CHAPTER THREE: The Arrested Philanthropy of Mr. Tomlinson
"This, Mr. Tomlinson, is our campus," said President
Boomer as they passed through the iron gates of Plutoria
University.
"For camping?" said the Wizard.
"Not exactly," answered the president, "though it would,
of course, suit for that. Nihil humunum alienum, eh?"
and he broke into a loud, explosive laugh, while his
spectacles irradiated that peculiar form of glee derived
from a Latin quotation by those able to enjoy it. Dr.
Boyster, walking on the other side of Mr. Tomlinson,
joined in the laugh in a deep, reverberating chorus.
The two had the Wizard of Finance between them, and they
were marching him up to the University. He was taken
along much as is an arrested man who has promised to go
quietly. They kept their hands off him, but they watched
him sideways through their spectacles. At the least sign
of restlessness they doused him with Latin. The Wizard
of Finance, having been marked out by Dr. Boomer and Dr.
Boyster as a prospective benefactor, was having Latin
poured over him to reduce him to the proper degree of
plasticity.
They had already put him through the first stage. They
had, three days ago, called on him at the Grand Palaver
and served him with a pamphlet on "The Excavation of
Mitylene" as a sort of writ. Tomlinson and his wife had
looked at the pictures of the ruins, and from the appearance
of them they judged that Mitylene was in Mexico, and they
said that it was a shame to see it in that state and that
the United States ought to intervene.
As the second stage on the path of philanthropy, the
Wizard of Finance was now being taken to look at the
university. Dr. Boomer knew by experience that no rich
man could look at it without wanting to give it money.
And here the president had found that there is no better
method of dealing with businessmen than to use Latin on
them. For other purposes the president used other things.
For example at a friendly dinner at the Mausoleum Club
where light conversation was in order, Dr. Boomer chatted,
as has been seen, on the archaeological remains of the
Navajos. In the same way, at Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's Dante
luncheons, he generally talked of the Italian cinquecentisti
and whether Gian Gobbo della Scala had left a greater
name than Can Grande della Spiggiola. But such talk as
that was naturally only for women. Businessmen are much
too shrewd for that kind of thing; in fact, so shrewd
are they, as President Boomer had long since discovered,
that nothing pleases them so much as the quiet, firm
assumption that they know Latin. It is like writing them
up an asset. So it was that Dr. Boomer would greet a
business acquaintance with a roaring salutation of,
"Terque quaterque beatus," or stand wringing his hand
off to the tune of "Oh et presidium et dulce decus meum."
This caught them every time.
"You don't," said Tomlinson the Wizard in a hesitating
tone as he looked at the smooth grass of the campus, "I
suppose, raise anything on it?"
"No, no; this is only for field sports," said the president;
"sunt quos curriculo--"
To which Dr. Boyster on the other side added, like a
chorus, "pulverem Olympicum."
This was their favourite quotation. It always gave
President Boomer a chance to speak of the final letter
"m" in Latin poetry, and to say that in his opinion the
so-called elision of the final "m" was more properly a
dropping of the vowel with a repercussion of the two last
consonants. He supported this by quoting Ammianus, at
which Dr. Boyster exclaimed, "Pooh! Ammianus: more dog
Latin!" and appealed to Mr. Tomlinson as to whether any
rational man nowadays cared what Ammianus thought?
To all of which Tomlinson answered never a word, but
looked steadily first at one and then at the other. Dr.
Boomer said afterwards that the penetration of Tomlinson
was wonderful, and that it was excellent to see how
Boyster tried in vain to draw him; and Boyster said
afterwards that the way in which Tomlinson quietly refused
to be led on by Boomer was delicious, and that it was a
pity that Aristophanes was not there to do it justice.
All of which was happening as they went in at the iron
gates and up the elm avenue of Plutoria University.
The university, as everyone knows. stands with its great
gates on Plutoria Avenue, and with its largest buildings,
those of the faculties of industrial and mechanical
science, fronting full upon the street.
These buildings are exceptionally fine, standing fifteen
stories high and comparing favourably with the best
departmental stores or factories in the City. Indeed,
after nightfall, when they are all lighted up for the
evening technical classes and when their testing machinery
is in full swing and there are students going in and out
in overall suits, people have often mistaken the university,
or this newer part of it, for a factory. A foreign visitor
once said that the students looked like plumbers, and
President Boomer was so proud of it that he put the phrase
into his next Commencement address; and from there the
newspapers got it and the Associated Press took it up
and sent it all over the United States with the heading,
"Have Appearance of Plumbers; Plutoria University
Congratulated on Character of Students," and it was a
proud day indeed for the heads of the Industrial Science
faculty.
But the older part of the university stands so quietly
and modestly at the top end of the elm avenue, so hidden
by the leaves of it, that no one could mistake it for a
factory. This, indeed, was once the whole university,
and had stood there since colonial days under the name
Concordia College. It had been filled with generations
of presidents and professors of the older type with long
white beards and rusty black clothes, and salaries of
fifteen hundred dollars.
