Author: George Randolph Chester
Category: Humorous
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CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH CONSTANCE DECIDES ON A FAIR GAME
By three o'clock Johnny Gamble had acquired so much hotel information that his head seemed stuffed. Every bright-eyed financier in the city had nursed the happy thought of a terminal hotel and had made tentative plans—and had jerked back with quivering tentacles; for all the property in that neighborhood was about a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The present increase of value and that of the next half-century had been gleefully anticipated, and the fortunate possessor of a ninety-nine-year lease on a peanut stand felt that he was providing handsomely for his grandchildren.
Mr. Gamble detailed these depressing facts to his friend Loring with much vigor and picturesqueness.
"The trouble with New York is that everybody wants to collect the profits that are going to be made," Loring sagely concluded.
"It's the only way they can get even," Johnny informed him. "Well, that's the regular handicap. Guess I'll have to take it."
"You don't mean to try to promote a hotel against such inflated values!" protested Loring.
"Why not?" returned Johnny. "That section has to have a hotel. The sporty merchants of the Middle West will pay the freight."
"I guess so," agreed Loring thoughtfully. "Well, good luck to you, Johnny! By the way, President Close of the Fourth National, has called you up twice this afternoon. I suppose he's gone, by now."
"No, I think he stays to sweep out for the gold-dust," surmised Johnny, and telephoned to the bank. Mr. Close, however, had gone home an hour before.
"He's sensible," approved Loring, putting away his papers. "This weather would tempt a mole outdoors. I'm going to the ball game. Better come along."
"Too frivolous for me," declared Johnny, eying his little book regretfully. "There's a thirty-five-thousand-dollar day almost gone. All I can credit myself with is a flivver. I'm going to stay right here on the job and figure hotel."
At three-thirty Loring returned.
"So you're not going to the game, Johnny?" he observed with a sly smile.
"At five thousand an hour! Nev-ver!"
"Too bad," regretted Loring still smiling. "I just saw Constance and Polly. They're going out."
Johnny promptly slammed several sheets of figures into a drawer.
"Is there room for me in your car?" he asked anxiously.
"Val Russel and Bruce Townley are with me. There's plenty of room— but you really ought to stay here and figure on your hotel," Loring advised him.
"I can figure any place," stated Johnny briskly, and put away his little book. "Are we ready?"
The eyes of Constance Joy lighted with pleasure as she saw the group which filed into the box adjoining the one in which she sat with Polly Parsons, Paul Gresham, Colonel Bouncer, and Sammy Chirp; and Gresham watched her discontentedly as she shook hands with Gamble. He did not like the cordiality of that hand-shake, nor yet the animation of her countenance. Neither did he like her first observation, which consisted not of any remarks about health or the weather, but about Johnny's intimate personal affairs.
"How is the million dollars coming on?" she had interestedly inquired, and then sat down in Gresham's own chair, next to the dividing rail. "You know, I promised to keep score for you."
"You may mark me a goose-egg for today," replied Johnny, sitting comfortably beside her with only the thin board partition between them.
Gresham, his dark eyebrows meeting in a sinister line across his forehead, smiled with grim satisfaction.
"People with money seem to be watching it on Mondays," he observed.
"They have to sleep some time," Polly quickly reminded him. "Your day for a nap was Saturday."
"I'm guilty," admitted Gresham with a frowning glance at Johnny. "My trance—day before yesterday—cost me fifteen thousand. I shan't forget it soon."
"I'll bet you never will!" Polly agreed.
"Johnny was awake that day," declared Colonel Bouncer, laughing heartily and reaching over to slap Gamble affectionately on the shoulder. "He's fifteen thousand better off; and I guess he won't forget that in a hurry."
"I've forgotten it now," asserted Johnny. "Colonel, I want to talk with you about some stock in a big hotel opposite the new terminal station."
"Bless my soul—NO!" almost shouted the colonel. "I nearly got tangled up in my friend Courtney's terminal hotel scheme—and I'm scared yet."
