Tutt and Mr. Tutt Part 25

"Oh, Mr. Tutt! Please get the money back from him. If you don't something terrible will happen to Jessie!"

"I'll do my best," he said gently, laying his hand on her fragile shoulder. "But I may not be able to do it--and anyhow I'll need your help."

"What can I do?"

"I want you to go down to Mr. Badger's office to-morrow morning and tell him that you are so much pleased with your investment that you would like to turn all your securities over to him to sell and put the money into the Great Geyser Texan Petroleum and Llano Estacado Land Company."

He rolled out the words with unction.

"But I don't!"

"Oh, yes, you do!" he a.s.sured her. "You want to do just what I tell you, don't you?"

"Of course," she answered. "But I thought you didn't like Mr. Badger's oil company."

"Whether I like it or not makes no difference. I want you to say just what I tell you."

"Oh, very well, Mr. Tutt."

"Then you must tell him about the note, and that first it will have to be paid off."

"Yes."

"And then you must hand him a letter which I will dictate to you now."

She flushed slightly, her eyes bright with excitement.

"You're sure it's perfectly honest, Mr. Tutt? I wouldn't want to do anything unfair!"

"Would you be honest with a burglar?"

"But Mr. Badger isn't a burglar!"

"No--he's only about a thousand times worse. He's a robber of widows and orphans. He isn't man enough to take a chance at housebreaking."

"I don't know what you mean," she sighed. "Where shall I write?"

Mr. Tutt cleared a s.p.a.ce upon his desk, handed her a pad and dipped a pen in the ink while she took off her gloves.

"Address the note to the bank," he directed.

She did so.

"Now say: 'Kindly deliver to Mr. Badger all the securities I have on deposit with you, whenever he pays my note. Very truly yours, Sarah Maria Ann Effingham.'"

"But I don't want him to have my securities!" she retorted.

"Oh, you won't mind! You'll be lucky to get Mr. Badger to take back your oil stock on any terms. Leave the certificate with me," laughed Mr.

Tutt, rubbing his long thin hands together almost gleefully. "And now as it is getting rather late perhaps you will do me the honor of letting me escort you home."

It was midnight before Mr. Tutt went to bed. In the first place he had felt himself so neglectful of Mrs. Effingham that after he had taken her home he had sat there a long time talking over the old lady's affairs and making the acquaintance of the phthisical Jessie, who turned out to be a wistful little creature with great liquid eyes and a delicate transparent skin that foretold only too clearly what was to be her future. There was only one place for her, Mr. Tutt told himself--Arizona; and by the grace of G.o.d she should go there, Badger or no Badger!

As the old lawyer walked slowly home with his hands clasped behind his back he pondered upon the seeming mockery and injustice of the law that forced a lonely, half-demented old fellow with the fixed delusion that he was a financier behind prison bars and left free the sharp slick crook who had no bowels or mercies and would s.n.a.t.c.h away the widow's mite and leave her and her consumptive daughter to die in the poorhouse.

Yet such was the case, and there they all were! Could you blame people for being Bolsheviks? And yet old Doc Barrows was as far from a Bolshevik as anyone could well be.

Mr. Tutt pa.s.sed a restless night, dreaming, when he slept at all, of mines from which poured myriads of pieces of yellow gold, of gushers spouting columns of blood-red oil hundreds of feet into the air, and of old-fashioned locomotives dragging picturesque trains of cars across bright green prairies studded with cacti in the shape of dollar signs.

Old Doc Barrows was with him, and from time to time he would lean toward him and whisper "Listen, Mr. Tutt, I'll tell you a secret! There's a vein of gold runs right through my daughter's cow pasture!"

When Willie next morning at half past eight reached the office he found the door already unlocked and Mr. Tutt busy at his desk, up to his elbows in a great ma.s.s of bonds and stock certificates.

"Gee!" he exclaimed to Miss Sondheim, the stenographer, when she made her appearance at a quarter past nine. "Just peek in the old man's door if you want to feel rich! Say, he must ha' struck pay dirt! I wonder if we'll all get a raise?"

But all the securities on Mr. Tutt's desk would not have justified even the modest advance of five dollars in Miss Sondheim's salary, and their employer was merely sorting out and making an inventory of Doc Barrows'

imaginary wealth. By the time Mrs. Effingham arrived by appointment at ten o'clock he had them all arranged and labeled; and in a special bundle neatly tied with a piece of red tape were what on their face were securities worth upward of seventy thousand dollars. There were ten of the beautiful bonds of the Great Lakes and Canadian Southern Railroad Company with their miniature locomotives and fields of wheat, and ten equally lovely bits of engraving belonging to the long-since defunct Bluff Creek and Iowa Central, ten more superb lithographs issued by the Mohawk and Housatonic in 1867 and paid off in 1882, and a variety of gorgeous chromos of Indians and buffaloes, and of factories and steamships spouting clouds of soft-coal smoke; and on the top of all was a pile of the First Mortgage Gold Six Per Cent obligations of the Chicago Water Front and Terminal Company--all of them fresh and crisp, with that faintly acrid smell which though not agreeable to the nostrils nevertheless delights the banker's soul.

"Ah! Good morning to you, Mrs. Effingham!" Mr. Tutt cried, waving her in when that lady was announced. "You are not the only millionaire, you see! In fact, I've stumbled into a few barrels of securities myself--only I didn't pay anything for them."

"Gracious!" cried Mrs. Effingham, her eyes lighting with astonishment.

"Wherever did you get them? And such exquisite pictures! Look at that lamb!"

"It ought to have been a wolf!" muttered Mr. Tutt. "Well, Mrs.

Effingham, I've decided to make you a present--just a few pounds of Chicago Water Front and Canadian Southern--those over there in that pile; and now if you say so we'll just go along to your bank."

"Give them to me!" she protested. "What on earth for? You're joking, Mr.

Tutt."

"Not a bit of it!" he retorted. "I don't make any pretensions as to the value of my gift, but they're yours for whatever they're worth."

He wrapped them carefully in a piece of paper and returned the balance to Doc Barrows' dress-suit case.

"Aren't you afraid to leave them that way?" she asked, surprised.

"Not at all! Not at all!" he laughed. "You see there are fortunes lying all about us everywhere if we only know where to look. Now the first thing to do is to get your bonds back from the bank."

Mr. Thomas McKeever, the popular loan clerk of the Mustardseed National, was just getting ready for the annual visit of the state bank examiner when Mr. Tutt, followed by Mrs. Effingham, entered the exquisitely furnished boudoir where lady clients were induced by all modern conveniences except manicures and shower baths to become depositors. Mr.

Tutt and Mr. McKeever belonged to the same Sat.u.r.day evening poker game at the Colophon Club, familiarly known as The Bible Cla.s.s.

"Morning, Tom," said Mr. Tutt. "This is my client, Mrs. Effingham. You hold her note, I believe, for ten thousand dollars secured by some government bonds. She has a use for those bonds and I thought that you might be willing to take my indors.e.m.e.nt instead. You know I'm good for the money."

"Why, I guess we can accommodate her, Mr. Tutt!" answered the Chesterfieldian Mr. McKeever. "Certainly we can. Sit down, Mrs.

Effingham, while I send for your bonds. See the morning paper?"

Mrs. Effingham blushingly acknowledged that she had not seen the paper.

In fact, she was much too excited to see anything.

"Sign here!" said the loan clerk, placing the note before the lawyer.

Mr. Tutt indorsed it in his strange, humpbacked chirography.