The Red Book Magazine/Volume 33/Number 2/Tell Me Your Troubles

by Meredith Nicholson

 

THERE'S something fundamentally wrong with all of us, of course, that we should be so fond of grafters in our fiction. Perhaps it's a they come closer to being romancers than the rest of us. Anyway you're going to like this story immensely

 

TELL
ME YOUR
TROUBLES

By
MEREDITH NICHOLSON

Illustration: “We can work this thing so's to make a big clean-up and leave the ol' gent to hold the bag.”

Illustrated by
WILSON DEXTER

“YOU'D oughta loosen up on Irene. The girl don't git no kinda show! One o' these days she'll kick up and skip, and then where'll we be?”

“Don't you 'worry about Irene, Bangsy,” replied Briggs tranquilly. “The girl's all right. My dear wife and I didn't educate that girl for nothing; and motherless though Irene is, I still entertain great ambitions for the child. She likes her job, and she knows I'm going to do the right thing by her. With money rolling in the way it is, Irene knows where her bread's buttered. And if I don't let her trot around with every young jackass that squints at her, it's for the girl's good. We don't want people hanging around; it wont do! Exclusive, my dear Bangsy, even though we appear cold and distant. Let safety first be our watchword!”

“The kid don't have no fun,” pleaded Bangs. “No boys come round her, because you scare 'em off. It aint square, Tip!”

“Look here, Bangsy, has Irene been giving you a hard-luck story?” Briggs demanded.

“Nary a word!” Bangs protested. “But I got eyes, aint I? Irene aint no fool, I tell ye!”

Briggs shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“You don't take enough exercise, Bangsy. You haven't been used to sedentary occupations. You ought to frequent the tranquil parks and walk a few miles daily and Sunday to quiet your nerves. The way business is going, we can buy an orange-farm in Florida pretty soon and have nothing to do for the rest of our lives but sit under the trees and watch the ripening of the > golden fruit.”

“Sometimes I reckon you're right, Tip. But things's goin' too easy. When you've got nothin' to do but shuck envelopes and shake out money the way we're doin', somebody's bound to butt in. Post-offus inspector, most likely! I never cared for them fellahs. They pop up when ye're not lookin' fer em. I keep worryin', Tip. Things's goin' too smooth, I tell ye!”

“No one has troubled us in the slightest, Bangsy—though I sha'n't conceal from 'you that the janitor has annoyed me at times by his obtrusive attentions. I gave the fellow a pair of my trousers last week, and he is now my friend for life. Diplomacy, my dear Bangsy!”

“Them wuz my pants,” said Bangs mournfully.

“My dear Bangsy,” said Briggs patiently, “with your imperfect intelligence you can't realize that the game we are playing is what is vulgarly called a lead-pipe cinch. No one has ever had more reason than I to ponder the pitfalls of the law. You are prone to forget that I am not only an A.B. of a college long since deceased, but an LL.B.; and but for the lure of easy money in the long ago, I might now be wearing a silk kimono on the Supreme bench beside the lordly Potomac. For ten years; Bangsy, you and I have lived the life of pure and upright men. A new generation has arisen of bulls, cops, and Bertillon experts, and our records are dim in the archives of countless courts of a criminal jurisdiction. Since our last experience of penal servitude, we have both acquired character, you as the man with the (illegible text) in the truck-gardens of California, I as a leader of mobs in classic scenes of the voiceless drama at Los Angeles.

“Cleansed of our sins by honest labor, we shall sin no more. When I pass a policeman on the street, my heart swells to reflect that he is not my enemy but my friend, sworn to protect honest citizens like you and me. I make it a practice to step occasionally into the courts just to contemplate what was once painfully familiar to both of us, the grievous experiences of those who do violence to the laws of the Republic. It hurts me, Bangsy, to find that men are still weak enough to imagine themselves capable of frustrating, not to say thwarting, the laws enacted for the protection of the mails from misuse by the lawless. We are men of wisdom, Bangsy; we ate the bread of adversity in bitterness and learned to keep to the straight and narrow path. Ten impeccable years to the credit of both of us! A wonderful record, my dear brother, and we shall spend the autumn of our lives in making the world a sweeter and safer place for all mankind.”

