Five Thousand an Hour

by George Randolph Chester

  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.

  There was a trace of resentment in his embarrassment, he found. The strain of being compelled to make a million dollars, before he could tell this only desirable young woman in the world that he loved her, was beginning to oppress him. He wanted to tell her now; but it was a task beyond him to ask her to forfeit her own fortune until he could replace it by another. Times were hard, he reflected.

  He was now twelve hours behind his schedule and possessed of sixty thousand dollars less than he should have. At nine o'clock to-morrow morning that deficit would begin to pile up again at the rate of five thousand dollars an hour. By comparison their auto seemed slow, and he spoke to the driver about it. How well Constance Joy was in sympathy with him and followed his thought, was shown by the fact that she heartily agreed with him, though they were already exceeding the Brooklyn speed limit.

  "I not only want to be the chaperon but the dictator of this tour," declared Winnie when they alighted at the big playground. "I've never been here before, and I don't want anybody to tell me anything I'm going to see."

  "It's your party," announced Johnny promptly. "Let's be plumb vulgar about it." And he thrust a big roll of bills into her hands.

  "You're a darling!" she exclaimed, her eyes glistening with delight. "May I kiss him, girls?"

  "Ask Johnny," laughed Polly, but Johnny had disappeared behind the others of the party.

  It took Winnie five minutes to chase him down, and she caught him, with the assistance of Constance, in the thickest crowd and in the best-lighted space on Surf Avenue, where Constance held him while he received his reward.

  "It's a new game," Johnny confessed, though blushing furiously. "I'll be 'it' any time you say."

  "Once is enough," asserted Winnie, entirely unruffled. "Your face is scratchy. Come on, you folks; I'm going to buy you a dinner." And, leading the way into the first likely-looking place, she ordered a comprehensive meal which started with pickles and finished with pie.

  Her party was a huge success, for it laughed its way from one end of Coney to the other. It rode on wooden horses; on wobbling camels; in whirling tubs; on iron-billowed oceans; down trestled mountains; through painted caves—on everything which had rollers, or runners, or supporting arms. It withstood shocks and bumps and dislocations and dizziness—and it ran squarely into Heinrich Schnitt!

  Three tables, placed end to end at the rail of a Shoot-the-Chutes lake, were required to accommodate Heinrich Schnitt's party. First, there was Heinrich himself, white as wax and stoop-shouldered and extremely clean. At the other end of the table sat Mama Schnitt, who bulged, and always had butter on her thumb. To the right of Heinrich sat Grossmutter Schnitt, in a black sateen dress, with her back bowed like a new moon and her little old face withered like a dried white rose.

  Next sat young Heinrich Schnitt and his wife, Milly, who was very fashionable and wore a lace shirt-waist—though she was not so fashionable that she
was ashamed of any of the rest of the party.

  Between young Heinrich and Milly sat their little Henry and little Rosa and little Milly and the baby, all stiffly starched and round- faced and red-cheeked. Besides these were Carrie, whose husband was dead; and Carrie's Louis; and Willie Schnitt with Flora Kraus, whom he was to marry two years from last Easter; and Lulu, who was pretty, and went with American boys in the face of broken-hearted opposition.

  In front of each member of the party—except the baby—was a glass of beer and a "hot dog", and down the center of the long table were three pasteboard shoe boxes, full of fine lunch, flanking Flora Kraus' fancy basket of potato salad and fried chicken, as well prepared as any those Schnitts could put up.

  It was Constance who, walking quietly with Johnny, discovered Heinrich Schnitt in the midst of his throng and casually remarked it.

  "There's the nice old German who cuts my coats," she observed.

  "Schnitt!" exclaimed Johnny, so loudly that she was afraid Schnitt might hear him. "Let me hear you talk to him."

  She looked at him in perplexity for a moment.

  "Oh, yes; the lease," she remembered. "I'll introduce you and you can ask him about it."

  "Don't mention it!" hastily objected Johnny. "You may introduce me, but you do the talking."

