Part 6

Jack slipped noiselessly out of the seat, and the guard, after feeling around in it for a second or two, turned with scorn upon the astonished Teuton, and in language of a slightly unparliamentary cast advised him to change his diet.

"You'll be seein' t'ings next!" he said.

Jack shook with internal laughter as the amazed son of the Rhine sat cautiously down again, his face showing a deal of relief to find that his first spooky impression was not correct, all of which for the remainder of the trip down-town he openly expressed with considerable volubility. Finally he was interrupted by the raucous voice of the guard crying:

"Wall Street!"

Now Jack had not consciously started out to go to Wall Street, but the announcement of the train's arrival there gave him a thrill.

"Wall Street, eh?" he muttered. "Ha! Hum! Methinks the financial stringency is over if this little old coat holds out! I seem to detect the odor of money."

He mounted the steps to the street, and wandered aimlessly down the great financial highway until he found himself standing before the gorgeous facade of the famous Urban National Bank. Here he paused a moment, and curiosity as much as anything else led him to enter its portals, and there within lay spread before his famished financial eyes, separated from his hands only by a slight bit of steel grillwork, countless packages, huge of bulk, of bank-notes, in all denominations, any one of which, once in his possession, would serve to put him at ease for the remainder of the year. Monte Cristo himself had no such stores of wealth within his reach in the treasure-caves of his wondrous island. The teller behind the grill was counting the contents of his safe, and as he bent over to foot up a column of figures Jack stopped in front of the little window and said:

"Good-morning!"

He did this not so much for the fun of it as for a precautionary test of his invisibility, for a great scheme had entered his mind. The teller looked up, craned his neck in every direction, and peered around to see who had addressed him.

"There must be something the matter with my nerves this morning," he said, scratching his head in bewilderment. "I was sure somebody spoke to me."

Jack had all he could do to keep from laughing outright, but safety bade him restrain the impulse, and in a moment he had climbed over the steel grillwork and entered the sacred precincts of Ready Money. Once within the teller's cage his heart began to thump so violently that it seemed impossible for him to escape detection, but so busy were all the bank people with the duties of the day that no one seemed to hear. And then our hero began. Within five minutes he had stowed away within the capacious pockets of his invisible cloak as many of the packages of bills, green-backed and yellow, as he could possibly carry there, and then, slipping out through the little door at the rear of the cage, he walked calmly out of the bank with them. Arrived on Broadway, he removed his coat and, hanging it over his arm, took a taxicab back to the Redmere.

He could hardly wait until he reached his apartment to count up the results of his morning's work, but his caution stood by him, and it was not until he had locked his door and barricaded it with the bureau rolled in front of it that he opened the various packages. There were ten of them altogether, and Jack's eyes nearly popped out of his head with wonder as he saw so much real money spread out before him. Three of the packages held one thousand dollars each in twenty-dollar bills, four of them held five hundred dollars each in five-dollar bills, and the other three totalled fifteen hundred dollars in ones and twos--sixty-five hundred dollars altogether.

"Mike!" he cried, going to the dumbwaiter shaft, and calling down, vociferously, "turn on the heat, and tell the boss to send a truck around here for his rent."

Hiding the money under the mattress of his bed, Jack removed the invisible cloak and hung it in the closet, taking care to lock the door thereof, and then he started to shave. His hand trembled too much for this, however, and after he had snipped off two or three pieces of his cheek he abandoned the effort, but his brief trial before the glass had a distinct moral influence upon him, for as his eye caught its own reflection in the mirror, and Jack came to look himself squarely in the face for the first time since his removal of the money from the bank, he found that he could not do it. His eye faltered and fell, and the question flashed across his mind as to the honesty of his morning's work.

"Hum!" he muttered, sitting down suddenly on his bed and staring at a hole in the carpet, "I hadn't thought of that before! What would my poor but honest parents think about this?"

He scratched the end of his nose thoughtfully.

