"It's risky!" And Collaton looked about him furtively. "It's easy enough to fake an old note for money—"

"You must not say 'fake' to me. I will not countenance any crooked business."

"To dig up an old note for money I am supposed to have borrowed and spent—"

"Not supposed."

"For money I borrowed and spent on the work out there—and have a quiet suit entered by one of my pet assassins in Fliegel's court, have the summons served and confess judgment. Johnny is sucker enough to confess judgment, too, rather than repudiate a debt which he can not prove he does not owe; but I've already milked that scheme so dry that I'm afraid of it."

"You're afraid of everything," Gresham charged him with the scorn one coward feels for another. "Your operations out there were spread over ten thousand acres of ground; and it would take a dozen experts six months, without any books or papers to guide them, to make even an approximate estimate of your legitimate expenditures."

"I don't know," hesitated Collaton with a shake of his head—"I only touched the high places in the actual work out there. I believe I was a sucker at that, Gresham. If I had buckled down to it, like Gamble does, we could have made a fortune out of that scheme. He's a wonder!"

"He has wonderful luck," corrected Gresham. "I tried my best to scare Courtney away from him with that attachment, but he insisted on clinging to his Johnny Gamble; so we'll hand him enough of Johnny by laying a fifty-thousand-dollar attachment against his property."

"You're a funny cuss," said Collaton, puzzled. "If you wanted to soak him for this fifty thousand why did you try to scare Courtney off?"

"Can't you understand that I'm not after the money?" demanded Gresham. "I've explained that to you before. I want Gamble broke, discredited, and so involved that he can never transact any business in New York."

"What's he done to you?" inquired Collaton. "He must be winning a stand-in with your girl."

"My private affairs are none of your concern!" Gresham indignantly flared.

"All right, governor," assented Collaton a trifle sullenly. "I'll fake that note for you to-night; and—"

"I told you I would not have anything to do with any crooked work," Gresham sharply reprimanded him.

"Oh, shut up!" growled Collaton. "You give me the cramps. You're a worse crook than I am!"



CHAPTER VIII

IN WHICH CONSTANCE SHOWS FURTHER INTEREST IN JOHNNY'S AFFAIRS

On Wednesday morning Mr. Courtney, sitting as rigidly at his desk as if he were in church, was handed the card of Morton Washer. He laid the card face down and placed a paper-weight on it, as if he feared it might get away. He turned a callous eye on his secretary and, in his driest and most husky tones, directed: "Tell Mr. Washer I will see him in five minutes."

During that five minutes Mr. Courtney signed letters as solemnly as a judge pronouncing a death sentence. At last he paused and looked at himself for a solid half-minute in the bookcase mirror across from his desk. Apparently he was as mournful as an undertaker, but at the end of the inspection his mouth suddenly stretched in a wide grin, which bristled the silver-white beard upon his cheeks; his eyes screwed themselves up into knots of jovial wrinkles and he winked—actually winked—at his reflection in the glass! Thereupon he straightened his face and sent for Morton Washer.

Mr. Washer, proprietor of two of the largest hotels in New York, and half a dozen enormous winter and summer places, looked no more like a boniface than he did like a little girl on communion Sunday. He was a small, wispy, waspish fellow with a violently upright, raging pompadour, a mustache which, in spite of careful attempts at waxing, persisted in sticking straight forward, and a sharp hard nose which had apparently been tempered to a delicate purple.

"Hear you've revived your hotel project," he said to Mr. Courtney.

"No," denied Courtney. "Sold the property."

"I know," agreed Mr. Washer with absolute disbelief. "What'll you take for it?"

"I told you it was sold. Here's the contract." And, with great satisfaction, Courtney passed over the document.

"Two million six hundred and fifty!" snorted Washer. "That's half a million more than it's worth."

"You told my friends you intended to buy the railroad plot at three and a half," Courtney gladly reminded him.

"It's four hundred feet deep."

"You said you only wanted two hundred feet square, which is the size of this plot—and this is an equally good location."

"I know," admitted Washer, contemptuous of all such trifles. "What will you take for the property—spot cash?"

"It's sold, I tell you. If you want to buy it see Mr. Gamble."

"Who's Gamble?"

"The man who is organizing the Terminal Hotel Company."

"How much stock has he subscribed?"

"You will have to see Mr. Gamble about that."

"Did you take any?"

"Half a million."

"Humph! You could afford to. Now give me the straight of it, Courtney: Is it any use to talk to you?"

"Not a bit. You'll—"

"I know. I'll have to see Mr. Gamble! Well, where do I find him?"

Mr. Courtney kindly wrote the address on a slip of paper. Mr. Washer looked at it with a grunt, stuffed it in his waistcoat pocket and slammed out of the door. Mr. Courtney winked at himself in the glass. Old Mort Washer would try to take advantage of him, to the extent of an eighth of a million dollars, would he! Make his old friend Courtney take an eighth of a million less than he paid, eh? Mr. Courtney whistled a merry little tune.

Fifteen minutes later, Old Mort Washer bounced into Loring's office.

"Mr. Gamble?" he popped out.

Both gentlemen turned to him, but Loring turned away.

"I'm Gamble," stated that individual.

"I'm Morton Washer."

Since Mr. Gamble was aware of that fact and was expecting this visit, he betrayed no surprise.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Washer?" he inquired.

"Are you taking bona fide subscriptions to your Terminal Hotel Company?"

"No other kind interests me."

"How nearly is your company filled?"

"Why do you want to know? Do you figure on taking some stock?"

"No."

"What do you want?"

"Your price on the property. Will you sell it?"

"Of course I will—at a profit."

"How much?"

"Two million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

"Keep it!" snapped Washer, and started for the door.

"Much obliged," returned Johnny cheerfully, and returned to his combination daybook, journal, ledger and diary. "Ashley, I put in four hours' overtime, Monday. Do I enter that on the debit or credit side?"

Loring stifled a snicker.

"I think I'd open a separate account for that," he solemnly advised.

"I say," renewed Washer, returning one pace, "who are some of your prospective stockholders?"

"Close, of the Fourth National, is one; Mr. Courtney is another; Colonel Bouncer is another. I have more."

"Thanks!" snapped Washer. "I'll give you two and a half millions for that property."

"I'd rather finance the Terminal Hotel. Let me show you a perspective sketch of it, Mr. Washer," and he opened the drawer of his desk.

"You'll have to excuse me," blurted Mr. Washer. "Good day!" and he was gone.

"I didn't know you had Close," commented Loring in surprise. "How did you hypnotize him?"

"Showed him a profit. Mr. Courtney told me last night that Close boosted me yesterday, so I sold him some stock this morning. Say, Loring, how did you square that fifteen thousand attachment?"

"None of your business," said Loring.

Mr. Washer rushed in to see Mr. Close.

"I see you've subscribed for stock in the Terminal Hotel Company," he observed. "To accommodate a client?"

"No, because I thought it would be a good investment," Mr. Close informed him, turning up the edge of a piece of paper and creasing it as carefully as if it had been money. "Of course I would not care to have my action influence others."

"Do you think Gamble can fully organize such a company?"

"I think so," stated Mr. Close. "Understand, I do not recommend the investment; and my stock is subscribed only on condition that he obtains his full quota of capital."

"What sort of a man is he?"

"A very reliable young man, I believe," responded Mr. Close, carefully testing an ink-eaten steel pen point to see if it was really time for it to be thrown away. "Of course I could not state Mr. Gamble to be financially responsible, but personally I would trust him. I would not urge or even recommend any one to take part in his projects; but personally I feel quite safe in investing with him, though I would not care to have that fact generally known, because of the influence it might have. Perhaps you had better see some of the other subscribers."

"No, I've seen enough," announced Mr. Washer. "Thanks!" and he dashed out of the door.

Ten minutes later he was in Loring's office again.

"Now, name your bottom price for that property," he ordered.

"Two million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars," obliged Johnny with careful emphasis on each word.

"It's too much money."

"Don't buy it, then," advised Johnny, smiling quite cheerfully.

"Come on; let's close it up," offered Washer resignedly. "I might have to pay more if I waited."

"All right," said Johnny. "It's a bargain, then?"

"It's a bargain—confound it!" agreed Mr. Washer quite affably, now that the struggle was over. "Where do we go?"

"To Mallard Tyne, the six original owners and myself will all take a piece of your two and three-quarter millions."

"I ought to take a body-guard," grinned Washer; "but I'll chance it. Come on."

While the foregoing was in progress Constance Joy was entertaining Paul Gresham, who had the effrontery to drop in for lunch. Of course the conversation turned to Johnny Gamble. Neither of them could avoid it. They had reached the point where Gresham was angry and Constance was enjoying herself.

"I have great faith in him," she was saying. "He has a wonderful project under way just now."

"And he doesn't care who suffers by it," charged Gresham, furious that she should be so well-informed. "You'll see that he'll involve Courtney's property with some of his old debts."

Constance's eyes widened.