"Courtney?" repeated Johnny. "That's the name they gave me at Mallard Tyne's office this afternoon. They told me that he has tied up the only available block the railroad company overlooked."
"Tied it up!" exploded the colonel. "Bless my soul, it has him tied up! Courtney's company blew so high that none of the pieces has come down yet. Meantime his enthusiasm is likely to cost him a round two and a quarter million dollars."
He must have had a high fever," commented Johnny. "How could a man be so forgetful of that much money?"
"He thought his friends were game," explained the colonel; "and, in spite of his long and sucessful business experience, he over-looked the difference between a promise and a promissory note. He nailed his stock subscribers down with hasty conversation only, and then rushed off and grabbed the six collected parcels of that block, for fear it might get away before he had his company legally organized."
"And now he can't unspike it," guessed Johnny smilingly. "Watch out, Colonel!"
There was a lively scramble in the two boxes as the first foul tip of the season whizzed directly at them. Gamble, who had captained his village nine, had that ball out of the air and was bowing jovially to the applause before Gresham had quite succeeded in squeezing himself down behind the door of the box.
Naturally it was Polly who led the applause; and Constance shocked the precise Gresham by joining in heartily.
She was looking up at Johnny with sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks when Gresham came out of his cyclone cellar—and, if he had disliked Gamble before, now he hated him.
It is a strange feature of the American national game that the more perfectly it is played the duller it is. This was a pitchers' battle; and the game droned along, through inning after inning, with seldom more than three men to bat in each half, while the score board presented a most appropriate double procession of naughts. Spectators, warmly praising that smoothly oiled mechanical process of one, two, three and out, and telling each other that this was a great game, nevertheless yawned and dropped their score cards, and put away their pencils, and looked about the grandstand in search of faces they knew.
In such a moment Colonel Bouncer, who had come into this box because of a huge admiration for Polly and an almost extravagant respect for Constance, and who had heartily wished himself out of it during the last two or three innings, now happily discovered a familiar face only a few rows back of him. "By George, Johnny, there's Courtney now!" he announced.
Gamble looked with keen interest.
"Do you mean that gentleman with the ruddy face and the white beard?" he inquired.
"That's the old pirate," asserted the colonel.
"Why, that's the man you wanted to introduce me to at the race-track in Baltimore Saturday."
"Bless my heart, so I did!" he remembered. "I thought it might relieve him to tell his troubles to you. It isn't too late yet. Come on up and I'll introduce you—that is, unless you want to watch this game."
"I'm pleased to pass up this game till somebody makes an error," Johnny willingly decided. "If they'll hand out a base on balls and a safe bunt and hit a batter, so as to get three men on bases with two out, and then muft a high fly out against the fence, and boot the ball all over the field while four of the Reds gallop home—I'll stay and help lynch the umpire; otherwise not. Show me to your friend Courtney." He turned to take courteous leave of the others and his eyes met the friendly glance of Constance.
"Let's catch Mr. Courtney at the end of the game," he suggested to the colonel; and then, turning directly to Constance, he added with a laugh: "I think I'll play hooky. I don't want to break up th
e party."
"If you think you see an opportunity for that million, the official scorer insists upon saying good-by," she laughed in return, and held out her hand.
Johnny shook the hand with both pleasure and reluctance, and obediently left.
"I'm offering my pet vanity parasol against a sliver of chewing-gum on Johnny," Polly confided to Loring. "I could see it in his eye that Mr. Courtney will be invited to help him make that million."
"Somebody ought to warn Courtney," Gresham commented sarcastically.
"Why warn him?" demanded Loring. "I'll guarantee that any proposition Johnny makes him will be legitimate."
"No doubt," agreed Gresham. "A great many sharp practices are considered legitimate nowadays."
"I object, also, to the term 'sharp practices'," responded Loring warmly. "I don't believe there's a man in New York with a straighter and cleaner record than Gamble's. Every man with whom he has ever done business, except possibly yourself, speaks highly of him and would trust him to any extent; and he does not owe a dollar in the world."
