IN WHICH JOHNNY DISPLAYS TALENT AS A TRUE PROMOTER
"I don't know much about bookkeeping, but I guess this will do,"
observed Johnny, passing over his first attempt for inspection.
Loring examined the little book with keen enjoyment. Johnny had opened
an account with himself and had made five entries. On the debit side
appeared the following items:
April 22. To three working hours, $15,000
April 23. Sunday.
April 24. To desk rent, ...$38
April 24. To seven working hours, $35,000
On the credit side was this:
April 22. By skinning Paul Gresham--good work, ..... $15,000
"How is it?" asked Gamble anxiously.
"Good work!" pronounced Loring with a chuckle. "They may not teach this
sort of bookkeeping in commercial colleges. Their kind is stiff and
dry. This has personality. Why am I two dollars shy on desk rent,
though? I thought you were to take forty days to make your million
dollars?"
"That's right," admitted Johnny; "seven hours on week-days and three on
Saturdays--two hundred hours at five thousand an hour. I started on
Saturday, however. To-day is Monday. This morning is when I begin to
use your desk-room. Here's your dollar a day until four P.M., May
thirty-first." And he handed Loring thirty-eight dollars.
"You're not really going to try that absurd stunt?" protested Loring
incredulously.
"I have to. Miss Joy will think I'm a four-flusher if I don't."
"Miss Joy again!" laughed Loring. "You only met her Saturday, and I
don't think you've thought of another thing since."
"Gresham and her million," corrected Johnny, and he started for the
door.
"Where are you going--if anybody should ask for you?" inquired Loring.
"Fourth National."
"To deposit Gresham's fifteen thousand?"
"No," laughed Gamble. "Polly took that away from me."
"That's a good safe place for it," returned Loring, relieved.
"Safe as the mint," corroborated Johnny, and hurried out.
As he went up the steps of the Fourth National Bank a pallid-faced
young man, with eyebrows, eyelashes and hair so nearly the color of his
skin that they were invisible, watched him out of the window of a taxi
that had been standing across the street ever since the bank had
opened. As soon as Johnny entered the door the young man gave a
direction to the driver, and the taxi hurried away.
President Close was conservatively glad to see Johnny. He was a
crisp-faced man, with an extremely tight-cropped gray mustache; and not
a single crease in his countenance was flexible in the slightest
degree. He had an admiration amounting almost to affection for
Johnny--provided the promising young man did not want money.
"Good morning," he greeted his caller. "What can we do for you to-day?"
And in great haste he mentally reviewed the contents of credit envelope
G-237. That envelope, being devoted to Mr. Gamble, contained a very
clear record; so Mr. Close came as near to smiling as those cast-iron
creases would allow.
"Want to give the Fourth National as a reference," returned Johnny
cheerfully.
"I see," assented Mr. Close, immediately ceasing to smile; for now
approached the daily agony of life--the grudging of credit. "I see; I
see. Do you propose engaging in a new venture?"
"Just as often as I can find one," stated Johnny briskly.
Mr. Close looked at him with stern disapproval.
"That does not sound like a very stable frame of mind," he chided.
"What do you propose to do first?"
"A twenty-story hotel."
"That runs into millions!" gasped Close, and reached out to touch a
button upon his desk; but Johnny Gamble stayed that hand.
"You're after my balance," he said. "It's twelve dollars and
thirty-seven cents."
"Well, you see, Mr. Gamble, under the circumstances--" hesitated Mr.
Close.
"I know," interrupted the applicant; "you can only say I'm good for
twelve-thirty-seven. I don't ask you to back me. If anybody 'phones
you, just say I'm a good boy."
Mr. Close almost smiled again.
"So far as the moral risk is concerned I shall have no hesitation in
speaking most highly of you," he granted.
"And don't laugh when you say it," Johnny admonished, smiling
cheerfully, for he knew that Close always did better than he promised.
"Tell them this, can't you?--I've banked with you for five years. I've
run about a ton of money through your shop. I've been broke a dozen
times and I never left a debt behind me. I've been trusted and I always
made good. I guess you could say all that if you stopped to take a
couple of breaths, couldn't you?"
"I shall certainly say those things if I am asked about them," replied
Mr. Close, considering them carefully, one by one. "Don't hesitate to
refer to me. I'll do the best I conscientiously can for you."
Johnny stood waiting for the stream of the traffic to stop for the
cross-current, so that he could go over to the subway, when a big blue
touring car stopped just in front of him, and the driver, a hearty
young woman all in blue, including plumes and shoes, hailed him
joyously.
"Jump in, Johnny!" she invited. "I found a four-leaf clover this
morning--and here I'm lucky already. Sammy, run into the drug store for
some chocolates. Johnny, sit up here with me."
Sammy Chirp, who tied his own cravats and did them nicely, smiled
feebly in recognition of Johnny Gamble, lugged Miss Polly Parson's
bouquet, parasol, fan, hand-bag and coat back into the tonneau and went
upon his errand.