"It isn't any too straight, even in these days of frenzied finance," he went on; "that is, it isn't unless I regard this thing as a loan! Of course if it's a loan--yes, it must be. Otherwise I'm no better than any other--"

His brow cleared as the idea entered his mind.

"I'll make it O. K. in a jiffy," he said.

He went to his writing-desk, and wrote to the cashier of the Urban National Bank as follows:

NEW YORK, _December 12, 1910_. _Cashier, the Urban National Bank,_ _New York City:_

DEAR SIR,--I think it only proper to inform you that, unknown to yourself or any other person in your bank, I have this morning negotiated a loan with your institution for six thousand five hundred dollars. I have a temporary need for this accommodation, and in order that the transaction may appear a trifle less informal, I beg to hand you herewith my six-months note for the amount borrowed, together with one hundred and ninety-five dollars in cash to cover discount charges, reckoned on a six-per-cent. basis. Please acknowledge receipt of the same in the Personal Column of the New York _Morning Gazoo_.

The charming ease and promptness with which this transaction was put through have given me a more than friendly feeling for your bank, and now that I have used one package of your money I take pleasure in saying that I shall not only recommend it to my friends, but shall hereafter use no other.

Cordially yours, A FRIEND IN NEED.

This written, Jack purchased a blank promissory note at a stationery store on the corner and filled it in.

$6,500. NEW YORK, _December 12, 1910_.

Six months after date I promise to pay to the order of the Urban National Bank Six thousand five hundred dollars at the Urban National Bank, New York City. Value received.

ME.

Both these interesting documents he now inclosed in an envelope, with one hundred and ninety-five dollars in bills, sending the whole by special-delivery mail to the cashier of the bank.

"There!" said Jack, when he had completed this righteous act. "I can now look myself in the eye again."

* * * * *

From this time on Jack wore his invisible cloak nearly all the time. He found it very convenient, especially when he wished to go to the theatre, or to ride on any of our vehicles of public transportation. Once he seriously contemplated a trip to Europe in it, but this was postponed by a sudden important development which called for his attention nearer home. While seated in the back of Colonel Midas's box at the Metropolitan Opera House one night, listening to the dreamy numbers of "La Boheme," utterly unobserved, of course, by any of the other occupants of the box, thanks to his magic cloak, Jack overheard Colonel Midas engaged in a strenuous conversation with one of his male relatives, who had asked the eminent financier for some kind of a tip that would make a rich man of him.

"If you'll tell me whether the San Francisco, Omaha & Mott Haven is going to buy the K., T. & W. or not, Colonel," the man had said, "I can make a million or two."

"Of course you could, Jim," said the Colonel, "but I can't tell you now what will be done in that matter. I don't know myself whether we'll buy K., T. & W. or build our own connecting line. We haven't decided. If we do buy, the stock will go jumping up ten, twenty, thirty points at a time. If we don't, the bottom will drop out of it. It's the turn of a hand which way that cat will jump, but I'll do this for you: As soon as I do know I'll give you twenty-four hours' start with the inside information. We have a secret meeting to-morrow at my office to discuss the matter, and when we come to a definite understanding I'll give you the tip. What I can tell you now is that the new line into Buffalo is going to run through Rocky Corners, and anybody who gets hold of old Hiram Bumpus's farm up there under a hundred thousand will clear half a million without getting out of bed."

"Why don't you go in and buy it yourself?" demanded the other.

"Because I'm not wasting my gray matter on piking little half-million-dollar deals, that's why," retorted Midas, with a glance of scorn at his guest.

Bursting with this valuable information, Jack immediately left the Opera House and dispatched a rush telegram to Hiram Bumpus at Rocky Corners offering him fifty thousand dollars for his farm.

The answer came back the next morning:

Price of farm seventy-five thousand, cash. No checks taken.

HIRAM BUMPUS.

To which Jack immediately replied: "Price satisfactory. Will arrive Thursday with money."

