Jack and the Check Book

"By Jove!" cried Jack, joyously. "Do you think she'll have me?"

"Will a duck quack?" asked the cat.

(Extract from the last will and testament of Joshua Dobbins):

"… and I do hereby appoint my said son-in-law, Horace Vanderpoel, husband of my beloved daughter Amanda, sole trustee of my estate, without bond, said estate to be administered by him for the benefit of my said daughter Amanda and her children, according to his own discretion; for which service, in lieu of executor's or trust fees, I do hereby give, bequeath, and devise to his use forever the sum of five million dollars, together with such additional sums as I have from time to time during the past four years invested under his advice and direction in the several properties in his control, both principal and interest accrued up to the date of my decease."

"Dear old dad!" said Jack, when the will had been read. "Your father was a fine man, Amanda dear, and a very successful man as well."

"Yes, Horace," said his weeping wife, "but he always insisted that he owed much to your splendid business management; so, after all, you have only come into your own, dear."

"Ah, well," said Jack, as he opened a fresh bottle of cream and placed it before his pet Angora, "money isn't everything, sweetheart, and I should have been satisfied if he had left me nothing but you."

And the Angora cat wiped off the back of his ear with his left paw and twirled his mustachios upward with a wave of his right, as he purred amiably over the cream.

IV

THE GOLDEN FLEECE

There was once a miller who was very poor, but he had a beautiful daughter. There were a great many people who said that if he had not had so beautiful a daughter he would not have been so poor, and it may be that these were right, for beautiful daughters are not infrequently a source of considerable expense to their parents, and I fear me that Gasmerilda was no exception to this rule.

She had a great passion for rare furs and for opera and lingerie cloaks, and the thousand and one other dainty things that appeal to the heart of beautiful young maidenhood, and it seemed to make no difference how many millions of bushels of corn passed through her father's mill day after day, the returns from the grinding wheels were always thirty or forty dollars a month lower than the total aggregate of Gasmerilda's bills from milliners, furriers, jewelers, and others too numerous to mention.

Of course, this thing could not go on indefinitely. There comes a time when even the blindest of creditors will insist upon the liquidation of a miller's account, and the poor man found himself getting deeper and deeper into debt as the months passed along, and was now at last at his wits' ends to devise new excuses for the non-payment of Gasmerilda's indebtedness. Indeed, he had now come to a point where there was but one refuge from the ultimate of financial disaster that should force him into a public declaration of his bankruptcy, and that was to be seen associating in public places with well-known malefactors of great wealth.

What awful agony of mind this cost him – for he was an honest miller, as had always been evidenced by his willingness to promise to pay his debts even when he knew he could not – the world will never know, but he swallowed his pride, and for a time gained immunity from the pressure of his creditors with their threatened judgments by being seen walking down Fifth Avenue in the morning alongside of Colonel John W. Midas, the president of the Pactolean Trust Company, a savings institution formed primarily for the purpose of lending its depositors' money to members of its own board of directors, taking their checks dated two months ahead and indorsed by their office-boys and stenographers for security.

It is true that anybody who was ever seen speaking to Colonel Midas in public was, by orders of the district attorney, immediately snap-shotted by the Secret Service Camera Squad attached to that gentleman's office, and the resulting negatives filed away for future reference in case Justice should ever, by some odd chance, peep over the top of her bandage for a moment and fix her eagle eye upon the Colonel's doings; but, on the other hand, there were countless thousands of worthy people, and among them were the miller's creditors, who believed that association with such a person as Colonel Midas was pretty good evidence either of a man's solvency or of his immunity to the lash of the law. Consequently, when for five successive mornings the furriers, the jewelers, the milliners, and others, to whom the unfortunate miller owed vast unpayable sums of money for sundries purchased from time to time by the beautiful Gasmerilda, saw their debtor walking down-town alongside of the great Pactolean magnate, they called off their collectors and attorneys, and sent the beautiful girl extra notifications through the mails of their new fall and winter importations; to which, in due course of time, the lovely maid responded, to the consequent swelling of the already over-large accounts due. If these persons had only known that these walks upon the avenue were silent walks, and that from the Plaza down to Madison Square Colonel Midas, though accompanied by the miller, was utterly unaware of the latter's presence, being too deeply absorbed in certain operations of great magnitude upon the Street to notice anything that was going on around him, they would doubtless have acted differently; but they did not know this, and it soon passed about among the tradesmen that the miller was the friend of Midas, and thereby was his credit greatly expanded.

On the morning of the sixth day's promenade, however, Colonel Midas, having solved the particular problem upon which his mind had been set for the past week or ten days, became more observant, and, after the miller had walked at his side for several blocks, he remarked the fact, and with emotions that were not altogether pleasant. Wherefore, he quickened his footsteps in order that he might leave the intruder behind, but the miller quickened his also and remained alongside. Colonel Midas stopped short in his walk before an art-shop window, and gazed in at the paintings therein displayed.

The miller likewise, his head cocked knowingly to one side like that of a connoisseur, paused and gazed in at the marvels of the brush. The Colonel, with a sudden jerky turn, leaped from the window to the gutter-curb and boarded a moving omnibus with surprising agility for a man of his years. But he was not too quick for his pursuer, for the miller, though scarcely able to afford the expense, immediately sprang aboard the same vehicle and took the seat beside him. Then for the first time the Colonel addressed him, and, there being no ladies upon the omnibus at that early hour, in terms rather more forcible than polite.

"What do you think you are doing?" he demanded, frowning upon his pursuer.

"Riding in a 'bus," replied the miller, with a pleasant smile.

"Are you trying to shadow me?" roared the Colonel.

