At the last minute, Aunt Pattie Boyden fortunately contracted a toothache—and the Coney Island party was compelled to go unchaperoned. They tried to be regretful and sympathetic as the six of them climbed into the big touring car, but Ashley Loring found them a solace.
"Never you mind," he soothed them—"Polly will chaperon us."
"You've lost your address book," declared that young lady indignantly. "Polly Parsons is not the person you have in mind. I'll be old soon enough without that! The chaperon of this party is my adopted sister, Winnie."
"Oh, fun!" accepted the nominee with delight. "We had a course in that at school." And Winnie, in all the glory of her fluffy youthfulness, toyed carefully with the points of her Moorish collar. "I was elected chaperon of the Midnight Fudge Club, and the girls all said that I fooled Old Meow oftener than anybody!"
Thereafter there was no lull in the conversation; for Winnie, once started on school reminiscences, filled all gaps to overflowing; and Sammy Chirp, he of the feeble smile, whose diffidence had denied him the gift of language, gazed on her in rapt and happy stupefaction.
Meanwhile, Johnny Gamble found himself gazing as raptly at Constance until the chaperon, in a brief interlude between reminiscences, caught him at it. She reached over and touched him on the back of the hand with the tip of one soft pink finger. Immediately she held that finger to her right eye and closed her left one, and Johnny felt himself blushing like a school-boy.
There was a trace of resentment in his embarrassment, he found. The strain of being compelled to make a million dollars, before he could tell this only desirable young woman in the world that he loved her, was beginning to oppress him. He wanted to tell her now; but it was a task beyond him to ask her to forfeit her own fortune until he could replace it by another. Times were hard, he reflected.
He was now twelve hours behind his schedule and possessed of sixty thousand dollars less than he should have. At nine o'clock to-morrow morning that deficit would begin to pile up again at the rate of five thousand dollars an hour. By comparison their auto seemed slow, and he spoke to the driver about it. How well Constance Joy was in sympathy with him and followed his thought, was shown by the fact that she heartily agreed with him, though they were already exceeding the Brooklyn speed limit.
"I not only want to be the chaperon but the dictator of this tour," declared Winnie when they alighted at the big playground. "I've never been here before, and I don't want anybody to tell me anything I'm going to see."
"It's your party," announced Johnny promptly. "Let's be plumb vulgar about it." And he thrust a big roll of bills into her hands.
"You're a darling!" she exclaimed, her eyes glistening with delight. "May I kiss him, girls?"
"Ask Johnny," laughed Polly, but Johnny had disappeared behind the others of the party.
It took Winnie five minutes to chase him down, and she caught him, with the assistance of Constance, in the thickest crowd and in the best-lighted space on Surf Avenue, where Constance held him while he received his reward.
"It's a new game," Johnny confessed, though blushing furiously. "I'll be 'it' any time you say."
"Once is enough," asserted Winnie, entirely unruffled. "Your face is scratchy. Come on, you folks; I'm going to buy you a dinner." And, leading the way into the first likely-looking place, she ordered a comprehensive meal which started with pickles and finished with pie.
Her party was a huge success, for it laughed its way from one end of Coney to the other. It rode on wooden horses; on wobbling camels; in whirling tubs; on iron-billowed oceans; down trestled mountains; through painted caves—on everything which had rollers, or runners, or supporting arms. It withstood shocks and bumps and dislocations and dizziness—and it ran squarely into Heinrich Schnitt!
Three tables, placed end to end at the rail of a Shoot-the-Chutes lake, were required to accommodate Heinrich Schnitt's party. First, there was Heinrich himself, white as wax and stoop-shouldered and extremely clean. At the other end of the table sat Mama Schnitt, who bulged, and always had butter on her thumb. To the right of Heinrich sat Grossmutter Schnitt, in a black sateen dress, with her back bowed like a new moon and her little old face withered like a dried white rose.
Next sat young Heinrich Schnitt and his wife, Milly, who was very fashionable and wore a lace shirt-waist—though she was not so fashionable that she was ashamed of any of the rest of the party.
Between young Heinrich and Milly sat their little Henry and little Rosa and little Milly and the baby, all stiffly starched and round-faced and red-cheeked. Besides these were Carrie, whose husband was dead; and Carrie's Louis; and Willie Schnitt with Flora Kraus, whom he was to marry two years from last Easter; and Lulu, who was pretty, and went with American boys in the face of broken-hearted opposition.
In front of each member of the party—except the baby—was a glass of beer and a "hot dog", and down the center of the long table were three pasteboard shoe boxes, full of fine lunch, flanking Flora Kraus' fancy basket of potato salad and fried chicken, as well prepared as any those Schnitts could put up.
It was Constance who, walking quietly with Johnny, discovered Heinrich Schnitt in the midst of his throng and casually remarked it.
"There's the nice old German who cuts my coats," she observed.
"Schnitt!" exclaimed Johnny, so loudly that she was afraid Schnitt might hear him. "Let me hear you talk to him."
She looked at him in perplexity for a moment.
"Oh, yes; the lease," she remembered. "I'll introduce you and you can ask him about it."
"Don't mention it!" hastily objected Johnny. "You may introduce me, but you do the talking."
"All right, boss," she laughingly agreed, and turned straight over to the head of the Schnitts' table, where she introduced her companion in due form.
"I want my walking suit," she demanded.
Heinrich's face had lighted with pleasure at the sight of Constance, but there was a trace of sadness in his voice.
"You must tell Louis Ersten," he politely advised her.
"I did," protested Constance. "He's holding it back on account of the coat, and that's your affair."
"It is Louis Ersten's," insisted Heinrich with dignity. "I have retired from business."
"You don't mean to say you've left Ersten?" returned Constance in surprise.
"I have retired from business," reiterated Heinrich.
"Ersten wouldn't give papa enough room," broke in Mama Schnitt indignantly, "so he quits, and he don't go back till he does."
"So I don't ever go back," concluded Heinrich.
"Well, we got enough that papa don't have to work any more," asserted Mama Schnitt with proper pride and a glance at Flora Kraus; "but he gets lonesome. That's why we make him come down to Coney to-day and enjoy himself. He was with Louis Ersten thirty-seven years."