This done, our hero proceeded to camp on the front doorstep of Colonel Midas, and when that distinguished financier appeared to take his motor down to his office Jack, still wearing his invisible cloak, climbed in alongside of him, and hardly daring to breathe lest he should betray his presence in the car, rode down to the offices of the Midas Trust Company with the magnate himself. Here Midas descended from the car, and Jack, close upon his heels, followed him into that holy of financial holies, the private office.

"Any word from Rockernegie?" asked the Colonel of his secretary, as he seated himself at his desk, Jack meanwhile having perched himself on the mantelpiece.

"Here at ten," returned the secretary, laconically. They did not even waste breath in that office.

"Moneypenny?"

"Wires, here ten-fifteen."

"Asterbilt?"

"Yachting. Mediterranean. Leaves all to you."

"Good!" said Midas. "When they come show them in, and I'm out to everybody else."

And then it was that Jack had his first glimpse of really great men in action. By ten-thirty all the magnates of finance, with the exception of Mr. Asterbilt, were on hand, and the secret meeting of the rulers of the San Francisco, Omaha & Mott Haven Transcontinental Railway System was on. They came down to business without any preliminaries.

"Is it buy or build?" asked Midas.

"Buy," said Rockernegie.

"Build," said Moneypenny.

"All right--we buy," said Midas.

"It's a hold-up," said Moneypenny. "K., T. & W. was built for no other purpose."

"Perfectly true," said Midas. "Therefore, instead of announcing that we shall buy, thus sending the price up till it bumps against the Dipper, let us announce that we have decided to build our own connecting line, and when K., T. & W. lands down around 1-7/8 we can go in and scoop it."

"Always right, Midas," said Rockernegie.

"I'll change my vote and make it unanimous," said Moneypenny, whereupon the Colonel passed the cigars and the meeting stood adjourned. It had taken seven minutes to settle a question involving millions upon millions of dollars, and for a moment Jack stood aghast, but for no longer than a moment, for the time for him to get busy had arrived. He was in possession of the most valuable secret on Wall Street, and it behooved him to begin operations. Passing hastily out of the office, he first paid a visit to the Urban National, where after an hour's hard work he succeeded in getting $300,000 out of the vaults, leaving on the cashier's desk, while he was out at lunch, as security for his loan, a sufficient amount of gilt-edged collateral, also taken from the vaults of the bank itself.

"It's all right," Jack wrote in his memorandum to the cashier. "I have a big transaction on hand which can't help win out, and I shall rejoice your heart by liquidating all my loans with you before spring. After all, my dear sir, all business must be done on confidence, and I assure you you can have plenty in me. I know myself through and through, and can testify to my absolute integrity. Meanwhile let me repeat that your money is the best I have ever used, and is received everywhere with real enthusiasm."

That night before he retired, operating through a dozen brokers' offices so as not to attract undue attention, Jack purchased five thousand shares of K., T. & W. at 20, paying for them in cash. The next morning on the announcement from Colonel Midas's office that the San Francisco, Omaha & Mott Haven road had decided not to take over the property, K., T. & W. fell off to 10, at which figure, after a hurried visit to the bank, Jack acquired ten thousand more shares. At the end of the week K., T. & W. had slumped to 3-1/8, whereat Jack pyramided by taking over twenty thousand more, all paid for in cash, having meanwhile sent his lawyer to Rocky Corners with seventy-five thousand dollars to close his real-estate deal with Hiram Bumpus.

In the brief period of ten days the unfortunate tenant of the freezing apartment at the Redmere had become the owner of fifty thousand shares of K., T. & W., as well as the proprietor of a thirty-thousand-acre farm through which a new line of railway was sure to pass.

