Otherwise Phyllis Part 39

"Something like that."

She pushed toward him the pad with her calculations. They read thus:--

Seattle R. E. 175,000 (about) Broken Axe (Gov't 3's) 250,000 A. T. & S. F. bonds 20,000 Phoenix Lumber 75,000 Other securities 100,000 (maybe)

His jaw fell and he gulped when he tried to speak. Even Amzi could not joke about half a million dollars.

"Thunder! You must be fooling, Lois."

"I may be fooled about some of that stuff, but those figures are supposed to be conservative by people who ought to know."

"Lord! you're a rich woman, Lois," he remarked with awe. "It's flabbergasting!"

"Oh, I haven't done so badly. You'd probably like to know how it came about, and I might as well tell you the whole story. Jack was an awful fizzle--absolutely no good. I saw that early in the game, and I knew where I'd bring up if I didn't look out for myself. He began nibbling like a hungry rat at my share of father's estate as soon as you sent it to me. I backed him in half a dozen things he wanted to go into. He hadn't the business sense of a baby, and I began to see that I was going to b.u.mp my head good and hard if I didn't look sharp. He began to cheer himself during his failures by getting drunk, which wasn't exactly pretty. He went his way and I went mine, and as he lied to me about everything I began to lie to him about my money. I made some friends, and one of these happened to be the wife of a banker with brains.

Through him I made some small turns in real estate, covering them up so Jack wouldn't know. The fifth year after I left here I made twenty thousand dollars in one turn. Then I grub-staked two young fellows who wanted to try their luck in Nevada--nice college boys, all on the square. I invested about two thousand dollars in those youngsters, and as a result got into Broken Axe. It was so good that it scared me, and I sold out for the two hundred and fifty thousand you see on the slip there, and bought Government bonds with it. My banker covered all these things up for me as long as I had Jack on my hands. When he became intolerable I got rid of him, legally, for fear he'd cause trouble if he found what I'd been doing. I'm a little tired of running my own business now and mean to dump it off on you if you don't mind. I left my papers in a safety vault in Chicago, but here's my Phoenix Lumber and a jumble of miscellaneous junk I want to send West to be sold so I can put it into things around here. I'm not going back there any more."

"Lord!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, rubbing his head. "You made all that money yourself?"

"Sheer luck, mostly. But it isn't so bad, take it all round. By the way, in that junk there are some Sycamore Traction bonds I took off the bank's hands out there. They were carrying them as collateral for a man Sam Holton stung on one of his Western trips. He'd planted all he could in New York and had to try a new field. The bank foreclosed on the bonds and I bought twenty of them at sixty-five. I suppose from what I hear that they're not good for much but kindling."

"You got 'em at sixty-five, Lois?"

"The bank only lent on them at that, and there was no market for them out there. What's going to become of that road?"

Amzi glanced toward the empty counting-room where a single clerk was sealing the mail.

"Tom's trying to save it. And I've been buying those things myself at seventy."

"You think it's a good buy at that? Going to clean up something out of it?"

Amzi flushed, and moved uneasily in his seat.

"No. That's not just the way of it. I don't want to make any money out of it; neither does Tom. We're trying to protect the honest people around here at home who put their money into that scheme. Sam and Bill Holton made a big play for small investors, and a lot of people put their savings into it--the kind o' folks who scrimp to save a dollar a week. Tom's trying to sift out the truth about the building of the line, and if he can force the surrender of the construction company's graft over and above the fair cost of the road, Sycamore will be all right.

Your bonds are good, I think. People have been up in the air over the rumors, and anxious to sell at any price. What I'm doing, Lois, as far as I'm able--"

He fidgeted uneasily, seemingly reluctant to disclose just what he was doing.

"Well," she said impatiently.

"I'm picking up all I can from these little fellows--farmers, widows, and so on, and if Tom works out his scheme and the bonds are good, I'm going to let them have them back. That's all," he ended shamefacedly; and added, as though such a piece of quixotism required justification to a woman who had rolled up a fortune and was therefore likely to be critical of business methods, "I suppose I'd be ent.i.tled to interest."

"I suppose you would, you gay Napoleon of finance!" She looked at him musingly with good humor and affection in her fine eyes.

"I sort o' like this old town, Lois, and I don't want any harm to come to the folks--particularly these little fellows that don't know how to take care of themselves."

"Is Tom animated by the same philanthropic motives, or is he going to get a fee for his work?"

"Oh, he'll get paid all right. It's different with Tom."

"I suppose so. He ought to have a good fee if he can straighten out that tangle. But, Amzi--" She hesitated a moment, then began again more deliberately. "If you're getting more of those bonds than you want, you might buy some with my money--I mean with a view to taking care of these home investors who are in a panic about Sycamore. I suppose I owe something to the community myself--after--"

She gave him her quick, radiant smile.

He nodded gravely.