But the change both of name and of character from Concordia
College to Plutoria University was the work of President
Boomer. He had changed it from an old-fashioned college
of the by-gone type to a university in the true modern
sense. At Plutoria they now taught everything. Concordia
College, for example, had no teaching of religion except
lectures on the Bible. Now they had lectures also on
Confucianism, Mohammedanism Buddhism, with an optional
course on atheism for students in the final year.
And, of course, they had long since admitted women, and
there were now beautiful creatures with Cleo de Merode
hair studying astronomy at oaken desks and looking up at
the teacher with eyes like comets. The university taught
everything and did everything. It had whirling machines
on the top of it that measured the speed of the wind,
and deep in its basements it measured earthquakes with
a seismograph; it held classes on forestry and dentistry
and palmistry; it sent life classes into the slums, and
death classes to the city morgue. It offered such a vast
variety of themes, topics and subjects to the students,
that there was nothing that a student was compelled to
learn, while from is own presses in its own press-building
it sent out a shower of bulletins and monographs like
driven snow from a rotary plough.
In fact, it had become, as President Boomer told all the
businessmen in town, not merely a university, but a
universitas in the true sense, and every one of its
faculties was now a facultas in the real acceptance of
the word, and its studies properly and truly studia;
indeed, if the businessmen would only build a few more
dormitories and put up enough money to form an adequate
fondatum or fundum, then the good work might be looked
upon as complete.
As the three walked up the elm avenue there met them a
little stream of students with college books, and female
students with winged-victory hats, and professors with
last year's overcoats. And some went past with a smile
and others with a shiver.
"That's Professor Withers," said the president in a
sympathetic voice as one of the shivering figures went
past; "poor Withers," and he sighed.
"What's wrong with him?" said the Wizard; "is he sick?"
"No, not sick," said the president quietly and sadly,
"merely inefficient."
"Inefficient?"
"Unfortunately so. Mind you, I don't mean 'inefficient'
in every sense. By no means. If anyone were to come to
me and say, 'Boomer, can you put your hand for me on a
first-class botanist?' I'd say, 'Take Withers.' I'd say
it in a minute." This was true. He would have. In fact,
if anyone had made this kind of rash speech, Dr. Boomer
would have given away half the professoriate.
"Well, what's wrong with him?" repeated Tomlinson, "I
suppose he ain't quite up to the mark in some ways, eh?"
"Precisely," said the president, "not quite up to the
mark--a very happy way of putting it. Capax imperii nisi
imperasset, as no doubt you are thinking to yourself.
The fact is that Withers, though an excellent fellow,
can't manage large classes. With small classes he is all
right, but with large classes the man is lost. He can't
handle them."
"He can't, eh?" said the Wizard.
"No. But what can I do? There he is. I can't dismiss him.
I can't pension him. I've no money for it."
Here the president slackened a little in his walk and
looked sideways at the prospective benefactor. But
Tomlinson gave no sign.
A second professorial figure passed them on the other
side.
"There again," said the president, "that's another case
of inefficiency--Professor Shottat, our senior professor
of English."
"What's wrong with him?" asked the Wizard.
"He can't handle small classes," said the president.
"With large classes he is really excellent, but with
small ones the man is simply hopeless."
In this fashion, before Mr. Tomlinson had measured the
length of the avenue, he had had ample opportunity to
judge of the crying need of money at Plutoria University,
and of the perplexity of its president. He was shown
professors who could handle the first year, but were
powerless with the second; others who were all right with
the second but broke down with the third, while others
could handle the third but collapsed with the fourth.
There were professors who were all right in their own
subject, but perfectly impossible outside of it; others
who were so occupied outside of their own subject that
they were useless inside of it; others who knew their
subject, but couldn't lecture; and others again who
lectured admirably, but didn't know their subject.
In short it was clear--as it was meant to be--that the
need of the moment was a sum of money sufficient to enable
the president to dismiss everybody but himself and Dr.
Boyster. The latter stood in a class all by himself. He
had known the president for forty-five years, ever since
he was a fat little boy with spectacles in a classical
academy, stuffing himself on irregular Greek verbs as
readily as if on oysters.
But it soon appeared that the need for dismissing the
professors was only part of the trouble. There were the
buildings to consider.
"This, I am ashamed to say," said Dr. Boomer, as they
passed the imitation Greek portico of the old Concordia
College building, "is our original home, the fons et
origo of our studies, our faculty of arts."
It was indeed a dilapidated building. yet there was a
certain majesty about it, too, especially when one
reflected that it had been standing there looking much
the same at the time when its students had trooped off
in a flock to join the army of the Potomac, and much the
same, indeed, three generations before that, when the
classes were closed and the students clapped three-cornered
hats on their heads and were off to enlist as minute men
with flintlock muskets under General Washington.