He sighed, stroked his gray beard and tightened the bow of his white tie.

“I never know when ye're kiddin' me, Tip!” Bangs whimpered. “Ye're eddicated; I know that; and ye make a front that would fool a bishop. But I can't help wonderin'.”

“The effort of thought fatigues you, Bangsy. You should never think. Thinking is for those of us whose faculties have been thoroughly disciplined in institutions of learning. I confess that you bring a certain dignity to our present calling. Strolling through the art museum the other day, I was struck by the resemblance your classic countenance bears to the features of the immortal Plato. The thought pleased me, Bangsy!"

The autobiographical data imbedded in Briggs were mainly true, though a slice should be cut from the boasted decade of impeccability by reason of the four years each had been immured in widely separated penitentiaries.

Eliphalet Trumbull Briggs had practiced crime in much higher and more exacting social and professional fields than those affected by Bangs, whose true name does not matter. Briggs was really entitled to affix to his name the A.B. and LL.B. to which he referred. His legal career had been marred at the start by irregularities culminating in the forgery of an invalid uncle's name to a promissory note, The uncle was supposed to be on his deathbed at the time, but miraculously recovering, he had not been mercifully disposed toward his erring nephew when the note was brought to his attention. Eliphalet thereupon took to the open land, exercising a skillful pen and oily tongue in the arts of the forger and confidence man. At intervals he had followed the races and for a dark, humiliating season he had been barker at a circus sideshow. Broadly democratic in spirit, the social and professional differentiations of the underworld were no bar to his warm admiration for Bangs, who in his day had been a safe-blower with a weakness for the treasure of country post offices.

Bangs had been a good second-rate yegg, incapable of brilliant thoughts, but resourceful in covering his tracks. and hiding his booty. In his big years Briggs lived extravagantly and saved nothing: while the humbler Bangs had hidden, at various points in the United States, moneys feloniously acquired, until at the beginning of his last incarceration he had safely planted something like ten thousand dollars. Briggs had assisted in assembling this—a delicate matter, as released convicts are watched in the hope that they will gravitate toward any loot they may have concealed. Briggs had gathered from hollow trees and crannies in the piers of bridges and other depositories Bangs' stash thus long removed from the channels of trade. Promising to double it for the confiding Bangs, he lost half of it on badly chosen horses along the Grand Circuit.

To reinstate himself in Bangs' confidence, Briggs revised and put into execution the great idea of the “Tell Me Your Troubles Company.” This was not a corporation within the meaning of the law, but merely the firm name and style of Briggs and Bangs. Ostensibly the firm's business was the publishing and purveying of books and tracts of a moral and spiritual nature, and the counseling of persons laboring under mental distress. The publishing end of it was easy. The failure of a concern that had printed a vast quantity of such literature in the hope of procuring its adoption by [state] reading-circles made it possible for Briggs to buy a carload of it at receiver's sale for the nominal sum of forty-two dollars. He then hired a room of an old business block and began discreetly advertising the willingness of the Tell Me Your Troubles company to solve the riddle of existence for the despairing, the oppressed, the sufferers from the fell blows of circumstances. Briggs expended a vast amount of time upon his advertisement and finally adopted the one appearing at the right.

 

[Illustration: Aunt Mary]

Would You
Like to Tell
Aunt Mary

Somewhere we all have had an Aunt Mary who gave us goodly counsel and advice. It was to her we hastened with our childish grievances when Mother was too busy to listen to our troubles. In manhood and womanhood we still found Aunt Mary our friend and helper.