"Do you think so?" she inquired as quietly as possible.

"Of course he will. His creditors are certain to take advantage of this immediately. I warned Courtney."

She hastily arose and went into the hall.

"Oh, Aunt Pattie!" she called up the stairs. "Mr. Gresham is here." Then to Gresham: "You'll excuse me for a little while, won't you? Aunt Pattie is coming down."

Five minutes after Johnny and Mr. Washer had gone, Constance Joy came into Johnny's office with carefully concealed timidity. Her manner was coldly gracious and self-possessed, and her toilet was perfect; but she carried one ripped glove.

"Is Mr. Loring in?" she asked with perfect assurance and also with suddenly accelerated dignity; for the stenographer was really quite neat-looking—not pretty, you know, but neat.

"He has just gone out," replied the stenographer with tremendous sweetness. Anybody could look pretty in expensive clothes like Constance Joy's.

There was a moment's hesitation.

"Is Mr. Gamble in?"

The girl smiled quite brightly.

"Mr. Gamble has just gone out," she stated, and smiled again. She was not at all pretty when she smiled—not by any means—neat, though.

"Could you tell me where I would be likely to find Mr. Loring?" asked Constance stiffly.

"Haven't the slightest idea," answered the girl happily, and gave her hair a touch. Ah! there was a rip under her sleeve!

"Do you know where Mr. Gamble has gone?" and Constance was suddenly pleasant through and through.

"Mr. Gamble?" repeated the girl, wondering at the sudden sweetness and suspicious of it. "Oh, Mr. Gamble has gone over to the office of Mallard back in a few minutes. He's in and out a great deal, but he seldom stays out of the office long at a time."

"Thank you," said Constance hastily, reflecting that there was a public telephone booth in the drug store on the corner, so she need not inquire the address of Mallard & Tyne.

Mr. Gamble, Mr. Courtney, and Mr. Washer were in Mr. Mallard's private office, with that acutely earnest real estate gentleman, when a boy came in to advise Mr. Gamble that he was wanted on the telephone. Johnny Gamble had never heard the voice of Constance over a thin wire, but he recognized it in an instant; and he hitched his chair six inches closer to the instrument. He gave her a fool greeting, which he tried to remember afterward so that he could be confused about it; but Constance wasted no time in preliminaries.

"Have you any property which could be attached?" she wanted to know.

"Just at the present minute I have," he admitted. "I shall have a nominal title in a big building plot, for a day or two—or until the necessary papers can be signed."

"You mustn't wait!" she hastily ordered him. "You must get rid of it right this minute."

"I'll burn it up if you don't like it," he heartily promised her. "What's the matter with it?"

"It isn't safe for you to have it an instant. I've wasted so much time trying to find Polly or Loring, so that they could warn you, that I haven't time to explain. Just get rid of it immediately—can't you?"

"I can do anything you say," he earnestly informed her, hitching his chair closer. There was only an inch left, but he took that. "You'll explain to me to-night what all this is about, won't you?"

"You may come, but you mustn't ask questions."

"I'll be there as soon as I'm through here," he promptly informed her.

"Not so early," she protested, panic-stricken, "I have a caller just now. You must hurry, Mr. Gamble."

"Yes, I will," and he tried to hitch his chair closer. "You're telephoning from the house, then?"

"No-o-o-o!" and he thought he detected a stifled snicker. "I left him with Aunt Pattie and slipped out for a minute."

Him! Him, eh? And she had slipped out to telephone her friend, Johnny, the bit of hot information!

He covered the transmitter with his hand to turn aside and smile. This was a pleasant world after all!

"Many, many thanks!" he jubilated. "I think I'll arrange a little dinner of jollification to-night and hand you the official score. I'll have the colonel, and Mr. Courtney, and Polly, and—"

"You may call me up and tell me about it as soon as you get that property off your hands," she interrupted him.

"All right," he reluctantly agreed. "You'll come to the dinner, won't you?"

"Well, I have a partial engagement," she hesitated.

"Then you'll come," he exultantly knew.

"Maybe," she replied. "Hurry!"

He declared that he would—but he was talking into a dead telephone.

"I guess I'll hurry," he decided, and stalked into Mallard's room. "Look here, fellows. Can't we cut this thing short?" he suggested. "There's no use in Mr. Courtney's completing his purchase from Mallard & Tyne, or me mine from Mr. Courtney, or Mr. Washer his from me. All that poppy-cock is just to conceal out profits. What Mr. Washer wants is the ground; and Courtney and I want half a million dollars, besides the eighth of a million that Mr. Courtney had already invested. Mr. Washer, give Courtney your check for five-eighths of a million—and both Courtney and I will tear up our contracts and give you the pieces. Then you settle with Mallard & Tyne for two and an eighth millions."

"Look here, Courtney, is this a put-up job between you and Gamble?" demanded Washer.

"No," returned Courtney, with that rarely seen smile of his, "it's only the finish of that job you put up on me when you persuaded my friends to drop out of my hotel company."

Washer looked petulant. Johnny Gamble patted him on the shoulder.

"Cheer up," he said—"but hurry. If you don't hurry I'll sell you some stock in my Terminal Hotel Company."

"Give me some papers to sign," ordered Washer, producing his check-book.

Gresham met the colonel and Courtney on Broadway in full regalia just as they were turning in at the newest big cafe to dine that night.

"I'm sorry to tell you, Mr. Courtney, that my warning of this noon was not unfounded," he remarked. "Perhaps, however, you already know it."

"No, I don't," returned Courtney, eying the correctly dressed Gresham with some dissatisfaction. "I'm not even sure of what you mean."

"About a certain man with whom you are doing business."

"Oh—Gamble?"

"What's the matter with Gamble?" bristled the colonel.

"Why, Gresham hinted to me this morning that Gamble had financial obligations he could not meet," explained Courtney. "It seems that he met them, however."

"Of course he did!" snorted the colonel.

"I hadn't intended to make the matter public property," stated Gresham with an uncomfortable feeling that he was combating an unassailable and unaccountable prejudice.

"Bless my soul, you're succeeding mighty well!" blurted the colonel. "Now, tell us all you know about my friend Gamble. Out with it!"

"I beg you to understand, Mr. Courtney, that I am inspired by a purely friendly interest," insisted Gresham with very stiff dignity. "I thought it might be of value for you to know—if you were not already informed—that an attachment for fifty thousand dollars upon Mr. Gamble was laid against your Terminal Hotel property this afternoon."

Mr. Courtney paused to consider.

"At what time was this attachment issued?"

"At three-thirty, I was informed."

Mr. Courtney's reception of that important bit of news was rather unusual, in consideration of its gravity. He threw back his head and laughed; he turned to the colonel and, putting his hand upon his old friend's shoulder, laughed again; he put his other hand upon Gresham's shoulder and laughed more. The colonel was a slower thinker. He looked painfully puzzled for a moment—then suddenly it dawned upon him, and he laughed uproariously; he punched his old friend Courtney in the ribs and laughed more uproariously; he punched Gresham in the ribs and laughed most uproariously.

"Why, bless my heart, boy!" he explained for Courtney. "At two-thirty, neither Courtney nor Johnny Gamble owned a penny's worth of interest in the Terminal Hotel site, if that's the property you mean—and of course you do."

"No," laughed Courtney. "At that hour we sold it outright to Morton Washer for a cool half-million profit, which my friend Johnny and I divide equally. I saw him make the entry in his book. He has twenty-four hours in which to loaf on that remarkable schedule of his. Johnny Gamble is a wonderful young man!"

"Who's that's such a wonderful young man?" snapped a jerky little voice. "Johnny Gamble? You bet he is! He skinned me!"

Turning, Courtney grasped the hands of lean little Morton Washer and of wiry-faced Joe Close.

"We're all here now except the youngsters and the ladies," said Courtney. "Possibly they're inside. Coming in, Gresham?"

"No, I think not," announced Gresham, sickly. "Who's giving the party?"

"Johnny Gamble," snapped Washer. "It's in honor of me!"

A limousine drove up just then. In it were sweet-faced Mrs. Parsons—Polly's mother by adoption—Polly, Loring and Sammy Chirp, the latter gentleman being laden with the wraps of everybody but Loring.

Just behind the limousine was a taxi. In it were Aunt Pattie Boyden, Constance Joy and Johnny Gamble. Gresham, who had held a partial engagement for the evening, went to his club instead.



CHAPTER IX

IN WHICH JOHNNY MEETS A DEFENDER OF THE OLD ARISTOCRACY

Johnny, whose sources of information were many and varied, called on a certain Miss Purry the very next morning, taking along Val Russel to introduce him.

"Any friend of Mr. Russel's is welcome, I am sure," declared Miss Purry, passing a clammy wedge of a hand to Johnny, who felt the chill in his palm creeping down his spine. "Of the Maryland Gambles?"

"No, White Roads," replied Johnny cheerfully. Miss Purry's chiseled smile remained, but it was not the same. "I came to see you about that vacant building site, just beyond the adjoining property."

