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JACK AND THE CHECK BOOK

by

JOHN KENDRICK BANGS

Illustrated by Albert Levering


[Illustration: THE WISH BROUGHT ABOUT THE MOST ASTONISHING RESULTS--See
page 54]







Harper & Brothers
New York and London
1911

Copyright, 1911, by Harper & Brothers




CONTENTS


  CHAP.                                                             PAGE
    I. JACK AND THE CHECK-BOOK                                         1
   II. THE GREAT WISH SYNDICATE                                       36
  III. PUSS, THE PROMOTER                                             74
   IV. THE GOLDEN FLEECE                                             115
    V. THE INVISIBLE CLOAK                                           157
   VI. THE RETURN OF ALADDIN                                         195




ILLUSTRATIONS


  THE WISH BROUGHT ABOUT THE MOST ASTONISHING RESULTS     _Frontispiece_
  THE BEANS SCATTERED IN EVERY DIRECTION                               7
  THE OGRE COLLAPSED IN HIS CHAIR                                     23
  "BLESS YOU, MY CHILDREN!"                                           27
  "A WEEK'S VACATION IN LITTLE OLD NEW YORK"                          31
  WITHIN THE ANCIENT HOUSE SAT THE OWNER, RICHARD WILBRAHAM           39
  "BALLYHACK! LAST STATION----ALL OUT!"                               51
  WILBRAHAM PAID BEFORE LEAVING THE COURT-ROOM                        71
  "I SUPPOSE I COULD SELL YOU, BILL"                                  79
  "TELL 'EM TO TELL MR. BONDIFELLER THAT I AM TOO BUSY TO SEE HIM"    87
  "GOOD-BYE, JACK"                                                    93
  "THE HANDSOMEST TOWER IN THE WORLD"                                 99
  "COULDN'T MAKE IT THREE MILLION, COULD YOU?" SUGGESTED MR. DOBBINS 107
  "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?"                                 121
  "THERE'S THE MONEY, SIR"                                           131
  POOR GASMERILDA SAT WHITE-FACED                                    137
  "I AM YOUR FAIRY GODMOTHER, GASMERILDA"                            141
  "THIS IS THE GREATEST CINCH IN THE HISTORY OF FINANCE"             149
  "DERE ISS SOMEDINGS IN DOT SEADT, ALRETTY YET!"                    169
  "THERE MUST BE SOMETHING THE MATTER WITH MY NERVES"                175
  "HUMPH!" SAID SHE, SCORNFULLY                                      199
  "THIS IS A HALF-PORTION, SIR," SAID <DW71>                          207
  "YOU RUBBED THE LAMP, I BELIEVE?"                                  213
  "WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?" THEY DEMANDED                               231




JACK AND THE CHECK-BOOK




I


Once upon a time a great many years ago there lived a poor woman who,
having invested all her savings in mining shares, was soon brought to
penury and want. She had bought her modest little home and all there was
in it on the instalment plan, and here she was, upon a certain beautiful
morning in late spring, absolutely penniless, and three days off,
staring her in the face, were payments due on the piano, the kitchen
range and even on the house itself. Moreover, the winter had been a
bitter one. Four times had the water-pipes frozen and burst, and a
plumber's bill of appalling magnitude had come in the morning's mail,
with the stern admonition stamped in red letters at the bottom:

  LONG PAST DUE.
  PLEASE REMIT.

The unhappy woman was at her wit's ends to know what to do. She had
tried to sell her shares in "Amalgamated War-whoop," only to find that
that once promising company had passed into the hands of a receiver, and
that there was an assessment, amounting to four times their face value,
due on the shares, so that every possible purchaser to whom she applied
refused to take the stock off her hands unless she paid them five
dollars a share for the service and would guarantee them against the
chance of further loss. All other means of raising the necessary
funds--and she had tried them all--proved equally futile. The
savings-banks would not lend her a penny on a house of which the parlor
floor alone was clear of obligation, and the threat of the piano people
to remove that instrument if the March instalment, now a month over-due,
was not immediately forthcoming rendered that both unsalable and
valueless as security for a loan.

[Illustration]

She sat, the perfect picture of hopeless despair, in her rocking-chair,
gazing moodily out of the window, thinking dreadful thoughts, and, it
may be, contemplating the alternative of suicide or marriage with the
village magnate, a miserable villain whom everybody detested, and who,
everybody knew very well, had been instrumental in the ruin of her
deceased husband, a once prosperous haberdasher. But on a sudden her
look of despair faded wholly away and a great light of happiness
illumined her eyes, as up the garden path, whistling merrily as he
strode along, came her son Jack, a lad of fifteen, the comfort and
solace of her lonely days.

"Dear boy!" she murmured softly to herself as he waved his hand at her,
"he is the only thing I have left that there isn't something due on."

The boy, entering the room, still whistling, flung his cap up on the
table and kissed his mother affectionately.

"Well, mother," he said, joyously, "our troubles are over at last."

Her face beamed an eager inquiry. The sudden, overwhelming happiness of
the news itself deprived her of the power of speech for a moment, and
then with difficulty she gasped out the words:

"Then you have secured a place with steady wages, my son?"

Her heart beat wildly as she awaited the answer.

"No, mother," he replied, promptly. "The only position open to me was
that of private secretary to old Jonas Bilkins, my father's enemy, and
when he found out that I was my father's son he fired me out of his
office."

"No wonder!" muttered the woman. "He didn't dare let you have access to
his private papers. He knows that every penny he calls his own belongs
by right to us, and once you got hold of his letter-files and secret
documents you could prove it."

[Illustration]

"So he said, mother dear," said the boy. "He was brutally frank about
it, and when I told him what I thought of him, and advised him to pick
out a nice, comfortable jail to spend his declining years in, he threw
his check-book at my head."

"The miserable villain!" groaned the old lady. "Did it hit you?"

"No, indeed," laughed Jack. "My baseball training helped me out there. I
caught it on the fly and have brought it home with me. Meanwhile, I have
sold the cow."

"You have?" cried the delighted mother, clasping him warmly in her arms.

"Yes," said Jack, proudly. "We need not go hungry to-day, mother. I
swapped her off for a pot of beans."

[Illustration: THE BEANS SCATTERED IN EVERY DIRECTION]

An awful, despairing silence followed this announcement. The old lady
loved her son beyond everything in the world, but this was too much even
for a mother's love. The idea that a first-class Jersey cow worth not
less than forty-five dollars regarded merely as raw material for the
table, and not taking into account her value as a producer of rich,
creamy milk, should have been bartered for a miserable pot of beans, and
doubtless pickled beans at that, was the last straw of misfortune that
broke the back of the Camel of Maternal Patience, and with certain
phrases of a forceful nature she seized the pot from her son's trembling
hand and flung it with such impetus against the garden wall that it was
shattered into countless fragments, and the beans scattered in every
direction. After this attack of rage she took to her bed, weeping
bitterly. Jack too, stunned by his kind mother's wrath, retired