All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 33: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A THIEVES’ .COMEDY. Papa had taken his friend into the library, closing the door very tightly; but didn’t think about the door leading from the library into the music-room. It looked closed, so it is to be sup- posed that he did not bother about it. ‘Toward the end of the interview, when his friend said a little excitedly, “\We can send it up to five hundred if we want to,” papa seemed to think of the door leading to the music-room, and, tiptoeing to it, discovered that it was not as tightly shut as he had imagined. Throwing it open suddenly, he found Margaret looking lazily up at him from a copy of the libretto of the “* Pirates of Penzance.” “What is it, papa?” she asked, and appeared so innocent and disinterested that papa really did not know what it was. ‘ Nothing—oh, nothing at all,” he said very fidgety, at the cross-roads of doubt and fear and anger. “ But I think you had better go to your room.” It was too late then, however, even though papa actually thought his daughter too unsophisticated to know the meaning of a “corner on Rand Island.’ Perhaps he imagined that her young mind would conceive it to be an acre or so of land. But it didn’t. Not only did she know what a “ cor- ner” meant, but also what it meant to be “caught short fifty thousand.” She hadn't been papa's daughter for eighteen years for nothing. It was such a simple little corner, too. The total issue of Rand Island stock was two hundred thousand shares. Papa and his friend had quietly ac- cumulated one hundred and _ five thousand, fifty thousand of which their victim had sold short in three months at a rising price of from fifty to eighty. One man in San Francisco held fifty thousand, but those were too far away to be troublesome at a day’s notice. The balance was scattered over the country at large, and papa and his 743 friend were gathering in everything that lay near enough to New York to be useful—probably ten thousand or so. Like the San Francisco lot, and for the same reason, the remainder was not dangerous enough to . bother about. The victim's name was not men-~ tioned, but it was the laudable inten- tion of papa and his friend to reduce his bank account considerably, if not actually relegate him to New Street— which is to say, break him. On Wednesday of the following week they would proceed to buy him in, bidding the stock up and up and up, knowing very well that almost every share that could possibly be bought for delivery the following day was in their possession. All that did Margaret gather from the libretto of the “ Pirates of Pen- zance’; papa’s friend having a stac- cato voice which would not suffer much modulation and a habit of repeating himself as if he were afraid he would not be properly understood.; When Margaret went to her room she arranged the facts and figures nice- ly upon a sheet of paper so that she would not jumble them up afterward. At a “conservative ’”* estimate, the stock would go up to two hundred— and the victim would enrich papa and his friend six or seven millions! The cab was circling Central Park by that time. How it got there I don’t know, because I hadn’t been paying particular attention. Margaret's cheeks were a little flushed and a wayward strand of her hair tickled my chin. I didn’t mind. “That is very interesting,” I de- clared when the story ended. ‘“‘ How much could I make with forty-five hundred?” “ Oh-—lots—but I want to make something, too. Not for me—for us. We're in partnership.” “T see. That sounds rather pleas- ant, but vou mustn't include the quarter of a million you threw at my head a little while ago.” comicloooks.com