Miss Purry shook her head,

"I'm afraid I could not even consider selling it without a very specific knowledge of its future." And her pale green eyes took on a slightly deeper hue.

Val Russel stifled a sly grin.

"This was once a very aristocratic neighborhood," he informed Johnny with well-assumed sorrow. "Miss Purry is the last of the fine old families to keep alive the traditions of the district. Except for her influence, the new-rich have vulgarized the entire locality."

"Thank you," cooed Miss Purry. "I could not have said that myself, but I can't hinder Mr. Russel from saying it. Nearly all of my neighbors tried to buy the riverview plot, about which you have come to see me; but I did not care to sell—to them."

Her emphasis on the last two words was almost imperceptible, but it was there; and her reminiscent satisfaction was so complete that Johnny, who had known few women, was perplexed.

"If all the old families had been as careful the Bend would not have deteriorated," Val stated maliciously, knowing just how to encourage her. "However, the new-comers are benefited by Miss Purry's resolve—particularly Mrs. Slosher. The Sloshers are just on the other side of the drive from the vacant property, and they have almost as good a river view as if they had been able to purchase it and build upon it in the first place."

The green of Miss Purry's eyes deepened another tone.

"Mr. Slosher, who is now in Europe, was almost brutal in his determination to purchase the property," she stated with painful repression. "The present Mrs. Slosher is a pretty doll, and he is childishly infatuated with her; but his millions can not buy everything she demands."

Ignorant of social interplay as Johnny Gamble was, he somehow divined that William G. Slosher's doll was the neighborhood reason for everything.

"If you were only certain of what you intend to build there—" she suggested, to break the helpless silence.

"I have an apartment-house in mind," he told her.

"That would be very large and very high, no doubt," she guessed, looking pleased.

"It's the only kind that would pay," Johnny Gamble hastily assured her. "It would be expensive—no suite less than three thousand a year and nobody allowed to do anything."

"I'll consider the matter," she said musingly.

"What about the price?" asked Johnny, whose mind had been fixed upon that important detail.

"Oh, yes—the price," agreed Miss Purry indifferently; "I've been holding it at two hundred thousand. I shall continue to hold it at that figure."

"Then that's the price," decided Johnny. "Can't we come to an agreement now?"

"To-morrow afternoon at three," she dryly insisted.

He saw that she meant to-morrow afternoon at three.

"Can't I arrange with you for a twenty-four-hour option?" he begged, becoming anxious.

"I shall not bind myself in any way," she declared. "To-morrow afternoon at three."

"That's a beautiful piece of property," commented Johnny as they drove by. "By George, the apartment-house will shut those people off from the river!"

"That's the only reason she'd be willing to sell," replied Val. "What set you hunting up this property?"

"The De Luxe Apartments Company intends confining its operations to this quarter. They'll go scouting among the listed properties first—and they may not find this one until I am asking them two hundred and fifty for it."

That afternoon, Johnny, always prompt, was ahead of time at the final committee meeting of the Babies' Fund Fair, but Constance Joy did not seem in the least surprised at his punctuality.

"I was in hopes you'd come early," she greeted him. "I want to show you the score board of your game."

"Honest, did you make one?" he asked, half-incredulous of his good fortune, as she led the way into the library; and his eyes further betrayed his delight when she showed him the score board itself.

"See," she pointed out, "you were to make five thousand dollars an hour for two hundred working hours, beginning on April twenty-second and ending May thirty-first."

Johnny examined the board with eager interest. It was ruled into tiny squares, forty blocks long and seven deep.

"I want to frame that when we're through," he said, admiring the perfect drawing.

"Suppose you lose?" she suggested, smiling to herself at his unconscious use of the word "we".

"No chance," he stoutly returned. "I have to paste a five-thousand-dollar bill in each one of those blocks."

"You've kept your paste brush busy," she congratulated him, marveling anew at how he had done it, as she glanced at the record which she had herself set down. "I have the little squares crossed off up to two hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars."

"The money's in Loring's bank," he cheerfully assured her. "That pays me up to next Tuesday, May second, at two o'clock. This is two o'clock, Thursday. I have twenty-four working hours to loaf."

"Lazy!" she bantered him. "That isn't loafing time; it's only a safety margin."

Her eagerness about it pleased Johnny very much. When he had his million he intended to ask her to marry him; and it was pleasant to have her, all unaware of his purpose, of course, taking such an acute interest in this big game.

"If a man plays too safe he goes broke," objected Johnny seriously, still intent on the diagram, however. "I notice that none of these Sundays or Saturday afternoons have money in them. According to my plan I also allowed for two possible holidays; but why are those two special days left white?"

"Well," hesitated Constance, flushing slightly, "May thirtieth is Decoration Day; and then I allowed for a possible birthday."

"Birthday?" he repeated, perplexed. "Whose?"

"Oh, anybody's," she hastily assured him. "You can move the date to suit. You know you said you weren't going to work on Sundays, evenings, holidays or birthdays."

"I have but one birthday this year, and it comes in the fall," he answered, laughing; then suddenly a dazzling light blinded him. "It's the score keeper's!" he guessed.

In spite of all her efforts to prevent it Constance blushed furiously. "I had intended to give a little party on the nineteenth," she confessed.

"I'm coming!" he emphatically announced.

Aunt Pattie Boyden swept into the room, and Johnny immediately felt that he had on tight shoes. He had once made a fatal error before Aunt Pattie; he had confessed to having been a voter before he owned a dress suit.

Paul Gresham arrived, and Aunt Pattie was as the essence of violets. Paul, though American-born, was a second cousin of Lord Yawpingham. Johnny and Paul sat and inwardly barked at each other. Johnny almost barked outwardly.

Val Russel and Bruce Townley came, and everybody breathed a sigh of relief.

"Well, Johnny," said Val, "I just now saw your newest speculation driving down the Avenue in a pea-green gown and a purple hat."

"I never had a speculation like that," denied Johnny.

"Sounds like a scandal," decided Bruce Townley.

"You might as well tell it, Val," laughed Constance with a mischievous glance at Johnny.

"It hasn't gone very far as yet," replied Val, enjoying Johnny's discomfort, "but it promises well. Johnny and I called upon a wealthy spinster, away upon Riverside Drive, this morning, ostensibly to buy real estate."

Val, leaning his cheek upon his knuckles with his middle finger upon his temple, imitated Miss Purry's languishing air so perfectly that Aunt Pattie and Gresham, both of whom knew the lady, could see her in the flesh—or at least in the bone.

"'Ostensible' is a good word in that neighborhood," opined Gresham lightly. "Were you trying to buy Miss Purry's vacant riverfront property?"

Notwithstanding his seeming nonchalance, Gresham betrayed an earnest interest which Constance noted, and she turned to Johnny with a quick little shake of her head, but he was already answering, and she frowned slightly.

Mrs. Follison arrived, and after her the rest of the committee came trooping by twos and threes,—a bright, busy, chattering mob which stopped all personal conversation.

Last of all came Polly Parsons, accompanied by Ashley Loring and Sammy Chirp, and by the fluffy little orphan whom she had been keeping in school for the last three years.

"I know I'm late," declared Polly defiantly; "but I don't adopt a sister every day. I stopped at Loring's office to do it, and I'm so proud I'm cross-eyed. Sister Winnie, shake hands with everybody and then run out in the gardens with Sammy."

Dutifully, Winnie, in her new role of sister, shook hands with everybody and clenched their friendship with her wide blue eyes and her ingenuous smile; and, dutifully, Sammy Chirp, laden with her sun-hat and parasol and fan, her vanity box and lace hand-bag, took her out into the gardens, and the proceedings began as they usually did when Polly Parsons arrived. Subcommittees took cheerful and happy possession of the most comfortable locations they could find, and Constance Joy walked Ashley Loring out through the side porch.

"There's a very cozy and retired seat in the summer-house," she informed him. "I wish to have a tete-a-tete with you on a most important business matter."

"You may have a tete-a-tete with me on any subject whatsoever," laughed Loring. "I suppose it's about those Johnny Gamble attachments, however."

"It's about that exactly," she acknowledged. "What have you learned of the one for fifty thousand dollars which was attempted to be laid against Mr. Gamble's interest in that hotel property yesterday?"

"Very little," he confessed. "It is of the same sort as the one we discussed the other day."

Constance nodded. "Fraudulent, probably," she guessed.

"I think so myself," agreed Loring. "Trouble is, nobody can locate the Gamble-Collaton books."

"Perhaps they have been destroyed," mused Constance.

"I doubt it," returned Loring. "It would seem the sensible thing to do; but, through some curious psychology which I can not fathom, crooks seldom make away with documentary evidence."

"Who is helping Mr. Collaton?" asked Constance abruptly after a little silence.

"I do not know," answered Loring promptly, looking her squarely in the eye.

"Some one of our mutual acquaintance," she persisted shrewdly. "Twice, now, attachments have been served on Mr. Gamble when the news of his having attachable property could only have come from our set."

