solemnly at plans involving huge amounts. And he was not consciously lying: the peculiar thing about it was that he really believed every word he uttered, and considered himself a young Napoleon of finance.

Collingwood listened in silence, save for an occasional word. Although he had taken his full share of wine it had not affected him to speech. With his hat tilted a little over his shrewd eyes and a cigar in the corner of his mouth he harkened gravely, occasionally filling Mortimer's glass.

"You're a wise guy—what!" said the latter. "Sit, solemn's ol' owl an' say nothing. Why don't you cheer up some?"

"I like to hear you talk," replied Collingwood. "You've got ideas and the gift of expressing them. I'm enjoying myself."

"So'm I," said Mortimer. "You're a good fellow. Best I've struck in the mudhole. Say, let's go into business together."

"You've got too much capital for me," said Collingwood gravely. "How much did you say you were ready to invest here if you got a good chance?"

"Twenty thousand," said Mortimer proudly. "Look here, I've got money and ideas, but I want experience."

"You'll get that before long." said Collingwood without a smile.

"This is all new to me, unnerstan'?" pursued Mortimer [unconvincingly]. "Now, you're right in touch with things. If I ask you for advice as a friend you'll give it to me, won't you? Or maybe you could give me the straight tip if you found a good thing?'

"Well, you know," said Collingwood, evasively, "good things don't last, and have to be snapped up. Every time there's a cinch play you can figure on half a dozen men fighting for the first chance to get their dollars down on it. You have to have real money—cash—to put on the board, and as a rule there's no time to look twice at a proposition."

"I unnerstan' all that," said Mortimer, nodding his head with tipsy gravity. "I'm no piker, I've got twenty thousand to my credit in the bank here, and five thousand more at home, and I can plank down the cash on a good thing in half an hour."

"I'd like to oblige you," said Collingwood doubtfully. "But—you see—well, I'm not working for myself. Suppose I got hold of a good thing and turned it over to you, what would my people say if they heard of it? Do you suppose they'd give me business again? Not on your life. And 1 couldn't blame them."

"I wouldn't say a word about it," protested Mortimer.

"These things always get out somehow," returned Collingwood. "I'd strain a point for you, but I can't afford to throw down my principals. It wouldn't be square, and you shouldn't ask it."

"That's right," said Mortimer. "I wouldn't ask you to do anything dishonorable. Business is business, though," he proceeded knowingly. "I'd make it worth your while."

"If I gave you a tip at all," said Collingwood, as if offended at the offer, "it would be as a friend, and I wouldn't take a commission. You haven't got money enough to buy me, Mortimer, understand that."

Mortimer protested that he had never thought of such a thing, and Collingwood accepted his statement.

"I'll see what I can do for you out of friendship only," he said. "Snaps are hot to be picked up every day, but if I find what I think is a good thing I'll let you know about it and then you can use your own judgment."

"You're all right!" exclaimed Mortimer. "I like you. Let's have another bottle, on me."

"Not for me," said Collingwood. "I've had enough, and my head has to be clear in the morning. By the way, that room of ours isn't very comfortable and I've been trying for something better. If I get another would you care to bunk in with me or stay where you are?"

"I'm with you," said Mortimer. "The best's none too good for me." He exhibited a large roll of bills. "Drew out a bundle this morning." he said boastfully.

Collingwood had obtained a room on the first floor, and thither he and Mortimer moved their grips. The new apartment was large and well furnished and held two beds. It was a vast improvement on the little room on the fourth floor.

Mortimer dropped into a chair; in a few minutes he was nodding. Collingwood, lighting a fresh cigar, paced the floor softly, observing him.

"Confound it," he said, suddenly, "I was to see a man to-night, and I was so interested in our conversation that I clean forgot about it." He consulted his watch. "I may catch him yet. You won't mind my running away for half an hour, old man?"

S all right," said Mortimer sleepily. "You toddle along, and I'll have a little snooze. Then we'll finish the evening somewhere."

Chapter 4

IV.

COLLINGWOOD left the hotel and made his way toward the outskirts of Galena where, dodging mud-puddles gingerly, he finally arrived at a small shack of undressed and unpainted lumber. He opened the door without ceremony. Inside a man in shirt-sleeves sat playing solitaire. He was some years older than Collingwood. His clean-shaven face was thoughtful, studious, and very honest; his eyes were blue and frank as a child's: indeed their expression was almost wistful. As he played he made note of the recurring card combinations in a small note-book.

He nodded absently to Collingwood, and carefully placed a card and shifted a pile. The next deal exhausted the possibilities; he threw the cards into a heap.

"Well?" he queried.

"Why don't you get a new game?" rasped Collingwood impatiently. "Try building-blocks, or something hard."

The other snorted.

"You think Romally's Solitaire is easy! Do you know how many chances you have of solving it? Just one in seven thousand and forty-five."

"What a lead-pipe it would be to keep a bank on a game like that," Collingwood commented, recovering his good humor. "All right, Frank. Throw the whole pack in the discard for a few days. This is where you get busy."

"I'm glad of it," said the other. "When I came to Galena I didn't figure on living in a blasted packing-box, with a hunch of assorted mountain-rats for company. Any time I have to see rats I want some fun first, and these are too genuine. Besides, if you want to know it, I'm down to white chips."

"If you'd quit spoiling good paper trying to figure out a system to beat cinch games you'd have a roll you couldn't carry," observed Collingwood. "It beats by me why a smart man like you is sucker enough to hand his coin to a bunch of [gams]. But you'll do it till you die, Frapk Duprau.'

Duprau glanced guiltily at sheets of paper covered with intricate calculations lying on the bare pine table.