So the campaign went on over the Christmas season. Jack, by following close on the heels of Midas or Moneypenny, it mattered little which, secured inside information as to every deal of magnitude on Wall Street whole days, and even weeks, before anybody else knew about it; and having the resources of the Urban National to draw upon at need, he was never at a loss how to finance himself. January came, and just as it seemed as if K., T. & W. was about to be wiped out of existence came the report that the property had been acquired by the San Francisco, Omaha & Mott Haven crowd, and that its stock had been put on an eight-per-cent. guaranteed-dividend basis. The quotation immediately began to soar. K., T. & W. began to jump like a kangaroo. First it leaped to 30, then to 68. On the tenth of January it opened at 128-7/8, and closed at 150, where it stuck. For a time Jack waited for a further rise, but it failed to come, and in February he sold one hundred and twenty thousand shares, which had cost him on an average of $7 a share, for $150 a share, realizing a profit of $17,160,000. Reference to his books showed that he had drawn on the Urban National for a trifle over $1,250,000, which sum he now started to return in the same laborious fashion in which it had been acquired. Every day for a period of ten days the lad would put on his invisible cloak, and at the cashier's lunch-hour would walk into his office and deposit a great bundle of currency on his desk. Once he found that gentleman, and the president of the bank as well, awaiting him, but it made no difference. Secure in the concealment of his marvellous cloak, Jack stood in the doorway and tossed the package of bills into the room, hitting the astonished president of the bank himself squarely in the stomach with it.

In this way complete restitution with interest was made, and on the first of February Jack found himself clear of all obligations, with a comfortable fortune of over $15,000,000 on his hands, which made any further involuntary loans on the bank's part unnecessary; but what was even better than this, the meteoric successes of the young millionaire upon the Street brought him such renown that it was not long before the powers began to take notice.

"That young man," said Colonel Midas, after watching him for a little while, "is the most singularly astute person I ever met. I don't wish to be vulgar, but he has been the nigger in every woodpile I have tackled for six months. He knows what I am going to do almost as quick as I do. We'll have to take him in the firm."

"He has a singularly keen premonition as to values," observed Mr. Rockernegie. "I've half a mind to start a trust company and make him president."

As for Mr. Moneypenny, after a year's experience at finding Jack at the bottom of pretty nearly every scheme he went into, he made the following observation to his daughter, as he pointed Jack out to her at the opera--in his own box now--one night.

"That young man in the third box on the left, my dear, is young Mr. Jack Hardluck. He's so keen that I don't even dare think what I'm going to do for fear he'll find it out!"

"If that's the case, papa," said Miss Moneypenny, blushing, "the best thing to do is to take him into the family. Don't you think you'd better--"

The girl hung her head shyly.

"Better what, my dear?" asked the old billionaire, kindly.

"Give him to me for a Christmas present?" she answered. "I think I could get to like him very, very much."

And, indeed, that is how it came to be that in due course of time the young financier became the son-in-law of one of the financial powers of the world.

As for the invisible cloak, Jack wears it now only to travel _incog._, which for a multi-millionaire is sometimes convenient.

Incidentally and in conclusion, let me add that Mike Brannigan, once the janitor of the Redmere, is now the owner of that handsome apartment-house, having received the title-deeds through the mails from some anonymous benefactor.

"Who the divvle sint it, I dinnaw!" he said. "Nor what for he done it, nayther. I ain't never done nothin' to injure nobody!"

VI

THE RETURN OF ALADDIN

Night had fallen over the city, but the work in the little tailor shop on the Bowery still went on. The toiling widow of Mustafa, the incorporated valet of the Bachelors' Aid Society, who had died the winter before, leaving his family with nothing but a few debts and his ironing-board, was wearily struggling with the last batch of undarned socks received that morning from the association. She sighed deeply as she labored, for her fingers were sore with many stitches.

"Heigho!" she murmured, sadly. "Why don't these bachelors get married and have this sort of thing done at home, I wonder? This is the ten-thousandth sock I have darned since Christmas, and as for the suspender buttons, the good Lord only knows how many of those I have sewed on. There ought to be a law compelling men to marry on penalty of having to do their own mending."

Poor woman! In the weariness of her spirit she little dreamed that she was growing petulant with her bread and butter. Suddenly she heard the door of the little shop without open, and her son Aladdin entered, a great, buoyant lad of twenty, cheerful of spirit and a good deal of a giant physically.

"Well, Worthless," she said, with an affectionate glance into his fine eyes, "where have you been all day?"