A wave of homesickness swept over Heinrich.
"I take it easy in my old days," he stoutly maintained, but with such inward distress that, without a protest, he allowed the waiter to remove his half-emptied glass of beer.
"I'm glad you can take it easy," declared Constance, "but Ersten's customers will miss you very much—and I am sure Ersten will, too."
"We worked together thirty-seven years," said Schnitt wistfully.
"I'm sure it's only obstinacy," commented Constance when she and Johnny had rejoined their party. "Why, Mr. Schnitt and Mr. Ersten have grown up together in the business, and they seemed more like brothers than anything else. I'd give anything to bring them together again!"
"I'll ask you for it some time," asserted Johnny confidently.
He caught a flash of challenge in her eyes and realized that he was moving faster than his schedule would permit.
"I'm going to bring them together, you know," he assured her in confusion.
"I do hope so," she demurely replied.
"We're wasting an awful lot of time!" called Winnie. "The Canals of Venice! We haven't been in this." And she promptly bought six tickets.
In the bustle of taking boats an officious guard succeeded, for the thousandth time that day, in the joyful duty of separating a party; and Constance and Johnny were left behind to enjoy the next boat all to themselves.
It was dim and cool in there—all narrow gravity canals, and quaint canvas buildings, and queer arches, and mellow lights, with little dark curves and long winding reaches, and a restfulness almost like solemnity.
It was the first time Johnny had been in such close companionship with Constance as this strange isolation gave them, and he did not know what to say. After all, what was the use of saying? They were there, side by side, upon the gently flowing water, far, far away from all the world; and it would seem almost rude to break that bliss with language, which so often fails to interpret thought.
Constance's hand was drooping idly across her knee and, by an uncontrollable impulse, Johnny's hand, all by itself, slid over and gently clasped the whiter and slenderer one. It did not draw away; and, huddled up on their low narrow seat, bumping against the wooden banks and floating on and on, they cared not whither, they stared into oblivion in that semi-trancelike condition that sometimes accompanies the peculiar state in which they found themselves.
"Oh-ho-o-o-o!" rang the clear voice of Winnie from a parallel canal just behind them.
Constance, flushing violently, attempted to jerk her hand away; but Johnny, animated by a sudden aggressiveness, clasped it tightly and held it—captive—up to view.
At that interesting moment another sharp turn in the canal brought them face to face with an approaching boat in which were Paul Gresham and Jim Collaton!
"I said it was a girl," charged Collaton, studying the green pallor of Gresham's face with wondering interest as they stepped out into the glare of the million electric bulbs.
"That is not a topic for you to discuss," returned Gresham, looking up the brilliantly lighted board walk around the bend of which Johnny Gamble, with Constance on one arm and Winnie on the other, was gaily following Polly, that young lady being escorted by the attentive Loring and the submissive Sammy.
"That's what you said before," retorted Collaton, his eyebrows and lashes even more invisible in this illumination than in broad day-light. "It's time, though, for a showdown. You drag me into dark corners and talk over schemes to throw the hooks into Johnny Gamble—and I tell you I'm afraid of him!"
"You're mistaken," asserted Gresham dryly. "It was I who told you that you were afraid of him."
"I admitted it all right," sulkily answered Collaton. "He's awake now, I tell you; and he's not a safe man to fool with. He turned our last trick against us, and that's enough hint for me."
"Your trick, you mean," corrected Gresham.
"Our trick, I said!" insisted Collaton, suddenly angry. "Look here, Gresham, I won't stand any monkey business from you! If there's ever any trouble comes out of this you'll get your share of it, and don't you forget it! You've had me lay attachments against the Gamble-Collaton Irrigation Company on forged notes. Since I had nothing, Johnny paid them, because he was square. The last attachment, though—for fifty thousand—he held off until I got that Slosher Apartment scheme in my own name, and turned it against me; and you had to pay it, because you had stood good for me."
"What difference does that make to you?" demanded Gresham. "It was my own money and I got it back."
"It makes just this much difference," explained Collaton: "Gamble and Loring are busy tracing all these transactions; and when they find out anything it will be fastened on me, for you never figure in the deals. You even try to avoid acknowledging to me that you have anything to do with them."
"You get all the money," Gresham reminded him.
"That's why I know you're framing it up to let me wear the iron bracelets if anything comes off. Now you play square with me or I'll hand you a jolt that you won't forget! There's a girl responsible for your crazy desire to put my old partner on the toboggan—and that was the girl. You see I happen to know all about it."
Gresham considered the matter in silence for some time, and Collaton let him think without interruption. They sat down now at one of the little tables and Collaton curtly ordered some drinks.
"It's a very simple matter," Gresham finally stated. "My father was to have married Miss Joy's aunt but did not. When the aunt came to die she left Miss Joy a million dollars, but coupled with it the provision that she must marry me. That's all."
"It's enough," laughed Collaton. "I understand now why Johnny Gamble wants to make a million dollars. As soon as he gets it he'll propose to Miss Joy, she'll accept him and let the million slide. Who gets it?"
"Charity."
"Why, Gresham, I'm ashamed of you!" Collaton mocked. "The descendant of a noble English house is making as sordid an affair of this as if he were a cheese dealer! I have the gift of second sight and I can tell you just what's going to happen. Johnny Gamble will make his million dollars—and I'm for him. He'll marry Miss Joy—and I'm for her. That other million will go to charity—and I'm for it. I hope they all win!"
"You're foolish," returned Gresham, holding his temper through the superiority which had always nettled Collaton. "You like money and I'm showing you a way to get it from Johnny Gamble."
The waiter brought the drinks. Collaton paid for them, tossed off his own and rose.
"I've had all of that money I want," he declared. "Whatever schemes you have in the future you will have to work yourself, and whatever trouble comes of it you may also enjoy alone—because I'll throw you."
"You would find difficulty in doing that," Gresham observed with a smile. "I fancy that, if I were to send the missing books of the defunct Gamble-Collaton Irrigation Company to Mr. Gamble, you would be too busy explaining things on your account to bother with my affairs to any extent."
