Produced by Annie McGuire
[Illustration: Book Cover]
MAKING MONEY
[Illustration: "'Bojo, you must marry Doris,' she said brokenly"]
MAKING MONEY
BY
OWEN JOHNSON
AUTHOR OF "THE SALAMANDER," "STOVER AT YALE,"
"THE SIXTY-FIRST SECOND," ETC.
_WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY_
_JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1915, by_
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE ARRIVAL 1
II FOUR AMBITIONS, AND THREE WAYS TO MAKE MONEY 16
III ON THE TAIL OF A TERRIER 31
IV BOJO'S FATHER 46
V DANIEL DRAKE, THE MULTI-MILLIONAIRE 58
VI BOJO OBEYS HIS GENERAL MANAGER 67
VII UNDER THE TICKER'S TYRANNY 75
VIII THE RETURN OF PATSIE 88
IX THE WEDDING BALL 100
X DRAKE'S GAME 111
XI BOJO BUTTS IN 122
XII SNOW MAGIC 133
XIII BOJO MAKES A DECISION 147
XIV THE CRASH 154
XV SUDDEN WEALTH 165
XVI BOJO BEGINS TO SPEND HIS QUARTER-MILLION 173
XVII PAYING THE PIPER--PLUS 184
XVIII BOJO FACES THE TRUTH 195
XIX A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK 207
XX BOJO HUNTS A JOB 213
XXI BOJO IN OVERALLS 222
XXII DORIS MEETS A CRISIS 234
XXIII THE LETTER TO PATSIE 247
XXIV PATSIE APPEALS FOR HELP 259
XXV DRAKE ADMITS HIS DANGER 270
XXVI A FIGHT IN MILLIONS 277
XXVII PATSIE'S SCHEME 288
XXVIII ONE LAST CHANCE 302
XXIX THE DELUGE 309
XXX THE AFTER-YEARS 323
ILLUSTRATIONS
"'Bojo, you must marry Doris,' she said brokenly" _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
"'Say, you're a judge of muscle, aren't you?'" 40
"'Just you wait; you're going to be one of the big men some
day!'" 104
"'Drina, dear child,' he said in a whisper" 144
"The message was the end of hope" 158
"'What does all the rest amount to?' she said breathlessly. 'I
want you'" 208
"'He wants to see you now,' she said" 268
"'Your promise. No one is to know what I do'" 292
CHAPTER I
THE ARRIVAL
Toward the close of a pleasant September afternoon, in one of the years
when the big stick of President Roosevelt was cudgeling the shoulders of
malefactors of great wealth, the feverish home-bound masses which poured
into upper Fifth Avenue with the awakening of the electric night were
greeted by the strangest of all spectacles which can astound a
metropolitan crowd harassed by the din of sounds, the fret and fury of
the daily struggle which is the tyranny of New York. A very young man,
of clean-cut limbs and boyish countenance, absolutely unhurried amidst
the press, without a trace of preoccupation, worry, or painful mental
concentration, was swinging easily up the Avenue as though he were
striding among green fields, head up, shoulders squared like a
grenadier, without a care in the world, so visibly delighted at the
novelty of gay crowds, of towering buildings decked in electric
garlands, of theatric shop-windows, that more than one perceiving this
open enthusiasm smiled with a tolerant amusement.
Now when a young man appears thus on Fifth Avenue, undriven, without
preoccupation, without a contraction of the brows and particularly
without that strained metropolitan gaze of trying to decide something
of importance, either he is on his way to the station with a coveted
vacation ahead or he has been in the city less than twenty-four hours.
In the present instance the latter hypothesis was true.
Tom Beauchamp Crocker, familiarly known as Bojo, had sent his baggage
ahead, eager to enjoy the delights one enjoys at twenty-four, which the
long apprenticeship of school and college is ended and the city is
waiting with all the mystery of that uncharted dominion--The World. He
went his way with long, swinging steps, smiling from the pure delight of
being alive, amazed at everything: at the tangled stream of nations
flowing past him; at the prodigious number of entrancing eyes which
glanced at him from under provoking brims; at the sheer flights of
blazing windows, shutting out the feeble stars; at the vigor and
vitality on the sidewalks; at the flooded lights from sparkling shop
windows; at the rolling procession of incalculable wealth on the Avenue.