"Doesn't he?" snarled Gresham. "There's an unsatisfied attachment for fifteen thousand dollars resting against him at the Fourth National Bank at this very moment."
Loring's indignation gave way immediately to grave concern.
"So that's why Close was trying to get him on the 'phone all afternoon!" he mused.
"Mr. Gresham," called Polly sharply, "how do you come to know about this so quickly?"
Gresham cursed himself and the blind hatred which had led him into making this slip; and he was the more uncomfortable because not only Loring and Polly but Constance had turned upon him gravely questioning eyes.
"Such things travel very rapidly in commercial circles," he lamely explained.
"I had no idea that you were a commercial circle," retorted Polly. "I wonder who's crooked." Gresham laughed shortly. "It isn't Johnny!" she indignantly asserted. "I know how Johnny's fifteen thousand was saved from this attachment, but I wouldn't tell where it is—even here."
Polly and Loring looked at each other understandingly.
"I suppose that was an old Gamble-Collaton account," Loring surmised with another speculative glance at Gresham. "I am quite certain that Johnny knows nothing whatever of this claim—let alone the attachment. The operations of his big irrigation failure were so extensive that, with the books lost, he can never tell when an additional claim may be filed against him. If suit is made in an obscure court, and Collaton, who hasn't a visible dollar, answers summons and confesses judgment for the firm, Johnny has no recourse."
"Except to repudiate payment," suggested Gresham with a shrug of his shoulders.
"I wish he would," returned Loring impatiently. "I wish he would let me handle his affairs in my own way."
"He won't," Polly despaired.
"Tell me, Mr. Loring," interposed Constance, who had been silently thoughtful all this while; "would this unpaid attachment at Mr. Gamble's bank interfere with his present success if Mr. Courtney—or any one else whom Mr. Gamble might try to interest—were to hear of it?"
"It might—and very seriously," returned Loring.
The long somnolent game was suddenly awakened by two blissful errors, which gave the audience something to jeer at. A tally slipped home for Boston. A sharp double play redeemed the errors and closed the inning. The first man up for the Yankees drove a clean two-bagger down the right foul line; the second man laid down his life nobly with a beautiful bunt; the Boston pitcher gave a correct imitation of Orville Wright and presented free rides to the next two Highlanders; big Sweeney stalked to bat—and the congregation prayed, standing. Under cover of all this quivering excitement, and with Gresham more absorbed than ever upon the foul which might yet slay him, Constance turned to Polly with an intent decisiveness which was quite new to her.
"Arrange it so that I may go home in Mr. Loring's car," she directed.
"Three cheers!" approved Polly, with a spiteful glance at Gresham.
Mr. Courtney, a live-looking elderly gentleman who kept himself more carefully groomed than many a young man, had shaken hands with Mr. Gamble quite cordially, had studied him through and through and through in about half a second of time, and had finished the hand- shake more cordially than he had begun it.
"The colonel has been saying all sorts of kind things about you,"— he very graciously stated.
"So he has about you," returned Johnny, smiling into Mr. Courtney's eyes and liking him.
"I suppose so," admitted Mr. Courtney. "The colonel's always blowing about his friends, so we mustn't trust each other too far."
"That's a good way to start anyhow," laughed Johnny. "The colonel's been telling me you're so trusting that you stung yourself."
"How's that?" asked Mr. Courtney, looking at the colonel in perplexity. "I don't quite understand."
"On that hotel deal," the colonel affably reminded him, and was unkind enough to laugh.
"You old reprobate!" protested Courtney. "I don't see why you want to publish my disgrace."
"You deserve it," chuckled the colonel. "It won't hurt for Johnny to know it though. He's the shrewdest young man of my acquaintance, and he might be able to figure a way out of your dilemma for you."
"I might even be able to make some money out of it myself," Johnny frankly acknowledged.
"Jump right in and welcome, young man," invited Courtney. "If you can pull me out whole I don't care how much you make."
"We'll consider that a bargain," offered Gamble.
