BOUND WEST.
Vance went to a Clark Street restaurant and had supper.
It was all right, but the boy did not enjoy it as much as he would have done at home.
The Thorntons lived in a small house, one of a row, on the North Side, which Mrs. Thornton owned.
They had once been wealthy, for Mr. Thornton had at one time been a successful member of the Chicago Board of Trade.
But a few months before his death, which had occurred ten years previously, he had been caught in a short deal and squeezed.
He extricated himself at the cost of his entire fortune.
Everything was swept away except the one little house, the property of Mrs. Thornton, to which the family immediately moved, and a few thousand dollars banked in the wife’s name.
After Mr. Thornton’s death the widow devoted herself to her children, and when Vance graduated from the public school, she made application to Mr. Whitemore, with whom her husband had had business relations, for a position for her son in his office.
The application being made at a lucky moment, the lad was taken on, and had in every way proved himself worthy of Jared Whitemore’s confidence.
Promptly at eight o’clock Vance was shown up to Mr. Whitemore’s rooms in the Grand Pacific Hotel.
The corn operator was in his sitting-room before a table that was scattered over with papers and telegraph blanks.
It was a cool evening, but Jared Whitemore was in his shirt sleeves, and, although the windows were down at the top, his face was red and he was perspiring furiously.
A half-smoked cigar projected between his lips, and several discarded stumps lay on a lacquer tray that held one of the hotel pitchers of ice water.
“You have the government report on the visible supply in that bundle, have you?” asked Jared Whitemore, as soon as he became aware of the boy’s presence in the room.
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me have it,” with an impatient gesture.
Vance had it before his employer in a twinkling.
“Your notes, please,” said the operator, after he had studied the report for several minutes.
The boy laid them before him.
“Put the pamphlets down there. Now, take the evening paper and go over there by the window and sit down.”
Vance did so, and there was perfect silence in the room for the next half hour, when it was broken by a knock on the door.
“See who that is,” almost snapped Whitemore, jerking his thumb in the direction of the entrance.
Vance found a telegraph boy outside, signed for the yellow envelope and brought it to his employer.
Two more dispatches arrived before the little marble clock on the mantel chimed the hour of nine.
Another half hour of almost perfect silence ensued, during which two more cigar stumps were added to the collection on the dish; and Vance was beginning to wonder why he was being held there by Mr. Whitemore, when the operator rose from his seat, mopped his forehead with his familiar bandana handkerchief and then sat down again.
“Vance.”
“Yes, sir,” answered the boy, springing up.
“Come here.”
The tones were short, sharp and incisive.
“Sit down here alongside of me.”
Vance obeyed this order with military promptness.
“When can you start for Omaha?”
“Sir!” said the boy, almost speechless from amazement.
“I asked you when you could leave for Omaha?” repeated the operator, brusquely.
“By the eight o’clock train in the morning, if you particularly wish it,” answered the astonished lad.
“Very well; make your arrangements to that effect. Now, Vance, I want to speak to you. Heretofore I have always closed my dealings with the elevator people through Mr. Vyce. For reasons which I need not discuss with you I am going to send you to do the business for me this time.”
The boy’s eyes expanded to the size of saucers at this information.
It simply meant a most remarkable expression of confidence on Mr. Whitemore’s part in his youthful office assistant.
Confidence not only in the boy’s business sagacity, but even more so in his integrity, for he would be obliged to handle checks signed in blank for a very large sum of money; just how large would, of course, depend on the amount of corn the options covered.
That it ran into several millions of bushels the lad already knew.
“I am taking this unusual course,” continued Mr. Whitemore, lighting a fresh cigar and regarding Vance keenly, “for several reasons. To begin with, since I started this deal I have in hand I have met with opposition from a most unexpected quarter. It could only have developed through information furnished by some one who had an insight to my plans. In order to test the accuracy of my suspicions in a certain direction I cut off all information from that quarter. The result has been confusion in the ranks of the opposition. I’m, therefore, convinced I can at any time put my finger on the traitor to my interests. To continue the further development of my scheme, I have decided to substitute you for Mr. Vyce, so far as the settlement of my Western corn options are concerned. During the last five or six weeks you have probably noticed that I have employed you on business of a confidential nature. This was to test you for the purpose I had in view. On one occasion I so arranged matters that you were forced to retain in your possession over Sunday a very large sum of money. I had no doubts as to your honesty, but I wished to see how you would proceed under the responsibility. The result was perfectly satisfactory to me. Vance, I knew your father well. We had many business dealings, and I found him a man on whom I could implicitly rely. I believe you are his duplicate.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Vance, gratefully, as Mr. Whitemore paused for a moment.
