Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 2, 1922 — page 43: what you’re looking at

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

MR. STOKES’ ACCOUNT. — claim to be a member, and of which your Templeton office is supposed to be a branch, has done all its business right here in town; and that your New York office consists of desk room in the office of another broker whose business, in so far as we have been able to learn, is hardly less questionable than your own. There you have employed a young woman whose sole duty seems to be to send you here in Templeton frequent telegrams concerning current prices of active stocks.” | ‘All of which,” cut in Stokes, “ is per- fectly innocent in the eyes of the law.” “True,” agreed Beth, ‘“‘ but there is hard- ly room for doubt that of the many thou- sands of dollars’ worth of orders for stocks executed by you here in Templeton, at least ninety-five per cent have been bucketed.”’ “You'd have hard work to prove that, Miss Benson. I have always delivered the stock purchased by my customers when called for.” “‘ A negligible proportion, since your busi- ness has been almost exclusively on mar- gins; and you have been adroit enough to see that in most cases the client had nothing coming to him; and lately those who did have a credit balance on your books have been induced to accept Alham- bra stock in settlement. “An examination of your affairs under a civil suit would doubtless turn up some valuable data.” “ You seem to have some pretty accurate inside knowledge concerning my business,” sneered Stokes. ‘““ Merely because your business has been so typical of most enterprises of its kind that it was easy to discover the combina- tion. Now, Mr. Stokes, I’m not threaten- ing you. I’m only telling you a little of what I know about you and your methods. You came into this town with the deliber- ate intent of making a cleanup. I don’t know about other banks, but this is a bank with a conscience and with a sense of re- sponsibility, not only toward its customers, but toward the community it serves. I de- clined your business the day you came to town. I have been lax in not taking steps which would have prevented loss to a good many Templeton people—loss which it is now too late to remedy. But I don’t pro- 3A 513 pose to let you walk out of this town with two or three hundred thousand dollars of easy money. You may have oil properties, or you may not. Of course, judging your promotion by others conducted along sim- ilar lines, the value of your Alhambra hold- ings is probably extremely small.” ‘“'We have ten thousand acres of the best prospective oil leases in Tex—”’ “That may be. In other words, ten thousand acres of wildcat, undrilled, and for all we know hundreds of miles away from any proven territory.” “ Now, that isn’t so, Miss Benson. All our leases are in good proven producing sec- tions, and when we have put down a well or two—”’ “All right, Mr. Stokes—I’ll take your word for it. I hope what you say is true; but you'll have to raise capital for develop- ment purposes elsewhere. I want you to turn over to me the contents of your safety deposit box at the Sands County Trust and the amount of your cash on deposit there. I will make arrangements with Mr. French of the other bank, and we will act as joint custodians of the securities and money until such time as all those in this vicinity who wish to sell back their Alhambra stock have had ample opportunity to do so. We will charge you only a nominal fee for adver- tising and incidental expenses; and at the end of three months, if anything is left, you may have a check for it and welcome. In the meanwhile, we shall be glad if you make your headquarters in some other part of the country.” “Well,” cried Stokes, “ that’s the coolest proposition I ever had put up to me. It won’t leave me a shoestring. I’ve paid for the leases with proceeds of the stock sales.” “Yes, but you had some money of your own, namely the profits of your bucketshop when you started what you thought would be a bigger game. I may say, Mr. Stokes, that we will make you an allowance of fifty dollars a week during the three months al- lotted to the repurchase of the stock.” Stokes jumped to his feet, shouting: ‘No, no, you can’t force me, Miss Benson, you can’t blackmail me. It’s the most high- handed piece of daylight robbery I ever heard.of! What’s to prevent my refusing, Comicvooks;com —