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 a 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 dollars, 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."
"Excuse me," refused Collaton. "If I ran across Johnny Gamble's
pocket-book in a dark alley I'd walk square around it without stopping
to look for the string to it."
Gresham rose.
"Then you won't take any part in the enterprise?"
"Not any," Collaton assured him with a wave of negation. "If Johnny
will let me alone I'll let him alone, and be glad of the chance."
Later, Gresham saw Johnny come back and speak to Heinrich Schnitt; but
he had no curiosity about it. Whatever affairs Johnny had in hand just
now he might carry through unmolested, for Gresham was busy with larger
plans for his future undoing.