They had turned the corner of the lilac screen and found a little summer-house occupied by Sammy and Winnie, and the low mellow voice of Winnie was flowing on and on without a break.

"It's the darlingest vanity purse I ever saw," she babbled. "Sister Polly bought it for me this morning. She's the dearest dear in the world! I don't wonder you're so crazy about her. How red your hand is next to mine! Madge Cunningham says that I have the whitest and prettiest hands of any girl in school—and she's made a special study of hands. Isn't that the cunningest sapphire ring? Sister Polly sent it to me on my last birthday; so now you know what month I was born in. Jeannette Crawley says it's just the color of my eyes. She writes poetry. She wrote some awfully sweet verses about my hair. 'The regal color of the flaming sun', she called it. She's dreadfully romantic; but the poor child's afraid she will never have a chance on account of her snub nose. We thought her nose was cute though. Miss Grazie, our professor of ancient history, said my nose was of the most perfect Greek profile she had ever seen—just like that on the features of Clytie, and with just as delicately formed nostrils. We set the funniest trap for her once. Somebody always told the principal when we were going to sneak our fudge nights, and we suspected it was one of the ugly girls—they're always either the sweetest or the meanest girls in school, you know. We had a signal for it, of course—one finger to the right eye and closing the left; and one day, when we were planning for a big fudge spree that night, I saw Miss Grazie watching us pass the sign. There isn't much escapes my eyes. Sure enough, that night Miss Porley made a raid. Well, on Thursday, Madge Cunningham and myself, without saying a word to anybody, stayed in Miss Grazie's room after class and gave each—other the fudge signal; and sure enough, that night—"

Constance and Loring tiptoed away, leaving the bewildered Sammy smiling feebly into the eyes of Winnie and floundering hopelessly in the maze of her information.

"I have it," declared Constance. "That lovely little chatterbox has given me an idea."

"Is it possible?" chuckled Loring. "Poor Sammy!"

"He was smiling," laughed Constance. "Here comes the chairman of the floor-walkers' committee."

Gresham, always uneasy in the absence of Constance, who was too valuable a part of his scheme of life to be left in charge of his friends, had come into the garden after them on the pretext of consulting the general committee.

"Do you know anything about the Garfield Bank?" Constance asked Gresham in the first convenient pause.

"It is very good as far as I have heard," he replied after careful consideration. "Are there any rumors out against it?"

"Quite the contrary," she hastily assured him. "It is so convenient, however, that I had thought of opening a small account there. Mr. Gamble transferred his funds to that bank to-day—and if he can trust them with over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars I should think I might give them my little checking account."

When they were alone again Loring turned to her in surprise.

"I have Johnny's money in my name. I didn't know he had opened an account with the Garfield Bank," he wondered.

"Neither did I," she laughed. "I told a fib! I laid a trap!"



CHAPTER X

IN WHICH JOHNNY IS SINGULARLY THRILLED BY A LITTLE CONVERSATION OVER THE TELEPHONE

Mr. Gamble, on his arrival the following afternoon, found Miss Purry very coldly regretful that she had already disposed of her property for a working-girls' home, at a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, having made a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reduction by way of a donation to the cause. Johnny drove back into the city rapidly—for he was now only sixteen hours ahead of his schedule. He was particularly out of sorts because Miss Purry had mentioned that the De Luxe Apartments Company had been after the plot. It is small satisfaction to a loser to have his judgment corroborated.

There was a Bronx project, involving the promotion of a huge exclusive subdivision, which he had hoped to launch; but during his call on Miss Purry that scheme went adrift through the sudden disagreement of the uncertain Wobbles brothers who owned the land. It was a day of failures; and at four o'clock he returned to the office and inscribed, upon the credit side of his unique little day-book, the laconic entry:

"April 28. Two flivvers. $0."

Loring, pausing behind him and looking over his shoulder, smiled—and added a climax. "Jacobs attached your account at the Garfield Bank to-day on that fifty-thousand-dollar note."

"That's my first good laugh to-day," returned Johnny. "I have no funds there."

"Gresham thought you had," said Loring quietly. "A trap was laid to make him think so, and he walked right into it."

"As soon as I have any place to keep a goat I'll get Gresham's," declared Johnny. "So he's really in on it."

"He's scared," stated Loring.

"I hope he's right," returned Johnny. "I do wish they'd let me alone, though, till Thursday, June first."

On Saturday, the twenty-ninth, and on Monday, the first of May, Johnny Gamble was compelled reluctantly to enter "flivvers" against his days' labors; and on Tuesday at two o'clock Constance called him up.

"Guilty!" he acknowledged as soon as he heard her voice. "I'm caught up with my schedule. At four o'clock I'll be ten thousand dollars behind. Everything I touch crawls right back in its shell."

"They'll come out again," she encouraged him. "I didn't call you up, as your score keeper, to tell you that from this hour you will be running in debt to yourself, but that one of your projects has come to life again."

"Which one is that?" he eagerly inquired.

"The property owned by that lady on Riverside Drive. I see by this morning's paper that the working-girls' home is not to be built. I suppose you already know it, however."

"I overlooked that scandal," he confessed. "Wasn't the building to be ugly enough?"

"This was a little obscure paragraph," she told him. "It was rather a joking item, based upon the fact that there is a great deal of ill feeling among the neighbors, who clubbed together and bought the option to prevent a building of this character from being erected. I'm so glad you didn't know about it!"

Her enthusiasm was contagious. Johnny himself was glad. It seemed like a terrific waste of time to have to wait a month before he could tell her what he thought of her; but he had to have that million!

"You're a careful score keeper," he complimented her. "I'll go right after that property. Does the item say who controls it now?"

"I have the paper before me. I'll read you the names," she returned with businesslike preparedness: "Mr. James Jameson-Guff, Mr. G. W. Mason, Mr. Martin Sheats, Mr. Edward Kettle."

"All the neighbors," he commented. "They don't like honest working-girls, I guess. That's a fine crowd of information you've handed me. I ought to give you a partnership in that million."

"You just run along or you'll be too late!" she urged him. "I'll take my commission in the five-thousand-dollar hours you donate to the Babies' Fund Fair. By the way, from whom do you suppose that option was purchased?"

"Gresham?" inquired Johnny promptly and with such a thrill of startled intensity in his tone that Constance could not repress a giggle.

"No, James Collaton," she informed him. "That's all the news. Hurry, now! Report to me, won't you, as soon as you find out whether you can secure the property? I haven't made an entry on my score board since last Wednesday night. Good-by."

"Good-by," said Johnny reluctantly; but he held the telephone open, trying to think of something else to say until he heard the click which told him that she had hung up.

Last Wednesday night! Why, that was the night he had given the dinner in celebration of his passing the quarter-of-a-million mark; and after he had taken her home from the dinner she had sat up to rule and mark that elaborate score board! Somehow his lungs felt very light and buoyant.

Collaton, though? How did he get into the deal? Suddenly Johnny remembered Val Russel's joking at the committee meeting. Gresham again!

"Loring, I don't think I can wait till June first to get after the scalps of Gresham and Collaton," he declared as he prepared to go out. "I want to soak them now."

James Jameson-Guff, so christened by his wife, but more familiarly known among his associates as Jim Guff, received Johnny with a frown when he understood his errand.

"You're too late," he told Johnny. "We've turned the option over to our wives to do with as they pleased. We're to have a swell yacht club out there now. I think that's a graft, too!"

"If you get stung again, Mr. Guff, let me know," offered Johnny, "and I'll have you a bona fide apartment-house proposition in short order."

"Nyagh!" observed Mr. Guff.

Johnny dutifully reported to his score keeper the result of his errand and, that evening, to explain it more fully he went out to her house; but he found Gresham there and nobody had a very good time.

On the following morning he saw in the papers that the Royal Yacht Club, a new organization, the moving spirit of which was one Michael T. O'Shaunessy, was to have magnificent headquarters on Riverside Drive—and he immediately went to see Mr. Guff. Mike O'Shaunessy was a notorious proprietor of road houses and "clubs" of shady reputation, and there was no question as to what sort of place the Royal Yacht Club would be.

Mr. Guff was furious about it.

"I knew it," he said. "The women have just telephoned me an authorization to send for this Jacobs blackguard and buy back the option."

"Jacobs?" inquired Johnny, "Not Abraham Jacobs?"

"That's the one," corroborated Guff. "Why, do you know him?"

"He is a professional stinger," Johnny admitted. "He stung me, and Collaton helped."

"I've no doubt of it," responded Guff. "It was a put-up job in the first place. By the way, Gamble, you used to be in partnership with Collaton yourself."

"That's true enough," admitted Johnny. "Possibly I'd better give you some references."

"Give them to the women," retorted Guff.

An hour later Johnny telephoned Guff.

"Did you repurchase the option from Jacobs?" he inquired.

"Yes!" snapped Guff, and hung up.

