just another restaurant scene with waiters and guests and steaming dishes and wine.
it’s the same old thing, repeated many times a day, but it’s like a stage on which a thousand plays have appeared. the setting is always the same—it’s only the scene that changes.
i just want to call your attention to that red-cheeked boy at the table over by the window. i said boy, although from the standpoint of years he is really a man. but he lacks experience to bring him to a man’s real estate. years, you know, don’t always count in this world, that is, not in all things. in this woman is excepted, because years count for everything with her.
this particular boy has just had his first experience, and that is the excuse for this story—if an excuse is needed. he has laid the foundation stone upon which he is going to build his life, and in the building he will use many stones of many colors, sizes and shapes.
you see him sitting there disconsolate, miserable and wretched. his home, as luxurious a one as anybody would want, is not more than a dozen blocks away, and he will wind up there in the course of the next forty-eight hours, for he is practically broke.
i call him the boy with the ten thousand dollar bill.
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just a few years ago his father died. a few weeks later the family lawyer was in the drawing room reading the will of the deceased, and near the end of the document he came to a clause which stipulated:
“on his twenty-first birthday my son shall receive from the balance of moneys unexpended a bill of the denomination of $10,000 to do with as he shall see fit, and he shall not be asked to account for the expenditure of it to anyone in any way whatsoever.”
that was a curious item for even a curious will, but the estate was big and the founder of that fortune felt evidently that he could afford to experiment with a mere ten thousand, even after his death, that the lesson might be of benefit to the heir.
the object is obvious.
the boy became of age, and on that day he received the bank note which to him seemed like a fortune, so he felt that he owned the world.
a man can do a lot of good in new york with that amount of money, and a boy can do a lot of harm.
this boy knew in advance the good fortune that was coming to him, and in looking around he made up his mind that the first thing a man of his means should buy would be an automobile costing $4,000, so the day he got the money he bought the car, and he received in exchange a bundle of crisp five hundred bills.
he must have thought those bills represented the wealth of croesus, or that they were magic, and no matter how many he might use, some mysterious agency would replace them.
at 11.30 o’clock that night the new automobile was backed up against the stage door of a broadway playhouse,
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and half an hour later it was filled with as many girls as could possibly be crowded in.
in that startling way the boy with the big bill made his debut into the society of the line. he gave the girls a dinner that they are talking of yet, and before two hours had gone by they were calling him pet names and incidentally trying to get a line on the actual size of his bank roll. they worked individually, and each one could in fancy see herself installed in a fine house, mistress of unlimited means and the wife of an especially easy mark, made to order for a chorus girl.
you see he was so liberal that he deceived them, although, as a matter of fact, young ladies with their wide experience ought to have known better, and have figured out the limit of his possibilities.
these ten thousand dollars were left by the dead man to be a bait for the wolves, and he had arranged it so that the hand of his son should feed it to them bit by bit. there were other thousands behind these and they were to be protected by the knowledge of the fate of the ones which had gone before. it was willed that ten thousand dollars of experience might be bought with it, and the boy was doing his share of it very well. he left his home and took a nice little apartment so that he could have more liberty, which he needed just about that time. he lunched with a soubrette and dined with a singer. if he liked a show or fancied one of the girls in it, he engaged a box every night for the week. the crowd dubbed him the little millionaire, and he deserved the title, for he was certainly playing the star part, and he was always present at what are known as rackets where the chief
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source of amusement were girls who cut capers and danced to the music of male voices.
his automobile, which always carried a bunch of freight from which ribbons and feathers fluttered, denoting the sex of the wearers, of course, shot up and down and in and out in a most spectacular manner, and it, as much as anything else, helped to make him popular.
he must have known a bit about finance, for it looked to those who were watching his career as if he was spending about ten thousand a week, and so he got the reputation of doing—as sometimes happens in this world—that which was impossible.
but through it all he never showed his hand.
he was dining one night with an especially nice little girl of the stage to whom he had shown a lot of attention—which means in stage parlance that he had bought her presents worth accepting.
they had come to the third bottle of wine, and to her way of thinking, the time seemed about ripe for what she had in mind.
“a man who’s been in the business a long time was telling me the other night that i ought to have a show of my own,” she mused, as she sipped her wine.
she had made a careful and skilful cast and she waited.
“why don’t you?” he asked presently.
that was quicker action than she had dared to expect.
“i ought to have done it two years ago when i had a friend that wanted to start me out on the road. don’t you think i’m as good as blanche bates?”
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“how was it you didn’t go?” he queried, ignoring her question.
“well, you see, i didn’t like this party, and i wouldn’t accept favors from no one i didn’t like. it don’t cost much to put a show on if you know how, and there’s a lot of money in it if it’s a hit.”
“about how much?”