Everywhere was the stir of returning crowds, the end of the summer's hot
isolation, the reopening of gilded theaters, the thronging of hotels,
and the displays of radiant shop fronts, preparing for the winter's
campaign. In the crush of the Avenue was the note of home-coming, in
taxicabs and coupes piled high with luggage and brown-faced children
hanging at the windows, acclaiming familiar landmarks with piping cries.
Tradesmen and all the world of little business, all the world that must
prepare to feed, clothe, and amuse the winter metropolis, were pouring
in.
And in the midst of this feverish awaking of luxury and pleasure one
felt at every turn a new generation of young men storming every avenue
with high imaginations, eager to pierce the multitudes and emerge as
masters. Bojo himself had not woven his way three blocks before he felt
this imperative need of a stimulating dream, a career to emulate--a
master of industry or a master of men--and, sublimely confident, he
imagined that some day, not too distant, he would take his place in the
luxurious flight of automobiles, a personage, a future Morgan or a
future Roosevelt, to be instantly recognized, to hear his name on a
thousand lips, never doubting that life was only a greater game than the
games he had played, ruled by the same spirit of fair play with the
ultimate prize to the best man.
In the crowd he perceived a familiar figure, a college mate of the class
above him, and he hailed him with enthusiasm as though the most amazing
and delightful thing in the world was to be out of college on Fifth
Avenue and to meet a friend.
"Foster! Hallo there!"
At this greeting the young man stopped, shot out his hand, and rattled
off in business manner: "Why, Bojo, how are you? How's it going? Making
lots of money?"
"I've just arrived," said Crocker, somewhat taken back.
"That so? You're looking fine. I'm in the devil of a rush--call me up at
the club some time. Good luck."
He was gone with purposeful steps, lost in the quick, nervous crowd
before Crocker with a thwarted sense of comradeship could recover
himself. A little later another acquaintance responded to his greeting,
hesitated, and offered his hand.
"Hello, Bojo, how are things? You look prosperous; making lots of money,
I suppose. Glad to have seen you--so long."
For a second time he felt a sense of disappointment. Every one seemed in
a hurry, oppressed by the hundred details to be crowded into the too
short day. He became aware of this haste in the air and in the street.
In this speed-driven world even the great stone flights seemed to have
risen with the hour. Dazzling electric signs flashed in and out,
transferring themselves into bewildering combinations with the necessity
of startling this wonder-surfeited city into an instant's recognition.
Electricity was in the vibrant air, in the scurrying throngs, in the
nervous craving of the crowd for excitement after drudgery, to be out,
to be seen in brilliant restaurants, to go with the rushing throngs,
keyed to a higher tension, avid of lights and thrumming sounds.
Insensibly he felt the stimulus about him, his own gait adjusted itself
to the rush of those who jostled past him. He began to watch for
openings, to dart ahead, to slip through this group and that, weaving
his way as though there was something precious ahead, an object to be
gained by the first arrival. All at once he perceived how unconsciously
he had surrendered to the subtle spirit of contention about him, and
pulled himself up, laughing. At this moment an arm was slipped through
his and he turned to find a classmate, Bob Crowley, at his side.
"Whither so fast?
"Just in. I'm bound for the diggings."
"Fred DeLancy's been asking about you for a week. I saw Marsh and old
Granny yesterday. The Big Four still keeping together?
"Yes, we're going to stick together. How are you?"
"Oh, so-so."
"Making money?"
The salutation came like a trick to his lips before he noticed the
adoption. Crowley looked rather pleased.
"Thanks, I've got a pretty good thing. If you've got any loose change I
can put you on to a cinch. Step into the club a moment. You'll see a lot
of the crowd."