The facts that the De Luxe Apartments Company was hot after the property and that he himself was now four hours behind his schedule, with nothing in sight, drove Johnny on, in spite of his dismal forebodings.

Mrs. Guff he found to be a hugely globular lady, with a globular nose, the lines on either side of which gave her perpetually an expression of having just taken quinine. In view of her recent experiences she was inclined to call the police the moment Johnny stated his errand, but he promptly referred her to some gentlemen of unimpeachable commercial standing; namely, Close, Courtney, Bouncer and Morton Washer. She coolly telephoned them in his presence and was satisfied.

"You must understand, however," she said to him severely, "the only way in which we will release this option is that nothing but a first-class apartment-house, of not less than ten stories in height and with no suites of less than three thousand a year rental, shall be erected."

"I'll sign an agreement to that effect," he promptly promised.

"And how much do you offer us for the property?"

"Two hundred thousand," he returned, making a conservative guess at the amount they must have paid for the two options.

A deepening of the quinine expression told him that he had undershot the mark.

"Two hundred and ten thousand," he quickly amended.

A chocolate-cream expression struggled feebly with the quinine; and Johnny, who could translate the lines of the human countenance into dollars and cents with great accuracy, knew instantly that their two options had cost them thirty thousand dollars, and that he was offering the four ladies a profit of one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars' worth of gowns or diamonds each.

"That will be the most I can give," he still further amended. "I am prepared to write you a check at any moment."

"I think I can call a meeting at once," she informed him, and did so by telephone.

Mrs. Sheats, who came over presently, was an angular woman who kept the expression of her mouth persistently sweet, no matter what her state of mind might be; and she was very glad indeed that, so long as Miss Purry insisted on permitting a building of any sort to be erected opposite the Slosher residence, they were protecting that estimable lady in her absence by insuring a structure of dignity and class.

Mrs. Kettle, who was a placid lady of mature flesh and many teeth, and who carried ounces upon ounces of diamonds without visible effort, bewailed the innovation that Miss Purry was forcing on them, but felt a righteous glow that, under the circumstances, they were doing so nobly on behalf of Mrs. Slosher.

Mrs. Mason, who was a little, dry, jerky woman whose skin creaked when she rubbed it, whose voice scratched and whose whole personality suggested the rasp of saw-filing, was in her own confession actuated by less affectionate motives.

"I'm glad of it!" she snapped. "Mrs. Slosher is always talking about their superb river view and the general superiority of the Slosher location, the Slosher residence, the Slosher everything! I'm glad of it!"

The other ladies felt that Mrs. Mason was very catty.

At four o'clock that afternoon Johnny entered in his book:

"May third. To seven hours—nine hours behind schedule—$35,000. To Purry speculation, $210,000."

To offset this was:

"May third. To a chance, $0."



CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH JOHNNY EXECUTES SOME EXCEEDINGLY RAPID BUSINESS DEALS

Sitting tight and watching the hands of his watch go round, with a deficit of five thousand dollars an hour piling up against him, was as hard work as Johnny Gamble had ever done; and yet he knew that, if he succumbed to impatience and went to the De Luxe Apartments Company before they came to him, he would relinquish a fifty per cent, advantage. He saw another day slipping past him, with a total deficit of sixteen hours behind his schedule—or an appalling shortage of eighty thousand dollars—when, at one o'clock on Thursday, the expected happened—and a brisk little man, with a mustache which would have been highly luxuriant if he had not kept it bitten off as closely as he could reach it, dropped in, inquired for Loring, jerked a chair as close to him as he could get it and said, in one breath: "Want to sell your river-view property?"

"Certainly," replied Loring, in whose name the property stood. "Mr. Gamble is handling that for me. Mr. Chase, Mr. Gamble."

Mr. Chase, holding to his chair, jumped up, hurried over to Johnny and once more jerked the chair close up.

"How much do you want for it?" he asked.

"Two hundred and seventy-five thousand."

"Too much. I understand it's restricted to apartment-house purposes alone?"

"Yes."

"Not less than ten stories, and a minimum rental of three thousand dollars a suite?"

"Yes."

"You can't sell it for that price with those restrictions."

"We can build on it," replied Johnny calmly.

"You won't," asserted Mr. Chase with equal conviction. "You bought it to sell. I'll give you two hundred and fifty thousand."

"No," refused Johnny quite bravely, though with a panicky feeling as he thought of that appallingly swift schedule.

"All right," said Chase. "I'll hold the offer open at that figure for forty-eight hours. I think you'll come to it."

"I doubt it," responded Johnny, smiling; but he was afraid he would.

In less than an hour he received an unexpected call from Mrs. Guff, who was in such secret agitation that she quivered like jelly whenever she breathed.

"Mr. Guff and myself have decided to take Miss Purry's river-view property off your hands, Mr. Gamble," was the glad tidings she conveyed to him, smiling to share his delight. "We can't think of letting that river view slip by us."

"I'm glad to hear it," he announced with gratification, as he thought of Mr. Chase. "Have you secured the consent of your partners in the option to waive the apartment-house requirements?"

"Oh, no!" she ejaculated, shocked that any one should think that possible. "We have decided to build the apartment-house and to live there."

"To live there!" he repeated, remembering the elaborate Guff residence.

"Yes, indeed!" she enthusiastically exclaimed. "You know the property slopes down to the river beautifully, and exquisite, private, terraced gardens could be built there. We could take the entire lower floor of the apartment building for ourselves, with a private driveway arched right through it; and we could take the first three floors of the rear part for our own use, with wonderful Venetian balconies overlooking the terraces and the river. The remaining apartments would have entrances on the two front corners, leaving us all the effect of a Venetian palace. Don't you think that's clever?"

"It is clever!" he repeated with smiling emphasis, and mentally raising Chase's ultimatum ten per cent.

"I suppose you'll want to charge us more for the property than you paid for it," she suggested with a faint hope that maybe he might not, since he had bought it so recently—and through them.

"That's what I'm in business for," he blandly acknowledged. "I can let you have the property for two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars."

"How much did you say?" she gasped.

"Two hundred and seventy-five thousand."

"Why, it's an outrage!" she puffed. "You paid only two hundred and ten thousand for it yesterday."

"I'm not telling you its cost to me yesterday, but its value to-day," he reminded her.

Mrs. Guff had helped her husband to his business success in the early days—and she had driven bargains with supply men which had made them glad when she was ill.

"You may keep the property," she wheezed. "Nobody will pay that price—not even William Slosher; and he'll buy anything if his wife pouts for it in the ridiculous French clothes she's brought back with her."

"So the Sloshers are back?" he guessed, with an understanding, at last, of her agitation.

"They came last night," she admitted, inflating with a multitude of feelings. "The most ungrateful people in the world! So far from being thankful for the time and pains and money we spent to protect them, they're viciously angry and are making threats—positive threats—that they will disgrace the entire neighborhood!"

"Do you refuse this property at two hundred and seventy-five thousand?" Mr. Gamble interestedly wanted to know.

"Certainly I do!" she emphatically declared, positive that no human being would pay that absurd increase in valuation.

"Then the price is withdrawn," he told her; and she left him, puzzling mightily over that last remark.

Johnny Gamble was a man of steady nerves, yet even he fidgeted until three o'clock for fear Mr. Slosher would not call him up. At that hour, however, Mr. Slosher called in person, accompanied by his wife. There is no need to describe Mr. Slosher, who was merely an elderly gentleman of much vigor and directness; and it is impossible to describe Mrs. Slosher, who was never twice alike, anyhow, being merely the spirit of a beautiful ever changing youth in a body of beautiful ever changing habiliments.

"What do you want for the river-view property you have just purchased?" Mr. Slosher demanded.

"I don't know," confessed Johnny, laughing. "The valuation is going up so rapidly that I can't keep track of it myself. Mrs. Guff was just in, asking the price."

Mrs. Slosher tapped the toe of a beautiful satin carriage slipper impatiently upon the floor, and a very bright red spot glowed on each cheek; but she did not say a word. She only looked at her husband. Mr. Gamble had a queer idea that her mere gaze could, on an occasion like this, burn holes through a cake of ice. Certain it is that Mr. Slosher turned quickly to her—and then, as if he had been galvanized, turned back to Johnny.

"I'll give you until to-morrow night to secure your highest offer and then I'll add five per cent, to it," he stated.

"You understand the restrictions, I suppose?" ventured Johnny.

"Perfectly. My kind neighbors have handed me a ten-story apartment-house, with a minimum rental per suite of three thousand dollars a year. I'm going to build their neighborhood ornament and fill it with high-toned niggers!"

Mrs. Slosher smiled. She was a beautiful young woman. To youth belongs much.

Johnny Gamble, caught amidships, as it were, snorted.

"Well, I don't live out there," he said.

Mr. Slosher smiled.

"That is all, I believe," he announced as he assisted Mrs. Slosher to her feet with that punctilious gallantry which defies a younger man to do it better.

At four o'clock Jim Guff called Mr. Gamble on the telephone.