There is hardly a soul that has not some worry which the kindly counsel of a big-hearted Aunt Mary would instantly remove. We are prepared to advise all such in the spirit of our dear Aunt Mary. We will send guidebooks of the Road to Happiness to hearten you for the journey of life. Aunt Mary herself will answer your questions in friendly letters. Our literature alone is worth the small fee of one dollar we charge for this unusual service. All communications strictly confidential. If reply and literature are not satisfactory: money refunded. Address:

TELL ME YOUR TROUBLES COMPANY

P. O. Box Z. O. 4876 MARIANAPOLIS, INDIANA

 

“There's a scheme that's absolutely grand-jury proof!” declared Briggs, pinning the result of his labors on the wall of the sitting-room of the small apartment which he and his daughter Irene shared with Bangs. “'Cross-cuts to Happiness' is a book worth a dollar of anybody's money. Indiana is famous as a literary center, and that gives tone to the advertisement, to say nothing of the fact that we're honoring with our presence almost the only state in the Union where we've never been indicted. Listen to the names of our contributing authors! Extracts from Holy Writ alone make a quarter of it. Do you see any Federal judge putting on his horn glasses and sending us to durance vile for shipping the Ten Commandments through the Mails? Certainly not! And there's old Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, and Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Josh Billings. There's something in that book, Bangsy, to fit any need of the human heart!”

“Where'd you git that picture o' Grandma, Tip?”

“Culled it from a photograph album I bought sight unseen at the sale of unclaimed express articles in Kansas City. I have kept that ever since. It has been my comfort and inspiration.” He wiped away a tear while Bangs watched him with awe not unmixed with reverence.

“If it's the safe bet you think it is, why don't ye charge two bucks; ye'd get 'em just as easy?”

“The thought is unworthy of you, Bangsy. To create the impression that Aunt Mary is a grasping old woman would be fatal. And besides, we must needs be conservative as to the inherent value of the literature we sell, vend and distribute. Nobody wanted that junk, and we are performing a noble philanthropy in placing it in the hands of just the people who ought to know and love the greatest uplift literature in the world. As for Aunt Mary's letters, my dear confrère, they will be masterpieces, models of the epistolary art! I surmise, not to say prophesy, that most of our clients will be lovelorn women, and I have already written in my favorite alcove of the public library, twenty forms warranted to cure heartache and waken hope. If there's any violation of the acts of Congress in writing letters of advice to people in trouble, my most thorough researches have failed to find it. We can't lose, Bangsy; the law and the prophets, to say nothing of the philosophers, are all on our side.”

Bangs had submitted meekly to the investment of his balance in the Tell Me Your Troubles scheme by the sanguine Briggs. Bangs, having long since burned all the bridges that linked him to respectability, was lonesome, and the voluble Briggs satisfied his social cravings. Briggs was his only friend. And having been a criminal for forty of his sixty years, it was a comfort to live in a decent house and look forward to spending his declining years in the enjoyment of an income whose magnitude appalled him. For the dollars were undoubtedly rolling in, in response to the electros Briggs spread broadcast in country journals as remote as possible from Indiana.

“We must discourage personal visits,” Briggs had explained. “To be obliged to meet our clients like internes in a free dispensary would be too severe a drain upon my emotional nature. We're a mail-order house strictly. Our net profit is eighty-five cents a shot. In five short months the gross receipts have jumped from fifty to two thousand letters a month. That pile of uplift literature at the office is shrinking so fast I'm thinking of placing a contract for a million more books.”

It was the imperative need of additional help in the office that had caused the always doubting Bangs to urge a greater consideration for Irene, Briggs' twenty-year-old daughter. Irene's mother had eloped with Briggs back in the days of his prosperity when he met her as he was cruising through Virginia selling stock in a nonexistent Alaska gold-mine. Irene had been none too happy in the home of an aunt who had cared for her after her mother's death. Nothing of a cheering nature had thus far happened in Irene's life. After a year in high school she had learned stenography and was employed in the office of a box-factory when her father induced her to share his fortunes.

“But you're right, Bangsy, that we need more help in the office. I've given thought to that. Irene's duties have grown far too arduous. And it's unbecoming in you to go staggering through the streets carrying the mail-sack. I've had an ad running for a week with replies going to the Courier office, and I think I've found the chap I want—a Simple Simon who came to the large city to enlist in the Marines and was rejected owing to myopic vision.”