At the club, an immense hotel filled with businesslike young men rushing
in and rushing out, thronging the grill-room with hats and coats on, an
eye to the clock, Bojo was acclaimed with that rapturous campus
enthusiasm which greets a returned hero. The tribute pleased him, after
the journey through the indifferent multitude. It was something to
return as even a moderate-sized frog to the small puddle. He wandered
from group to group, ensconced at round tables for a snatched moment
before the call of the evening. The vitality of these groups, the
conflict of sounds in the low room, bewildered him. Speculation was in
the air. The bonanza age of American finance was reaching its climax.
Immense corporations were being formed overnight and stocks were
mounting by bounds. All the talk in corners was of this tip and that
while in the jumble staccato sentences struck his ear.
"A sure thing, Joe-- I'll tell you where I got it."
"They say Harris cleaned up two thousand last week."
"The amalgamation's bound to go through."
"I'm in the bond business now; let me talk to you."
"Two more years in the law school, worse luck."
"At the P. and S."
"They say the Chicago crowd made fifteen millions on the rise--"
"I ran across Bozer last week."
"Hello, Bill, you old scout, they tell me you're making money so fast--"
All the talk was of business and opportunity, among these graduates of a
year or two, eager and restless, all keen, all confident of arriving,
all watching with vulture-like sharpness for an opportunity for a
killing: a stock that was bound to shoot up or to tumble down. Every one
seemed to be making money or certain to do so soon, cocksure of his
opinion, prognosticating the trend of industry with sure mastery. Bojo
was rather dazed by this academic fervor for material success; it gave
him the feeling that the world was after all only a postgraduate course.
He had left a group, with a beginning of critical amusement, when a hand
spun him around and he heard a well-known voice cry:
"Bojo--you old sinner--you come right home!"
It was Roscoe Marsh, chum of chums, rather slight, negligently dressed
among these young men of rather precise elegance, but dominating them
all by the shock of an aggressive personality that stood out against
their factoried types. Just as the generality of men incline to the
fashions of conduct, philosophy, and politics of the day, there are
certain individualities constituted by nature to be instinctively of the
opposition. Marsh, finding himself in a complacent society, became a
terrific radical, perhaps more from the necessity of dramatic sensations
which was inherent in his brilliant nature than from a profound
conviction. His features were irregular, the nose powerful and aquiline,
the eyebrows arched with a suggestion of eloquence and imagination, the
eyes gray and domineering, the mouth wide and expressive of every
changing thought, while the outstanding ears on the thin, curved head
completed an accent of oddity and obstinacy which he himself had
characterized good-humoredly when he had described himself as looking
like a poetical calf. Roscoe Marsh, the father--editor, politician, and
capitalist, one of the figures of the last generation--had died, leaving
him a fortune.
"What the deuce are you wasting time in this collection of
fashion-plates and messenger-boys for?" said Marsh when the greetings
were over. "Come out into the air where we can talk sense. When did you
come?"
"An hour ago."
"Fred and Granny have been here all summer. You're a pampered darling,
Bojo, to get a summer off. What was it--heart interest?"
"Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies," said Bojo with a half
laugh and a whirl of his cane. "By George, Roscy, it's good to be here!"
"We'll get you to work."
"Who could help it? I say, is every one making money in this place? I've
heard nothing else since I landed."
"On paper, yes, but you don't make money till you hear it chink, as lots
will find out," said Marsh with a laugh. "However, this place's a
regular mining-camp--every one's speculating. I say, what are you going
to do?"
"Oh, I'm going into Wall Street too, I suppose. I spent a month with Dan
Drake."
"--And daughter."
"And daughters," said Bojo, smiling. "I think I'll have a good opening
there--after I learn the ropes, of course."
"Drake, eh," said Marsh reflectively, naming one of the boldest
manipulators of the day. "Well, you ought to get plenty of excitement
out of that. No use my tempting you with a newspaper job, then. But how
about your Governor?"
Bojo became quiet, whistling to himself. "I've got a bad half-hour
there," he said solemnly. "I've got to fight it out with the old man as
soon as he arrives. You know what he thinks of Wall Street."
