"After all," suggested Jasper, "it's none of our business. The company is all right."
"That's so," agreed Lamb, recovering his enthusiasm in a bound. "The tack itself can't be beat, and we are making progress toward getting on the market. Suppose the man were to sell all his stock. It wouldn't make any difference, so long as he finishes that one machine for covering the tack."
"He's a liar!" suddenly burst out David Jasper. "I wish he had his machinery done and was away from us. I can't sleep well when I do business with a liar."
"We don't want to get rid of him yet," Lamb reminded him, "and, in the meantime, I suppose he will have to have money in order to keep him at work. You'd better get him to give you stock to cover your note and tell Lewis to do the same. We'll all go after him on that point, and get protected."
David looked troubled in his turn.
"I can't afford it. When I took up that five thousand dollars' worth of stock I only had fifteen hundred in the building loan, and I put a mortgage on one of my houses to make up the amount. If I have to stand this thousand I'll have to give another mortgage, and I swore I'd never put a plaster on my property."
"The tack's good for it," urged Lamb, with conviction.
"Yes, the tack's good," admitted Jasper.
That was the thing which held them all in line – the tack! Wallingford himself might be a spendthrift and a ne'er-do-well, but their faith in the tack that was to make them all rich was supreme. Lamb picked up one from his desk and handed it to his friend. The very sight of it, with its silken covered top, imagination carrying it to its place in a carpet where it would not show, was most reassuring, and behind it, looming up like the immense open cornucopia of Fortune herself, was the Eureka Company, the concern that would buy them out at any time for a million dollars if they were foolish enough to sell. After all, they had nothing to worry them.
David Jasper went up to the bank and had them hold the note until the next day, which they did without comment. David was "good" for anything he wanted. The next day he got hold of Wallingford to get him to renew the note and to give him stock as security for it. When J. Rufus came out of that transaction, in which David had intended to be severe with him, he had four thousand dollars in his pocket, for he had transferred to his indorser five thousand dollars of his stock and Jasper had placed another mortgage on his property. The single tack in his vest pocket had assumed proportions far larger than his six cottages and his home. It was the same with Lewis and one of the others, and, for a week, the inventor struggled with the covering machine.
No one seemed to appreciate the fact that here their genius was confronting a problem that was most difficult of solution. To them it meant a mere bit of mechanical juggling, as certain to be accomplished as the simple process of multiplication; but to glue a piece of cloth to so minute and irregular a thing as the head of a tack, to put it on firmly and leave it trimmed properly at the edges, to do this trick by machinery and at a rate rapid enough to insure profitable operation, was a Herculean task, and the stockholders would have been aghast had they known that J. Rufus was in no hurry to solve this last perplexity. He knew better than to begin actual manufacture. The interference report on the first patent led him to make secret inquiries, the result of which convinced him that the day they went on the market would be the day that they would be disrupted by vigorous suits, backed by millions of capital. He had been right in stating that a patent is of no value except as a basis for lawsuits.
There was only one thing which offset his shrewdness in realizing these conditions, and that was his own folly. Had he been content to devote himself earnestly to the accomplishment even of his own ends, the many difficulties into which he had floundered would never have existed. Always there was the pressing need for money. He was a colossal example of the fact that easily gotten pelf is of no value. His wife was shrewder than he. She had no social aspirations whatever at this time. They were both of them too bohemian of taste and habit to conform to the strict rules which society imposes in certain directions, even had they been able to enter the charmed circle. She cared only to dress as well as the best and to go to such places of public entertainment as the best frequented, to show herself in jewels that would attract attention and in gowns that would excite envy; but she did tire of continuous suspense – and she was not without keenness of perception.
"Jim," she asked, one night, "how is your business going?"
"You see me have money every day, don't you? There's nothing you want, is there?" was the evasive reply.
"Not a thing, except this: I want a vacation. I don't want to be wondering all my life when the crash is to come. So far as I have seen, this looks like a clean business arrangement that you are in now; but, even if it is, it can't stand the bleeding that you are giving it. If you are going to get out of this thing, as you have left everything else you were ever in, get out right away. Realize every dollar you can at once, and let us take a trip abroad."
"I can't let go just yet," he replied.
She looked up, startled.
"Nothing wrong in this, is there, Jim?"
"Wrong!" he exclaimed. "Fanny, I never did anything in my life that the law could get me for. The law is a friend of mine. It was framed up especially for the protection of J. Rufus Wallingford. I can shove ordinary policemen off the sidewalk and make the chief stand up and salute when I go past. The only way I could break into a jail would be to buy one."
She shook her head.
"You're too smart a man to stay out of jail, Jim. The penitentiary is full of men who were too clever to go there. You're a queer case, anyhow. If you had buckled down to straight business, with your ability you'd be worth ten million dollars to-day."
He chuckled.
"Look at the fun I'd have missed, though."
But for once she would not joke about their position.
"No," she insisted, "you're looking at it wrong, Jim. You had to leave Boston; you had to leave Baltimore; you had to leave Philadelphia and Washington; you will have to leave this town."
"Never mind, Fanny," he admonished her. "There are fifty towns in the United States as good as this, and they've got coin in every one of them. They're waiting for me to come and get it, and when I have been clear through the list I'll start all over again. There's always a fresh crop of bait-nibblers, and money is being turned out at the mint every day."
"Have it your own way," responded Mrs. Wallingford; "but you will be wise if you take my advice to accumulate some money while you can this time, so that we do not have to take a night train out in the suburbs, as we did when we left Boston."
Mr. Wallingford returned no answer. He opened the cellar door and touched the button that flooded his wine cellar with light, going down himself to hunt among his bottles for the one that would tempt him most. Nevertheless, he did some serious thinking, and, at the next board-of-directors' meeting, he announced that the covering machine was well under way, showing them drawings of a patent application he was about to send off.
It was a hopeful sign – one that restored confidence. He must now organize a selling department and must have a Chicago branch. They listened with respect, even with elation. After all, while this man had deceived them as to his financial standing when he first came among them, he was well posted, for their benefit, upon matters about which they knew nothing. Moreover, there was the great tack! He went to Chicago and appointed a Western sales agent. When he came back he had sold fifteen thousand dollars' worth of his stock through the introductions gained him by this man.
J. Rufus Wallingford was "cleaning up."
CHAPTER VII
WHEREIN THE GREAT TACK INVENTOR SUDDENLY DECIDES TO CHANGE HIS LOCATION
"In two weeks we will be ready for the market," Wallingford told inquiring members of the company every two weeks, and, in the meantime, the model for the covering device, in which change after change was made, went on very slowly, while the money went very rapidly. A half dozen of the expensive stamping machines had already been installed, and the treasury was exhausted. The directors began to look worried.
One