“You oughta told me about that, Tip,” said Bangsy huskily. “That fellah's a bull, playin' ye.”

“You score another error, Bangsy. I sent him a fake letter to call at the Arlington Hotel and ask for Mr. Artemus Ward. I had a good look at him as the bell-hops paged Artemus all over the place. I called later at his humble lodgings and subjected him to the most searching questions, and finally engaged him at twelve a week. A chump of the first water, Bangsy, but an honest lad. We can't take the chance of picking up some fresh city boy who'd want to pay Irene social attentions.”

“A fellow like that sent me over the road oncet,” remarked Bangs sullenly. “I got 'im to sell a bunch o' stamps I'd lifted from a post offus, and he called the wagon the first drugstore I steered 'im against.”

“A deplorable blunder! But as a judge of character, Bangsy I've always regarded you as lacking in true discernment.”

“Don't monkey with no guys you pick up from ads in the papers,” protested Bangs, still unconvinced and irascible.

“Trust! Confidence! You depress me at times, my dear associate! Unless you get out an injunction, young Reuben reports at eight in the morning. He's as wholesome to look at as a crock of buttermilk, and his face is adorned with freckles the size of turkey-eggs. I've got to consider Irene in adding to our office staff, and there's a man no living girl would contemplate without disdain.”

Irene came home at this juncture. In addition to her duties at the office, she was ostensibly the housekeeper, though Bangs, who had once done service in a prison refectory, assisted in the kitchen. It was Briggs' theory of their new existence that they should attract as little attention as possible, and he encouraged the idea among the neighbors in the flat that he was a retired minister. Irene served him well. She was capable; and her knowledge, hazy as it was, of his long career as a criminal added to her value—she knew at least enough to be cautious. She was highly essential to the business of the Tell Me Your Troubles Company. The choice of the proper letter to send to earnest inquirers fell to her lot, and when none of the forms between A and Z were suitable, Irene composed an original response on the letter-head bearing Aunt Mary's lineaments.

Illustration: “Ah, my daughter!” cried Briggs. “I have just subscribed for a winter course of instruction for you in the classes of the Business Women's Union!” “Thank you, Father” said Irene dutifully.

Irene was not beautiful, but if Briggs hadn't compelled her to wear the plainest clothes, and if she hadn't, under his instruction brushed her hair straight back from her forehead in a fashion distinctly unbecoming, she would have been much pleasanter to look at. She never talked back to Briggs, and her very meekness troubled Bangs.

“Ah, ah, my daughter!” cried Briggs ecstatically, “I have just subscribed for a winter course of instruction for you in the night classes of the Business Women's Union. You have inherited my literary tastes in large measure, and I wish you to enjoy every advantage, that you may attain the life beautiful. You will go far, my child, onward and upward! Here's the ticket; you will begin to-morrow night with French and a course in English literature. Your membership carries privileges of a gymnasium with free access to the swimming-pool. What can be more refreshing after a day of toil than an hour of stimulated study followed by a plunge and swim?”

“Thank you, Father; that will be very nice,” said Irene dutifully.

“It's nothing, the merest trifle! I have long wanted to do something for you in appreciation of your faithful service. You are rewarded with a bountiful harvest and your office duties will be much lightened henceforth. To-morrow we install an assistant, a young person of intelligent and excellent character.”

Irene turned slowly from the mirror of the hall, where she was removing her hat.

“An assistant?” she inquired. “What's her name?”

“John B. Hawkins—nothing fancy about the man or the name. A splendid young fellow, most highly recommended by his last employer, a county merchant at (illegible text) and with a touching letter from his Sunday-school teacher. He understands that he takes his orders from you. Be firm with him at the start and you will find him patient, obedient and helpful.”

“Yes, Father,” responded Irene.