But Dr. Boomer's one idea was to knock the building down
and to build on its site a real facultas ten storeys
high, with elevators in it.
Tomlinson looked about him humbly as he stood in the main
hall. The atmosphere of the place awed him. There were
bulletins and time-tables and notices stuck on the walls
that gave evidence of the activity of the place. "Professor
Slithers will be unable to meet his classes today," ran
one of them, and another "Professor Withers will not meet
his classes this week," and another, "Owing to illness,
Professor Shottat will not lecture this month," while
still another announced, "Owing to the indisposition of
Professor Podge, all botanical classes are suspended,
but Professor Podge hopes to be able to join in the
Botanical Picnic Excursion to Loon Lake on Saturday
afternoon." You could judge of the grinding routine of
the work from the nature of these notices. Anyone familiar
with the work of colleges would not heed it, but it
shocked Tomlinson to think how often the professors of
the college were stricken down by overwork.
Here and there in the hall, set into niches, were bronze
busts of men with Roman faces and bare necks, and the
edge of a toga cast over each shoulder.
"Who would these be?" asked Tomlinson, pointing at them.
"Some of the chief founders and benefactors of the
faculty," answered the president, and at this the hopes
of Tomlinson sank in his heart. For he realized the class
of man one had to belong to in order to be accepted as
a university benefactor.
"A splendid group of men, are they not?" said the president.
"We owe them much. This is the late Mr. Hogworth, a man
of singularly large heart." Here he pointed to a bronze
figure wearing a wreath of laurel and inscribed GULIEMUS
HOGWORTH, LITT. DOC. "He had made a great fortune in the
produce business and wishing to mark his gratitude to
the community he erected the anemometer, the wind-measure,
on the roof of the building, attaching to it no other
condition than that his name should be printed in the
weekly reports immediately beside the velocity of the
wind. The figure beside him is the late Mr. Underbugg,
who founded our lectures on the Four Gospels on the sole
stipulation that henceforth any reference of ours to the
four gospels should be coupled with his name."
"What's that after his name?" asked Tomlinson.
"Litt. Doc.?" said the president. "Doctor of Letters,
our honorary degree. We are always happy to grant it to
our benefactors by a vote of the faculty."
Here Dr. Boomer and Dr. Boyster wheeled half round and
looked quietly and steadily at the Wizard of Finance. To
both their minds it was perfectly plain that an honourable
bargain was being struck.
"Yes, Mr. Tomlinson," said the president, as they emerged
from the building, "no doubt you begin to realize our
unhappy position. Money, money, money," he repeated
half-musingly. "If I had the money I'd have that whole
building down and dismantled in a fortnight."
From the central building the three passed to the museum
building, where Tomlinson was shown a vast skeleton of
a Diplodocus Maximus, and was specially warned not to
confuse it with the Dinosaurus Perfectus, whose bones,
however, could be bought if anyone, any man of large
heart; would come to the university and say straight out,
"Gentlemen, what can I do for you?" Better still, it
appeared the whole museum which was hopelessly antiquated,
being twenty-five years old, could be entirely knocked
down if a sufficient sum was forthcoming; and its curator,
who was as ancient as the Dinosaurus itself, could be
dismissed on half-pay if any man had a heart large enough
for the dismissal.
From the museum they passed to the library, where there
were full-length portraits of more founders and benefactors
in long red robes, holding scrolls of paper, and others
sitting holding pens and writing on parchment, with a
Greek temple and a thunderstorm in the background.
And here again it appeared that the crying need of the
moment was for someone to come to the university and say,
"Gentlemen, what can I do for you?" On which the whole
library, for it was twenty years old and out of date,
might be blown up with dynamite and carted away.
But at all this the hopes of Tomlinson sank lower and
lower. The red robes and the scrolls were too much for
him.
From the library they passed to the tall buildings that
housed the faculty of industrial and mechanical science.
And here again the same pitiful lack of money was everywhere
apparent. For example, in the physical science department
there was a mass of apparatus for which the university
was unable. to afford suitable premises, and in the
chemical department there were vast premises for which
the university was unable to buy apparatus, and so on.
Indeed it was part of Dr. Boomer's method to get himself
endowed first with premises too big for the apparatus,
and then by appealing to public spirit to call for enough
apparatus to more than fill the premises, by means of
which system industrial science at Plutoria University
advanced with increasing and gigantic strides.
But most of all, the electric department interested the
Wizard of Finance. And this time his voice lost its
hesitating tone and he looked straight at Dr. Boomer as
he began,
"I have a boy--"
"Ah!" said Dr. Boomer, with a huge ejaculation of surprise
and relief; "you have a boy!"
There were volumes in his tone. What it meant was, "Now,
indeed, we have got you where we want you," and he
exchanged a meaning look with the professor of Greek.
Within five minutes the president and Tomlinson and Dr.
