c.1905 –
by
John Kendrick Bangs
“Excuse me, Henriette,” said I one
morning, after I had been in Mrs. Van Raffles’s employ for about three months
and had begun to calculate as to my share of the profits. “What are you doing with all this money we
are gradually accumulating? There must
be pretty near a million in hand by this time---eh?”
“One million two hundred and eighty-seven
thousand five hundred and twenty-eight dollars and thirty-six cents,” replied
Henriette instantly. “It’s a tidy little
sum.”
“Almost enough to retire on,” I suggested.
“Now, Bunny, stop that!” retorted
Henriette. “Either stop it or else
retire yourself. I am not what they call
a quitter in this country, and I do not propose at the very height of my career
to give up a business which I have struggled for years to establish.”
“That is all very well, Henriette.,” said
I. “But the pitcher that goes to the bat
too often strikes out at last.”
(I had become a baseball fiend during my
sojourn in the States.) “A million
dollars is a pot of money, and it’s my advice to you to get away with it as
soon as you can.”
“Excuse me, Bunny, but when did I ever employ
you to give advice?” demanded Henriette.
“It is quite evident that you don’t understand me. Do you suppose for an instant that I am
robbing these people here in
“You certainly are an artist, Henriette,”
I answered, desirous of placating her.
“Then you should know better than to
intimate that I am in this business for the sordid dollars and cents there are
to be got out of it,” pouted my mistress.
“Mr. Vauxhall Bean doesn’t chase the aniseseed bag because he loves to
shed the aniseseed or hungers for bags as an article of food. He does it for the excitement of the hunt;
because he loves to feel the movement of the hunter that he sits so well
between his knees; because he is enamoured of the baying of the hounds, the
winding of the horn, and welcomes the element of personal danger that enters
into the sport when he and his charger have to take an unusual fence or an
extra broad watercourse. So with
me. In separating these people here from
their money and their jewels, it is not the money and the jewels that I care
for so much as the delicious risks I incur in getting them. What the high fence is to the hunter, the
barriers separating me from Mrs. Gaster’s jewel-case are to me; what the
watchful farmer armed with a shot-gun for the protection of his crops is to the
master of the hounds, the police are to me.
The game of circumnavigating the latter and surmounting the former are
the joy of my life, and while my eyes flash and sparkle with appetite every
time I see a necklace or a tiara or a roll of hundred-dollar bills in the
course of my social duties, it is not avarice that make them glitter, but the
call to action which they sound.”
I felt like saying that if that were the
case I should esteem it a privilege to be made permanent custodian of the
balance in hand, but it was quite evident from Henriette’s manner that she was
in no mood for badinage, so I held my peace.
“To prove to you that I am not out for the
money, Bunny, I’ll give you a check this morning for two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars to pay you for those steel bonds you picked up on the train
when you came up here from New York.
That’s two-and-a-half times what they are worth,” said Henriette. “Is it a bargain?”
“Certainly, ma’am,” I replied, delighted
with the proposition. “But what are you
going to do with the bonds?”
“Borrow a million and a half on ‘em,” said
Henriette.
‘What!” I cried. “A million and a half on a hundred thousand
security?”
“Certainly,” replied Henriette, “only it
will require a little manipulation. For
the past six months I have been depositing the moneys I have received in
seventeen national banks in
“Me?” I laughed. “Surely you are joking. What value will my signature have?”
“It will be good as gold after you have
deposited that check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in your New
York bank,” said Henriette. “I shall go
to the president of the Ohoolihan National bank at Oshkosh, Ohio, where I have
at present three hundred and sixty-eight thousand three hundred and forty-three
dollars and eighteen cents on deposit and tell him that the Hon. John
Warrington Bunny, of New York, is my trustee for an estate of thirteen million
dollars in funds set apart for me by a famous relative of mine who is not proud
of the connection. He will communicate
with you and ask you if this is true.
You will respond by sending him a certified copy of the trust
certificate, and refer him as to your own responsibility to the New York bank
where our two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is on deposit. I will then swap checks with you for three
hundred thousand dollars, mine to you going into your
“That’s a very simple little plan of
yours, Henriette,” said I, “and the first part of it will work easily I have no
doubt; but how the deuce are you going to wash those bonds up to fifteen times
their value?”
“Easiest thing in the world, Bunny,”
laughed Henriette. “There will be two
million dollars of the bonds before I get through.”
“Heavens --- no counterfeiting, I hope?” I
cried.
“Nothing so vulgar,” said Henriette. “Just a little management --- that all. And, by-the-way, Bunny, when you get a
chance, please hire twenty safe-deposit boxes for me in as many different trust
companies here and in New York --- and don’t have ‘em too near together. That’s all for the present.”
Three weeks later, having followed out
Henriette’s instructions to the letter, I received at my New York office a
communication from the president of the Ohoolihan National Bank, of Oshkosh,
Ohio, inquiring as to the Van Raffles trust fund. I replied with a certified copy of the
original which Henriette had already placed in the president’s hands. I incidentally referred the inquirer as to my
own standing to the Delancy Trust Company, of
“Now, Bunny,” said Mrs. Van Raffles on the
morning of his arrival, “all you have to do is to put the one hundred bonds
first in the vault of the Amalgamated Trust Company, of
I toppled back into a chair in sheer
amazement.
“By Jingo! But you are a wonder,” I cried.
“If it only works.”
----------------
It worked.
Mr. Bolivar was duly impressed with the extent of Henriette’s fortune in
tangible assets, not to mention her evident standing in the community of her
residence. He was charmingly entertained
and never for an instant guessed when at dinner where Henriette had no less
personages than the Rockerbilts, Mrs. Gaster, Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, Tommy
Dare, and various other social lights to meet him, that the butler who passed
him his soup and helped him liberally to wine was the Hon. John Warrington
Bunny, trustee.
“Well,” said, Henriette, as she gazed
delightedly at the president’s certified check for one million four hundred
thousand dollars---the amount of the loan less the bonus---“that was the best
sport yet. Even aside from the size of
the check, Bunny, it was great chasing the old man to cover. What do you think he said to me when he left,
the poor, dear old innocent?”
“Give it up---what?”
“He said that I ought to be very careful
in my dealings with men, who might impose upon my simplicity,” laughed
Henriette.
“Simplicity?” I roared. “What ever gave him the idea that you were
simple?”
“Oh---I don’t know,” said Henriette,
demurely. “I guess it was because I told
him I kept those bonds in twenty safe-deposit vaults instead of in one, to
protect myself in case of loss by fire---I didn’t want to have too many eggs in
one basket.
“H’m!” said I. “What did he say to that?”
Henriette laughed long and hard at the
recollection of the aged bank president’s reply.
“He squeezed my hand and answered, ‘What a
child it is, indeed!’” said Henriette.