A wan, sad smile crossed Irene's face the next morning when her father introduced John B. Hawkins to her. She had never known young men since leaving her aunt's home for the excellent reason that her father discouraged all such acquaintances. Irene craved companionship; a bright, cheery girl in the office would have pleased her, but Hawkins was a ridiculous object. He wore on his attenuated form a suit that was half a size too small. His legs were too short for the rest of his body, and he walked with a curious swaying motion. He had a small, narrow head crowned with an over-abundance of coarse yellow hair which he swept away from his broad forehead by an overwhelming (illegible text). At his desk he removed his steel-rimmed spectacles and in reading appeared to be tracing the lines with his nose.

“You will be if a sense secretary to my daughter,” Briggs explained to the new assistant. “But for the present, at least, we shall ask you to perform such tasks as carrying the mail from the post office, tying up parcels and the like. Apart from these minor duties your work will be almost entirely literary in character. While your experience in this field is so slight as to be negligible, you will develop; yes, I am confident that you will develop the true literary touch.”

Opening the mail and shaking out dollar-bills had begun to bore Bangs, and he was relieved when Hawkins was permitted to sit with Briggs at the long table in the back office and slip a paper-cutter through the envelopes. The sight of so many dollar-bills evidently awoke no covetousness in Hawkins, who expressed no surprise and asked no questions. He was a sober person who, with stolid seriousness did what he was told to do. The hard-luck stories, the earnest pleas for a word of advice from Aunt Mary that poured into the office in a steady stream, interested and moved him, and at times he wept over their sad revelations of human misery.

“It's a privilege,” he remarked to Briggs, “to be permitted to minister to so many distressed souls!”

“Our work is indeed a ministry,” replied Briggs, beaming benevolently.

Briggs found enjoyment in listening to the business conferences between Irene and Hawkins.

“Excuse me, Miss Briggs, but do you think Form G really answers this inquirer? She says her parents want her to marry a widower of fifty-two, with three grown children.”

"That's the second letter we've had from that girl,” Irene would answer. “We sent her Form J, 'Be Just to Your Parents and They Will Be Just to You,' the first time. But I've got out a new form A2, that gives Aunt Mary's views on the December and May combination. Send her one, and inclose a personal note from Aunt Mary telling her that happiness must be in her heart first of all.”

“Thank you, Miss Briggs,” Hawkins would reply.

“There's a charming old-time courtesy in Hawkins! His manner toward Irene is perfect. We have added a jewel to our crown!” Briggs jubilantly declared to the pessimistic Bangs.

At this juncture an amazing thing happened to Bangs the sorrowful. One morning he was strolling through the public market to kill time, when a bailiff carried him off to the criminal court to complete a quota of talesmen suddenly demanded in a murder case. Nothing like this had ever happened to Bangs before, and he was frightened out of his senses. The learned counsel asked him how long he had lived in the county, and he said ten years; he had never heard of the case and was accepted and sworn with eleven other citizens before he realized what was happening to him.

THE trial lasted a week, and Briggs repaired daily to the court-room to watch the proceedings, deriving great satisfaction from the contemplation of his business associate on the front row of the jury-box gravely weighing the evidence for and against a burglar who had shot and killed a policeman in a running street-fight.

“I'm proud of you, Bangsy, the just and merciful! You're the only one of the twelve that looks like a philosopher.”

Bangs confided to Briggs afterward that he voted for acquittal in the first ballot out of fellow-feeling, but finding that his conduct was viewed with strong disapproval by his fellow-jurors he hastened to join with them in a unanimous verdict of guilty.

“Your vote of not guilty, while purely complimentary, proves you to be a man of kind heart, Bangsy,” said Briggs. “The prisoner was beyond question guilty of slaughtering a fellow-human, and if you had persisted in hanging the jury, you would surely have attracted attention to yourself as a quixotic philanthropist. I suggest that you invest your fees as a juror in a small dinner- and theater-party. Irene and I would enjoy it enormously. Your employment as a juror adds to the atmosphere of respectability in which we live, Bangsy, and lifts our social tone.”

