Chapter 3

"Now look here: do you really think any girl with a million would take a chance on me?"

"She'll jump at it."

Duncan thought this over for a while. Then his lips twitched. "What's the matter with her?" he inquired. "I'm willing to play the game as it lies, but I bar lunatics and cripples."

"There's no particular her--yet. You can take your pick. I've no more idea where she is than you have."

"Now I know you're stark, staring, gibbering----"

"Not a bit of it. I'm inspired--that's all. I've solved your problem--you only can't believe it."

"How could I? What the devil are you getting at, anyhow?"

"This pet scheme of mine. Lend me your ears. Have you ever lived in a one-horse country town--a place with one unspeakable hotel and about twenty stores and five churches?"

"No ..."

"I have; I was born in one of 'em.... Have you any idea what becomes of the young people of such towns?"

"Not a glimmering."

"Then I'll enlighten your egregious density. ...The boys--those who've got the stuff in them--strike out for the cities to make their everlasting fortunes. Generally they do it, too."

"The same as you."

"The same as me," assented Kellogg, unperturbed. "But the yaps, the Jaspers, stay there and clerk in father's store. After office-hours they put on their very best mail-order clothes and parade up and down Main Street, talking loud and flirting obviously with the girls. The girls haven't much else to do; they don't find it so easy to get away. A few of 'em escape to boarding-schools and colleges, where they meet and marry young men from the cities, but the majority of them have to stay at home and help mother--that's a tradition. If there are two children or more, the boys get the chance every time; the girls stay home to comfort the old folks in their old age. Why, by the time they're old enough to think of marrying--and they begin young, for that's about the only excitement they find available--you won't find a small country town between here and the Mississippi where there aren't about four girls to every boy."

"It's a horrible thought ..."

"You'd think so if you knew what the boys were like. There isn't one in ten that a girl with any sense or self-respect could force herself to marry if she ever saw anything better. Do you begin to see my drift?"

"I do not. But go on drifting."

"No? Why, the demand for eligible males is three hundred per cent. in excess of the supply. Don't you know--no, you don't: I got to that first--that there are twenty times as many old maids in small country towns as there are in the cities? It's a fact, and the reason for it is because when they were young they couldn't lower themselves to accept the pick of the local matrimonial market. Now, do you see--?"

"You're as interesting as a magazine serial. Please continue in your next. I pant with anticipation."

"You're an ass.... Now take a young chap from a city, with a good appearance, more or less a gentleman, who doesn't talk like a yap or walk like a yap or dress like a yap or act like a yap, and throw him into such a town long enough for the girls to get acquainted with him. He simply can't lose, can't fail to cop out the best-looking girl with the biggest bank-roll in town. I tell you, there's nothing to it!"

"It's wonderful to listen to you, Harry."

"I'm talking horse sense, my son. Now consider yourself: down on your luck, don't know how to earn a decent living, refusing to accept anything from your friends, ready (you say) to do almost anything to get some money.... And think of the country heiresses, with plenty of money for two, pining away in--in innocuous desuetude--hundreds of them, fine, straight, good girls, girls you could easily fall in love with, sighing their lives away for the lack of the likes of you.... Now, why not take one, Nat--when you come to consider it, it's your duty--marry her and her bank-roll, make her happy, make yourself happy, and live a contented life on the sunny side of Easy Street for the rest of your natural born days? Can't you see it now?"

"Yes," Duncan admitted, half-persuaded of the plausibility of the scheme. "I see--and I admire immensely the intellect that conceived the notion, Harry. But ... I can't help thinking there must be a catch in it somewhere."

"Not if you follow my instructions. You see, having come from just such a hole-in-the-ground, I know just what I'm talking about. Believe me, everything depends on the way you go about it. There are a lot of things to contend with at first; you won't enjoy it at all, to begin with. But I can demonstrate how it can be managed so that you'll win out to a moral certainty."