"I'd make a mighty poor eclipse for you, Colonel Midas," said the miller, suavely, "but to tell you the truth," he added, a sudden idea having flashed across his mind, which in the absence of anything else to say in explanation of his conduct seemed as good as any other excuse he could invent, "there is a little matter I'd like to bring to your attention."

"Bombs?" asked the Colonel, moving away apprehensively, noticing that the miller had put his hand into his pocket, and fearing that he had, perhaps, encountered a crank who designed to do him harm.

"No, indeed," laughed the miller. "Not in such close quarters as this. When I throw a bomb at anybody I shall take care to provide a safety net for myself."

"Ha!" ejaculated the Colonel, with a deep sigh of relief. "Book-agent?"

"Nothing in it," said the miller. "Work too heavy for the profits. No, sir, I am neither a book-agent nor an anarchist. I am nothing but a poor miller with an ingrowing income, but I have a beautiful daughter who – "

"Oh yes," interrupted Midas, with a nod. "I remember now. I've heard of you. You preferred to remain independent instead of selling out to the Trust. You tried to discount some of your notes at the Pactolean Trust Company, of which I am president, the other day."

"Yes," said the miller, "and you refused them."

"Naturally," laughed Midas. "A beautiful daughter, Mr. Miller, is a lovely possession, but she's mighty poor security for a loan. About the worst in the market. Especially yours. I've seen Miss Miller at the opera several times and have wondered how you managed it. It would cost more than the face value of your notes to support the security for one week in the style to which she is accustomed."

"That's true enough," said the miller, "and nobody knows it better than I do. Nevertheless, you made a mistake. You have possibly never heard of her wonderful gift."

"No," said the magnate. "I was not aware that the young lady had any other gifts than beauty and a father with a little credit left."

"Well, be that as it may," retorted the miller, "she has one great gift. She can spin straw into gold."

"What?" cried Midas, becoming interested at once.

"Yes, sir," the miller went on. "She has marvellous powers in that direction. If she hadn't I'd have been up a tree long ago."

"I had heard of her father's ability to turn hot air into Russian sables and diamond necklaces, but this straw business is something new," said Midas.

"I thought you would so regard it," said the miller, confidently, "and that is why I have been trying to get a word with you for the past week. You are the only man I know in the financial world who is known to have the enterprise and the courage to go into a little gamble that other people would laugh at. You have that prime quality of success, Colonel Midas, that is known to mankind as nerve. You are always willing to sit in any kind of a game that shows a glimmer of profit in the perspective, and that is why I bring this matter to you instead of to my friend Rockernegie, a man utterly without imagination and blind to many a sure thing because he can't understand it."

The Colonel, who was not unsusceptible to flattery, was visibly impressed by this tribute. He scratched his head thoughtfully for a moment.

"See here, Mr. Miller," he said, after a brief communion with himself, "if this story is true, why are you trying to discount your notes at the Pactolean Trust Company? Why don't you get a bale of straw and have your daughter turn it over a few times?"

"I will be perfectly frank with you, Colonel," said the miller. "It is a humiliating confession to make, sir, but I'm everlastingly busted. Just plain down and out and I couldn't buy a lemonade straw if they were going at a cent a ton, much less a bale."

The Colonel looked at him sympathetically, and then, giving his knee a resounding whack, he cried: "By Jove, Miller, I'll back you! I rather like your nerve, and, as you have so charmingly put it, I am the sort of man to take a long shot. Yes, sir, and I wouldn't have had seven cents to my name to-day if I hadn't been. Come with me to the Pactolean Trust Company and we'll discount your demand note, suitably indorsed, right off, with the understanding, however, that your daughter gives us an immediate demonstration of her powers. We'll furnish the straw."

The miller's heart leaped with joy, but he deemed it well not to show himself over-anxious lest he lose the whole advantage.

"It is very good of you, Colonel," he observed quietly, "but I don't know a soul in this bright, beautiful world who would indorse my note for any sum, large or small."

"Oh, that will be all right," laughed the Colonel. "We've got a rubber stamp in the office for just such emergencies."

So the miller and his new-found friend went to the offices of the Pactolean Trust Company, where, in a short while, he found relief from his pressing woes by the exchange of his demand note for five thousand dollars, indorsed most appropriately by a man of straw, for four crisp one-thousand-dollar treasury notes and the balance, less six months' interest, in yellow-backs of a denomination of fifty dollars each.

"Tell your daughter to come down here to-morrow morning," said the Colonel, as the miller pocketed the money. "I'll summon the board of directors and she can give us a demonstration of her gift in the private office. We'll have a couple of bales of straw all ready for her."

"You will have to excuse me, Colonel," said the miller, with that calmness which a man is likely to show when he has five thousand dollars in good money in his purse, "but that will be impossible. Gasmerilda has always refused to exercise her gift in the presence of anybody else, and I am quite sure she will make no exception in this case. Even as a child she would not let either her mother or myself see how she did it."

"But she must," said the Colonel, firmly, "or I shall be under the painful necessity of calling that note at once."

"But she can't," returned the miller. "You see, sir, it is one of the peculiarities of the gift that she must be alone while at work. It requires such intense concentration of effort. If you insist upon her presence here, why – well, as you intimate, the deal is off between us and I shall have to take it to Rockernegie. There's the money, sir."

With a supreme effort of will the miller tossed the roll of bills back upon the table. It was, of course, an act of sheer bravado, but he carried it off so well that it worked.

"Oh, very well," said the Colonel, gruffly, a shade of disappointment crossing his face. "If she can't, she can't, I suppose. It's worth a try, anyhow. We'll send a bale of straw up to your residence this afternoon, and if by to-morrow morning she has managed to turn it into gold, all well and good. If not – well, we call the note, that's all."

"Can't you make it a week?" pleaded the miller. "She may have some other engagement on for to-night, and – er – well, a week will give her time to turn around."