"Looking for work, mother, as usual," said the young man, throwing a small package on the table. "And you?"

"The same old drudgery, dear," she replied, with a sigh. "Did you have any luck?"

"No, mother dear, not a bit," replied Aladdin.

"Do you mean to tell me that in all this great city there is no work of any kind that a hale, hearty, hungry boy like you can get to do?" she demanded.

"Plenty of it, mother," replied the boy; "plenty of it, but nothing in my special line. Lots of snow-shovelling jobs and a position as guard on the Subway were offered me, but I cannot demean myself by taking anything of that sort, Mummsy dear. Father in the last days of his life spent too many hours teaching me how to raise mushrooms under glass for me to dishonor his memory by undertaking labor that is beneath that in artistic quality, and just at present I cannot find anybody in all this city who wants a helper in mushroom culture."

"Then we shall have to go supperless to bed," sighed the poor woman. "Not a penny in the house and the pantry bare. Oh, Aladdin, Aladdin, why will you not give up this false pride of yours and get some kind of a job that will at least feed yourself and help me pay the rent?"

The boy was silent. He had had this same argument with his mother time and time and again, and he was quite aware of the futility of speech in trying to overcome her objections to what she termed his incorrigible idleness.

"What have you in the package?" the woman asked, after a prolonged silence.

"I don't know," replied Aladdin. "I picked it up outside the stage-door of the Helicon Theatre. I saw it lying in the snow and I brought it along with me. It is probably some kind of a make-up box belonging to one of the performers. If there is any reward offered in any of the morning papers for its return, maybe I shall earn a few honest pennies by taking it back to its owner."

His mother busied herself with the string, and in a moment it came untied and a small brass lamp rolled out of the brown-paper covering. It was very dirty and much battered.

"Humph!" said she, scornfully, gazing at the homely little object. "I don't think anybody will be foolish enough to offer a reward for a trumpery little thing like that."

"Ah, well," said Aladdin, gazing out of the shop window at the scurrying crowds on the sidewalk, "it might be worse, Mummsy dear. We at least have a roof over our heads this night, which is more than some of those poor wretches have, and unless I am very much mistaken this storm that is upon us is going to be a blizzard."

In very truth a blizzard had descended upon the city. All the transportation lines were blocked, and over on Broadway all traffic had been tied up for hours. Thanks to the elevated-railway structure, this portion of the Bowery still remained passable. Even this was momentarily piling higher and higher with the snow, and the wind was in one of its most violently rampageous moods.

"How would you feel if your little Aladdin had a job as a chauffeur on a night like this?" the lad went on.

The poor woman shuddered and was about to reply, when a terrific crash from without drove all thought of words from her mind. Hastily running to the window, she, too, peered out into the street for a moment over Aladdin's shoulder, but only for a moment, for in an instant the boy was up and making for the door of the little tailor shop. A heavy limousine car lay overturned upon its side upon the walk, its wheels having skidded on the slippery, snow-covered pavement, and striking the curb, toppled completely over. Aladdin, with the agility of a small monkey, soon mounted to the upper side of the overturned vehicle, and, opening the door, had assisted a beautifully arrayed young woman, possibly a year or two younger than himself, from within, and after her, fuming and condemning his luck and the world in general, a gray-haired and apparently irascible old gentleman.

"Mother!" cried Aladdin, as the girl fainted in his arms, "come quickly. The young lady has fainted."

The good woman needed no second bidding. She hastened to his side, and the limp form of the young girl was carried in her strong, motherly arms into the little back room behind the tailor shop, which formed their only home. Shortly afterward the old gentleman came also, ushered in by Aladdin.

"She is safe?" cried he, with an anxious glance at the prostrate form of his daughter.

"Perfectly so, sir," replied Aladdin's mother. "She has only fainted. Won't you sit down, sir?" she added. "You look a little shaken up yourself."

"Thank you," said the old gentleman, gazing around the room vainly in search of a chair. "Ah--what shall I sit down on, madam?"

"Try the stove, sir," laughed Aladdin. "It may warm it up a bit."