Duncan drew a deep breath, sat back and looked Kellogg over very critically. There was not a suspicion of a gleam of humour in his face; to the contrary, it blazed with the ardour of the instinctive schemer, the man who, with the ability to originate, throws himself heart and soul into the promotion of the product of his imagination. Kellogg was not sketching the outlines of a gigantic practical joke; he believed implicitly in the feasibility of his project; and so strongly that he could infuse even the less susceptible fancy of Duncan with some of his faith.

"If I didn't know you so well, Harry," said Duncan slowly, "I'd be certain you were mad. I'm not at all sure that I'm sane. It's raving idiocy--and it's a pretty damned rank thing to do, to start deliberately out to marry a woman for her money. But I've been through a little hell of my own in my time, and--it's not alluring to contemplate a return to it. There's nothing mad enough nor bad enough to stop me. What've I got to do?"

Kellogg beamed his triumph. "You'll try it on, then?"

"I'll try anything on. It's a contemptible, low-lived piece of business--but good may come of it; you can't tell. What've I got to do?"

Slipping back, Kellogg knitted his fingers and stared at the ceiling, smiling faintly to himself as he enumerated the conditions that first appealed to his understanding as essentials toward success.

"First, pick out your town: one of two or three thousand inhabitants--no larger. I'd suggest, at a hazard guess, some place in the interior of Pennsylvania. Most of such towns have at least one rich man with a marriageable daughter--but we'll make sure of that before we settle on one. Of course any suburban town is barred."

"How so?"

"Oh, they don't count. The girls always know people in the city--can get there easily. That spoils the game."

"How about the game laws?"

"I'm coming to them. Of course there isn't an open or close season, and the hunting's always good, but there are a few precautionary measures to be taken if you want to be sure of bagging an heiress. You won't like most of 'em."

"Like 'em! I'll live by them!"

"Well, here come the things you mustn't do. You mustn't swear or use slang; you mustn't smoke and you mustn't drink--"

"Heavens! are these people as inhuman as all that?"

"Worse than that. It might be fatal if you were ever seen in the hotel bar. And to begin with, you must refuse all invitations, of any sort, whether to dances, parties, church sociables, or even Sunday dinners."

"Why _Sunday_ dinners?"

"Because Sunday's the only day you'll be invited. Dinner on week-days is from twelve to twelve-thirty, and it's strictly a business matter--no time for guests. But you needn't fret; they won't ask you till they've sized you up pretty carefully."

"Oh!..."

"Moreover, you must be very particular about your dress; it must be absolutely faultless, but very quiet: clothing sober--dark greys and blacks--and plain, but the very last word as to cut and fit. And everything must be in keeping--the very best of shirts, collars, ties, hats, socks, shoes, underwear--." Kellogg caught Duncan's look and laughed. "Your laundress will report on everything, you know; so you must be impeccable."

"I'll be even that--whatever it is."

"Be very particular about having your shoes polished, shave daily and manicure yourself religiously--but don't let 'em catch you at it."

"Would they raid me if they did?"

"And then, my son, you must work."

Kellogg paused to let his lesson sink in. After a time Duncan observed plaintively: "I knew there was a catch in it somewhere. What kind of work?"

"It doesn't make any difference, so long as you get and hold some job in the town."

"Well, that lets me out. You'll have to sic some other poor devil on this glittering proposition of yours. I couldn't hold a job in--"

"Wait! I'll tell you how to do it in just a minute."

"I don't mind listening, but--"

"You'll cinch the whole business by going to church without a break. Don't ever fail--morning and evening every Sunday. Don't forget that."

"Why?"

"It's the most important thing of all."

"Does going to church make such a hit with the young female Jasper--the Jasperette, as it were?"

"It'll make you more solid than anything else with her popper and mommer, and that's very necessary when you're a candidate for their ducats as well as their daughter. You must work and you must go to church."

"That can't be all. Surely you can think of something else?"