"All right, Lois. I'll remember that. And I'll tell you something else, now that we're on business matters. The First National Bank over the way there is built up in the air too high; it's got all the weaknesses of the Holton family--showy without any real bottom to it. Some of their stock has always been owned around through the state--quite a bunch of it--and Bill has had to sell part of his own holdings lately; he's got only a scant majority. I've been picking up a little myself, on the quiet. After Tom gets through with the Holtons, I doubt if Bill's going to be able to hold on. I know his line of customers; I guess I could tell you about every piece of paper he's got. It's a poor line, wobbly and uncertain. There was a new examiner here not long ago, and he stayed in town two or three days when he usually cleans up in a day. Banking is a business, Lois, not a pastime, and Bill isn't a banker; he's a promoter. Do you get the idea?"

"I think I see the point, but if his bank's going to smash, why don't you keep away from it? There's a double liability on national bank stock, isn't there? Seems to me that's the reason I never bought any."

"Right, Lois; but I don't intend the First shall bust. It won't do me or my bank or the town any good to have it go to smash. A town of the size of this don't live down a bank failure in one generation. It soaks clear in. I've got enough now to a.s.sert my rights as a stockholder, only I'm keeping under cover; there's no use in screaming in the newspapers. I haven't anything against Bill Holton, and if he pulls through, all right; but if he can't--well, I've never wanted to nationalize this bank, but that would be one way of doing it."

"You seem to be full of large thoughts, brother. You may play with my money all you like in your charitable games, with a few reservations. I like to eat and I don't want to spend my old age in the poorhouse.

There's cash enough here to run me for some time and you can use half of that in any way you like. I'll take any chance you do, and you'll find I won't cry if the boiler bursts. My Seattle real estate is all right--and I mean to hold fast to it. Now I want to do something for Phil; I want to make sure she never comes to want. That's only right, you know."

She waited for his affirmation.

"You ought to do it, Lois," he said. "I mean to do the right thing by her myself. If I should die to-night, Phil would be taken care of."

"That's like you, Amzi, but it isn't necessary. I want to set aside one hundred thousand for Phil. I'd like to make a trust fund of it, and let her have the income from now on, and turn over the princ.i.p.al when she's thirty, say. How does that strike you?"

"It's splendid, Lois. By George, it's grand!"

He blew his nose violently and wiped his eyes. And then his humor was touched again. Phil, the long-unmothered, the Main Street romp, the despair of sighing aunts, coming in for a hundred thousand dollars! And from the mother whom those intolerant, sn.o.bbish sisters had execrated.

He was grateful that he had lived to see this day.

"You've been fine to Phil, and I appreciate it, Amzi. She's told me all about it; the money you offered her and all that; and how you've stood by her. Those dear sisters of mine have undoubtedly worked me hard as an awful example. If they hadn't painted me so black, the dear beautiful child wouldn't have warmed to me as she has."

"If the girls knew you had all that money, Lois, it would brace 'em up a good deal. It's a funny thing about this funny old world, how the scarletest sins fade away into pale pink at the jingle of money."

This bit of philosophy seemed not to interest her; she was thinking of something else, humming softly. Her sins were evidently so little in her mind that she paid no heed to his remark or the confusion that covered him when he realized that he had been guilty of a tactless and ungracious speech.

"Mrs. King called on me this afternoon, the dear old soul."

"You don't say!"

"I do, indeed. She put on her best clothes and drove up in the old family chariot. She hasn't changed a bit."

Amzi sat pigeon-toed. Mrs. John Newman King, whose husband had been United States Senator and who still paid an annual visit to Was.h.i.+ngton, where the newspapers interviewed her as to her recollections of Lincoln, was given to frank, blunt speech as Amzi well knew. It was wholly possible that she had called on Lois to administer a gratuitous chastis.e.m.e.nt, and if she had done so, all Montgomery would know of it.

"Don't worry! She was as nice as pie. Josie had kindly gone to see her to tell her the 'family' had warned me away; the 'family' wanted her to know, you know. Didn't want an old and valued friend like the widow of John Newman King to think the good members of the House of Montgomery meant to overlook my wickedness. Not a bit of it! You can hear Josie going on. She evidently laid it on so thick it made the old lady hot.

When she came in, she took me by both hands and said, 'You silly little fool, so you've come back.' Then she kissed me. And I cried, being a silly little fool, just as she said. And she didn't say another word about what I'd done or hadn't done, but began talking about her trip abroad in 1872, when she saw it all, she says--the Nile and everything.

She swung around to Phil and told me a lot of funny stories about her.

She talked about Tom and you before she left; said she'd never made out how you and Tom meant to divide up the Bartlett girls; seems to be bent on marrying you both into the family."

"Thunder!" he exploded. This unaccountable sister had the most amazing way of setting a target to jingling and then calmly walking off. The thought of her husband's marrying again evidently gave her no concern whatever.

"Not nice of you to be keeping your own prospects a dark secret when I'm living under the same roof with you. Out with it."

"Don't be foolish, Lois."