Mr. Wallingford objected, frowning. "They are too hard to handle. Your larger investors are business men who understand all the details and are not raising eternal questions about the little things that turn up; but since we have this tack so perfect I've changed my plan of incorporation, and consequently there is a way in which your friends can get in. We don't want to attract any attention to ourselves from the Eureka people just now, so we will only incorporate at first for one thousand dollars, in ten shares of one hundred dollars each – sort of a dummy corporation in which my name will not appear at all. If you can find four friends who will buy one share of stock each you will then subscribe for the other six shares, for which I will pay you, giving you one share, as I promised. These four friends of yours then, if they wish, may take up one block of twenty-five thousand when we make the final corporation, which we will do by increasing our capital stock as soon as we get our corporation papers. These friends of yours would, necessarily, be on our first board of directors, too, which will hold for one year, and it will be an exceptional opportunity for them."
"I don't quite understand," said Mr. Lamb.
"We incorporate for one thousand only," explained Mr. Wallingford, slowly and patiently, "ten shares of one hundred dollars each, all fully paid in. The Eureka Company will pay no attention to a one-thousand-dollar company. As soon as we get our corporation papers, we original incorporators will, of course, form the officers and board of directors, and we will immediately vote to increase our capitalization to one hundred thousand dollars, in one thousand shares of one hundred dollars each. We will vote to pay you and I as inventors sixty thousand dollars or six hundred shares of stock for our patents – applied for and to be applied for during a period of five years to come – in carpet-tack improvements and machinery for making the same. We will offer the balance of the forty thousand dollars stock for sale, to carry us through the experimental stage – that is, until we get our machinery all in working order. Then we will need one hundred thousand dollars to start our factory. To get that, we will reincorporate for a three-hundred-thousand capital, taking up all the outstanding stock and giving to each stockholder two shares at par for each share he then holds. That will take up two hundred thousand dollars of the stock and leave one hundred thousand for sale at par. You, in place of fifteen thousand dollars' worth of stock as your share for the patent rights, will have thirty thousand dollars' worth, or three hundred shares, and if, after we have started operating, the Eureka Company should buy us out at only a million, you would have a hundred thousand dollars net profit."
A long, long sigh was the answer. Mr Lamb saw. Here was real financiering.
"Let's get outside," he said, needing fresh air in his lungs after this. "Let's go up and see my friend, Mr. Jasper."
In ten minutes the automobile had reported. Each man, before he left the room, slipped a handful of covered carpet tacks into his coat pocket.
CHAPTER V
THE UNIVERSAL COVERED CARPET TACK COMPANY FORMS AMID GREAT ENTHUSIASM
The intense democracy of J. Rufus Wallingford could not but charm David Jasper, even though he disapproved of diamond stick-pins and red-leather-padded automobiles as a matter of principle. The manner in which the gentleman from Boston acknowledged the introduction, the fine mixture of deference due Mr. Jasper's age and of cordiality due his easily discernible qualities of good fellowship, would have charmed the heart out of a cabbage.
"Get in, Dave; we want to take you a ride," demanded Mr. Lamb.
David shook his head at the big machine, and laughed.
"I don't carry enough insurance," he objected.
Mr. Wallingford had caught sight of a little bronze button in the lapel of Mr. Jasper's faded and threadbare coat.
"A man who went through the battle of Bull Run ought to face anything," he laughed back.
The shot went home. Mr. Jasper had acquitted himself with honor in the battle of Bull Run, and without further ado he got into the invitingly open door of the tonneau, to sink back among the padded cushions with his friend Lamb. As the door slammed shut, Ella Jasper waved them adieu, and it was fully three minutes after the machine drove away before she began humming about her work. Somehow or other, she did not like to see her father's friend so intimately associated with rich people.
They had gone but a couple of blocks, and Mr. Lamb was in the early stages of the enthusiasm attendant upon describing the wonderful events of the past two days – especially his own share in the invention, and the hundred thousand dollars that it was to make him within the year – when Mr. Wallingford suddenly halted the machine.
"You're not going to get home to dinner, you know, Mr. Jasper," he declared.
"Oh, we have to! This is lodge night, and I am a patriarch. I haven't missed a night for twenty years, and Eddy, here, has an office, too – his first one. We've got ten candidates to-night." "I see," said Mr. Wallingford gravely. "It is more or less in the line of a sacred duty. Nevertheless, we will not go home to dinner. I'll get you at the lodge door at half past eight. Will that be early enough?"
Mr. Jasper put his hands upon his knees and turned to his friend.
"I guess we can work our way in, can't we, Eddy?" he chuckled, and Eddy, with equally simple pleasure, replied that they could.
"Very well. Back to the house, chauffeur." And, in a moment more, they were sailing back to the decrepit little cottage, where Lamb jumped out to carry the news to Ella. She was just coming out of the kitchen door in her sunbonnet to run over to the grocery store as Edward came up the steps. He grabbed her by both shoulders and dragged her out.
"Come on; we're going to take you along!" he threatened, and she did not know why, but, at the touch of his hands, she paled slightly. Her eyes never faltered, however, as she laughed and jerked herself away.
"Not much, you don't! I'm worried enough as it is with father in there – and you, of course."
He told her that they would not be home to supper, and, for a second time, she wistfully saw them driving away in the big red machine.
Mr. Wallingford talked with the chauffeur for a few moments, and then the machine leaped forward with definiteness. Once or twice Mr. Wallingford looked back. The two in the tonneau were examining the cloth-topped tacks, and both were talking volubly. Mile after mile they were still at it, and the rich man felt relieved of all responsibility. The less he said in the matter the better; he had learned the invaluable lesson of when not to talk. So far as he was concerned, the Universal Covered Carpet Tack Company was launched, and he was able to turn his attention to the science of running the car, a matter which, by the time they had reached their stopping point, he had picked up to the great admiration of the expert driver. For the last five miles the big man ran the machine himself, with the help of a guiding word or two, and when they finally stopped in front of the one pretentious hotel in the small town they had reached, he was so completely absorbed in the new toy that he was actually as nonchalant about the new company as he would have wished to appear. His passengers were surprised when they found that they had come twenty miles, and Mr. Wallingford showed them what a man who knows how to dine can do in a minor hotel. He had everybody busy, from the proprietor down. The snap of his fingers was as potent here as the clarion call of the trumpet in battle, and David Jasper, though he strove to disapprove, after sixty years of somnolence woke up and actually enjoyed pretentious luxury.
There were but five minutes of real business conversation following the meal, but five minutes were enough. David Jasper had called his friend Eddy aside for one brief moment.
"Did he give you any references?" he asked, the habit of caution asserting itself.
"Sure; more than half a dozen of them."
"Have you written to them?"
"I wrote this morning."
"I guess he wouldn't give them to you if he wasn't all right."
"We don't need the references," urged Lamb. "The man himself is reference enough. You see that automobile? He bought it this morning and didn't pay a cent on it. They didn't ask him to."
It was a greater recommendation than if the man had paid cash down for the machine; for credit is mightier than