"Those are the cardinal rules--church and work until you've landed your heiress. After that you can move back to civilisation.... Now as soon as you strike your town you want to make arrangements for board and lodging in some old woman's house--preferably an old maid. You'll be sure to find at least half a dozen of 'em, willing to take boarders, but you want to be equally sure to pick out the one that talks the most, so that she'll tell the neighbours all about you. Don't worry about that, though, they all talk. When you've moved In, stock up your room with about twenty of the driest-looking books in the world--law books look most imposing; fix up a table with lots of stationery--pens and pencils, red and black ink and all that sort of thing; make the room look as if you were the most sincere student ever. And by no means neglect to have a well-worn Bible prominently in evidence: you can buy one second-hand at some book-store before you start out."

"I'd have to, of course. I thank you for the flattery. Proceed with the programme of the gay, mad life I must lead. I'm going to have a swell time: that's perfectly plain."

"As soon as you're shaken down in your room, make the rounds of the stores and ask for work. Try and get into the dry-goods emporium if you can: the girls all shop there. But anything will do, except a grocery or a hardware store and places like that. You mustn't consider any employment that would soil your clothes or roughen your lily-white hands."

"You expect me to believe I'd have any chance of winning a millionaire's daughter if I were a ribbon-clerk in a dry-goods store?"

"The best in the world. The ribbon-clerk is her social equal; he calls her Mary and she calls him Joe."

"Done with you: me for the ribbon counter. Anything else?"

"The storekeepers aren't apt to employ you at first; they'll be suspicious of you."

"They will be afterwards, all right. However--?"

"So you must simply call on them--walk in, locate the boss and tell him: 'I'm looking for employment.' Don't press it; just say it and get out."

"No trouble whatever about that; it's always that way when I ask for work."

"They'll send for you before long, when they make up their minds that you're a decent, moral young man; for they know you'll draw trade. And every Sunday--"

"I know: church!"

"Absolutely.... Pick out the one the rich folks go to. Go in quietly and do just as they do: stand up and kneel, look up the hymns and sing, just when they do. Be careful not to sing too loud, or anything like that: just do it all modestly, as if you were used to it. Better go to church here two or three times and get the hang of it...."

"Here, now--"

"Nearly all the wealthy codgers in such towns are deacons, you see, and though they may not speak to you for months on the street, it's their business to waylay you after the service is over and shake hands with you and tell you they hope you enjoyed the sermon and ask you to come again. And you can bank on it, they'll all take notice from the first."

"It's no wonder Bartlett made you a partner, Harry."

"Now behave. I want you to get in right. ... If you follow the rules I've outlined, not only will all the girls in town be falling over themselves to get to you first, but their fond parents will be egging them on. Then all you've got to do is to pick out the one with the biggest bundle and--"

"Make a play for her?"

"Not on your life. That would be fatal. Your part is to put yourself in her way. She'll do all the courting, and when she scents the psychological moment she'll do the proposing."

"It doesn't sound natural, but you certainly seem to know what you're drooling about."

"You can anchor to that, Nat."

"And are you finished?"

"I am. Of course I'll probably think of more things to wise you to, before you go."

Duncan laughed shortly and tilted back in his chair, selecting another cigarette. "And you're the chap who wanted me to go to some bromidic old show to-night! Harry, you're immense. Why didn't you ever let me suspect you had all this romantic imagination in your system?"

"Imagination be blowed, son. This is business." Kellogg removed the stopper from the decanter and filled both glasses again. "Well, what do you say?"

"I've just said my say, Harry. It's amazing; I'm proud of you."

"But will you do it?"

"Everything else aside, how can I? I've got to live, you know."

"But I propose to stake you."

Duncan came down to earth. "No, you won't; not a cent. I'm in earnest about this thing: no more sponging on you, Harry. Besides--"

"No, seriously, Nat: I mean this, every word of it. I want you to do it--to please me, if you like; I've a notion something will come of it. And I believe from the bottom of my heart there's not the slightest risk if you'll play the cards as they fall, according to Hoyle."

"Harry, I believe you do."