"All right," returned Courtney, smiling. "We'll shake hands on it in the good old-fashioned way." And they did so, under Colonel Bouncer's earnestly interested approval.
"Tell him your troubles," urged the colonel. "If it were my case, Ben, I'd be yelling for help as long as I had breath in my body."
"It's very simple," explained Courtney. "I imagined that a big hotel at the new terminal station would be the best investment in New York. I spoke to a number of my financially active friends about it and they were enthusiastic. I had verbal promises in one day's work of all the money necessary to finance the thing. I found that the big vacant plot across from the station was held at a prohibitive price. Mallard Tyne had, with a great deal of labor, collected the selling option on the adjoining block, fronting the terminal. They held it at two and a quarter millions. My friends, at an infernal luncheon, authorized me, quite orally, indeed, to secure the cheaper site without a moment's delay, especially since it was rumored that Morton Washer was contemplating the erection of a hotel upon that very spot."
"I see the finish," laughed Johnny. "Mad with fear, you dashed right down there and broke yourself! Then Union Pacific fell off an eighth; they killed an insurrecto in Mexico; the third secretary of a second-rate life-insurance company died and Wall Street put crape on the door. All your friends got cold feet and it was the other fellow who had urged you to buy that property. The colonel says you dropped a hundred and twenty-five thousand. That's a stiff option. Can't you get any of it back?"
"Get it back!" groaned Courtney. "They're after the balance. It wasn't an option—it was a contract. If I don't pay the remainder at the end of the ninety days they'll sue me; and I have several million dollars' worth of property that I can't hide."
Gamble shrugged his shoulders resignedly.
"Your only chance is to build or sell," he decided. "It's your property, all right. Have you offered it?"
"Old Mort Washer wants it—confound him! I've discovered that the day after I bought this ground he told my friends that he intended to buy the big piece and build in competition; and they ran like your horse—Angora—last Saturday, Gamble. Now Washer offers to buy this ground for two and an eighth millions—just the amount for which I will be sued."
"Leaving you to try to forget the hundred and twenty-five thousand you've already spent," figured Gamble. "Nice cheery thought of Washer's! Of course you applauded?"
"With a brick—if I'd had one!" declared Courtney still angry.
>
Johnny smiled and looked thoughtfully out over the sunlit greensward. There were electrifying plays down there; but, "fan" though he was, he did not see them. Something in the tingle of it, however, seemed to quicken his faculties.
"Sell me that block, Mr. Courtney," he suggested with a sudden inspiration.
The mad mob rose to its feet just then and pleaded with Sweeney to "Hit 'er out!" Shrieks, howls and bellows resounded upon every hand; purple-faced fans held their clenched fists tight to their breasts so that they could implore the louder.
"On what terms?" shouted Courtney into Johnny's ear.
"I'll take over your contract," yelled Johnny beneath Courtney's hat brim.
"On what terms?" repeated Courtney at the top of his voice.
"Bless your heart, Sweeney, slam it!" shrieked the now crimson- visaged colonel. He was standing on his chair, with distended eyes, and waving his hat violently.
"Your original price!" loudly called Johnny. "Pay you fifteen thousand now, fifty thousand in thirty days and the balance in sixty."
Sweeney fanned. The atrocious tumult was drowned, in the twinkling of an eyelash, in a dismal depthless gulf of painful silence. One could have heard a mosquito wink.
"Where's my security?" bellowed Courtney in Johnny's ear, so vociferously that all the grandstand turned in that direction and three park policemen headed for the riot.
"Just come outside and I'll tell you," whispered Johnny with a grin.
"Ashley, how do you like your car?" asked Polly in the groaning calm which followed Sweeney's infamous strike-out.
"I'm just designing a private medal for the builder," replied Loring.
"Self-cranker, isn't it?"
"Self-cranker, automatic oiler, and supplies its own gasolene. Why?"
"Well, Constance is talking of buying one, and mine is a little too muscular for her. Suppose you take her for a spin after the game and deliver her safely to her Aunt Pattie. I'll take the boys back in my car."