“Now to business. Here is a power of attorney, which will give you all the necessary authority to represent me on this Western trip. Here are your general instructions,” and he handed Vance the two typewritten pages Bessie Brown had executed just before she left the office for the night.
“You will go to Omaha first, thence to Kansas City, and so on. Here are letters of introduction addressed to the elevator firms. Some of them are personally acquainted with me. These are the vouchers for the options. You will insist on all settlements at the figures given in the options, which, as you will see, are below the market quotations. Now, as to the payments of the balances, here is a small check-book of the Chicago National Bank. I have made out and signed sixteen checks in blank, one of each payable to the order of the elevator firm; all you will have to do is to fill in the amount after the difference has been computed. Immediately after each settlement you will mail me by registered letter, care of the Chicago National Bank, the firm’s receipt for the amount of money represented by the check, together with the warehouse receipt. Now, read your instructions over carefully, and if there is anything you have to suggest, I will listen to you.”
Vance went over the two-page letter and found that it covered every emergency, so far as he could see.
The boy was especially directed to visit certain out-of-the-way places, where elevators, reported as disused or empty, were known to exist, and to ascertain by every artifice in his power whether any corn had been received there for storage during the past three months. This was one of the most important objects of his journey.
“Here are a couple of hundred dollars to cover incidental expenses,” said Mr. Whitemore, handing Vance a roll of bills. “I hardly need to tell you that I am reposing an almost unlimited confidence in your honor and business sagacity—a somewhat unusual thing to do with one so young as you. But I am rarely mistaken in my estimate of character, and I feel satisfied you will fill the bill to the letter. I may say right here that you have studied the corn market to advantage. Such details as I have asked you to look into for me you have gone over and reduced to practical results with astonishing clearness and dispatch for one of your years and limited experience with Board of Trade methods. You seem to be a born speculator, like your father. I have long wished to associate with me a young man of nerve and accurate foresight in whom I could thoroughly depend. You appear to combine all the qualities in question. On this trip you are bound to acquire knowledge of the most confidential nature—information that could not but seriously embarrass me if it became known to my business opponents. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said Vance, with a serious face.
“You see how much I depend on your loyalty?”
“You need have no fear but I will fulfil your trust down to the smallest degree,” answered Vance, earnestly.
“I am sure of it, Vance. The proof of the pudding is that I am sending you West on this business. One thing your age, and, I hope, your wit and cautiousness, are particularly adapted to, and that is acquiring the information about the possible contents of those elevators reported to be empty. On the thoroughness of your report as regards these properties will depend one of my most important moves on the corn market.”
“I will find out the truth, if that be within the bounds of possibility.”
“Now, Vance, another thing. Your mother will naturally want to know where you are going, but it will be necessary for you to withhold that information, for I have an idea that as soon as your absence is noted at the office she will be approached on the subject by some one interested in tracing your movements. You will simply tell her you are going out of town on business for me and will be back in a few days. Do not write to any one in Chicago, not even your folks, while you are away. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Should you find it necessary to communicate with me at any time, call up Mr. Walcott, of the Chicago National Bank, on the long-distance telephone, and he will send for me.”
“Very well, sir.”
“I believe there is nothing further, so I will say good bye till I see you at the office after your return.”
“Good-bye, sir.”
Vance took up his hat, after carefully putting all the papers and the check-book of the Chicago National Bank in an inside pocket of his coat, and left the hotel.
When he reached home an hour later he duly astonished his mother and sister with the information that he was going out of town on business for his employer.
Of course the first thing they wanted to know was his destination.
“I am sorry, mother, I can’t tell you. Where I am going, as well as the object of the trip, is a business secret.”
“But we ought to know, Vance,” expostulated his pretty sister Elsie. “Unless you tell us we shall be worried to death about you.”
“Sorry, sis,” he replied, taking her face in his two hands and kissing her cherry-red, pouting lips; “but I am under strict orders not to say a word about it.”
“It’s real mean of you. You know neither mamma nor I would say a word if you told us not to,” she persisted, throwing her arms about his neck coaxingly.
“Don’t blame me, Elsie—blame the boss. Let me tell you one thing, dear. I feel sure this trip is the chance of my life. Mr. Whitemore as good as said so.”
And with that the gentle mother and loving sister had to be content.
Next morning Vance boarded a Pullman drawing-room car and left Chicago over the C. B. & Q. railroad for Omaha.