  "All right, boss," she laughingly agreed, and turned straight over to the head of the Schnitts' table, where she introduced her companion in due form.

  "I want my walking suit," she demanded.

  Heinrich's face had lighted with pleasure at the sight of Constance, but there was a trace of sadness in his voice.

  "You must tell Louis Ersten," he politely advised her.

  "I did," protested Constance. "He's holding it back on account of the coat, and that's your affair."

  "It is Louis Ersten's," insisted Heinrich with dignity. "I have retired from business."

  "You don't mean to say you've left Ersten?" returned Constance in surprise.

  "I have retired from business," reiterated Heinrich.

  "Ersten wouldn't give papa enough room," broke in Mama Schnitt indignantly, "so he quits, and he don't go back till he does."

  "So I don't ever go back," concluded Heinrich.

  "Well, we got enough that papa don't have to work any more," asserted Mama Schnitt with proper pride and a glance at Flora Kraus; "but he gets lonesome. That's why we make him come down to Coney to- day and enjoy himself. He was with Louis Ersten thirty-seven years."

  A wave of homesickness swept over Heinrich.

  "I take it easy in my old days," he stoutly maintained, but with such inward distress that, without a protest, he allowed the waiter to remove his half-emptied glass of beer.

  "I'm glad you can take it easy," declared Constance, "but Ersten's customers will miss you very much—and I am sure Ersten will, too."

  "We worked together thirty-seven years," said Schnitt wistfully.

  "I'm sure it's only obstinacy," commented Constance when she and Johnny had rejoined their party. "Why, Mr. Schnitt and Mr. Ersten have grown up together in the business, and they seemed more like brothers than anything else. I'd give anything to bring them together again!"

  "I'll ask you for it some time," asserted Johnny confidently.

  He caught a flash of challenge in her eyes and realized that he was moving faster than his schedule would permit,

  "I'm going to bring them together, you know," he assured her in confusion.

  "I do hope so," she demurely replied.

  "We're wasting an awful lot of time!" called Winnie. "The Canals of Venice! We haven't been in this." And she promptly bought six tickets.

  In the bustle of taking boats an officious guard succeeded, for the thousandth time that day, in the joyful duty of separating a party; and Constance and Johnny were left behind to enjoy the next boat all to themselves.

  It was dim and cool in there—all narrow gravity canals, and quaint canvas buildings, and queer arches, and mellow lights, with little dark curves and long winding reaches, and a restfulness almost like solemnity.

  It was the first time Johnny had been in such close companionship with Constance as this strange isolation gave them, and he did not know what to say. After all, what was the use of saying? They were there, side by side, upon the gently flowing water, far, far away from all the world; and it would seem almost rude to break that bliss with language, which so often fails to interpret thought.

  Constance's hand was drooping idly across her knee and, by an uncontrollable impulse, Johnny's hand, all by itself, slid over and gently clasped the whiter and slenderer one. It did not draw away; and, huddled up on their low narrow seat, bumping against the wooden banks and floating on and on, they cared not whither, they stared into oblivion in that semi-trancelike condition that sometimes accompanies the peculiar state in which they found themselves.

  "Oh-ho-o-o-o!" rang the clear voice of Winnie from a parallel canal just behind them.

  Constance, flushing violently, attempted to jerk her hand away; but Johnny, animated by a sudden aggressiveness, clasped it tightly and held it—captive—up to view.

  At that interesting moment another sharp turn in the canal brought them face to face with an approaching boat in which were Paul Gresham and Jim Collaton!

  "I said it was a girl," charged Collaton, studying the green pallor of Gresham's face with wondering interest as they stepped out into the glare of the million electric bulbs.

  "That is not a topic for you to discuss," returned Gresham, looking up the brilliantly lighted board walk around the bend of which Johnny Gamble, with Constance on one arm and Winnie on the other, was gaily following Polly, that young lady being escorted by the attentive Loring and the submissive Sammy.