“See here, Tip,” said Bangs, one evening after Irene had departed for her French-literature class. He drew the back of his hand across his nose, a distressing habit for which Briggs had frequently reprimanded him. “What ye doin' runnin' round with that woman on the first floor? Ye can't tell but she's a spotter fer some bull. Most o' the time I've done, women's give me away. Ye gotta cut it out, Tip!”

Illustration: Bangs beamed with delight. “Nipped 'im! Nipped ol' Tip! What ye suppose the widdy thiaks o' that?”

“Dear old Bangsy! My interest in the widow Stansifer is purely Platonic and neighborly. The dear lady has honored me by asking my advice about her investments. Flattering? Decidedly so. She manifests the deepest interest in our beautiful work and has heartily approved of all our literature.”

“Saw ye walkin' with 'er yistiddy,” said Bangs doggedly.

“In the bright joyous spring afternoons,” cried Briggs, rocking himself on his toes, “as the first tremulous green appears in the trees, how delightful to walk abroad with a congenial woman spirit!”

“Ye make me sick, Tip. Ye gotta keep yer eye on the offus. That jay ye put in there knows the whole game, and first thing ye know the post-offus inspector'll be nosin' in. Ye're smart, Tip, and ye got yer eddication, but I reckon I know a thing er two.”

As Briggs persisted in his attentions to the widow, Bangs' uneasiness increased. Such times as he spent at the office he sat in the window watching for the dreaded post-office inspectors. And he resumed a habit, long abandoned, of testing his personal security by furtively doubling on his tracks when walking the streets, to make sure he wasn't followed. Briggs was spending less and less time at the office, often merely looking in now and then to check up the day's receipts and exchange the sack of dollar-bills for larger denominations which he stored in a safety vault box in the cavern of the biggest bank in town.

Left to his own devices as Briggs became more and more absorbed in the widow, Bangs acquired certain information which he was at pains to conceal from his partner. On an evening when the demure Irene was supposed to be attending her classes at the Business Women's Union, Briggs saw her with Hawkins tranquilly viewing the screen in the most popular movie-house in town. This was staggering, as the relations of the two at the office were marked by the most rigid formality. His suspicions thoroughly aroused, Bangs made it his business to watch Irene and Hawkins. This gave him something to do; and it was a huge joke that Irene, who said “Yes, Father,” so meekly, was not the obedient, long-suffering child she appeared.

Not only was she dodging her evening classes at the Institute for clandestine meetings with Hawkins, but now that Briggs had become the financial adviser of the Widow Stansifer, Irene and her assistant took advantage of his increasingly brief visits to the office to widen the scope of the business.

“SEE here,” said Hawkins, as he tossed into a mail-sack a neatly wrapped copy of “Let Hope Be Your Watch-word,” “hasn't it ever struck you that you're not getting much out of this business?”

“Um,” replied Irene guardedly. “What's tinkling in the belfry?”

“Well, for one thing, the old man treats you like a slave; and he's got the idea that I'm a mere nut shaken from the spreading hazel-bush. Aint that right?”

It was right, and Irene knew that it was right and promptly said so.

“We can work this thing so's to make a big clean-up and leave the ol' gent to hold the bag.”

“Whistle some more,” said Irene. “I'm not catching the tune.”

“It's this way, Irene: Out of all these hard-luck letters asking Aunt Mary's advice, about half are from people who are broke. They want to know how to get some dough without working. By studying the letters more carefully, we can pick out sufferers of this class who are not satisfied with our silly booklet on “Honest Earn; Patient Save” We can do better for them, Irene.”

“Your moral nature is skidding,” said Irene. “You go to monkeying with the system, and we all get pinched.”

“Not all,” replied Hawkins. “We use this shop to play our own game, and then we get from under and let Eliphalet T. dance for the piper.”

“Well, I'm not for shaking Bangsy,” said Irene gently. “He's always been nice to me. And it was his money gave Aunt Mary her start.”

“We'll let the old boy in, all right; I'm for that,” Hawkins agreed.

“I'm not keen for taking chances,” said Irene doubtfully. “As things have been going, I might as well be in jail right now, I guess. But the idea of spending my remaining years in the women's prison isn't exactly fascinating.”