"I was in jail once," Collaton told him with quiet intensity. "If I ever go again the man who puts me there will have to go along, so that I will know where to find him when I get out. Good-by."
"Wait a minute," said Gresham. "Your digestion is bad or else you made a recent winning in your favorite bucket-shop. Now listen to me: Whatever Johnny Gamble's doing at the present time is of no consequence. Let him go through with the deal he has on and think he has scared you off. I'll only ask you to make one more attempt against him. That's all that will be necessary, for it will break him and at the same time destroy Miss Joy's confidence in him. He has over a third of a million dollars. We can get it all."
"Excuse me," refused Collaton. "If I ran across Johnny Gamble's pocket-book in a dark alley I'd walk square around it without stopping to look for the string to it."
Gresham rose.
"Then you won't take any part in the enterprise?"
"Not any," Collaton assured him with a wave of negation. "If Johnny will let me alone I'll let him alone, and be glad of the chance."
Later, Gresham saw Johnny come back and speak to Heinrich Schnitt; but he had no curiosity about it. Whatever affairs Johnny had in hand just now he might carry through unmolested, for Gresham was busy with larger plans for his future undoing.
Johnny Gamble was waiting at the store when Louis Ersten came down the next morning. Mr. Ersten walked in with a portentous frown on his brow and began to take off his coat as he strode back toward the cutting room. He frowned still more deeply as Johnny confronted him.
"Again!" he exclaimed, looking about him in angry despair as if he had some wild idea of calling a porter. "First it's Lofty; then it's some slick real estate schemer; then it's you! I will not sell the lease!"
"I won't say lease this time," Johnny hastily assured him.
"Then that is good," gruffly assented Ersten with a trace of a sarcastic snarl.
"Heinrich Schnitt," remarked Johnny.
That name was an open sesame. Louis Ersten stopped immediately with his coat half-off.
"So-o-o!" he ejaculated, surprised into a German exclamation that he had long since deliberately laid aside. "What is it about Heinrich?"
"I saw him at Coney Island last night. He doesn't look well."
"He don't work. It makes him sick!" Ersten's voice was as gruff as ever; but Johnny, watching narrowly, saw that he was concerned, nevertheless.
"His eyes are bad," went on Johnny, "but I think he would like to come back to work."
"Did he say it?" asked Ersten with a haste which betrayed the eagerness he did not want to show.
"Not exactly," admitted Johnny, "but if he knew that he could have a workroom where there is a better light I know he would like to come. His eyes are bad, you know."
"I said it makes him sick not to work," insisted Ersten. "If he wants to come he knows the way."
"His job's waiting for him, isn't it?"
"In this place, yes. In no other place. I don't move my shop to please my coat cutter—even if he is the best in New York and a boy that come over from the old country with me in the same ship, and his word as good as gold money. It's like I told Heinrich when he left: If he comes back to me he comes back here—in this place. Are his eyes very bad?"
"Not very," judged Johnny. "He must take care of them though."
"Sure he must," agreed Ersten. "We're getting old. Thirty-seven years we worked together. I stood up for Heinrich at his wedding and he stood up for me at mine. He's a stubborn assel!"
"That's the trouble," mused Johnny, "He said he wouldn't work in this shop any more."
"Here must he come—in this place!" reiterated Ersten, instantly stern; and he walked sturdily away, removing his coat.
Johnny found Heinrich Schnitt weeding onions, picking out each weed with minute care and petting the tender young bulbs through their covering of soft earth as he went along. Mama Schnitt, divided into two bulges by an apron-string and wearing a man's broad-brimmed straw hat, stood placidly at the end of the row for company.
"Good morning, Mr. Schnitt," said Johnny cheerfully. "I have just come from Ersten's. He wants you to come back."
"Did he say it?" asked Heinrich with no disguise of his eagerness.
"Not exactly," admitted Johnny, "but he said that you are the best coat cutter in New York and that your job's waiting for you."
"I know it," asserted Heinrich. "Is he going to move?"
"Not just yet," was the diplomatic return. "He will after you go back to work, I think."
"I never work in that place again," announced the old man with a sigh. "I said it."
"That shop isn't light enough, is it?" suggested the messenger.
"There is no light and no room," agreed Heinrich.
"Your eyes began to give out on you, didn't they?"
Heinrich straightened himself and his waxen-white face turned a delicate pink with indignation.
"My eyes are like a young man's yet!" he stoutly maintained.
"You don't read much any more," charged Mama Schnitt.
"My glasses don't fit," he retorted to that.
"You changed them last winter," she insisted. "Now, papa, don't be foolish! You know your eyes got bad in Louis Ersten's dark workroom. You never tell lies. Say it!"
Heinrich struggled for a moment between his pride and his honesty.
"Well, maybe they ain't just so good as they was," he admitted.
"That's what I told Ersten," stated Johnny. "He's worried stiff about it! I think he'll move so you have a lighter workroom if you go back."
"When he moves I come."
"He won't move till you do."
"Then there is nothing," concluded Schnitt resignedly, and stooped over to pull another weed. "Mama, maybe Mr. Gamble likes some of that wine Carrie's husband made the year he died."
"Ja voll," assented Mamma Schnitt heartily, and toddled away to get it.
"I'll fix it for you," offered Johnny. "You go to Ersten and say you will come back; then Ersten will get a new place before you start to work."
Heinrich straightened up with alacrity this time, his face fairly shining with pleasure.
"I do that much," he agreed.
"Good!" approved Johnny. "You want to be careful what you say, though, for Ersten is stubborn."
"He is stubborn like a mule," Schnitt pointed out with sober gravity.
"You must say you have come back to work in that place."
"I'll never do it!" indignantly declared Heinrich, his face lengthening.
"Certainly not," agreed Johnny hurriedly. "You tell him you want a month to rest up your eyes."
"I don't need it!" protested Heinrich.
"You only say that so you won't have to work in that shop, but, never mind, I'll fix it so he offers it," patiently explained Johnny, and proceeded to make it perfectly plain. "You say that you have come back to work. Don't say another word."
"I have come back to work," repeated Schnitt.
"Then Ersten will ask you: 'In this place?' You say: 'Yes.'"
Heinrich began to shake his head vigorously, but Johnny gave him no chance to refuse.