"Hello, Gamble!" he hailed in an entirely new voice. "You're a robber!"

"You flatter me," returned Johnny quite comfortably. "Is there anything I can do for you in that line?"

"A whole lot," replied Guff. "I'll accept the price you gave Mrs. Guff on that river-view site."

"Too late," answered Johnny cheerfully. "I withdrew that offer before Mrs. Guff left the office. Mr. and Mrs. Slosher have been in since then."

Jim Guff's voice cracked as he hastily said:

"I'll meet any offer he makes you and tack a five-thousand-dollar bonus to it."

Johnny called up the De Luxe Apartments. Company and secured the ear of Mr. Chase.

"I withdraw my offer of two hundred and seventy-five thousand for that river-view property," he stated. "What is the best bid you will make me above that figure?"

"I'm not inclined to scramble for it," immediately claimed Mr. Chase, who was aware at the time that he was telling a point-blank lie.

"Very well, then," said Johnny, wondering how he was to get a definite figure without committing himself. "I'll have to drop you out of my calculations."

"When must you know?"

"To-morrow morning."

"You're bluffing!" charged Mr. Chase scornfully.

"I have two very earnest bidders for the property," insisted Johnny with dignity—and completed his bluff, if Chase cared to regard it that way, by hanging up his receiver.

Before he left the office he entered in his books:

"May 4. Sold; but I don't know who to or at what price. Close to schedule, though."

He entered the next day in advance:

"May 5. The Babies' Fund Fair—Holiday. Nothing doing."



CHAPTER XII

IN WHICH JOHNNY EVEN DOES BUSINESS AT THE BABIES' FUND FAIR

"I wish I could write poetry," regretted Johnny, looking across at Constance Joy in the violet booth.

"Why don't you try it?" asked Polly Parsons, following his gaze and comprehending his desire perfectly, for she, too, was a rabid Constancite.

"I did," he confessed with a disappointed laugh. "I hadn't the nerve to be mushy enough, though—and nothing else seems to be real poetry. I got one line that listened like the goods, but I couldn't match it up: 'As I lie awake and look at the stars—' Pretty good start, eh? How do you find a rhyme for it?"

"You go down through the alphabet," Polly advised him, rather proud to be able to answer him so promptly. "Bars, cars, fars, jars—that way, you know. How I found out is that Sister Winnie writes so much poetry."

"She's a great kid," laughed Johnny. "Where is she?"

"Round here some place, giving orders to Sammy Chirp. Why are you loafing this afternoon? You're supposed to be making five thousand dollars an hour, but I don't see any chance for it here."

"It's a holiday," he retorted. "You're loafing yourself. I see it's on the program that you're to sell a quarter's worth of violets and a smile, for five dollars a throw at the boutonniere booth. Notice how I said boutonniere?"

"You got it out of a book," charged Polly disdainfully. "I called Constance over from the candy booth to take my place because a gray-haired rusher came back seven times to have me pin violets on his coat—and I couldn't smile any more. There he goes now. That's his second trip for Constance."

"This is a cruel world. I suppose it would fuss her all up if I dropped him out of a window," Johnny observed wistfully.

"Constance doesn't need help. Just watch her!" And Polly grinned appreciatively as Constance, recognizing and sorting the tottering lady-killer at a glance, took his money handed him a nosegay and a pin, and returned to the back of the booth to arrange her stock:

A huge blot of orange and a thin streak of lavender paused on the other side of the palms. Johnny wondered to see these two enemies together, but no man could know the satisfaction they took in it.

"The violet booth," read the big blot of orange, adjusting her gold lorgnette to the bridge of her globular nose and consulting her catalogue. "Friday afternoon: Polly Parsons and Mrs. Arthur Follison. That is not Mrs. Follison in the booth, is it?"

"Oh, no, Mrs. Guff!" protested the thin streak of lavender in a rasping little lavender voice. "Mrs. Follison, though not a doll-face—indeed, far from it—is of most aristocratic bearing."

"I suppose that person in the booth, then, is the adopted actress," guessed Mrs. Guff. "Any one can tell that's beauty and movement of the professional type."

Johnny looked at Polly with hasty concern, but that young lady was enjoying the joke on Constance and gripped his arm for silence.

"One can quite understand how poor Billy Parsons might become infatuated with her doll-face," returned Miss Purry pityingly, since she was herself entirely free from the crime of doll-facedness; "but that the Parsons should adopt such a common person merely because Billy died before he could marry her was inconsiderate of the rest of our class."

"The artfulness of her!" exclaimed the thick one, lorgnetting the graceful Constance with a fishy eye as the temporary flower girl joyously greeted Ashley Loring and Val Russel and Bruce Townley, pinned bouquets upon them and exchanged laughing banter with them.

"Dreadful!" agreed the shocked thin one. "Those are the very wiles by which doll-faced stage women insnare our most desirable young men."

Constance looked about just then in search of Polly, and her eyes lighted as they saw Johnny standing with her.

"Oh, Polly!" she called.

"Coming, Constance!" returned the hearty and cheery voice of Polly from just behind the critics.

The ladies in lavender and orange were still gasping when Johnny Gamble passed them with Polly. He had made up his mind about the river-front property.

Loud acclaim hailed Polly and Johnny, for where they went there was zest of life; and the boys, knowing well that Johnny never wore flowers, made instant way for him at the violet booth.

"I'll take some blue ones, lady," announced Johnny gamely, intending to wear them with defiance.

"I'll give you the nearest we have, mister," laughed Constance, and promptly decorated him.

Since this was the closest her face and eyes had ever been to him, he forgot to pay her and had to be reminded of that important duty by Polly and all the boys in unison. There was a faint evasive trace of perfume about her, more like the freshness of morning or the delicacy of starlight than an actual essence, he vaguely thought with a groping return to his poetic inclination. He felt the warmth of her velvet cheek, even at its distance of a foot away, and there seemed to be a pulsing thrill in the very air which intervened. For a startled instant he found himself gazing deep down into her brown eyes. In that instant her red lips curved in a fleeting smile—a smile of the type which needs moist eyes to carry its tenderness. It was all over in a flash, only a fragment of a second, which seemed a blissful pulsing eternity; and at its conclusion he thought that her finger quivered as it brushed his own, where he held out the lapel of his coat, and her cheek paled ever so slightly—but these were dreams, he knew.

"I'm next, I think," grated a usually suave voice which now had a decided tinge of unpleasantness; and Paul Gresham, selecting a bunch of violets from the tray, held them out toward Constance, impatient to end the all too pretty tableau.

"Next and served," Polly briskly told him; and, taking the boutonniere from his fingers, she whisked it into place and pinned it and extracted his money—all apparently in one deft operation.

"Thanks," said Gresham, blinking with the suddenness of it all and sweeping with a glance of gloomy dissatisfaction, Polly, the bouquet, Constance and Johnny. "I thought you were to be in the caramel booth, Constance."

"I'm just going back," she informed him, pausing to straighten Johnny's lapel, patting it in place and stepping back to view the result with a critical eye. It seemed to need another coaxing bend and another pat, both of which she calmly delivered.

A handsome passing couple caught Johnny's eye—a keen and vigorous-looking elderly gentleman, and Springtime come among them in the pink and white of apple blossoms—sweet and fresh and smiling; as guileless as the May itself, but competent!

"Excuse me," said Johnny, and tore himself away from the girl whose natural beauty made Mrs. Slosher an exquisite work of art. "Beg your pardon, Mr. Slosher."

Mr. Slosher turned and smiled.

"Hello, Mr. Gamble!" he greeted him, while Mrs. Slosher gave him a bright and cheery little nod. "I played old-fashioned army poker with Colonel Bouncer and Ben Courtney and Mort Washer and Joe Close last night—and the old robbers skinned me out of thirty-two dollars. They spoke of you during the game and I guess you could get backing to any amount in that crowd."

"Thanks for the tip," returned Johnny. "I may need it."

"You're going to give us our apartment-house property, aren't you?" Mrs. Slosher knew by his very appearance.

"It's only a matter of closing the deal," Johnny told her with a perfectly justifiable smile which Constance, from a distance, criticized severely. He drew an envelope from his pocket and took from it a paper which he passed to Mr. Slosher.

It was a written offer from the De Luxe Apartments Company for three hundred thousand dollars.

"That makes my offer, then—at five per cent, advance—three hundred and fifteen thousand," figured Slosher. "Is that a bargain?"

Johnny, glancing contentedly about the big inclosure, saw Jim Guff waiting impatiently for a chance to speak with him.

"It's a bargain," he agreed, and pretty little Mrs. Slosher nodded her head vehemently with innocent joy.

Gresham passed them by and tipped his hat to Mrs. Slosher, including Mr. Slosher in the greeting. A pleasant idea struck Johnny.

"You scarcely intend to build your colored apartment-house under your own name?" he suggested.

"Indeed, no!" laughed Mrs. Slosher happily. "All we wish is the result. We ask for no credit."