"Some day I'll just choke 'em to death," he said, with conviction. "I've made mistakes in calculation. I'll admit, and I got what was coming to me. This time I'm all right. I'm figuring out a system that's a sure winner. When I get it I'll let you in on it."

"After you've tried it and they've got to you for your roll again, come to me and I'll stake you a couple of hundred if I have it," said Collingwood. "You ought to have more sense. You know a game for a brace and a skin, and yet you skip to it with your little old tin dollars and feed them into the hopper. If it was on the square you couldn't win. You're dotty on systems that keep you poor. But it's your money, and there's more coming. Now, forget your infernal systems and listen to me."

For ten minutes he talked earnestly. At the end of that time Duprau- produced a safety ink-bottle and a bundle of stock-certificates. The latter were blank. He began to fill in names and signatures. The ink he used was peculiar: even as it flowed from the pen it lost it's brilliancy and turned a brownish black—the exact color of writing a year or more old.

Collingwood watched him in silence until the work was completed.

"It may take three or four days," he said. "As soon as the deal is closed wire me. Your train leaves in two hours. We'll meet you in Red Cloud."

"Till then, good-by," said Dupray, reaching for a sheet of paper, "Two hours till train-time, you say. I want to do a little figuring2"

Collingwood snatched the paper away from him and gathering up the pack of cards shoved both in his pocket.

"No solitaire or figuring out's systems," he said firmly "You never know when to stop, and I want you out of town to-night. Do I have to see you to the train, or will you cut it out?"

Collingwood retraced his way through the mud and mounted to his room at the hotel. He fully expected to find Mortimer there, but to his disgust the room was empty. He searched the hotel immediately.

"That Bostonese guy?" said the bartender, in answer to his inquiry. "Yes, he was in here and I make him a Joey Brown. He licks it up and asks me where he can find a swift game. I tell him most anywheres, but he'll get skinned quicker at Carey's. Then he gives me the glassy glare and [fetches] the door in three takes."

To Carey's went Collingwood, and there he found Mortimer bucking faro-bank. The Joey Brown on top of the champagne had done the business, for he was very drunk indeed. He had been allowed to win, but he was now losing, and with the fatuity of the loser he was increasing his bets.

Collingwood laid a hand on his shoulder. "How are you making it go?" he asked.

For answer Mortimer swore thickly and put a fifty-dollar bill on the eight open. He lost again.

"If you've had enough fun for one night." said Collingwood. "I want you to come with me. I've got onto a good thing and I've made an appointment for you The man is waiting now."

"Let him wait!" cried Mortimer. "I'm going to break this game."

"Hang the game!" said Collingwood. "There's big money in sight if you come with me. Let the game go. on. You can come back and break it up to-morrow."

Beside the dealer stood Carey, the owner of the house, an old-time gambler with an unsavory reputation. Mortimer seemed a fairly plump pigeon to be plucked, and he resented Collingwood's interference.

"Stranger," he said, "your friend is backing his judgment his own way. He don't need to be night-herded. Let him alone."

Collingwood looked him straight in the eye; the gambler met his gaze squarely; they sized each other up.

"You mean well," said Collingwood coldly, "but I guess that lets you out." He turned to Mortimer. "Come along, old man."

But Mortimer would not come.

Carey's remark had had the desired effect.

"You lemme 'lone," he said thickly. "See you in mornin'."

But Collingwood for reasons of his own was not willing to allow him to lose more money to Carey. He adapted himself quickly to the situation.

"Guess I might as well make a night of it too, then," he said. "Let me in on the game."

He ordered a drink and watched Mortimer throw it down his throat with satisfaction. He pressed on him a particularly black and heavy cigar. Carey watched these tactics with a scowl. At the end of fifteen minutes, during which he had lost but moderately, Mortimer's head began to sag.

Two minutes after he fell sidewise from his chair and became unconscious.

Carey beckoned to two men. "Take him up-stairs and put him to bed," he ordered.

Collingwood interposed.

"Hardly. He's going back to his hotel."

"Is he?" said Carey. "There's where you make a mistake. When a man gets full in my house I look after him."

"Nice benevolent custom, too," said Collingwood. "I'll save you the trouble this time. He's going with me."

Carey, his face impassive as ever, leaned forward.

"See here, stranger." he said, "you're just a little too positive in your views to stay popular. Without giving offense I'm telling you that I don't let a man I don't know handle a drunk with money in his clothes. And I don't know you."

"It sounds all right," retorted Collingwood. "My objection to leaving him here is just the opposite; I do know you."

The controversy was attracting attention. The lookout on his stool pinched out the end of a cigarette and dropped it on the floor, gently sliding his hand into his coat pocket. The game was suspended and clear spaces opened automatically behind both Carey and Collingwood. It was significant of the experience of the two that neither had raised his voice. Their tones were almost confidential, but cold as cut ice.

Carey's eyelids narrowed and drooped a little lower. Twenty years before—fifteen, ten, even—he would have shot as the last word left Collingwood's lips. But now a gun was to be employed only as a last resort; and he felt that he could not afford to gain much more notoriety, even in Galena.

"Stranger," he said in a level voice the more ominous by its absolute calm. "I wouldn't say no more things like that if I was you. They're apt to affect your plans for the future. Now here it is," he went on, dismissing the remark with a large wave of his slim hand. "If you're a friend of this man I'd rather you'd take care of him and save me the trouble; on the other hand, as you're a stranger I can't let you do it. It's up to you."

"Well, we needn't block business talking about it." said Collingwood, accepting the flag of truce thus held aloft. "Let me see you in private for a moment."