"You say: 'Yes'!" he emphatically insisted. "Ersten will tell you to take a month off to rest your eyes."
Again Heinrich started to shake his head, and again Johnny hurried on.
"You say: 'Thank you'," he directed; "then you go away. Before your month is up, Ersten will send for you in a new shop!"
"Will he promise it?"
"No," confessed Johnny. "I promised it but Ersten will do it."
Heinrich pondered the matter long and soberly.
"All right; I try it," he agreed.
"Three cheers!" said Johnny with a huge sigh of relief. "I'll be back after you in about an hour." And he reluctantly paused long enough to drink some of the wine which Carrie's husband helped to make. It was probably good wine.
Ersten was in the cutting room when Johnny again arrived at the store, and a clerk took his name up very dubiously. The clerk returned, smiling with extreme graciousness, and informed the caller that he was to walk straight back. Johnny found Ersten in spectacles and apron, with a tape-line round his neck and a piece of chalk in his hand, and wearing a very worried look, while all the workmen in the room appeared subdued but highly nervous.
"Did you see him?" Ersten asked immediately.
"He is anxious to come back," Johnny was happy to state.
"When?" This very eagerly.
"To-day."
Ersten took his apron and the tape and threw them on a table with a slam.
"I invite you to have a glass of Rheinthranen," he offered.
"Thanks," returned Johnny carelessly, not quite appreciating the priceless honor. "I'll have Mr. Schnitt here in an hour, but you must be careful what you say to him. He is stubborn."
"Sure, I know it," impetuously agreed Ersten. "He is an old assel. What is to be said?" Johnny could feel the nervous tension of the room lighten as Ersten walked out with him.
"It will be like this," Johnny explained: "Schnitt will come in with me and say: 'I have come back to work.'"
"In this place?" demanded Ersten.
"Ask him that. He will say: 'Yes.'"
"Will he?" cried Ersten, unable to believe his ears.
"That's what he will say—but he won't do it."
"What is it?" exploded the shocked Ersten. "You say he says he will come back to work in this place, but he won't do it! That is foolishness!"
"No, it isn't," insisted Johnny. "Now listen carefully. Schnitt says: 'I have come back to work.' You say: 'In this place?' Schnitt says: 'Yes.' Then you tell him that he must take a month to rest up his eyes."
"But must I do his coat cutting for a month yet?" protested the abused Ersten. "Nobody can do it in New York for my customers but Heinrich Schnitt and me."
"It may not be a month. Just now he might take some of your more important work home, where the light is better. That would be working for you in this place."
"Well, maybe," admitted Ersten puffing out his cheeks in frowning consideration.
Johnny held his breath as he approached the crucial observation.
"By the time his eyes are rested you may have a better shop for the old man to work in."
Ersten fixed him with a burning glare.
"I see it!" he ejaculated. "You put this job up to make me sell my lease!"
Johnny looked him in the eye with a frank smile.
"Of course I did," he confessed. "I didn't know either you or Schnitt until yesterday."
Ersten knit his bristling brows, but presently grinned.
"You're a smart young man," he complimented. "But I don't promise Schnitt I move."
"Certainly not," agreed the smart young man, and mopped his brow. The fight was won! "Here is exactly what you must say"—and he went patiently over the entire dialogue again, word by word.
Ersten listened carefully with frowns at some parts.
"Well, I try it," he dubiously promised.
They were in front of Schoppenvoll's now; and Johnny, noting Ersten's fretfulness, proved himself a keen student of psychology by suggesting: "I'm thirsty for that special drink of yours, Ersten; but suppose we put it off till after I've brought Schnitt."
"Oh, well, if you say so," returned Ersten with poorly assumed indifference.
"It's as fine as a frog's feather!" Johnny assured Heinrich Schnitt half an hour later.
"Will he move?" asked Heinrich.
"Yes, but you mustn't say anything about it"
"Well, I like to know it," returned Heinrich with proper caution.
"I have his promise," asserted Johnny.
"Then he moves," declared Heinrich, fully satisfied.
The mediator conveyed Heinrich to Ersten's with much the same feeling that he would have endured in carrying a full plate of soup—and he had that feeling all through the conference.
"Hello, Heinrich!" greeted Ersten with indifference.
"Hello, Louis!" returned Schnitt with equal nonchalance; then he assumed a rigid pose and recited: "I have come back to work."
"In this place?" asked Ersten, with parrotlike perfection.
A lump came into Heinrich Schnitt's throat. He struggled with that lump, but the simple word "Yes" would not come.
"I say yes; but I don't—"
Johnny jerked him violently by the sleeve.
"He said 'Yes'," he informed Ersten.
"Well, maybe," Ersten was decent enough to admit.
There was an uncomfortable pause in which the two men evinced a slight disposition to glare at each other.
"Mr. Schnitt's eyes are bad," suggested Johnny hopefully.
"My eyes are like a young man's!" asserted Schnitt, his pride coming uppermost.
"He needs a month to rest them," insisted the buffer, becoming a trifle panic-stricken; and he tapped the sole of Ersten's shoe with his foot.
"Must it take a month, Heinrich?" implored Ersten, taking the cue.
"Well, how soon you move?" inquired Schnitt.
"I don't promise I move!" flared Ersten.
"I never come back—"
"Till his eyes are better," hastily interrupted Johnny. "Look here, you fellows! You're balling up this rehearsal! Now let's get together. Schnitt, you'll come back to work in this place, won't you?"
"Well, I say it anyhow," admitted Schnitt reluctantly.
"Ersten, you offer him a month to rest his eyes, don't you?"
"I don't promise him I move!" bristled Ersten.
"We understand that," soothed Johnny, "all of us. Schnitt, you'll take some of Mr. Ersten's work home with you from this place, won't you?"
"Sure, I do that," consented Schnitt eagerly. "Louis, what is in the shop?"
Ersten had a struggle of his own.
"All what was in when you left," he bravely confessed. "That coat for Mrs. Follison gives me trouble for a week!"
"She's got funny shoulders," commented Schnitt with professional impersonality. "It's the left one. You cut it—Let me see it."
