"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.
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br /> "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?"
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