Mr. Fogg did have a voice. "Five thousand dollars in your fist, my boy,
as soon as I can work the wire to New York--and there's no piker about
the man who can have five thousand flashed in here when he asks for it.
You can see what kind of men are behind me. What do you care about old
man Vose and his crowd?"
"There's Mr. Franklin! I'll be doing a mighty mean trick, Mr. Fogg. No,
I'll not do it."
Mr. Fogg did not bluster. He was silent for some time. He pursed his
lips and stared at Boyne, and then he shifted his gaze to the ceiling.
"It's too bad--too bad for a young fellow to turn down such an
opportunity," he sighed. "It can be done without you, Boyne, in another
way. The same result will happen. But you might as well be in on it.
Now let me tell you a few instances of how some of the big men in this
country got their start."
Mr. Fogg was an excellent raconteur with a vivid imagination, and it did
not trouble his conscience because the narratives he imparted to this
wide-eyed youth were largely apocryphal.
"You see," he put in at the end of the first tale, "what a flying start
will do for a man. Suppose that chap I've just told you about sat back
and refused to jump when the road was all open to him! You don't hear
anybody knocking that man nowadays, do you? And yet that's the trick he
pulled to get his start."
With a similar snapper did Mr. Fogg touch up each one of his stories of
success.
"I--I didn't have any idea--I thought they managed it some other way,"
murmured David Boyne.
"Your horizon has been limited; you haven't been out in the world
enough to know, my son."
"I have heard of all those men, of course. They're big men to-day."
"You didn't think they got to be millionaires by saving the money out of
clerks' salaries, did you? Of course, Boyne, I admit that in this
affair you'll be up to a little sharp practice. But you're not stealing
anything. Nobody can lug off steamships in a vest pocket. It's only a
deal--and deals are being made every day."
Fogg was a keen judge of his fellow-men. He knew weakness when he saw
it. He could determine from a man's lower lip and the set of his nose
whether that person were covetous. And he knew now what signified the
flush on Boyne's cheeks and the light in his eyes. However, there was
something else to reckon with.