man, perplexed. "It is
the most remarkable resemblance I ever saw. I would have sworn you
were Wix. He used to run a brokerage shop in the Grand Hotel in
Filmore."

"Never was in the town," lied Wix.

The man turned away. Daw looked after him with an amused smile.

"By the way, Wix, what is your name now?"

"By George, I haven't decided! I was too busy getting rid of my only
handicap to think up a substitute. I'll tell you in a minute," and on
the spur of the moment he invented a quite euphonious name, one which
was to last him for a great many years.

"Wallingford," he announced. "How does that hit you? J. Rufus
Wallingford!"

CHAPTER VI

J. RUFUS PROVES A SAD, SAD DISAPPOINTMENT TO
SOME CLEVER PEOPLE

They were glad to see Blackie Daw back on Broadway--that is, in the
way that Broadway is glad; for they of the Great White Way have no
sentiments and no emotions, and but scant memories. About Blackie's
companion, however, they were professionally curious.

"Who is this large, pink Wallingford person, and where did you get
it?" asked Mr. Phelps, whose more familiar name was Green-Goods Harry.

Mr. Daw, standing for the moment with Mr. Phelps at the famous old
cheese-and-crackers end of the Fifth Avenue bar, grinned.

"He's an educated Hick," he responded, "and I got him out of the heart
of the hay-fever district, right after he'd turned a classy little
trick on the easy producers of his childhood home. Sold 'em a bankrupt
bucket-shop for eight thousand, which is going _some_!"

Mr. Phelps, natty and jaunty and curly-haired, though shifty of eye,
through long habit of trying to watch front and back doors both at
once, looked with a shade more interest across at the imposing white
vest of young J. Rufus where he stood at the bar with fat and somber
Badger Billy. There was a cocksure touch to the joviality of young
Wallingford which was particularly aggravating to an expert like Mr.
Phelps. Young Wallingford was so big, so impressive, so sure of
pleasing, so certain the world was his oyster, that it seemed a shame
not to give his pride a tumble--for his own sake, of course.

"Has he got the eight thousand on him, do you think?" asked the
green-goods one, his interest rapidly increasing.

"Not so you could notice it," replied Daw with conviction. "He's a
wise prop, I tell you. He's probably lugging about five hundred in his
kick, just for running expenses, and has a time-lock on the rest."

"We