“twelve or fifteen thousand dollars would do it up in great shape. i think a nice little comic opera would be good. the kind lillian russell has. all she makes good on is her looks and that’s not so much. i could take a few music lessons while the play was being fixed up and it wouldn’t be long before i could make them all sit up and look me over.”
there was a moment’s pause and then she aimed at the bull’s eye:
“what’s the matter with you backing it?”
“that’s what i was just thinking about,” was the answer. “i’ll look into it and if it’s all right i’ll see my broker and give you a chance to see what you can do as a star.”
he was talking like an old timer and he had her going in a minute. but that was only one of his jokes and for two weeks he kept it up. then he told her of some enormous investments he had made which had tied him up temporarily, while she had to go around explaining to her friends that it was all off about what she had been telling them.
there was one proposition this gay young sport hadn’t figured on, for all going out and nothing coming in makes a quick and, as a rule, a spectacular finish. a fellow starts out like a three-time winner and
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comes under the wire with nothing but a bundle of junk, without even knowing his right name.
two months of the three had gone by and the most remarkable part of the whole affair was that there was any money left. but toward the latter part of the game he had been growing wise, or he thought he was, at any rate. he stopped the five-dollar tips and he was cutting out a night here and there. he might have retired with honors if he hadn’t met blanche.
good-looking, slick, clever blanche, the regret of whose life was that she hadn’t met him first and got it all in one solid chunk. he didn’t know it, but he was made for blanche, and what was more to the point, she knew it. in fact, there were very few things she didn’t know.
his talk about his brokers didn’t switch her in the least. there had been a time in her life when she might have believed it, but that time had gone by. she had lived in a fool’s paradise just once and that was enough for her.
he actually wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t consider it for a moment, because she didn’t figure him out as a future proposition for more than a couple of thousand at the most.
“you’re all right, harry,” she said once, “but we won’t have any marrying just now. what we will do is go shopping. i want to furnish a flat so i can really have a home of my own and you will be just as welcome there as if you owned it yourself, so come along and we’ll pick the things out. you have very nice taste in such matters, i know, and we can have a good time buying.”
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good speech that, and very nicely delivered, and he liked her well enough to find no flaw in it. but when the time really came for the buying there was something else she had to do, so she said:
“don’t you bother your head about this; just give me the money; i know what i want; i have the list all made out. i’ll buy them and fix them up and when everything is ready i’ll have you come up and look at them and tell me what you think. i know my taste is not as good as yours, but i’ll do the best i can.”
please bear in mind that he was only a boy—just twenty-one years old—then you will understand perhaps why it was he fell for so old a story.
at this point you’ve got it all figured out. in your opinion she took the coin and simply faded away.
nothing of the kind.
he saw her once every twenty-four hours at least and she reported progress, and then one day he got a note telling him to come up and see the new place.
she received him at the door herself and if the little flat had been a palace she couldn’t have been more delighted. it was so very fine that when she told him she had gone into debt just a little bit he promptly asked how much and paid up without even so much as a murmur. it was so easy that she ought to have given it back to him a little while just to hold.
when he went away he had a latch key and was about as proud a fellow as it was possible to be and walk straight.
as in a play so in a story—the finish is everything.
it must be good and it must be quick.
the earlier parts of the story or the scenes may lag, but nothing like that will do at the end.
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blanche had been on the stage, and consequently she knew the value of “finis.”
he was to go on a hunting trip for a week, and in her opinion the critical moment had about arrived. she intuitively divined the end of the string. one night at a little dinner in the flat she talked to him about money matters, and such was the charm of her manner that presently he was telling her all about himself, and the romance of the ten thousand dollar bill.
“and how much have you left of all this?” she asked softly.
“oh, i don’t know, about seven or eight hundred.”
“well, i think you’ve been very, very foolish. you’re going away on a week’s trip and a hundred really ought to do you. just give the rest to me and i will take good care of it until you come back, and then you will have it. you want to be careful of what you have now; you are altogether too liberal, and you do too much for people.”
that was the reason when he went away on that trip that he was a trifle shy financially, and so far to the bad that he had to borrow to get back in good shape.
from the grand central station he took a cab to the flat. it seemed as though he couldn’t get there quick enough. he went up the stairs two at a time. he came to the door.
there was a light, dim, but still a light, shining feebly over the transom. he put the key in the lock, turned it, opened the door and went in. he took four steps in the private hall. then a man’s arm went around his neck and a voice asked:
“what are you doing here?”
he had nerve and he wasn’t the least bit flustered.
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“if you’ll let go that strangle i’ll tell you,” he said. “where’s blanche?”
that was the opening for the story, which he told very well under the circumstances.
“she never owned this furniture,” spoke up the man, when the tale had been concluded. “this flat is rented furnished. she left here about a week ago, and i live here now.”
now we get the curtain.
he has finished his dinner, and he’s going home. that’s the best place anyhow. what right has a boy like that to be on broadway with ten thousand dollars?