Boyster were gravely discussing on what terms and in what
way Fred might be admitted to study in the faculty of
industrial science. The president, on learning that Fred
had put in four years in Cahoga County Section No. 3
School, and had been head of his class in ciphering,
nodded his head gravely and said it would simply be a
matter of a pro tanto; that, in fact, he felt sure that
Fred might be admitted ad eundem. But the real condition
on which they meant to admit him was, of course, not
mentioned.
One door only in the faculty of industrial and mechanical
science they did not pass, a heavy oak door at the end
of a corridor bearing the painted inscription: Geological
and Metallurgical Laboratories. Stuck in the door was a
card with the words (they were conceived in the courteous
phrases of mechanical science, which is almost a branch
of business in the real sense): Busy--keep out.
Dr. Boomer looked at the card. "Ah, yes," he said. "Gildas
is no doubt busy with his tests. We won't disturb him."
The president was always proud to find a professor busy;
it looked well.
But if Dr. Boomer had known what was going on behind the
oaken door of the Department of Geology and Metallurgy,
he would have felt considerably disturbed himself.
For here again Gildas, senior professor of geology, was
working among his blue flames at a final test on which
depended the fate of the Erie Auriferous Consolidated
and all connected with it.
Before him there were some twenty or thirty packets of
crumpled dust and splintered ore that glittered on the
testing-table. It had been taken up from the creek along
its whole length, at even spaces twenty yards apart, by
an expert sent down in haste by the directorate, after
Gildas's second report, and heavily bribed to keep his
mouth shut.
And as Professor Gildas stood and worked at the samples
and tied them up after analysis in little white cardboard
boxes, he marked each one very carefully and neatly with
the words, PYRITES: WORTHLESS.
Beside the professor worked a young demonstrator of last
year's graduation class. It was he, in fact, who had
written the polite notice on the card.
"What is the stuff, anyway?" he asked.
"A sulphuret of iron," said the professor, "or iron
pyrites. In colour and appearance it is practically
identical with gold. Indeed, in all ages," he went on,
dropping at once into the classroom tone and adopting
the professional habit of jumping backwards twenty
centuries in order to explain anything properly, "it has
been readily mistaken for the precious metal. The ancients
called it 'fool's gold.' Martin Frobisher brought back
four shiploads of it from Baffin Land thinking that he
had discovered an Eldorado. There are large deposits of
it in the mines of Cornwall, and it is just possible,"
here the professor measured his words as if speaking of
something that he wouldn't promise, "that the Cassiterides
of the Phoenicians contained deposits of the same sulphuret.
Indeed, I defy anyone," he continued, for he was piqued
in his scientific pride, "to distinguish it from gold
without a laboratory-test. In large quantities, I concede,
its lack of weight would betray it to a trained hand.
but without testing its solubility in nitric acid, or
the fact of its burning with a blue flame under the
blow-pipe, it cannot be detected. In short, when
crystallized in dodecahedrons--"
"Is it any good?" broke in the demonstrator.
"Good?" said the professor. "Oh, you mean commercially?
Not in the slightest. Much less valuable than, let us
say, ordinary mud or clay. In fact, it is absolutely good
for nothing."
They were silent for a moment, watching the blue flames
above the brazier.
Then Gildas spoke again. "Oddly enough," he said, "the
first set of samples were undoubtedly pure gold--not the
faintest doubt of that. That is the really interesting
part of the matter. These gentlemen concerned in the
enterprise will, of course, lose their money, and I shall
therefore decline to accept the very handsome fee which
they had offered me for my services. But the main feature,
the real point of interest in this matter remains. Here
we have undoubtedly a sporadic deposit-what miners call
a pocket--of pure gold in a Devonian formation of the
post-tertiary period. This once established, we must
revise our entire theory of the distribution of igneous
and aqueous rocks. In fact, I am already getting notes
together for a paper for the Pan-Geological under the
heading, Auriferous Excretions in the Devonian Strata:
a Working Hypothesis. I hope to read it at the next
meeting."
The young demonstrator looked at the professor with one
eye half-closed.
"I don't think I would if I were you." he said.
Now this young demonstrator knew nothing or practically
nothing, of geology, because he came of one of the richest
and best families in town and didn't need to. But he was
a smart young man, dressed in the latest fashion with
brown boots and a crosswise tie, and he knew more about
money and business and the stock exchange in five minutes
than Professor Gildas in his whole existence.
"Why not?" said the professor.
"Why, don't you see what's happened?"
"Eh?" said Gildas.
"What happened to those first samples? When that bunch
got interested and planned to float the company? Don't
you see? Somebody salted them on you."
"Salted them on me?" repeated the professor, mystified.
"Yes, salted them. Somebody got wise to what they were
and swopped them on you for the real thing, so as to get
your certified report that the stuff was gold."
"I begin to see," muttered the professor. "Somebody
exchanged the samples, some person no doubt desirous of
establishing the theory that a sporadic outcropping of
the sort might be found in a post-tertiary formation. I
see, I see. No doubt he intended to prepare a paper on
it, and prove his thesis by these tests. I see it all!"