There was a sibilant sound as of many suppressed sighs of relief when Heinrich walked into the cutting room, but no man grinned or gave more than a curt nod of greeting—for the forbidding eye of Louis Ersten glared fiercely upon them. He strode across to the table held sacred to himself and spread down a piece of cloth, bounded by many curves. Heinrich Schnitt gave it but one comprehensive glance.
"Na, na, na!" he shrilly commented. "Here it is wrong!" And, grabbing up a slice of chalk, he made a deft swoop toward the material. Suddenly his arm stayed in mid air and he laid down the chalk with a muscular effort. "I think I take this home," he firmly announced.
"Heinrich, you come back after the work. Just now we go with Mr. Gamble to Schoppenvoll's and have a glass of Rheinthranen!" Ersten said.
"The Rheinthranen!" repeated Heinrich in awe; and for the first time his eyes moistened. "Louis, we was always friends!" And they shook hands.
Johnny Gamble, keen as he was, did not quite understand it; but, nevertheless, he had penetration enough to stroll nonchalantly out into the show-room, where Louis and Heinrich presently joined him, chattering like a Kaffe-klatsch; and they all walked round to Schoppenvoll's.
While Schnitt thanked Johnny for his interference until that modest young man blushed, Ersten argued seriously in whispers with Shoppenvoll to secure a bottle of the precious wine that only he and Schoppenvoll and Kurzerhosen had a right to purchase. Johnny drank his with dull wonder. It tasted just like Rhine wine!
While Heinrich Schnitt was back in the cutting room, carefully selecting every coat in the shop to take home with him, Ersten drew Johnny near the door.
"I fool him!" he announced with grinning cuteness. "I move right away. You get my lease for the best price what that smart-Aleck Lofty offered me. And another word: Whenever you want a favor you come to me!"
Johnny walked into the Lofty establishment with the feeling of a Napoleon. "How much will you give me for the Ersten lease?" he suggested out of a clear sky.
Young Willis Lofty sighed in sympathy with his bank-account.
"Have you really secured it?" he asked.
"I'm the winner," Johnny cheerfully assured him.
"If it's too much I'll build that tunnel," warned Lofty.
"Make me an offer."
"A hundred and twenty-five thousand."
"Nothing doing," stated Johnny with a smile. "There's no use fussing up our time though. I can tell you, to the cent, how much I must have. At four o'clock to-day I shall be nineteen hours behind my schedule, and I want a day for a fresh start, which makes it twenty-six. At five thousand an hour, that makes a hundred and thirty thousand dollars. I paid Ersten a hundred thousand. Grand total: two hundred and thirty thousand."
"I don't understand your figures," protested Lofty.
"It's a private code," laughed the leaseholder, "but that's the price."
"I won't pay it," threatened the young merchant.
"Build your tunnel then," returned Johnny—but pleasantly, nevertheless. "Don't let's be nervous, Lofty. I might ask you a lot more, but that's the exact amount the system I'm playing calls for. I don't want any more and I won't take any less!"
Lofty studied his face contemplatively for a moment and rang for his treasurer.
"How did you get Ersten?" he was curious to know; and Johnny told him, to their mutual enjoyment.
At the nearest drug store Johnny called up Constance.
"Heinrich Schnitt is fixing your coat!" he announced.
"Danke!" she cried. "Did you get the lease?"
"Yes, and sold it to Lofty," he enthusiastically informed her. "The schedule is paid up until four o'clock to-morrow afternoon."
"Oh!" she gasped. "Wait a minute." He held the telephone while she consulted the score board and did some figuring. "That makes five hundred thousand of your million! Just half!"
"I'm coming around to see that diagram," he hastily stated.
"My dear," observed Mr. Courtney as he and his wife approached the jessamine summer-house, "do you pick your week-end guests from a city directory or do you draw the names from a hat?" Constance Joy, sitting in the summer-house with Johnny Gamble, rose and laughed lightly as a warning.
"My dear," retorted Mrs. Courtney very sweetly indeed and all unheeding of the laugh, "I pick them by a better system than you employ when you invite stag parties. You usually need to be introduced to your guests. Just whom would you like to have me send home?"
"Paul Gresham for one," replied Courtney bluntly, "and the entire Wobbles tribe, with their friend Birchard, for some more."
"I could be perfectly happy without them myself, Ben," sighed his wife, "but the Wobbles bachelors invite themselves whenever they please, and Paul Gresham was asked on account of Constance."
Constance, in the summer-house, laughed again, although less happily than before, and dropped her portfolio as loudly as possible, while Johnny Gamble merely grinned.
"That's what I wondered about," persisted the grizzled financier, as oblivious to the noises from within the jessamine bower as his wife had been. "I should have thought that on Constance's account you would have dropped Gresham."
"How absurd!" laughed Mrs. Courtney. "Why, she is to marry him!"
"I don't believe it!" indignantly denied Courtney. "She got him in a will with a million dollars, and it isn't enough!"
Constance's foot, twitching nervously, rustled a dry leaf, and her heart popped into her throat lest the noise should be heard. The time had passed for wishing to be discovered.
Johnny Gamble had ceased to grin and was looking scared.
"Mr. Gresham is of a very old family," Mr. Courtney's wife reminded him.
"Age is no recommendation for an egg," her husband kindly informed her. "Gresham is second cousin to Lord Yawpingham, and if they had any sense of shame they'd murder each other for the relationship."
"Oh, Ben, I'm sure you're harsh," protested the optimistic Mrs. Courtney.
"I'm so charitable as to be almost weak," he insisted with a grin. "Seriously; though, Lucy, Gresham's not square. He tried to destroy Johnny Gamble's credit with me two or three weeks ago in a most underhanded manner."
There was a moment of silence, during which the pair in the bower gazed straight up at nothing.
"You seem to like Mr. Gamble," mused Mrs. Courtney. "Everybody does, however. Where is he from?"
"Some little town up the state," returned Courtney indifferently. "He's a fine young fellow, square as a die and a hustler! He's going to marry Constance Joy."
Johnny Gamble, turning the color of a tomato, dropped his sailor straw hat, and its edge hit the tiled floor with a noise like the blow of an ax. Constance could have murdered him for it. They missed a lot of conversation just about then.
