Tutt and Mr. Tutt Part 23

He smiled.

"And I haven't seen Louisa for three years--my only daughter. I shall enjoy being with her. She was such a dear little girl! I'll tell you another secret"--his voice dropped to a whisper--"I've found out there's a gold mine on her farm, only she doesn't know it. A rich vein runs right through her cow pasture. We'll be rich! Wouldn't it be fine, Mr.

Tutt, to be rich? Then I'm going to pay you in real money for all you've done for me--thousands! But until then I'm going to let you have these--all my securities; my own, you know, every one of them."

He placed the suitcase in front of Mr. Tutt and opened the clasps with his shaking old fingers. It bulged with bonds, and he dumped them forth until they covered the top of the desk.

"These are my jewels!" he said. "There's millions represented here!" He lifted one tenderly and held it to the light, fresh as it came from the engraver's press--a thousand dollar first-mortgage bond of The Chicago Water Front and Terminal Company. "Look at that! Good as gold--if the courts only knew the law."

He took up a yellow package of valueless obligations upon the top of which an old-fas.h.i.+oned locomotive from whose bell-shaped funnel the smoke poured in picturesque black clouds, dragging behind it a chain of funny little pa.s.senger coaches, drove furiously along beside a rus.h.i.+ng river through fields rich with corn and wheat amid a border of dollar signs.

"The Great Lakes and Canadian Southern," he crooned lovingly. "The child of my heart! The district attorney kept all the rest--as evidence, he claimed, but some day you'll see he'll bring an action against the Lake Sh.o.r.e or the New York Central based on these bonds. Yes, sir! They're all right!"

He pawed them over, picking out favorites here and there and excitedly extolling the merits of the imaginary properties they represented. There were the repudiated bonds of Southern states and munic.i.p.alities of railroads upon whose tracks no wheel had ever turned; of factories never built except in Doc Barrows' addled brain; of companies which had defaulted and given stock for their worthless obligations; certificates of oil, mining and land companies; deeds to tracts now covered with sky sc.r.a.pers in Pittsburgh, St. Louis and New York--each and every one of them not worth the paper they were printed on except to some crook who dealt in high finance. But they were exquisitely engraved, quite lovely to look at, and Doc Barrows gloated upon them with scintillating eyes.

"Ain't they beauties?" he sighed. "Some day--yes sir!--some day they'll be worth real money. I paid it for some of 'em. But they're yours--all yours."

He gathered them up with care and returned them to the suitcase, then fastened the clasps and patted the leather cover with his hand.

"They are yours, sir!" he exclaimed dramatically.

"As you say," agreed Mr. Tutt, "there's gold lying round everywhere if we only had sense enough to look for it. But I think you're wise to retire. After all, you have the satisfaction of knowing that your enterprises were sound even if other people disagreed with you."

"If this was 1819 instead of 1919 I'd own Chicago," began Doc, a gleam appearing in his eye. "But they don't want to upset the status quo--that's why I haven't got a fair chance. But they needn't worry! I'd be generous with 'em--give 'em easy terms--long leases and nominal rents."

"But you'll like living with your daughter, I'm sure," said Mr. Tutt.

"It will make a new man of you in no time."

"Healthiest spot in northern New York," exclaimed Doc. "Within two miles of a lake--fis.h.i.+ng, shooting, outdoor recreation of all kinds, an ideal site for a mammoth summer hotel."

Mr. Tutt rose and laid his arms round old Doc Barrows' shoulders.

"Thank you a thousand times," he said gratefully, "for the securities.

I'll be glad to keep them for you in my vault." His lips puckered in a stealthy smile which he tried hard to conceal.

"Louisa may want to repaper the farmhouse some time," he added to himself.

"Oh, they're all yours to keep!" insisted Doc. "I want you to have them!" His voice trembled.

"Well, well!" answered Mr. Tutt. "Leave it that way; but if you ever should want them they'll be here waiting for you."

"I'm no Indian giver!" replied Doc with dignity. "Give, give, give a thing--never take it back again."

He laughed rather childishly. He was evidently embarra.s.sed.

"Could--could you let me have the loan of seventy-five cents?" he asked shyly.

Down below, inside a doorway upon the other side of the street, Sergeant Murtha of the Detective Bureau waited for Doc Barrows to come out and be arrested again. Murtha had known Doc for fifteen years as a harmless old nut who had rarely succeeded in cheating anybody, but who was regarded as generally undesirable by the authorities and sent away every few years in order to keep him out of mischief. There was no danger that the public would accept Doc's version of the nature or value of his securities, but there was always the chance that some of his worthless bonds--those b.a.s.t.a.r.d offsprings of his cracked old brain--would find their way into less honest but saner hands. So Doc rattled about from penitentiary to prison and from prison to madhouse and out again, constantly taking appeals and securing writs of habeas corpus, and feeling mildly resentful, but not particularly so, that people should be so interfering with his business. Now as from force of long habit he peered out of the doorway before making his exit; he looked like one of the John Sargent's prophets gone a little madder than usual--a Jeremiah or a Habakkuk.

"h.e.l.lo, Doc!" called Murtha in hearty, friendly tones. "Hie spy! Come on out!"

"Oh, how d'ye do, captain!" responded Doc. "How are you? I was just interviewing my solicitor."

"Sorry," said Murtha. "The inspector wants to see you."

Doc flinched.

"But they've just let me go!" he protested faintly.

"It's one of those old indictments--Chicago Water Front or something.

Anyhow--Here! Hold on to yourself!"

He threw his arms around the old man, who seemed on the point of falling.

"Oh, captain! That's all over! I served time for that out in Illinois!"

For some strange reason all the insanity had gone out of his bearing.

"Not in this state," answered Murtha. New pity for this poor old wastrel took hold upon him. "What were you going to do?"

"I was going to retire, captain," said Doc faintly. "My daughter's husband--he owned a farm up in Cayuga County--well, he died and I was planning to go up there and live with her."

"And sting all the b.o.o.bs?" grinned Murtha not unsympathetically. "How much money have you got?"

"Seventy-five cents."

"How much is the ticket?"

"About nine dollars," quavered Doc. "But I know a man down on Chatham Square who might buy a block of stock in the Last Chance Gold Mining Company; I could get the money that way."

"What's the Last Chance Gold Mining Company?" asked Murtha sharply.

"It's a company I'm going to organize. I'll tell you a secret, Murtha.

There's a vein of gold runs right through my daughter Louisa's cow pasture--she doesn't know anything about it--"

"Oh, h.e.l.l!" exclaimed Murtha. "Come along to the station. I'll let you have the nine bones. And you can put me down for half a million of the underwriting."

That same evening Mr. Tutt was toasting his carpet slippers before the sea-coal fire in his library, sipping a hot toddy and rereading for the eleventh time the "Lives of the Chancellors" when Miranda, who had not yet finished was.h.i.+ng the few dishes incident to her master's meager supper, pushed open the door and announced that a lady was calling.

"She said you'd know her sho' enough, Mis' Tutt," grinned Miranda, swinging her dishrag, "'case you and she used to live tergidder when you was a young man."

This scandalous announcement did not have the startling effect upon the respectable Mr. Tutt which might naturally have been antic.i.p.ated, since he was quite used to Miranda's forms of expression.

"It must be Mrs. Effingham," he remarked, closing the career of Lord Eldon and removing his feet from the fender.

"Dat's who it is!" answered Miranda. "She's downstairs waitin' to come up."