The demonstrator looked at the professor with a sort of
pity.
"You're on!" he said, and he laughed softly to himself.
"Well," said Dr. Boomer, after Tomlinson had left the
university, "what do you make of him?" The president had
taken Dr. Boyster over to his house beside the campus,
and there in his study had given him a cigar as big as
a rope and taken another himself. This was a sign that
Dr. Boomer wanted Dr. Boyster's opinion in plain English,
without any Latin about it.
"Remarkable man," said the professor of Greek; "wonderful
penetration, and a man of very few words. Of course his
game is clear enough?"
"Entirely so," asserted Dr. Boomer.
"It's clear enough that he means to give the money on
two conditions."
"Exactly," said the president.
"First that we admit his son, who is quite unqualified,
to the senior studies in electrical science, and second
that we grant him the degree of Doctor of Letters. Those
are his terms." "Can we meet them?"
"Oh, certainly. As to the son, there is no difficulty,
of course; as to the degree, it's only a question of
getting the faculty to vote it. I think we can manage
it."
Vote it they did that very afternoon. True, if the members
of the faculty had known the things that were being
whispered, and more than whispered, in the City about
Tomlinson and his fortune, no degree would ever have been
conferred on him. But it so happened that at that moment
the whole professoriate was absorbed in one of those
great educational crises which from time to time shake
a university to its base. The meeting of the faculty that
day bid fair to lose all vestige of decorum in the
excitement of the moment. For, as Dean Elderberry Foible,
the head of the faculty, said, the motion that they had
before them amounted practically to a revolution. The
proposal was nothing less than the permission of the use
of lead-pencils instead of pen and ink in the sessional
examinations of the university. Anyone conversant with
the inner life of a college will realize that to many of
the professoriate this was nothing less than a last wild
onslaught of socialistic democracy against the solid
bulwarks of society. They must fight it back or die on
the walls. To others it was one more step in the splendid
progress of democratic education, comparable only to such
epoch-making things as the abandonment of the cap and
gown, and the omission of the word "sir" in speaking to
a professor.
No wonder that the fight raged. Elderberry Foible, his
fluffed white hair almost on end, beat in vain with his
gavel for order. Finally, Chang of Physiology, who was
a perfect dynamo of energy and was known frequently to
work for three or four hours at a stretch, proposed that
the faculty should adjourn the question and meet for its
further discussion on the following Saturday morning.
This revolutionary suggestion, involving work on Saturday,
reduced the meeting to a mere turmoil, in the midst of
which Elderberry Foible proposed that the whole question
of the use of lead-pencils should be adjourned till that
day six months, and that meantime a new special committee
of seventeen professors, with power to add to their
number, to call witnesses and, if need be, to hear them,
should report on the entire matter de novo. This motion,
after the striking out of the words de novo and the
insertion of ab initio, was finally carried, after which
the faculty sank back completely exhausted into its chair,
the need of afternoon tea and toast stamped on every
face.
And it was at this moment that President Boomer, who
understood faculties as few men have done, quietly entered
the room, laid his silk hat on a volume of Demosthenes,
and proposed the vote of a degree of Doctor of Letters
for Edward Tomlinson. He said that there was no need to
remind the faculty of Tomlinson's services to the nation;
they knew them. Of the members of the faculty, indeed,
some thought that he meant the Tomlinson who wrote the
famous monologue on the Iota Subscript, while others
supposed that he referred to the celebrated philosopher
Tomlinson, whose new book on the Indivisibility of the
Inseparable was just then maddening the entire world. In
any case, they voted the degree without a word, still
faint with exhaustion.
But while the university was conferring on Tomlinson the
degree of Doctor of Letters, all over the City in business
circles they were conferring on him far other titles.
"Idiot," "Scoundrel," "Swindler," were the least of them.
Every stock and share with which his name was known to
be connected was coming down with a run, wiping out the
accumulated profits of the Wizard at the rate of a thousand
dollars a minute.
They not only questioned his honesty, but they went
further and questioned his business capacity.
"The man," said Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, sitting in the
Mausoleum Club and breathing freely at last after having
disposed of all his holdings in the Erie Auriferous, "is
an ignoramus. I asked him only the other day, quite
casually, a perfectly simple business question. I said
to him. 'T.C. Bonds have risen twenty-two and a half in
a week. You know and I know that they are only collateral
trust, and that the stock underneath never could and
never would earn a par dividend. Now,' I said, for I
wanted to test the fellow, 'tell me what that means?'
Would you believe me, he looked me right in the face in
that stupid way of his, and he said, 'I don't know!'"
"He said he didn't know!" repeated the listener
contemptuously; "the man is a damn fool!"