"I do, firmly. And I'll put the proposition on a business basis, if you like."

"Go on; there's no holding you."

"You start out to-morrow and order your war kit. Get everything you need, and plenty of it, and have the bills sent to me. You can be ready inside a fortnight. The day you start I'll advance you five hundred dollars. When you're married you can repay me the amount of the advances with interest at ten per cent, and I'll consider it a mighty good deal for myself. Now, will you?"

"You mean it?"

"Every word of it. Well?"

For a moment longer Duncan hesitated; then the vision of what he must return to, otherwise, decided him. In desperation he accepted. "It's a drowning man's straw," he said, a little breathlessly. "I'm sure I shouldn't. But I will."

Kellogg flung a hand across the table, palm uppermost.

"Word of honour, Nat?"

Duncan let his hand fall into it. "Word of honour! I'll see it through."

"Good! It's a bargain." Kellogg lifted his glass high in air. "To the fortune hunter!" he cried, half laughing.

Duncan nervously fingered the stem of his glass. "God help the future Mrs. Duncan!" he said, and drank.

IV

TRIUMPH OF MR. HOMER LITTLEJOHN

The twenty-first of June was a day of memorable triumph to me, a day of memorable events for Radville.

Only the evening previous Will Bigelow and I had indulged in acrimonious argument in the office of the Bigelow House, the subject of contention being the importance of the work to which I am devoting my declining years, to wit, the recording of _The History of Radville Township, Westerly County, Pennsylvania_; Will maintaining with that obstinacy for which he is famous, that nothing ever had happened, does happen, can or will happen in our community, I insisting gently but firmly that it knows no day unmarked by important occurrence (for it would ill become me, as the only literary man in Radville, to yield a point in dispute with the proprietor of the town tavern). Besides, he was wrong, even as I was indisputably right--only he had not the grace to admit it. We ended vulgarly with a bet, Will wagering me the best five-cent Clear Havana in the Bigelow House sample-room that nothing worth mentioning would take place in Radville before sundown of the following day.

I left him, returning to my room at Miss Carpenter's (Will and I are old friends, but I refuse to eat the food he serves his guests), warmed by the prospect of certain triumph if a little appalled by the prospect of winning the stake; and sympathising a little with Will, who, for all his egregious stubborness, has some excuse for upholding his unreasonable and ridiculous views. He knows no better, having never had the opportunity to find out for himself how utterly absurd are his claims for the outside world. Whereas I have.

He's an adventurer at heart, Will Bigelow, a romantic soul crusted heavily with character--like a volcano smouldering beneath its lava. For many years he has managed the Bigelow House, with his thoughts apart from it, his eyes ever seeking the horizon that recedes beyond the soaring rim of our encircling cup of hills, his heart forever yearning forth to the outer world; which he erroneously conceives to be a theatre of events--as if outside of Radville only could there be things worth seeing, considering, or doing, or matters of any sort that move momentously! As long as I've known the man (and we played truant together fifty years ago--hookey, we called it then) he's had his heart set on going forth from Radville, "for to admire and for to see, for to view this wide world o'er"; always he has presented himself to me as one poised on the pinnacle of purpose, ready the next instant to dive and strike out into the teeming unknown beyond the barrier hills. But this promise he has never fulfilled. He still maintains that he will surely go--next week--after the hayin's over--as soon as the ice is in--the minute Mary graduates from High School. ... But I know he never will.

So to Will Radville is as dull as ditchwater to a teamster; to me it's as fascinating as that same ditchwater to a biologist with a microscope. I see nothing going on in the world outside of Radville more important than our daily life. Too long I have lived away from it, a stranger in strange lands, not to appreciate its relative significance in the scheme of things. It makes all the difference--the view-point: Will sees Radville from its homely heart outwards, I stand on its boundaries, a native but yet, somehow in the local esteem (by reason of my long residence in the East) an outlander. Thus I get a perspective upon the place, to Will and his ilk denied.

