A day or two after that Catty and I were sitting on the platform of the station, waiting for the train to come in with some things Jack Phillips had ordered. Along came Captain Winton, the president of the bank, and Mr. Moss, the hardware-man. They sat down a little ways from us and began to talk.

“We’ve got to get ready for it,” says Captain Winton. “It won’t be long before mill-hands will be moving in here with their families, and we haven’t any places for them to live. I’ve been thinking it over, and it looks to me like some of us could get together and build a dozen houses or so and pick up a nice profit—or make a good income from rents.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too. You own a piece of land down the new factory way, don’t you?”

“Ten acres,” says Captain Winton. “We could run streets through and start in by building a dozen cottages. Then, if the thing went as I expect, we could put up more.”

“How much would we have to put into it?”

“Well, my guess is that we could put up the houses for a couple of thousand apiece—maybe twenty-five hundred. The bank would loan on each house and lot fifteen hundred. A dozen, including land and everything, would stand us in thirty-six thousand, and we would have to raise half of that.”

“I’ve got a few thousand lying loose,” says Mr. Moss. “I wouldn’t want to put everything into this building thing, because I’m still hoping to persuade Mr. Kinderhook to sell me a block of stock—say five thousand dollars. He’s pretty friendly with me.”

“I don’t know. He seems to want to hang onto it.”

“You got some,” says Mr. Moss.

“That was on account of the bank, I guess. He wanted to have us interested.... But I think we can get four or five men here to go into this building thing. We could form a company. I’ll put in my land at five thousand and take another five thousand besides.”

“You can count on me for two or three thousand, and Gage ’ll come in for some, and so will Gordon and Piddlecomb and Bockers.”

“Tell any of them you see to meet at the bank this afternoon. We want to go at it as quickly as we can.”

Then the train came in. We didn’t hear any more, but there didn’t seem to be any more to hear. On the way back to the store Catty was pretty quiet. As soon as we got there he hollered for Jack Phillips.

“Jack,” he says, “there’s goin’ to be a dozen houses built here all in a bunch, and we got to land the job.”

“Tell me about it,” says Jack.

Catty told him all we had heard, and Jack got quite excited. “I wonder how they’ll let the contract. On bids, probably.”

“With Mr. Gage and Mr. Bockers mixed up in it we won’t have much of a chance,” says Catty.

“That’s right,” says Jack, and he looked discouraged, but Catty spoke right up and says: “We got to have a chance. We got to land that job. There’s big money in it.”

“Pretty big. We ought to make five thousand dollars, anyhow, and maybe more.”

“If they know we’re biddin’ we’ll never land it,” says Catty, “so we got to fool ’em. It’s fair. We’ll do ’em as good a job as anybody if we get a chance, and it hain’t right for them to act like they will toward us.... I guess I got an idee. You’ll have to do it, Jack. We’ll git up a company and call it by a fancy name. It ’ll be a company over to Harleyville. You’ll have to go over there and have letter-heads printed and kind of make believe have an office, and we kin do all the business by mail. Then, when the contracts are all signed up, we’ll be the folks that do the work. How’s that?”

“Bully,” says Jack.

I guess Catty was right about the chance the Atkinses would have had to land the contract, because I heard Mr. Gage and Mr. Bockers talking in Gage’s back yard, and they both said that it didn’t matter what kind of a bid the Atkinses made they wouldn’t let them do the work.

“My wife’s dead set on getting those people out of town,” says Mr. Gage.

“So’s mine. If they have the nerve to make a bid, why, we’ll just throw it out.”

I told this to Catty and he grinned a little and then squared up his jaw. In a day or two there was an advertisement for plans and bids in the paper, and Jack went over to Harleyville. He had been working on plans and specifications, and he had had letter-paper printed with “North American Construction Company” on it. He signed his letters that way, with only an initial “P” under it in pen and ink. They were fine letters, too, and guaranteed the kind of work that would be done—and it would be the best work, Jack said. He said he wanted Atkins & Phillips to get to be known everywhere as a firm that did better work than anybody else and always did what it guaranteed to do.

Atkins & Phillips didn’t make any bid at all. Mr. Wade was appointed by the North American Construction Company to be its agent in town, and it gave him quite a reputation, because the name sounded as if it was a whopping big company. Mr. Wade knew all about it, and the way he laughed was enough to make your sides ache. He said it was regular Napoleon tactics, fooling the enemy and hitting them hard where they weren’t looking for it. He got right on the job and kept after Captain Winton, who wouldn’t care himself who got the job, and he kept after Mr. Gage and Mr. Bockers, until they thought the North American Construction Company was about right. He said the company would put up a bond to do the work right.