“Cheer up, little girl. I bring you good tidings.” His voice sank to a whisper. “In about a week we'll be all set to pull our freight.”

“You're teasing me, Jack!” cried Irene somewhat tremulously.

“Not on your life! I've already tried out my scheme!”

He glanced at the door, leaned further over her desk and whispered:

Illustration: Eliphalet Briggs, who asserted: “But for the lure of easy money, I might now be wearing a kimono on the Supreme Bench.”

“For about two weeks I've been dropping my hook into the sucker-hole, and I've got seven thousand to the good. Thought I'd see how the fish were biting, before I broke the news. I knew a chap in New Orleans who got pinched for passing plate-bills—wonderful stuff. They couldn't find his plates and he put up a good fight and got off with a year. Struck him here the day I landed, and he wanted me to help him distribute a bit of the green. You're bound to get pinched changing bills in the old way, and the Tell Me Your Troubles plant [struck] me as just the medium for selling it to cash customers at a price. Do you follow me?”

“I'm beginning to catch a gleam,” replied Irene

“The emerald goods hasn't been doing much for a while, and the suckers are getting hungry. I've shipped about eighty thousand dollars' worth right out of this shop with Tell Me Your Troubles labels on it.”

Irene paled at this. That the mild-mannered Hawkins, with his stupid stare, should have thought of marketing unlawful currency through the benevolent medium of the Tell Me Your Troubles office took her breath away.

“You're as good as pinched now!” she faltered, “The man will get onto you, dead sure.”

“Not unless he gets up earlier in the morning than he's been doing. I slip out the envelopes from towns I'm working when he sees the bag. I got a thousand dollars in one bill, (illegible text) from a wealthy farmer, for five thousand of the G. G. There'll be five or six thousand more by Saturday, if only half the prospects come through!”

“When do you expect to travel?” asked Irene.

“We'll get married next Saturday, and beat it on the evening limited for New York. Your suggestion about letting old Bangs into the sketch offers a new hope. On Saturdays your esteemed parent's been going to the country with that widow to view beauties of nature. He lets Bangs carry the day's receipts to the safety-vault—the only chance the old boy ever gets to see them. We'll not only have the good money I'm getting for the fake kale, but we'll take all that Bangsy can lug away from the bank, all wrapped up in thousand-dollar bundles, and quite a tidy sum could be got into a suit-case”

“But you needn't think my fond parent will just sit down and cry when he finds we've stung him. He'll run us down if it takes the rest of his natural life.”

“Not with great speed will he follow us,” exclaimed Hawkins. “I'm going to fill his [desk] with the green imitation before we skip. When he finds that you and Bangsy and I have gone out of his life, he'll be sure to come up here for a peep, and he's bound to receive a hearty welcome. Are my remarks sufficiently explicit?”

“I'm calling for a better connection. Speak more distinctly.”

“A special-delivery note inclosing a sample of the phony stuff, with a few words explaining where it's being handled, will reach a secret-service man right here in town at just time we're sitting down to supper in the diner Saturday night. As the message will be on 'Tell Me Your Troubles' stationery, the detective will have no difficulty in finding place. This will not be a case of the cruel father pursuing. Not so, Irene! He will have permanent engagements that will detain him for a considerable period.”

“Jack,” she said as he perched on the desk beside her typewriter and caressed her hand, “I don't want to appear fussy, but you know I'm just a simple-hearted little girl with a crook for a father, and I don't really know a thing about you. Before I give my life into your keeping—"

“Dearest,” he replied, “it is only right that my past be revealed to you. I was born at Nagatooskook, Maine, exactly twenty-five years ago, and my true name is Ragsdale. My parents died when I was but an infant, and I was left to the care of a bachelor uncle who ran one of the largest spud-farms in the Pine Tree State. I wished to be an artist, but he willed otherwise; and smarting under his cruel treatment, I ran away, and for three years I have been a roamer. The tale i told your papa that I was a young patriot, broken-hearted that they wouldn't take me into the Marines, was all piffle. The letters I gave him were my own handiwork. I had blown in from New Orleans, where I spent most of my exile doing [chores in] pool-rooms, working the trap-drum for the jazzy dance, toying with the fickle dice and other light employments. I chanced upon an ad of the Tell Me Your Troubles Company in a country paper, answered it and saw at once that some genius had struck a sure winner.

