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.
"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.