There were three other bids from out-of-town companies, but between Jack’s letters and Mr. Wade the North American landed the job and the contracts were signed by Captain Winton, president of the building company, and by Mr. Wade as agent for the North American, and the bond was made and everything. Nobody said a word, and then the lumber began to come and carpenters from out of town—and the work started.

Well, maybe you think there wasn’t a row then when folks found out Jack Phillips was in charge of the job and Mr. Atkins was a kind of foreman, and that the whole work was actually being done by Atkins & Phillips. Mr. Gage got a lawyer and Bockers got one and they tried every which way to break the contract, but it was no go. Captain Winton sort of grinned and wouldn’t have anything to do with it. He said if the Atkins folks were smart enough to get the contract he guessed they were smart enough to carry it out, and he told them to come to the bank if they needed any money—which they did.

It was right after this that Catty made his father go to the clothing-store and buy two suits of clothes, one for business and one for Sundays, and the right kind of hats to go with them. Well, sir, when Mr. Atkins got dressed up in those duds you wouldn’t have known him, and I guess he hardly knew himself. He kept his hair cut now, and his beard trimmed down into a point, and if he wasn’t as good-looking a man as we had in town, I’ll eat him. He didn’t look any more like a tramp than Mr. Rockefeller did.

Those clothes seemed to make quite a difference in him, too. He acted different. He didn’t act so much like Mr. Atkins any more, but like another man that wasn’t shiftless at all and really liked to work. That is, he acted that way part of the time, and when he was feeling shiftless he sort of kept out of sight so folks wouldn’t see it. Catty said his father was really getting interested in the work, and he was hoping he would get interested in being respectable.

From that day nobody ever saw Mr. Atkins in any clothes but good ones. He didn’t wear his painter’s suit, though he wanted to. Catty wouldn’t let him. Every morning before Mr. Atkins could get out of his room Catty looked him all over to see he was dressed right. It was funny. It was almost as if Catty had taken a jack-knife and whittled out a man, his father was getting to be so different to what he used to be.

Catty and I began trailing around after Mr. Kinderhook whenever we got a chance, but we hadn’t even seen anything that looked suspicious. He just looked rich and important, and he acted rich and important and puffed up. To see him sitting on the hotel porch like he owned the whole state, and being kind to folks and behaving toward them just like he thought they were as good as he was, was a sight. He never talked about his factory and what he was going to manufacture unless somebody started it first and then urged him on, and then he acted sort of like the subject tired him and he didn’t want to be bothered with it. We listened to him a dozen times, and couldn’t see how he was planning to gouge anybody.

“Maybe he’s reformed,” says I.

“Bet he hain’t. He don’t look reformed,” says Catty. “If he was the kind of man that was willin’ to make money sellin’ cheat medicine to old women with the rheumatiz that wouldn’t help ’em a bit and maybe made ’em worse, why, he’s bad yet. But I can’t see how he’s plannin’ to be bad.”

“It’s sure he hain’t tryin’ to sell any shares in his factory.”

“Looks that way,” says Catty. “’Course he sold some to Captain Winton.”

“But not to anybody else, and everybody is crazy to buy.”

“I heard him say this mornin’ that his company was all incorporated, whatever that is, and he expected to start in buildin’ soon,” says Catty. “I wonder what ‘incorporated’ is?”

“Haven’t any idee,” says I. “Maybe it means somethin’ like planned out.”

“Maybe. I heard him tell Mr. Gage that he didn’t have any patent on this churn of his, because if he was to patent it he would have to give away the secret and somebody would sell it. He says there’s a secret part, and nobody kin find out how to make it, so he hain’t goin’ to git a patent at all, but just go to work and manufacture and prevent anybody from findin’ out how it’s done.”

“Sounds kind of fishy,” says I. “Everybody swallers it down,” says Catty, “but if there’s any cheatin’ in this I’ll bet it’s got somethin’ to do with that secret.” That very afternoon we didn’t have anything else to do, so we fussed around close to Mr. Kinderhook, keeping watch of him and listening to what he had to say. After a while he got up and walked down the street, and we trailed after him until he got to the station. He went into the telegraph-office and wrote out a message. We waited till he was gone and then we went right in where Tom Purvis was clicking the keys. We could do that because I knew Tom mighty well and he didn’t mind. We stood right back of Tom’s chair, making believe we were interested in what he was doing and how he sent messages, but really we wanted to get a sight of what Mr. Kinderhook had written. Pretty soon Tom came to it and began clacking away. I could read it over his shoulders. It was addressed to a man by the name of Matthew Binger in New York, and it said:

Now that was a funny message, it seemed to me, because there weren’t any crops ripe just then, and Mr. Kinderhook wasn’t interested in crops if they had been. Catty and I went off after that, but we couldn’t make any head nor tail of it. It just looked silly, but anyhow we made up our minds we would keep meeting trains till this man Binger came, and we would see what he was up to and what crop Mr. Kinderhook had in mind.