"Moreover," warned Mr. Slosher, "I wouldn't care to have my purpose known until after I have sold my own residence. I am a little worried, however, about the detail you suggest. No man of any consequence would injure the good will of his fellows by standing sponsor for such a venture."

"I think I know your man," stated Gamble with pleasant anticipation. "I'll tell you about him if you'll be careful not to let him or anybody else know that I recommended him."

"I can figure out sufficient reasons for that," replied Slosher. "Is he reliable?"

"He can give you security—and I suppose you had better exact it," advised Johnny. "He is the man who first secured the option from Miss Purry."

"What is his name?"

"Collaton," and Johnny gazed serenely after Gresham.

"I'll send for him in the morning," decided Mr. Slosher.

When Johnny returned to the violet booth he found there Winnie and Sammy Chirp, the latter with all his pockets and both his arms full of Winnie's purchases and personal belongings, inextricably mixed with similar articles belonging to Polly; and there was a new note of usefulness which redeemed somewhat the feebleness of his smile. Loring was helping Sammy to adjust his burdens; and Winnie, with the aid of the mirror in her vanity box, was trying the effect of violets close to her eyes. Johnny waited patiently for Loring to get through and then, despite Polly's protest, dragged him away.

"I've arranged for the first dent in Gresham and Collaton," he announced, and outlined the program which later on was carried out to the letter. "I've fixed to have some valuable property placed in Collaton's name, with Gresham as security. When that is done I want you to go to Jacobs and play a mean trick on him. Make him serve that attachment on Collaton's ostensible property. Collaton, having confessed judgment on the note, can not fight it—and Gresham will have to foot the bill."

Self-contained and undemonstrative as Loring was in public, he, nevertheless, gave way to an uncontrollable burst of laughter which humiliated him beyond measure when he discovered the attention he had attracted.



CHAPTER XIII

IN WHICH JOHNNY BUYS A PRESENT AND HATCHES A SCHEME

Johnny, relying like a lost mariner on Polly Parsons and Constance Joy to help him pick out a present for his only mother, approached Lofty's with a diffidence amounting to awe. In that exclusive shop he would meet miles of furbelowed femininity, but he would not have ventured unprotected into those fluffed and billowed aisles for anything short of a penance.

Being a philosopher, however, he kept his mind active in as many other directions as possible, like a child deliberately feasting upon thoughts of Santa Claus though on the way to a promised spanking.

"There's a hoodoo on this block," Johnny observed as they were caught in the traffic crush almost in front of their destination.

"Lofty and Ersten must be the hoodooers, then," laughed Polly. "Everybody else has gone away."

Johnny looked at the towering big Lofty establishment, which occupied half the block, and at the dingy little ladies' tailoring shop, down around the other corner, with speculative curiosity. About both, as widely different as they were, there was the same indefinable appearance of prosperity, as if the solid worth from within shone heavily through.

"Lofty's couldn't move and Ersten wouldn't," supplemented Constance.

"Not that Dutchman!" returned Polly, laughing again as she peered into the low dark windows of the ladies' tailoring shop. "I was in the other day, and he told me three times that he would be right there to make my walking frocks for the next thirteen years."

"He was having a quarrel with Mr. Schnitt about the light in the workroom when I was in," observed Constance, "but he told me the same thing, in his enjoyable German way, and he seemed almost angry about it."

"That's the extent of his lease," guessed Johnny shrewdly. "They're trying to get it away from him."

"I wonder why," speculated Constance.

"It's as simple as spending money," Johnny announced. "Lofty intends building an extension."

"They won't tear down Ersten's shop," Polly confidently asserted.

"They'll move him in a wheelbarrow some night," Johnny prophesied. "If I could grab his lease I could play a few hours."

Both the girls laughed at him for that speech.

"You'll be gray before the thirty-first of May," warned Polly.

"It turns anybody gray to dig up a million," agreed Johnny. "It's a good guess, though, Polly. I counted seven new white ones this morning."

"That's a strange coincidence," commented Constance, with a secretly anxious glance at his hair. "You're just seven hours behind your schedule."

Johnny shook his head.

"That schedule goes round like an electric fan," he soberly declared.

"And there's no switch," Constance reminded him.

"Gresham," Johnny suggested with a smile.

Polly cast a sidelong glance at the pretty cousin into whose family she had been adopted. The subject of Gresham was a painful one; and Johnny felt his blundering bluntness keenly.

"There isn't any Gresham," laughingly asserted Polly. "There never was any Gresham. Let's go to Coney Island to-night."

Both Constance and Johnny gave Polly a silent but sincere vote of thanks.

Willis Lofty, who continued the progressive fortune of his father by prowling about the vast establishment with a microscopic eye, approached Polly with more than a shopkeeper's alacrity.

"You promised to send for me to be your clerk the next time you came in," he chided her.

"I didn't come in this time," she gaily returned. "Mr. Gamble is the customer," and she introduced Constance and the two gentlemen. "Mr. Gamble wants to buy a silk shawl for a blue-eyed mother with gray wavy hair and baby-pink cheeks."

"There are a lot of pretty shawls here," Constance added, "but none of them seems quite good enough for this kind of a mother."

Young Lofty, himself looking more like a brisk and natty college youth who had come in to buy a gift for his own mother than the successful business man he was, glanced at the embarrassed Johnny with thorough understanding.

"I think I know what you want," he said pleasantly; and, calling a boy, he gave him some brief instructions. "We have some very beautiful samples of French embroidered silks, just in yesterday, and if I can get them away from our buyer you may have your choice. There's a delicate gray, worked in pink, which would be very becoming to a mother of that description. They're quite expensive, but, I believe, are worth the money."

"That's what I want," stated Johnny. "I understand you're going to build an extension, Mr. Lofty."

The girls gasped and then almost tittered.

Young Lofty ceased immediately to be the suave master of friendly favors and became the harassed slave of finance.

"I don't know where you secured your information," he protested.

"I'm a fancy guesser," returned Johnny with a grin.

"I wish you were right," said Lofty soberly. "We have quietly gained possession of nearly all the property in the block, but we're not quite ready to build, nevertheless."

"I can finish the sad story," sympathized Johnny. "One granite-headed ladies' tailor threatens to block the way for thirteen years."

Lofty was surprised by the accuracy of his knowledge. "I'd like to borrow your guesser," he admitted.

Johnny and the girls looked at each other with smiles of infantile glee. They were delighted that they had deduced all this while waiting for a traffic Napoleon to blow his whistle.

"Somebody's been telling," surmised Lofty. "The worst of it is, we own the original lease. Father covered the entire block, in fact."

Johnny's thorough knowledge of New York business conditions enabled him to make another good conjecture.

"Your firm has made money too fast," he remarked. "Your father hoped to build in twenty years, and you need to build in seven."

"He provided much better than that," returned Lofty in quick defense of his father's acumen. "He only allowed ten-year leases; but the one occupied by Ersten came to him with a twenty-year life on it. We've bought off all the other tenants, at startlingly extravagant figures in some cases; but Ersten won't listen."

"Did you rattle your keys?" inquired Johnny, much interested.

"As loudly as possible," returned Lofty, smiling. "I went up three steps at a time until I had offered him a hundred thousand; then I quit. Money wouldn't buy him."

"Then you can't build," innocently remarked Constance.

Willis Lofty immediately displayed his real age in his eyes and his jaws.

"I'll tear down the top part of his building and put a tunnel around him if necessary," he asserted.

"You won't like that any better than Ersten," commented Johnny. "I think I'll have to make another guess for you."

"I like your work," replied Lofty with a smile. "Let's hear it."

"All right. I guess I'll buy Ersten's lease for you."

"You'll have to find another answer, I'm afraid," Lofty hopelessly stated. "I've had a regiment of real estate men helping me devil Ersten to death, but he won't sell."

"Of course he'll sell," declared Johnny confidently. "You can buy anything in New York if you go at it right. Each deal is like a Chinese puzzle. You never do it twice alike."

"Try this one," urged Lofty. "There's a good commission in it."

"Commission? Not for Johnny!" promptly refused that young man; "I'll buy it myself, and hold you up for it."

"If you come at me too strongly I'll build that tunnel," warned Lofty.

"I'll figure it just below tunnel prices," Johnny laughingly assured him. The gray shawl with the pink relief came up just then, and all four of them immediately bought it for Johnny's sole surviving mother.



CHAPTER XIV

IN WHICH JOHNNY TRIES TO MIX BUSINESS WITH SKAT

Louis Ersten, who puffed redly wherever he did not grayly bristle, met Johnny Gamble half-way. Johnny's half consisted in stating that he had come to see Mr. Ersten in reference to his lease. Mr. Ersten's half consisted in flatly declining to discuss that subject on the premises.

"Here—I make ladies' suits," he explained. "If you come about such a business, with good recommendations from my customers, I talk with you. Otherwise not."

"I'll talk any place you say," consented Johnny. "Where do you lunch?"

