And he darted from the office, took the trail of Mr. Macdonald, whom he had seen passing, brought him to bay in front of the post-office, and dragged him away to some doom, the nature of which I could only surmise.
This took place on the morning of my first day with Elkins & Barslow. I was to take up the office work.
"That will be easy for you from the first," said Jim. "Your experience as rob-ee down there in Posey County makes you a sort of specialist in that sort of thing; and pretty soon all other things shall be added unto it."
The Captain's onslaught in the first half-hour admonished me that a good deal was already added to it. On that very day, too, we had our first conference with Mr. Hinckley. We wanted to handle securities, said Mr. Elkins, and should have a great many of them, and that was quite in Mr. Hinckley's line. To carry them ourselves would soon absorb all our capital. We must liberate it by floating the commercial paper which we took in. Mr. Hinckley's bank was known to be strong, his standing was of the highest, and a trust company in alliance with him could not fail to find a good market for its paper. With an old banker's timidity, Hinckley seemed to hesitate; yet the prospects seemed so good that I felt that this consent was sure to be given. Jim courted him assiduously, and the intimacy between him and the Hinckley family became noticeable.
"Jim," said I, one day, "you have an unerring eye for the pleasant things of life. I couldn't help thinking of this to-day when I saw you for the twentieth time spinning along the street in Miss Hinckley's carriage, beside its owner. She's one of the handsomest girls, in her flaxen-haired way, that I know of."
"Isn't she a study in curves and pink and white?" said Jim. "And she understands this trust company business as well as her father."
The trust company's stock, he went on to explain, ignoring Antonia, seemed to be already oversubscribed. Our firm, Hinckley, and Jim's Chicago and New York friends, including Harper, all stood ready to take blocks of it, and there was no reason for requiring Hinckley to put much actual money in for this. He could pay for it out of his profits soon, and make a fortune without any outlay. Good credit was the prime necessity, and that Mr. Hinckley certainly had. So the celebrated Grain Belt Trust Company was begun--a name about which such mighty interests were to cluster, that I know I should have shrunk from the responsibility had I known what a gigantic thing we were creating.