Courtney and his wife rounded the corner of the bower and paused a moment before turning into it.
"Really, Ben," defended Mrs. Courtney, returning to the criticism that her husband by now wished he had not made, "except for the epidemic of Wobbleses this would have been a delightful week-end party: Constance, Polly, fluffy little Winnie, Mrs. Follison and our own two girls; Mr. Loring, Val Russel, Bruce Townley, Sammy Chirp, Mr. Gamble and Mr. Gresham. For your entertainment you'll have Mr. Washer, Mr. Close and Colonel Bouncer, with whom you will play poker from the time they reach here this afternoon until they go away Monday morning."
"It was a good party!" agreed Courtney, "By the way, I owe my poker guests to Johnny Gamble. He asked if they would be here, and seemed to want them. He's a live member! Did I ever tell you how he helped me skin old Mort Washer?" And, changing his mind about entering the jessamine bower, Mr. Courtney, explaining with great glee the skinning of his friend Mort Washer, took the other path and the two strolled away without having seen or heard the luckless eavesdroppers.
The miserable pair in the bower, exhibiting various shades of red, looked steadfastly out into the blue, blue sky for some minutes in stupefied silence. Johnny presently picked up his sailor straw hat and surveyed the nick in its brim with ingenuous interest.
"I bought that hat in Baltimore," he inanely observed.
Constance suddenly rose and walked straight out of there—alone!
Mr. Eugene Wobbles, who tried to live down his American ancestry in London clubs and was, consequently, more British than any Englishman, came to Mr. Courtney lazily apologetic.
"I fancy I'm going to give you a lot of bother, my dear Courtney," he observed, lounging feebly against the porch rail.
"I prefer bother to almost anything," returned his host pleasantly; "it gives me something to do."
"Rather clever that," laughed Eugene, swinging his monocle with one hand and stroking his drooping yellow mustache with the other. "Really I never thought of bother in that way before. Keeps one bothered, I think you said," and he gazed out over the broad lawn where the young people were noisily congregating, in pleasant contemplation of Courtney's wonderful new philosophy.
"What is this particular bother?" gently suggested Courtney after a pause.
"Oh, yes," responded Eugene, "we were discussing that, weren't we? I've a rotten memory; but my oldest brother, Tommy, can't even remember his middle initial. Pretty good that, don't you think; Tommy is a perfect ass in every respect." And idly considering Tommy's perfection as an ass, he turned and gazed down into the ravine where Courtney had built some attractive little waterfalls and cave paths. "About how deep should you say it was down there, Courtney?"
"Three hundred and fifty feet," answered Courtney. "I think you were speaking about a little bother."
"Oh, yes, so I was," agreed Eugene. "Very good of you to remind me of it. You know, Courtney, Mr. Gamble—who wants to buy some land of ours—has made the remarkable discovery that we're all here together. First time in years, I assure you. No matter how necessary it may be for us to hold a complete family council, one of my brothers—most unreliable people in the world, I think—is always missing."
"And when they're all together I suppose you are somewhere else," suggested Courtney.
That proposition was so unique that Eugene was forced to spend profound thought on it.
"Curious, isn't it?" he finally admitted. "A chap becomes so in the habit of thinking that he is himself always present, wherever he happens to be, that it's no end starting to reflect that sometimes he isn't."
"I see," said Courtney, grasping eagerly at the light. "You merely happen to be all here at the same time, and you think it advisable to hold a family business meeting because the accident may never occur again. Sensible idea, Eugene. The east loggia off the second-floor hall is just the place. Assemble there and I'll send you any weapons you want."
"Perfectly stunning how you Americans grasp things!" commented Eugene, agape with admiration. "But I say, old chap, that's a joke about the weapons. Really, we shan't need them."
"You're quite right; I was joking," returned Courtney gravely. "I'll go right up and have some chairs and tables put out on the loggia."
"I knew it would be a deuced lot of bother for you," regretted Eugene apologetically. "It's a lot of face in us to ask it. So crude, you know. By the way, should you say that this Mr. Gamble chap was all sorts reliable?"
"Absolutely," Courtney emphatically assured him.
"Ow," returned Eugene reflectively. "And his solicitor fellow, Loring?"
"Perfectly trustworthy."
"Ow," commented Eugene, and fell into a study so deep that Courtney was able to escape without being missed.
In the library, where he went to ring for a servant, he found Constance Joy looking gloomily out of a window, with a magazine upside down in her hands. She immediately rose.
"Don't let me disturb you," begged Courtney as he rang the bell. "Do you know where I can find Johnny Gamble?"
"I really couldn't say," replied Constance sweetly. "I left him out in the gardens a few minutes ago." And she made for the door, confident that she had not spoken with apparent haste, embarrassment or coldness.
"Won't you please tell him that Joe Close and Morton Washer and Colonel Bouncer are coming out on the next train?" requested Courtney. "You're sure to see him by and by, I know."
"With pleasure," lied Constance miserably, and hurried to finish her escape. At the door, however, she suddenly turned and came back, walking nonchalantly but hastily out through the windows upon the side porch. A second later Paul Gresham and Billy Wobbles, the latter walking with temperamental knees, passed through the hall.
Courtney looked after Constance in perplexity, but, a servant entering, he gave orders for the furnishing of the loggia and went up to make sure of the arrangements. He found Johnny Gamble in moody solitude, studying with deep intensity the braiding of his sailor straw hat.
"Hello, Johnny!" hailed Courtney cordially. "I was just asking Miss Joy about you."
Johnny looked at him with reproachful eyes. Courtney was to blame for his present gloom.
"Thanks," he returned. "What did she say?"
"Not much," replied Courtney, smiling slyly. "She didn't know where you were, but she's looking for you."
"Where is she?" asked Johnny, jumping up with alacrity.
"She just went out on the side porch of the library," announced Courtney. "Her message is from me, however. Washer and Close and the colonel are coming out this noon."
"Thanks," replied Johnny starting away. "Did I understand you to say the side porch of the library?"
A thin-legged figure stopped in the door and twitched.
"Mornin'," it observed. "I knew Eugene's intellect was woozing again. Always announcing some plan for us to bore each other, don't you know, and never having it come off."