The reason of all this was that the results of the
researches of the professor of geology were being whispered
among the directorate of the Erie Auriferous. And the
directors and chief shareholders were busily performing
the interesting process called unloading. Nor did ever
a farmer of Cahoga County in haying time with a thunderstorm
threatening, unload with greater rapidity than did the
major shareholders of the Auriferous. Mr. Lucullus Fyshe
traded off a quarter of his stock to an unwary member of
the Mausoleum Club at a drop of thirty per cent, and
being too prudent to hold the rest on any terms, he
conveyed it at once as a benefaction in trust to the
Plutorian Orphans' and Foundlings' Home; while the
purchaser of Mr. Fyshe's stock, learning too late of his
folly, rushed for his lawyers to have the shares conveyed
as a gift to the Home for Incurables.
Mr. Asmodeus Boulder transferred his entire holdings to
the Imbeciles' Relief Society, and Mr. Furlong, senior,
passed his over to a Chinese mission as fast as pen could
traverse paper.
Down at the office of Skinyer and Beatem, the lawyers of
the company, they were working overtime drawing up deeds
and conveyances and trusts in perpetuity, with hardly
time to put them into typewriting. Within twenty-four
hours the entire stock of the company bid fair to be in
the hands of Idiots, Orphans, Protestants, Foundlings,
Imbeciles, Missionaries, Chinese, and other unfinancial
people, with Tomlinson the Wizard of Finance as the senior
shareholder and majority control. And whether the gentle
Wizard, as he sat with mother planning his vast benefaction
to Plutoria University, would have felt more at home with
his new group of fellow-shareholders than his old, it
were hard to say.
But, meantime, at the office of Skinyer and Beatem all
was activity. For not only were they drafting the
conveyances of the perpetual trusts as fast as legal
brains working overtime could do it, but in another part
of the office a section of the firm were busily making
their preparations against the expected actions for fraud
and warrants of distraint and injunctions against disposal
of assets and the whole battery of artillery which might
open on them at any moment. And they worked like a corps
of military engineers fortifying an escarpment, with the
joy of battle in their faces.
The storm might break at any moment. Already at the office
of the Financial Undertone the type was set for a special
extra with a heading three inches high:
COLLAPSE
OF THE ERIE CONSOLIDATED
ARREST OF THE MAN TOMLINSON
EXPECTED THIS AFTERNOON
Skinyer and Beatem had paid the editor, who was crooked,
two thousand dollars cash to hold back that extra for
twenty-four hours; and the editor had paid the reporting
staff, who were crooked, twenty-five dollars each to keep
the news quiet, and the compositors, who were also crooked,
ten dollars per man to hold their mouths shut till the
morning, with the result that from editors and sub-editors
and reporters and compositors the news went seething
forth in a flood that the Erie Auriferous Consolidated
was going to shatter into fragments like the bursting of
a dynamite bomb. It rushed with a thousand whispering
tongues from street to street till it filled the corridors
of the law courts and the lobbies of the offices, and
till every honest man that held a share of the stock
shivered in his tracks and reached out to give, sell, or
destroy it. Only the unwinking Idiots, and the mild
Orphans, and the calm Deaf mutes and the impassive Chinese
held tight to what they had. So gathered the storm, till
all the town, like the great rotunda of the Grand Palaver,
was filled with a silent "call for Mr. Tomlinson,"
voiceless and ominous.
And while all this was happening, and while at Skinyer
and Beatem's they worked with frantic pens and clattering
type there came a knock at the door, hesitant and uncertain,
and before the eyes of the astounded office there stood
in his wide-awake hat and long black coat the figure of
"the man Tomlinson" himself.
And Skinyer, the senior partner, no sooner heard what
Tomlinson wanted than he dashed across the outer office
to his partner's room with his hyena face all excitement
as he said:
"Beatem, Beatem, come over to my room. This man is
absolutely the biggest thing in America. For sheer calmness
and nerve I never heard of anything to approach him. What
do you think he wants to do?"
"What?" said Beatem.
"Why, he's giving his entire fortune to the university."
"By Gad!" ejaculated Beatem, and the two lawyers looked
at one another, lost in admiration of the marvellous
genius and assurance of Tomlinson.
Yet what had happened was very simple.
Tomlinson had come back from the university filled with
mingled hope and hesitation. The university, he saw,
needed the money and he hoped to give it his entire
fortune, to put Dr. Boomer in a position to practically
destroy the whole place. But, like many a modest man, he
lacked the assurance to speak out. He felt that up to
the present the benefactors of the university had been
men of an entirely different class from himself. It was
mother who solved the situation for him.
"Well, father," she said, "there's one thing I've learned
already since we've had money. If you want to get a thing
done you can always find people to do it for you if you
pay them. Why not go to those lawyers that manage things
for the company and get them to arrange it all for you
with the college?"
As a result, Tomlinson had turned up at the door of the
Skinyer and Beatem office.
"Quite so, Mr. Tomlinson," said Skinyer, with his pen
already dipped in the ink, "a perfectly simple matter.
I can draw up a draft of conveyance with a few strokes
of the pen. In fact, we can do it on the spot."