It seems curious that things should have fallen out thus for the two of us: that Will Bigelow, all afire with the lust for travel, should never have mustered up enterprise enough to break his home ties, whilst I whose dearest desire had always been to live no day of my alloted span away from Radville, should have been, in a manner which I'm bound presently to betray, forced out into the world; that he, the rebellious stay-at-home, cursing the destiny which chained him, should have prospered and become the man of substance he is, while I, mutinously venturing, should have returned only to watch my sands run out in poverty--what's little better.

Not that I would have you think me whining: I have enough, little but ample for my simple needs, if inadequate for my ambitions or my neighbours' necessities. My editorial work for the _Radville Citizen_ is quite remunerative, while my weekly column of local gossip for the _Westerly Gazette_ brings me in a little, and I've one or two other modest sources of still more modest income. But Radville folks are poor, many of them, many who are very dear to me for old sake's sake. There's Sam Graham.... Though I wouldn't have you understand that as a community we are not moderately prosperous and contented, comfortable if not energetic and advanced. This is not a pushing town: it has never known a boom. That I'm sure will some day come, but I hope not in my time. I have faith in the mountains that fold us roundabout; they are rich with the possibilities of coal and iron, and year by year are being more and more widely opened up and developed; year by year the ranks of flaming, reeking coke ovens push farther on beside the railway that penetrates our valley. But as yet their smoke does not foul our skies, nor does their refuse pollute our river, nor their soot tarnish our vegetation. And as I say, I hope this is not to be while I live, though sometimes I have fears: Blinky Lockwood made a fortune selling the coal that was discovered beneath his father's old farm over Westerly way, and ever since that there's been more or less quiet prospecting going on in our vicinity. I shall be sorry to see the day when Radville is other than as it is: the quiet, peaceful, sleepy little town, nestling in the bosom of the hills, clean, sweet and wholesome....

But this is rambling far from the momentous twenty-first of June, my day of triumph.

I shall try to set down connectedly and coherently the events which culminated in the humbling of Will Bigelow to the dust.

To begin with, we were early startled by the rumour that Hiram Nutt, theretofore deemed unconquerable, had been disastrously defeated at checkers in Willoughby's grocery--and that by Watty the tailor, of all men in Radville. The rumour was confirmed by eleven in the forenoon, and in itself should have provided us with a nine days' wonder.

As it happened, an event happening almost simultaneously confused our minds. At eleven-fifteen Miss Carpenter's household was thrown into consternation by the scandalous behaviour of her black cat, Caesar, who chose suddenly to terminate a long and outwardly respectable career as Miss Carpenter's familiar by having kittens under the horse-hair sofa in the parlour. Incidentally this indelicate and ungentlemanly behaviour temporarily unloosed the hinges of Miss Carpenter's reason, so that my supper suffered that evening, and for several days she wandered round the house with blank and witless eyes. Perhaps I should have warned her, for I had latterly come to suspect Caesar of leading a double life; but for reasons which seemed sufficient I had refrained.

By the noon train Roland Barnette received his new summer suit from Chicago. I did not see it till evening, but heard of it before one, since Roland donned it immediately and wore it to the bank that very afternoon. I understand it caused something very near a run on the bank; people came in to draw a dollar or so or get change and lingered to feast their outraged visions, so that Blinky Lockwood, the president, had to send Roland home to change before closing-time. He changed back, however, as soon as off duty, and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening hours in Sothern and Lee's, at the soda-fountain; which Sothern and Lee did not object to, since it drew trade.

Pete Willing established a record by getting drunk at Schwartz's bar by three in the afternoon, his best previous time being four-thirty; and Mrs. Willing chased him up Centre Street until, at the corner of Main, he blundered into the arms of Judge Scott; who ordered him to arrest and lock himself up; which Pete, being the sheriff, solemnly did, saying that it was preferable to a return to home and wife.

At five o'clock there was a dog-fight in front of Graham's drug-store.

At five-forty-five the evening train lurched in, bearing The Mysterious Stranger.