"This is the place and the hour, Reggie," declared Mr. Courtney. "If you'll just stay here I'll send you out a brandy and soda and some cigars."
"Thanks awfully, old man," returned Reggie, looking dubiously out at the loggia. It was enticing enough, with its broad, cool, tiled flooring and its vine-hung arches and its vistas of the tree-clad hills across the ravine; but it was empty. "I think I'll return when the rest of them are together.", And Reggie, stumbling against the door-jamb on his way out, wandered away, choosing the right-hand passage because his body had happened to lurch in that direction.
"Johnny, if you say anything I'll be peevish," protested Courtney in advance. "Please remember that the gentleman is a guest of mine."
"I was grinning at something else," Johnny soothed him, still grinning, however.
"I apologize," observed Courtney. "Do you think the Wobbles family will hold their conclave if each of them waits until all the others are together?"
"I hope so," replied Johnny. "I'll make some money if they do."
"How rude!" expostulated Courtney with a laugh. "Business at a week-end house-party!"
"Business is right," confessed Johnny. "They admit that you run the best private exchange in America out here."
Courtney, enjoying that remark, laughed heartily.
"I'm glad they give me credit," he acknowledged. "Well, help yourself to all the facilities. Where are you going?"
"Library porch," answered Johnny promptly. "Excuse me, I'm in a hurry."
Constance Joy was not on the library porch. Instead, Johnny found there Polly Parsons and her adopted sister Winnie, Ashley Loring and Sammy Chirp. This being almost a family party for Johnny, he had no hesitation in asking bluntly for Constance.
"This is her morning for Wobbling," returned Polly disdainfully. "A while ago she was dodging the perfectly careless compliments of old Tommy and trying not to see that his toupee was on crooked; and now she's down toward the ravine some place, watching young Cecil stumble. You could make yourself a very solid Johnny by trotting right down there and breaking up the party."
"I think I'd rather have a messenger for that," calculated Johnny. "His brothers wish to see Cecil up in the east loggia."
"Sammy will go," offered Winnie confidently; whereat Sammy, smiling affably, promptly rose.
"Go with him, Winnie," ordered Polly. "Trot on now, both of you. I want to talk sense."
Quite cheerfully Winnie gave Sammy her fan, her parasol, her vanity box, her novel, her box of chocolates and her hat, stuffed a handkerchief in his pocket and said: "Come on, Sammy; I'm ready."
"Constance showed me that schedule last night, Johnny," rattled Polly. "You ought to see it, Loring. On Wednesday, at four o'clock, he was exactly even with it; five hundred thousand dollars to the good."
"I know," laughed Loring, "and he'll beat his schedule if the Wobbleses will only hold steady for ten minutes."
"You don't mean to say that a Wobbles could be useful!" protested Polly.
"Half a million dollars' worth," Loring informed her; then he drew his chair closer and lowered his voice. "It's a funny story, Polly. Two weeks ago Johnny took Courtney and Close and Washer and Colonel Bouncer up to the Bronx in my machine and arranged to sell them a subdivision for three and a half million dollars."
"Help!" gasped Polly. "Burglar!"
"They'll double their money," asserted Johnny indignantly. "Fanciest neglected opportunity within a gallon of gasolene from Forty-second Street."
"Trouble is, Johnny didn't own it and doesn't yet," laughed Loring. "He's been trying to buy it from the Wobbleses ever since he arranged to sell it."
"He'll get it," decided Polly confidently.
"Will they agree when they get together?" Loring worried. "Individually each one needs the money, and each one is satisfied with Johnny's offer of three million cash."
"Don't say another word," ordered Polly. "I have to figure this out. Why, Johnny, if you carry this through it will finish your million, and this is only the thirteenth of May. That's going some! You weren't supposed to have it till the thirty-first. Polly's proud of you!"
"I don't think you get the joke of this yet, though, Polly," Loring went on. "The Wobbleses don't know that Johnny had already arranged to sell their land, and the subdivision company doesn't know that the beautiful Bronx tract is the Wobbles estate. In the meantime both parties are here, and I'm lurking behind the scenery with all the necessary papers ready to sign, seal and deliver."
"Hush!" commanded Polly; "I'm getting excited. It sounds like the finish of the third act. Oh, lookee! Who's the graceful party with Gresham?"
Both Johnny and Loring glanced up at a tall, suave, easy-moving gentleman, whose clothing fitted him like a matinee idol's, whose closely trimmed beard would have served as a model for the nobility anywhere, and whose smile was sickening sweet.
"Eugene Wobbles' friend, Birchard," stated Johnny, who kept himself well posted on Wobbles affairs. "He's always either with Gresham or a Wobbles, and he travels for a living, I believe." And Johnny suddenly rose.
Coming from the direction of the ravine were Constance and Cecil, Winnie and Sammy, and passing Gresham and Birchard with the nod of compulsion Johnny walked carelessly on to meet the quartet.
"Good morning, Cecil," he observed. "Your brothers are about to hold a meeting in the east loggia, and I think they're looking for you."
"No doubt," admitted Cecil wearily. "It's barely possible that one or two of them are already believing that they will go up. Do you know, I think I shall establish a record for family promptness, if I may be excused. Most annoying to be torn away from such a jolly talk, I'm sure." And receiving the full and free permission of the company to depart he did so, changing his mind twice about whether to go through the rose arbor or round by the sun-dial.
Johnny swung in by the side of Constance.
"Some one told me you had a message for me," he blundered.
"Who said so?" she was cruel enough to ask.
Johnny turned pink, but he was brave and replied with the truth.
"Mr. Courtney," he admitted.
"So I imagined," she answered icily. "Mr. Washer and Mr. Close and Colonel Bouncer are to arrive on the noon train. You'll excuse me, won't you, please?" And she hurried on to the house by herself to dress for luncheon.
Johnny Gamble tried to say "Certainly", but he dropped his sailor straw hat. Constance heard it and every muscle in her body jumped and stiffened. Johnny turned to business as a disappointed lover turns to drink.