Two days later a stranger got off of the train. He was short and fat, and he looked almost as rich as Kinderhook did.

“Bet that’s Binger,” says Catty.

“Bet it is, too,” says I.

So we rode with Pazzy Bills back to the hotel and saw the man register. Sure enough, his name was Matthew Binger and he asked if a man named Kinderhook was stopping there. The clerk allowed there was, and Mr. Binger asked the clerk if he would take up his card. The clerk done so, and pretty soon down comes Mr. Kinderhook, peering around like he was looking for somebody. He didn’t recognize Mr. Binger any more than as if he had never heard of him till the clerk says, “That’s the gentleman that wanted to see you, Mr. Kinderhook,” and Kinderhook walked over, holding the card in his hand and reading it.

“Mr. Binger?” says he, looking at the card again, as if he was making sure he had the name right.

“Matthew Binger—yes. And is this Mr. Arthur Peabody Kinderhook?”

“It is. What can I do for you?”

“I have come down from New York to talk business with you. Where can we go and be quiet?”

“Is your business secret, Mr. Binger? Because if it is, we can’t talk. I don’t do secret business. There’s nothing about my business that any of my good friends in this town can’t hear. Whatever you’ve got to say to me can be said right out on the porch—or it can’t be said at all.”

Mr. Binger he acted sulky, but it looked like there wasn’t anything he could do about it, so they went out and sat in red rocking-chairs, and Catty and I sat on the steps close by.

“I represent a syndicate in New York, Mr. Kinderhook, and we have heard that you are about to start the manufacture of a remarkable churn.”

“You are correct, sir. It is a churn that will revolutionize the business. A year after I start to manufacture there will be no other churns on the market.”

“So I understand, sir. My associates and myself, sir, wish to make you a proposition. You have not started to manufacture this churn as yet. It will require a large outlay of money to do so.”

“No trouble about that, Mr. Binger,” says Kinderhook, with a wave of his hand.

“Um!... So we understand. We know you are rated well above a million, but we have an idea that you will not object to making a considerable sum without the necessity of building a factory.”

“It is not merely the making of money that interests me,” says Mr. Kinderhook, “but I have grown to like this little town and to want to do something for its prosperity. I want to see the town grow, sir. It has a wonderful future.”

“Possibly, but my associates and myself believe we can make a proposition that will interest you.... As you say, this churn of yours will put all other churns out of business.”

“Do you, Mr. Binger, represent the Amalgamated Churn Company—the trust?”

“Hush!” says Mr. Binger.

“If you do, sir,” says Kinderhook, “this interview is at an end. You are afraid of my churn, sir. You do not want my churn to be manufactured because it will destroy your business. You want to buy me off. Am I right?”

“Er—well—” Mr. Binger hesitated and hemmed and hawed and acted embarrassed.

“You go back and tell the churn trust,” says Mr. Kinderhook, in a voice you could have heard clean to the post-office, “that my churn is not for sale and I am not for sale.”

“I am empowered to offer you fifty thousand dollars for your secret, Mr. Kinderhook.”

“Nonsense! Fiddlesticks! I shall make ten times that out of the manufacture. Good afternoon, Mr. Binger. There is nothing further to say.”

Right then and there Mr. Kinderhook got up as grand as an emperor and walked off, leaving Mr. Binger looking like he had bit into an April-fool sandwich filled with soap.

Catty and I sat a spell and then went off to talk it over.

“That was funny,” says I.

“It was,” says he. “Pretended not to know each other.”

“And Kinderhook telegraphed for him to come,” says I.

“It’s some kind of a snide trick. That’s sure. Those two fellers are in it together, and they’re tryin’ to fool folks some way. Whatever their scheme is, it’s pretty slick.”

“You bet,” says I.

“We’ll have to watch both of ’em,” says Catty.

Well, by night it was all over town that the churn trust had offered Mr. Kinderhook fifty thousand dollars just for his secret because they were afraid of his churn. Folks were saying that if the churn trust thought it was worth fifty thousand dollars just to stop it from being manufactured, why, it would be worth millions to go ahead and sell such churns. Everybody was talking about it and everybody was crazier than ever to get a chance to buy some of the stock.