The Deluge | Page 9

it has as members most of the men I do business with and most of those
I want to get into touch with."
He laughed. "It can't be done."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Oh--I don't know. You see--the fact is--well, they're a lot of old fogies
up there. You don't want to bother with that push, Matt. Take my
advice. Do business with them, but avoid them socially."
"I want to go in there," I insisted. "I have my own reasons. You put me
up."
"I tell you, it'd be no use," he replied, in a tone that implied he wished
to hear no more of the matter.
"You put me up," I repeated. "And if you do your best, I'll get in all
right. I've got lots of friends there. And you've got three relatives in the
committee on membership."
At this he gave me a queer, sharp glance--a little fright in it.
I laughed. "You see, I've been looking into it, Sam. I never take a jump
till I've measured it."
"You'd better wait a few years, until--" he began, then stopped and
turned red.
"Until what?" said I. "I want you to speak frankly."
"Well, you've got a lot of enemies--a lot of fellows who've lost money
in deals you've engineered. And they'd say all sorts of things."
"I'll take care of that," said I, quite easy in mind. "Mowbray Langdon's
president, isn't he? Well, he's my closest friend." I spoke quite honestly.
It shows how simple-minded I was in certain ways that I had never
once noted the important circumstance that this "closest friend" had
never invited me to his house, or anywhere where I'd meet his up-town
associates at introducing distance.
Sam looked surprised. "Oh, in that case," he said, "I'll see what can be
done." But his tone was not quite cordial enough to satisfy me.
To stimulate him and to give him an earnest of what I intended to do
for him, when our little social deal had been put through, I showed him
how he could win ten thousand dollars in the next three days. "And you
needn't bother about putting up margins," said I, as I often had before.
"I'll take care of that."
He stammered a refusal and went out; but he came back within an hour,

and, in a strained sort of way, accepted my tip and my offer.
"That's sensible," said I. "When will you attend to the matter at the
Travelers? I want to be warned so I can pull my own set of wires in
concert."
"I'll let you know," he answered, hanging his head.
I didn't understand his queer actions then. Though I was an expert in
finance, I hadn't yet made a study of that other game--the game of
"gentleman." And I didn't know how seriously the frauds and fakirs
who play it take it and themselves. I attributed his confusion to a
ridiculous mock modesty he had about accepting favors; it struck me as
being particularly silly on this occasion, because for once he was to
give as well as to take.
He didn't call for his profits, but wrote asking me to mail him the check
for them. I did so, putting in the envelop with it a little jog to his
memory on the club matter. I didn't see him again for nearly a month;
and though I searched and sent, I couldn't get his trail. On opening day
at Morris Park, I was going along the passage behind the boxes in the
grand stand, on my way to the paddock. I wanted to see my horse that
was about to run for the Salmagundi Sweepstakes, and to tell my
jockey that I'd give him fifteen thousand, instead of ten thousand, if he
won--for I had put quite a bunch down. I was a figure at the tracks in
those days. I went into racing on my customary generous scale. I liked
horses, just as I liked everything that belonged out under the big sky;
also I liked the advertising my string of thoroughbreds gave me. I was
rich enough to be beyond the stage at which a man excites suspicion by
frequenting race-tracks and gambling-houses; I was at the height where
prodigalities begin to be taken as evidences of abounding superfluity,
not of a dangerous profligacy. Jim Harkaway, who failed at playing the
same game I played and won, said to me with a sneer one day: "You
certainly do know how to get a dollar's worth of notoriety out of a
dollar's worth of advertising."
"If I only knew that, Jim," said I, "I'd have been long ago where you're
bound for. The trick is to get it back ten for one. The more you
advertise yourself, the more suspicious