There seemed a conspicuous dearth of Wobbleses on the east loggia that morning. Loring, pathetically faithful to his post, entertained them in relays as Johnny brought them up: sometimes one, sometimes two, and once or twice as many as three of them at one time; but they all lost their feeble mooring and drifted away.
Luncheon-time passed; Washer and Bouncer and Close and Courtney went into executive session; two o'clock came, three o'clock, four o'clock, and still no meeting. At the latter hour Johnny, making his tireless rounds but afflicted with despair, located Billy Wobbles, the one with the jerky eyelids and impulsive knees, on the loggia with Loring; Eugene was in the poker room trying numbly to discover the difference between a four-flush and a deuce-high hand; Tommy, his toupee well down toward his scanty white eyebrows, was boring the Courtney girls to the verge of tears; Cecil, stumbling almost rhythmically over his own calves, was playing tennis with Winnie and Sammy and Mrs. Follison; and Reggie, the twitcher, was entertaining Val Russel and Bruce Townley with a story he had started at nine o'clock in the morning.
Suddenly Johnny was visited with a long-sought inspiration and hurried down to the kennels, remembering with much self-scorn that he had dragged each of the Wobbleses away from there at least once.
The master of the dogs was Irish and young, with eyes the color of a six-o'clock sky on a sunny day, and he greeted Johnny with a white-toothed smile that would have melted honey.
"I locked Beauty up, sir," he said with a touch of his cap, referring to the gentle collie that had poked its nose confidingly into Johnny's hand at every visit. "There was too much excitement for her with all the strangers round, but she'll be glad to see you, sir."
"Give Beauty my card and tell her I'll be back," directed Johnny with a friendly glance in the direction of Beauty's summer residence. "Didn't you say something this morning about a crowd of setter puppies?"
"Yes, sir," replied the dog expert proudly. "Several of the gentlemen have been down to see them, but the day has been so hot I didn't care to bring them out. It's cool enough now, sir, if you'd like to see them."
"I'll be back, in five minutes," returned Johnny hastily. "I'll say hello to Beauty first."
Beauty barked and capered when she was let out, and expressed her entire approval of Johnny in fluent dog language, looking after him reproachfully when he hurried away.
Johnny first begged a puppy of Courtney, then he brought Eugene Wobbles and Tommy Wobbles and Billy and Cecil and Reggie Wobbles down in turns to pick it out for him. Each of the Wobbleses was still there, deciding, when he brought another. When the last Wobbles, including their friend Birchard, was in the inclosure Johnny locked the gate and sent Loring on a brisk errand. That energetic commercial attorney returned in a very few minutes, laden with some papers and writing materials, and followed by a servant carrying a wicker table.
"Gentlemen," said Johnny in a quite oratorical tone of voice, "suppose we talk business."
The assembled Wobbleses turned in gasping surprise from the violent family dispute over the puppies.
"Upon my soul, this is a most extraordinary thing!" exclaimed Eugene, looking about him in amazement. "Why, the whole blooming family is here, even Tommy. I say, Tommy, it's perfectly imbecile, with all due respect to you, to prefer that little beggar with the white star."
"I'll back him for a hundred pounds before any official committee," indignantly quavered Tommy, feeling in all the wrong pockets for his betting-book.
"Gentlemen," interposed Johnny most crudely indeed, "I am here to repeat my offer of three million dollars, cash, for your Bronx property; one-half million dollars to-day, one million dollars next Saturday, May twentieth, and the remaining million and a half the following Saturday, May twenty-seventh, title to remain vested in you until the entire amount is paid. Just to show that I mean business I have brought each of you a certified check for one hundred thousand dollars." And he distributed them like diplomas to a class.
Tommy Wobbles, startled to find his toupee on straight, examined his check with much doubt. "I say, you know," he expostulated, "this can't be quite regular!"
"Why not?" inquired Johnny.
"Well—er—it's so very precipitate," responded Tommy, putting the check in his pocket and taking it out again and folding and unfolding it with uncertain fingers. "No time for deliberation and dignity and such rot, you know."
"An advance cash payment of half a million dollars is so full of dignity that its shoes squeak," announced Johnny. "As to delay, I don't see any reason for it. You want to sell the property, don't you?"
Eugene said yes, and the others looked doubtful.
"You're satisfied with the price?" demanded Johnny.
Since Eugene kept silent the others answered that they were.
"You know that by my plan you are perfectly secured until you are fully paid; so there's no reason why we shouldn't wind up the business at once."
"Should you say that this was regular, Birchard?" asked Eugene, toying with his check lovingly. He had just finished figuring that it was worth something like twenty thousand pounds!
"Quite regular indeed," Mr. Birchard smilingly assured him. "Typically American for its directness and decision, but fully as good a business transaction in every way as could be consummated in London."
"Ow, I say," protested Eugene, but he seemed perfectly satisfied, nevertheless.
"As I understand it," went on Mr. Birchard, "Mr. Gamble's proposition is very simple. You are to execute a contract of sale to him to-day, acknowledging receipt of half a million dollars' advance payment, and are at the same time to execute a clear deed that will be placed in the hands of your agent until Mr. Gamble completes his payments. The deed will then be delivered to him and properly recorded. Is this correct, Mr. Gamble?"
"I couldn't say it so well, but that's what I mean," replied Johnny.
"Then, gentlemen," continued Birchard, "I should advise you to sign the papers at once and have the matter off your minds."
Loring had everything ready, but it was Johnny who really conducted the meeting and manipulated the slow-moving Wobbleses so that they concluded the business with small waste of time.
When it was finished Johnny thanked them with intense relief. The Wobbles property was his, and he knew exactly where to sell it at a half-million dollars' profit. His tremendous race for a million was to be won, with a day or so of margin. There were a few technical matters to look after, but in reality the prize was his. He could go to Constance Joy now with a clear conscience and the ability to offer her a fortune equal to the one she would have to relinquish if she married him.
"By the way," said Johnny in parting, "who is your agent?"
"Why, I rather fancy it will be Mr. Birchard," replied Eugene. "Of course nothing is decided as yet, since there are five of us and four stubborn; but I rather fancy it will be Birchard. Eh, old chap?"
"I trust so," responded Birchard with a pleasant smile at Johnny.