“Then, last of all,” concluded Ryder,
“I made out I was a hobo, and began stealing
rides on the Belt Line Railroad. Know the road?
It just circles Chicago. Truslow owns it.
Yes? Well, then I began to catch on. I noticed
that cars of certain numbers—thirty-one
nought thirty-four, thirty-two one ninety—well,
the numbers don’t matter, but anyhow, these
cars were always switched onto the sidings by Mr. Truslow’s
main elevator D soon as they came in. The wheat
was shunted in, and they were pulled out again.
Well, I spotted one car and stole a ride on her.
Say, look here, that car went right around the
city on the Belt, and came back to D again, and the
same wheat in her all the time. The grain
was reinspected—it was raw, I tell you—and
the warehouse receipts made out just as though the
stuff had come in from Kansas or Iowa.”
“The same wheat all the time!” interrupted
Hornung.
“The same wheat—your wheat, that
you sold to Truslow.”
“Great snakes!” ejaculated Hornung’s
broker. “Truslow never took it abroad at
all.”
“Took it abroad! Say, he’s just been
running it around Chicago, like the supers in ‘Shenandoah,’
round an’ round, so you’d think it was
a new lot, an’ selling it back to you again.”
“No wonder we couldn’t account for so
much wheat.”
“Bought it from us at one-ten, and made us buy
it back—our own wheat—at one-fifty.”
Hornung and his broker looked at each other in silence
for a moment. Then all at once Hornung struck
the arm of his chair with his fist and exploded in
a roar of laughter. The broker stared for one
bewildered moment, then followed his example.
“Sold! Sold!” shouted Hornung almost
gleefully. “Upon my soul it’s as
good as a Gilbert and Sullivan show. And we—Oh,
Lord! Billy, shake on it, and hats off to my
distinguished friend, Truslow. He’ll be
President some day. Hey! What? Prosecute
him? Not I.”
“He’s done us out of a neat hatful of
dollars for all that,” observed the broker,
suddenly grave.
“Billy, it’s worth the price.”
“We’ve got to make it up somehow.”
“Well, tell you what. We were going to
boost the price to one seventy-five next week, and
make that our settlement figure.”
“Can’t do it now. Can’t afford
it.”
“No. Here; we’ll let out a big link;
we’ll put wheat at two dollars, and let it go
at that.”
“Two it is, then,” said the broker.
The street was very dark and absolutely deserted.
It was a district on the “South Side,”
not far from the Chicago River, given up largely to
wholesale stores, and after nightfall was empty of
all life. The echoes slept but lightly hereabouts,
and the slightest footfall, the faintest noise, woke
them upon the instant and sent them clamouring up and
down the length of the pavement between the iron shuttered
