Five Thousand an Hour

by George Randolph Chester

  "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 cunniest 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 sn
ub 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."