What he meant was, "In fact, we can do it so fast that
I can pocket a fee of five hundred dollars right here
and now while you have the money to pay me."
"Now then," he continued, "let us see how it is to run."
"Well," said Tomlinson, "I want you to put it that I give
all my stock in the company to the university."
"All of it?" said Skinyer, with a quiet smile to Beatem.
"Every cent of it, sir," said Tomlinson; "just write down
that I give all of it to the college."
"Very good," said Skinyer, and he began to write, "I,
so-and-so, and so-and-so, of the county of so-and-so--
Cahoga, I think you said, Mr. Tomlinson?"
"Yes, sir," said the Wizard, "I was raised there."
"--do hereby give, assign, devise, transfer, and the
transfer is hereby given, devised and assigned, all those
stocks, shares, hereditaments, etc., which I hold in the
etc., etc., all, several and whatever--you will observe,
Mr. Tomlinson, I am expressing myself with as great
brevity as possible--to that institution, academy, college,
school, university, now known and reputed to be Plutoria
University, of the city of etc., etc."
He paused a moment. "Now what special objects or purposes
shall I indicate?" he asked.
Whereupon Tomlinson explained as best he could, and
Skinyer, working with great rapidity, indicated that the
benefaction was to include a Demolition Fund for the
removal of buildings, a Retirement Fund for the removal
of professors, an Apparatus Fund for the destruction of
apparatus, and a General Sinking Fund for the obliteration
of anything not otherwise mentioned.
"And I'd like to do something, if I could, for Mr. Boomer
himself, just as man to man," said Tomlinson.
"All right," said Beatem, and he could hardly keep his
face straight. "Give him a chunk of the stock-give him
half a million."
"I will," said Tomlinson; "he deserves it."
"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Skinyer.
And within a few minutes the whole transaction was done,
and Tomlinson, filled with joy, was wringing the hands
of Skinyer and Beatem, and telling them to name their
own fee.
They had meant to, anyway.
"Is that legal, do you suppose?" said Beatem to Skinyer,
after the Wizard had gone. "Will it hold water?"
"Oh, I don't think so," said Skinyer, "not for a minute.
In fact, rather the other way. If they make an arrest
for fraudulent flotation, this conveyance, I should think,
would help to send him to the penitentiary. But I very
much doubt if they can arrest him. Mind you, the fellow
is devilish shrewd. You know, and I know that he planned
this whole flotation with a full knowledge of the fraud.
You and I know it--very good--but we know it more from
our trained instinct in such things than by any proof.
The fellow has managed to surround himself with such an
air of good faith from start to finish that it will be
deuced hard to get at him."
"What will he do now?" said Beatem.
"I tell you what he'll do. Mark my words. Within twenty-four
hours he'll clear out and be out of the state, and if
they want to get him they'll have to extradite. I tell
you he's a man of extraordinary capacity. The rest of us
are nowhere beside him."
In which, perhaps, there was some truth.
"Well, mother," said the Wizard, when he reached the
thousand-dollar suite, after his interview with Skinyer
and Beatem, his face irradiated with simple joy, "it's
done. I've put the college now in a position it never
was in before, nor any other college; the lawyers say so
themselves."
"That's good," said mother.
"Yes, and it's a good thing I didn't lose the money when
I tried to. You see, mother, what I hadn't realized was
the good that could be done with all that money if a man
put his heart into it. They can start in as soon as they
like and tear down those buildings. My! but it's just
wonderful what you can do with money. I'm glad I didn't
lose it!"
So they talked far into the evening. That night they
slept in an Aladdin's palace filled with golden fancies.
And in the morning the palace and all its visions fell
tumbling about their heads in sudden and awful catastrophe.
For with Tomlinson's first descent to the rotunda it
broke. The whole great space seemed filled with the
bulletins and the broadside sheets of the morning papers,
the crowd surging to and fro buying the papers, men
reading them as they stood, and everywhere in great
letters there met his eye:
COLLAPSE
OF THE ERIE AURIFEROUS
THE GREAT GOLD SWINDLE
ARREST OF THE MAN TOMLINSON
EXPECTED THIS MORNING
So stood the Wizard of Finance beside a pillar, the paper
fluttering in his hand, his eyes fixed, while about him
a thousand eager eyes and rushing tongues sent shame into
his stricken heart.
And there his boy Fred, sent from upstairs, found him;
and at the sight of the seething crowd and his father's
stricken face, aged as it seemed all in a moment, the
boy's soul woke within him. What had happened he could
not tell, only that his father stood there, dazed, beaten,
and staring at him on every side in giant letters:
ARREST OF THE MAN TOMLINSON
"Come, father come upstairs," he said, and took him by
the arm, dragging him through the crowd.