“Hence I came here to bore into the game. But only to-day I have learned that my uncle died a month ago, leaving me the fee simple in the potato-farm and all other property of which he died seized, real and personal. After we have glanced over the large cities of the East, we shall beat it for Nagatooskook, where my acres border upon a lovely lake. There we shall build us a modern home with fly-screens and running water, and live there in peace and happiness.”

“You talk just like Father when you get going. It's too bad he doesn't know you for what you are, Jack.”

“It has never been in my scheme of life,” said Ragsdale, alias Hawkins, “to have a father-in-law hanging round to bother me. Your pop's treated you, Irene, as no decent parent would treat a one-eyed stepchild. With my father-in-law safe in some strong, well-guarded penitentiary, we shall be happy, and you will never miss him, Irene. The Ragsdales are one of the oldest families in Nagatooskook, and your position in that pleasant hamlet is already assured. Bangs will be your uncle, a retired planter from the rice-fields of Louisiana, Elias Worthington by name. The old boy craves affection, and this he shall have in abundance.”

“Don't wake me from my dream; I want to sleep forever,” murmured Irene.

“OUR visit has greatly increased the cash reserve of the Wall Street banks,” remarked Ragsdale at the end of a happy week spent in New York. “We'll see one more good show to-night, and then pull out for pine-fringed Nagatooskook. We've got just seventy-five thousand dollars in Government bonds. You ought to have ten one-thousand-dollar bills sewed into your waistcoat, Uncle Elias. And in the third drawer of your sky-scraper trunk, Irene, there's the groom's gift to the bride—twenty-five thousand in Liberty Bonds—a sign of our sturdy patriotism. And when we reach the happy haven of Nagatooskook, the administrator of Uncle Toby's estate will have a few thousand waiting for us. I'm not bragging any, but I think we wont suffer much for food and fuel this winter.”

Bangs had been very nervous during the first two days of their flight. He purchased newspapers in enormous quantities and urged Irene to read them carefully.

“If they pinched yer pop, I'd sort of like to know it,” he explained. “We don't want to miss nothin'.”

While they were enjoying a late breakfast at their hotel on the third morning, Irene read the following:

Indianapolis, June 15.—The federal authorities to-day arrested E. T. Briggs, alias Windy Bill Thompson, alias Tip Trescott, a veteran confidence man with a long criminal record. The police had lost track of him since his last imprisonment, but he had been operating as the publisher of uplift literature under the name of the Tell Me Your Troubles Company, through which he distributed large quantities of green goods. The secret service operatives found his desk filled with spurious bills. The janitor of the building in which he conducted his business was arrested as an accomplice.

Bangs beamed with delight. “Nipped 'im! Nipped ol' Tip!” he chortled. Then, becoming serious: “Ye reckon Tip'll squeal on us?”

“Let him squeal!” Ragsdale replied. “Stopping as we do in modest hotels, dressing plainly but in good taste, and registering from Nagatooskook, Maine we invite the closest scrutiny. Once established on the potato-ranch, we shall live quietly, making no vulgar display of our wealth. The impression will leak out that I married money, which is undoubtedly true, and that Uncle Elias has generously endowed us.”

Sounds kind o' lonesome, that joint up there in the woods,” suggested Elias, poking a finger suspiciously in the finger-bowl the waiter had brought him. “And there aint no licker in Maine.”

“Let the dark cloud pass, Uncle Elias!” exclaimed Ragsdale, bestowing a fifteen-cent tip upon the waiter. “It's only a pleasant run from the dominion of good King George, and the sheriff of our county is a cousin of mine on my mother's side. Let us now go out and step with a light but firm foot upon the city.”