CHAPTER 2Percival Shores, professional cheerleader, so to speak, for the chamber of commerce, the busy boy with the twelve-cylinder vocabulary from whose tongue flowed multisyllabled words as water over a mill race, was susceptible to “a front.” Although Mr. Clackworthy had only vaguely hinted his intention of locating in Higbeeville and had not said whether he proposed to manufacture railroad locomotives or toothpicks, Mr. Shores already had visions of a ten-acre factory and a payroll as long as the county tax list. This was because Mr. Clackworthy looked like money—big money. It was simply impossible for Mr. Shores to look upon the master confidence man’s wonderfully tailored figure, his brisk, incisive manner, and to connect him with an enterprise of small proportions.
Thus it was that