  "That's what you said before," retorted Collaton, his eyebrows and lashes even more invisible in this illumination than in broad day- light. "It's time, though, for a showdown. You drag me into dark corners and talk over schemes to throw the hooks into Johnny Gamble- -and I tell you I'm afraid of him!"

  "You're mistaken," asserted Gresham dryly. "It was I who told you that you were afraid of him."

  "I admitted it all right," sulkily answered Collaton. "He's awake now, I tell you; and he's not a safe man to fool with. He turned our last trick against us, and that's enough hint for me."

  "Your trick, you mean," corrected Gresham.

  "Our trick, I said!" insisted Collaton, suddenly angry. "Look here, Gresham, I won't stand any monkey business from you! If there's ever any trouble comes out of this you'll get your share of it, and don't you forget it! You've had me lay attachments against the Gamble- Collaton Irrigation Company on forged notes. Since I had nothing, Johnny paid them, because he was square. The last attachment, though—for fifty thousand—he held off until I got that Slosher Apartment scheme in my own name, and turned it against me; and you had to pay it, because you had stood good for me."

  "What difference does that make to you?" demanded Gresham. "It was my own money and I got it back."

  "It makes just this much difference," explained Collaton: "Gamble and Loring are busy tracing all these transactions; and when they find out anything it will be fastened on me, for you never figure in the deals. You even try to avoid acknowledging to me that you have anything to do with them."

  "You get all the money," Gresham reminded him.

  "That's why I know you're framing it up to let me wear the iron bracelets if anything comes off. Now you play square with me or I'll hand you a jolt that you won't forget! There's a girl responsible for your crazy desire to put my old partner on the toboggan—and that was the girl. You see I happen to know all about it."

  Gresham considered the matter in silence for some time, and Collaton let him think without interruption. They sat down now at one of the little tables and Collaton curtly ordered some drinks.

  "It's al very simple matter," Gresham finally stated. "My father was to have married Miss Joy's aunt but did not. When the aunt came to die she left Miss Joy a million do
llars, but coupled with it the provision that she must marry me. That's all."

  "It's enough," laughed Collaton. "I understand now why Johnny Gamble wants to make a million dollars. As soon as he gets it he'll propose to Miss Joy, she'll accept him and let the million slide. Who gets it?"

  "Charity."

  "Why, Gresham, I'm ashamed of you!" Collaton mocked. "The descendant of a noble English house is making as sordid an affair of this as if he were a cheese dealer! I have the gift of second sight and I can tell you just what's going to happen. Johnny Gamble will make his million dollars—and I'm for him. He'll marry Miss Joy—and I'm for her. That other million will go to charity—and I'm for it. I hope they all win!"

  "You're foolish," returned Gresham, holding his temper through the superiority which had always nettled Collaton. "You like money and I'm showing you a way to get it from Johnny Gamble."

  The waiter brought the drinks. Collaton paid for them, tossed off his own and rose.

  "I've had all of that money I want," he declared. "Whatever schemes you have in the future you will have to work yourself, and whatever trouble comes of it you may also enjoy alone—because I'll throw you."

  "You would find difficulty in doing that," Gresham observed with a smile. "I fancy that, if I were to send the missing books of the defunct Gamble-Collaton Irrigation Company to Mr. Gamble, you would be too busy explaining things on your account to bother with my affairs to any extent."

  "I was in jail once," Collaton told him with. quiet intensity. "If I ever go again the man who puts me there will have to go along, so that I will know where to find him when I get out. Good-by."

  "Wait a minute," said Gresham. "Your digestion is bad or else you made a recent winning in your favorite bucket-shop. Now listen to me: Whatever Johnny Gamble's doing at the present time is of no consequence. Let him go through with the deal he has on and think he has scared you off. I'll only ask you to make one more attempt against him. That's all that will be necessary, for it will break him and at the same time destroy Miss Joy's confidence in him. He has over a third of a million dollars. We can get it all."