"Thanks, Sammy," said Johnny, and clambered into young Chirp's place in
the car. "Where are you going to take me?"
"Any place you say," rejoined Polly.
"Drive over on Seventh Avenue, then," he directed. "There's a lot of
shack property around the new terminal station. I want to build a
smashing big hotel over there. I don't see why somebody hasn't done it."
Polly puzzled over that matter considerably herself.
"It doesn't seem possible that New York would overlook a bet like
that," she declared, and obeying the traffic policeman's haughty
gesture, turned briskly off Broadway.
"Why not?" he demanded. "New York grabs a cinch. The cinch has been
kicking around loose for fifty years. New York pats herself on the pink
bald spot. 'Nothing gets by me!' she says."
"New York's the best town in the world!" Polly flared.
"I wasn't insulting your friend," apologized Johnny, and looked at his
watch. "Great Scott! It's ten-thirty!" he exploded. "I owe myself
seventy-five hundred dollars. All I've done is to decide on a Terminal
Hotel Company. Want some stock, Polly?"
"I'll take all I can reach if you're leading it around," she assured
him. "I can't take much, but I'll make Daddy Parsons go in, and I'll be
a nuisance to every moneyed man I know."
"By the by, where's the fifteen thousand I made Saturday?" Johnny asked.
"In my bank," she replied. "I just deposited it."
"Why did you take it away from me--if it's any of my business?" he
wanted to know.
"I was afraid they'd snatch it from you," she returned. "Gresham was
all peeved up because you took fifteen thousand away from him in front
of Constance. Loring saw Gresham and your old partner talking together
immediately afterward; and he told me that they might frame up some
crooked scheme to grab the money. I didn't have a chance to explain, so
I asked you to indorse the check to me."
"Do you think Collaton's crooked?" Johnny asked with a queer smile.
"I can think he's crooked without batting an eyelash. I can think it
about Gresham too."
"Why do you have that idea about Gresham?"
"Because I don't like him," she triumphantly argued.
"Shake!" invited Johnny. "I know six reasons why I can do without him.
What are your six?"
"One is because I don't like him, and another is because he's going to
marry Constance, and the other four are because I don't like him," she
calmly summed up.
"Does Constance say he's going to marry her?" he inquired crisply.
"Not in so many words."
"Then I don't believe it. I wouldn't marry him for six millions."
"Constance can't be so careless. If they break you they can't sprint
fast enough to keep it; but if they take it away from Constance she's
broke."
"It's ten-forty!" groaned Johnny. "I'm slow on that million.
Constance'll think I'm loafing."
"Is she interested?"
"She promised last night to keep score. Gresham was there. I looked,
any minute, to see him bite himself in the neck and die of poison.
Polly, he can't have her."
"You'd better tell Constance about that," laughed Polly. "Why, Johnny,
you had never seen her or heard of her forty-eight hours ago!"
"I know; I didn't have the right chances when I was young!"
Polly gazed upon him admiringly.
"I've seen swift love affairs before, but you've set a new record!" she
exclaimed. "Well, I'm for you, Johnny. Since poor Billy's parents
adopted me and made me a cousin of Constance, I can trot up her stone
steps any minute; and she treats me as if I'd had my first bottle in a
pink-silk boudoir. I'll make it my business to run up there twice a day
and boost for you."
"Don't be too strong!" Johnny hastily warned her. "Boost half of the
time if you want to, but be sure and knock the other half."
"I guess it would be better," soberly agreed Polly--"even with
Constance. Here's your terminal station. Pick out your corner and drive
a claim stake."
Polly obligingly drove slowly around three sides of the huge new
terminal. Directly opposite the main entrance was a vacant plot of
ground, with a frontage of an entire block and a depth of four hundred
feet. Big white signs upon each corner told that it was for sale by
Mallard & Tyne. They stopped in front of this location, while both
Johnny and Polly ranged their eyes upward, by successive steps, to the
roof garden which surmounted the twentieth story of Johnny's imaginary
Terminal Hotel.
"It's a nifty-looking building, Johnny!" she complimented him as they
turned to each other with sheepish smiles.
"I'm going to tear it down and put up a better one," he briskly told
her. "I'll hand you a piece of private information. If the big railroad
company which built this terminal station doesn't own that blank space
it's a fool--and I don't think it is. If it does the property will be
held for ever for the increase in value. Let's look at these other
blocks. The buildings on the one next to it are worth about a plugged
nickel apiece--and that would make exactly as good a location."
"But, Johnny; you couldn't build a hotel in forty days!"
"Build it! I don't want to. I only want to promote it."
"Does a promoter never build?" asked Polly.
"Not if he can escape," replied Johnny. "All a promoter ever wants to
do is to collect the first ninety-nine years' profits and promote
something else. Drive me up to the address on that real estate sign and
I'll pay you whatever the clock says and let you go."
"The clock says a one-pound box of chocolates," she promptly estimated.
"Wait, though. I did send for some!" And she looked back into the
tonneau. "Why, drat it all! I mislaid Sammy!" she gasped.