"At August Schoppenvoll's," replied Mr. Ersten with no hint of an intention to disclose where August Schoppenvoll's place might be. "At lunch-time I talk no business; I eat."

The speculator studied those forbidding bushy brows in silence for a moment. Beneath them, between heavy lids, glowed a pair of very stern gray eyes; but at the outward corner of each eye were two deep, diverging creases, which belied some of the sternness.

"Where do you sleep?" Johnny asked.

"I don't talk business in my sleep," asserted Mr. Ersten stoutly, and then he laughed with considerable heartiness, pleased immensely with his own joke and not noticing that it was more than half Johnny's. After all, Johnny had only implied it; he had said it! Accordingly he relented a trifle. "From four to half-past five, at Schoppenvoll's, I play skat," he added.

"Thank you," said Johnny briskly, and started for the nearest telephone directory. "I'll drop in on you."

"Well," returned Ersten resignedly, "it won't do you any good."

Johnny grinned and went out, having first made a swift but careful estimate of Ersten's room, accommodations and requirements. Outside, he studied the surrounding property, then called on a real estate firm.

At four-ten he went into the dim little basement wine-room of Schoppenvoll. He had timed this to a nicety, hoping to arrive just after the greetings were over and before the game had begun, and he accomplished that purpose; for, with the well-thumbed cards lying between them and three half-emptied steins of beer on the table, Ersten was opposite a pink-faced man with curly gray hair, whose clothes sat upon his slightly portly person with fashion-plate precision. It was this very same suit about which Ersten was talking when Johnny entered.

"Na, Kurzerhosen," he said with a trace of pathos in his guttural voice, "when you die we have no more suits of clothes like that."

"I thank you," returned the flexible soft voice of Kurzerhosen. "It is like the work you make in your ladies' garments, Ersten. When you die we shall have no more good walking clothes for our womenfolks."

"And when Schoppenvoll dies we have no more good wine," declared Ersten with conviction and a wave of his hand as Schoppenvoll approached them with an inordinately long-necked bottle, balancing it carefully on its side.

Johnny had drawn near the table now, but no one saw him, for this moment was one of deep gravity. Schoppenvoll, a tall, straight-backed man with the dignity of a major, a waving gray pompadour, and a clean-cut face that might have belonged to a Beethoven, set down the tray at the very edge of the table and slid it gently into place. An overgrown fat boy, with his sleeves rolled to his shoulders, brought three shining glasses, three bottles of Glanzen Wasser and a corkscrew.

It was at this most inopportune time that Johnny Gamble spoke.

"Well, Mr. Ersten," he cheerfully observed, "I've come round to make you an offer for that lease."

Mr. Ersten, his gnarled eyebrows bent upon the sacred ceremony about to be performed, looked up with a grunt—and immediately returned to his business. Mr. Kurzerhosen glanced round for an instant in frowning appeal. Mr. Schoppenvoll paid no attention whatever to the interruption. He gave an exhibition of cork-pulling which a watchmaker might have envied for its delicacy; he poured the tall glasses half-full of the clear amber fluid and opened the bottles of Glanzen Wasser. The three friends, Schoppenvoll now sitting, clinked their steins solemnly and emptied them. Ersten wiped the foam from his bristling gray mustache.

"About that lease I have nothing to say," he told Johnny, fixing a stern eye upon him. "I will not sell it."

The other gentlemen of the party looked upon the stranger as an unforgivable interloper.

"I'm prepared to make you a very good offer for it," insisted Johnny. "I have a better location for you, not half a block away, and I've taken an option on a long-time lease for it."

The stolid boy removed the steins. The three gentlemen poured the Glanzen Wasser into their wine.

"I will not sell the lease," announced Ersten with such calm finality that Johnny apologized for the intrusion and withdrew. As he went out, Ersten and Kurzerhosen and Schoppenvoll, in blissful forgetfulness of him, raised their glasses for the first delicious sip of the Rheinthranen, of which there were only two hundred and eighty precious bottles left in the world.

Outside, Johnny hailed a passing taxi. He called on Morton Washer, on Ben Courtney, on Colonel Bouncer, and even on Candy-King Slosher; but to no purpose. Finally he descended upon iron-hard Joe Close.

"Do you know anybody who knows Louis Ersten, the ladies' tailor?" he asked almost automatically.

"Ersten?" replied Close unexpectedly. "I've quarreled with him for thirty years. He banks with me."

"Start a quarrel for me," requested Johnny. "I've been down to look him over. I can do business with him if he'll listen."

Close smiled.

"I doubt it," he rejoined. "Ersten has just lost the coat cutter who helped him build up his business, and he's soured on everything in the world but Schoppenvoll's and skat and Rheinthranen."

"Could I learn to play skat in about a day?" inquired Johnny.

"You have no German ancestors, have you?" retorted Close.

"No."

"Then you couldn't learn it in a thousand years!"

"I have to find his weak spot," Johnny persisted. "If you'll just make him talk with me I'll do the rest."

Close shook his head and sighed.

"I'll try," he agreed, "but I feel about as hopeful as I would be of persuading a bull to sleep in a red blanket."

Johnny had caught Close as he was leaving his club for home, and they went round immediately to Schoppenvoll's. At exactly five-thirty Ersten emerged from the wine-room with Kurzerhosen.

"Hello, Louis!" hailed the waiting Close. "Jump into the taxi here, and I'll take you down to your train."

Ersten and Kurzerhosen looked at each other.

"Always we walk," declared Ersten.

"There's room for both of you," laughed Close, shaking hands with Kurzerhosen.

Ersten sighed.

"Always we walk," he grumbled, but he climbed in.

When they were started for the terminal Ersten leaned forward, with his bushy brows lowering, and glared Close sternly in the eye.

"I will not sell the lease!" he avowed before a word had been spoken.

"We know that," admitted Close; "but why?"

Ersten hesitated a moment.

"Oh, well; I tell you," he consented with an almost malignant glance in the direction of Johnny. "All my customers know me in that place."

"Your customers would find you anywhere," Close complimented him.

"Maybe they do," admitted Ersten. "My cousin, Otto Gruber, had a fine saloon business. He moved across the street—and broke up."

"It was not the same," Close assured him. "In saloons, men want to feel at home. In your business, your customers come because they get the best—and they care nothing for the shop itself."

"They like the place," asserted Ersten. "I've made a good living there for almost forty years. Why should I move?"

"Because you would be nearer Fifth Avenue," Johnny ventured to interject, and spoke to the chauffeur, who drew up to the curb. "This is the place I have in mind, Mr. Ersten."

"They come to me where I am," insisted Ersten, refusing to look, with unglazed eyes.

"You have no such show-windows," persisted Johnny.

"My customers know my goods inside."

"There's a big light gallery—twice the size of your present workrooms."

Ersten's cheeks suddenly puffed and his forehead purpled, while every hair on his head and face stuck straight out.

"My workroom is good enough!" he exploded. "I told it to Schnitt!"

"Is Schnitt your coat cutter?" asked Johnny, remembering what Constance and Close had said.

Ersten glowered at him.

"He was. Thirty-seven years he worked with me; then he tried to run my business. He is gone. Let him go!"

"He objected to the light in the workroom, didn't he?" went on the cross-examiner, carefully piecing the situation together bit by bit.

"He could see for thirty-seven years, till everybody talks about moving; then he goes crazy," blurted Ersten.

"Won't you look at this place?" he was urged. "Let me show it to you to-morrow."

"I stay where I am," sullenly declared Ersten, still angry. "We miss my train."

Close told the driver to go on. Before Ersten alighted at the terminal, Johnny made one more attempt upon him.

"If a majority of your best customers insisted that they liked the new shop better would you look at the other place?" he asked.

"My customers don't run my business either!" he puffed.

"Good-by," stated Mr. Kurzerhosen, who had been looking steadily at the opposite side of the street throughout the journey. "I thank you."

Close stared at Johnny in silence for a moment after their guests had gone.

"I told you so," he said. "You'll have to give him up as a bad job."

"He's beginning to look like a good job," asserted Johnny. "He can be handled like wax, but you have to melt him. Schnitt's the real reason. Do you know Schnitt?"

"I am happy to say I do not," laughed Close. "One like Ersten is enough."

"Somebody must lead me to him," declared Johnny. "I'm going to see Schnitt in the morning. I'd call to-night if I didn't have to be the big works at a Coney Island dinner party."

"I don't see how Schnitt can help you," puzzled Close.

"He's the tack in the tire. I can see what happened as well as if I had been there. Ersten knew he ought to move. Lofty tried to buy him and Schnitt tried to force him. Then he got his Dutch up. Schnitt left on account of it. Now Ersten won't do anything."

"You can't budge him an inch," prophesied the banker. "I know him."

"I'll coax him," stated Johnny determinedly. "There's a profit in him, and I have to have it!"



CHAPTER XV

IN WHICH WINNIE CHAPERONS THE ENTIRE PARTY TO CONEY ISLAND

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.