In the next half-hour as they sat and waited for the
arrest in the false grandeur of the thousand-dollar
suite-Tomlinson, his wife, and Fred-the boy learnt more
than all the teaching of the industrial faculty of Plutoria
University could have taught him in a decade. Adversity
laid its hand upon him, and at its touch his adolescent
heart turned to finer stuff than the salted gold of the
Erie Auriferous. As he looked upon his father's broken
figure waiting meekly for arrest, and his mother's
blubbered face, a great wrath burned itself into his
soul.
"When the sheriff comes--" said Tomlinson, and his lip
trembled as he spoke. He had no other picture of arrest
than that.
"They can't arrest you, father," broke out the boy.
"You've done nothing. You never swindled them. I tell
you, if they try to arrest you, I'll--" and his voice
broke and stopped upon a sob, and his hands clenched in
passion.
"You stay here, you and mother. I'll go down. Give me
your money and I'll go and pay them and we'll get out of
this and go home. They can't stop us; there's nothing to
arrest you for."
Nor was there. Fred paid the bill unmolested, save for
the prying eyes and babbling tongues of the rotunda.
And a few hours from that, while the town was still
ringing with news of his downfall, the Wizard with his
wife and son walked down from their thousand-dollar suite
into the corridor, their hands burdened with their
satchels. A waiter, with something between a sneer and
an obsequious smile upon his face, reached out for the
valises, wondering if it was still worth while.
"You get to hell out of that!" said Fred. He had put on
again his rough store suit in which he had come from
Cahoga County, and there was a dangerous look about his
big shoulders and his set jaw. And the waiter slunk back.
So did they pass, unarrested and unhindered, through
corridor and rotunda to the outer portals of the great
hotel.
Beside the door of the Palaver as they passed out was a
tall official with a uniform and a round hat. He was
called by the authorities a chasseur or a commissionaire,
or some foreign name to mean that he did nothing.
At the sight of him the Wizard's face flushed for a
moment, with a look of his old perplexity.
"I wonder," he began to murmur, "how much I ought--"
"Not a damn cent, father," said Fred, as he shouldered
past the magnificent chasseur; "let him work."
With which admirable doctrine the Wizard and his son
passed from the portals of the Grand Palaver.
Nor was there any arrest either then or later. In spite
of the expectations of the rotunda and the announcements
of the Financial Undertone, the "man Tomlinson" was not
arrested, neither as he left the Grand Palaver nor as he
stood waiting at the railroad station with Fred and mother
for the outgoing train for Cahoga County.
There was nothing to arrest him for. That was not the
least strange part of the career of the Wizard of Finance.
For when all the affairs of the Erie Auriferous Consolidated
were presently calculated up by the labours of Skinyer
and Beatem and the legal representatives of the Orphans
and the Idiots and the Deaf-mutes they resolved themselves
into the most beautiful and complete cipher conceivable.
The salted gold about paid for the cost of the incorporation
certificate: the development capital had disappeared,
and those who lost most preferred to say the least about
it; and as for Tomlinson, if one added up his gains on
the stock market before the fall and subtracted his bill
at the Grand Palaver and the thousand dollars which he
gave to Skinyer and Beatem to recover his freehold on
the lower half of his farm, and the cost of three tickets
to Cahoga station, the debit and credit account balanced
to a hair.
Thus did the whole fortune of Tomlinson vanish in a night,
even as the golden palace seen in the mirage of a desert
sunset may fade before the eyes of the beholder, and
leave no trace behind.
It was some months after the collapse of the Erie Auriferous
that the university conferred upon Tomlinson the degree
of Doctor of Letters in absentia. A university must keep
its word, and Dean Elderberry Foible, who was honesty
itself, had stubbornly maintained that a vote of the
faculty of arts once taken and written in the minute book
became as irrefragable as the Devonian rock itself.
So the degree was conferred. And Dean Elderberry Foible,
standing in a long red gown before Dr. Boomer, seated in
a long blue gown, read out after the ancient custom of
the college the Latin statement of the award of the degree
of Doctor of Letters, "Eduardus Tomlinsonius, vir
clarrisimus, doctissimus, praestissimus," and a great
many other things all ending in issimus.
But the recipient was not there to receive. He stood at
that moment with his boy Fred on a windy hillside beside
Lake Erie, where Tomlinson's Creek ran again untrammelled
to the lake. Nor was the scene altered to the eye, for
Tomlinson and his son had long since broken a hole in
the dam with pickaxe and crowbar, and day by day the
angry water carried down the vestiges of the embankment
till all were gone. The cedar poles of the electric lights
had been cut into fence-rails; the wooden shanties of
the Italian gang of Auriferous workers had been torn down
and split into fire wood; and where they had stood, the
burdocks and the thistles of the luxuriant summer conspired
to hide the traces of their shame. Nature reached out
its hand and drew its coverlet of green over the grave
of the vanished Eldorado.
And as the Wizard and his son stood upon the hillside,
they saw nothing but the land sloping to the lake and
the creek murmuring again to the willows, while the
off-shore wind rippled the rushes of the shallow water.