"I like your Governor."
"So do I. The trouble is we're too much alike."
"So you've made up your mind?"
"I have; no mills and drudgery for me."
"Well, if you've made up your mind, you've made it up," said Marsh a
little anxiously.
In college the saying was that Marsh would sputter but Crocker would
stick, and this byword expressed the difference between them. One
attacked and the other entrenched. Crocker had an intense admiration for
Marsh, for whom he believed all things possible. As they walked side by
side, Bojo was the more agreeable to the eye; there was an instinctive
sense of pleasing about him. He liked most men, so genuinely interested
in their problems and point of view that few could resist his good
nature. Mentally and in the knowledge of the world he was much the
younger. There was a boyishness and an unsophistication about him that
was in the clear forehead and laughing brown eyes, in the spontaneous
quality of his smile, the spring in his feet, the general enthusiasm for
all that was new or difficult. But underneath this easy manner there was
a dangerous obstinacy ready to flare up at an instant's provocation,
which showed in the lower jaw slightly undershot, which gave the lips a
look of being pugnaciously compressed. He was implacable in a hatred or
a fight, blind to the faults of a friend, and stubborn in his opinions.
"What sort of quarters have we got?" asked Bojo, who had left the detail
to his three friends.
"The queerest spot in New York--the cave of Ali Baba. Wait till you see
it--you'd never believe it. Hidden as safe as a needle in a haystack. No
more than a stone's throw from here, and you'd never guess it."
He stopped, for at this moment they entered Times Square under the
shadow of the incredible tower, dazzled by the sudden ambuscade of
lights which flamed about them. Marsh, who could never brook waiting,
without having altered his pace made a wide detour amid a jam of
automobiles, dodged two surface cars and a file of trucks, and arrived
at the opposite curb considerably after Crocker, who had waited for the
direct route. Neither perceived how characteristic of their divergent
temperaments this incident had been. But Marsh, whose spirit was
irreverence, exclaimed contemptuously:
"The Great White Way. What a sham!" He extended his arm with an
extravagant gesture, as much as to say, "I could change all that," and
continued: "Look at it. There are not ten buildings on it that will last
five years. Take away the electric advertisements and you'll see it as
it is--a main street in a mining town. All the rest is shanty
civilization, that will come tumbling down like a pack of cards. Look at
it; a few hidden theaters with an entrance squeezed between a
cigar-store and a haberdashery, restaurants on one floor, and the rest
advertisements."
"Still it gives you quite a feeling," said Bojo in dissent, caught in
the surging currents of automobiles and the mingled throngs of late
workers and early pleasure-seekers. "There's an exhilaration about it
all. It does wake you up."
"Think of a city of five thousand millionaires that can build a hundred
business cathedrals a year, that has an opera house with the front of a
warehouse and calls a row of squatty booths luxury. Well, never mind;
here we are. Rub your eyes."
They had left the roar and brilliancy of the curiously blended mass
behind, plunging down a squalid side street with tenements in the dark
distances, when Marsh came to a stop before two green pillars, above
which a swaying sign announced--
WESTOVER COURT
BACHELOR APARTMENTS
Before Bojo could recover from his astonishment, he found himself
conducted through a long, irregular monastic hall flooded with mellow
lights and sudden arches, and as bewilderingly introduced, in a sort of
Arabian Nights adventure, into an oasis of quiet and green things. They
were in an inner court shut in from the outer world by the rise of a
towering wall at one end and at the other by the blazing glass back of a
great restaurant. In the heart of the noisiest, vilest, most brutal
struggle of the city lay this little bit of the Old World, decked in
green plots, with vine-covered fountain and a stone Cupid perched on
tip-toe, and above a group of dream trees filling the lucent yellow and
green enclosure with a miraculous foliage. Lights blazed in a score of
windows above them, while at four medieval entrances, of curved doorways
under sloping green aprons, the suffused glow of iron lanterns seemed
like distant signals lost in a fog. Everything about them was so remote
from the stress and fury out of which they had stepped, that Bojo
exclaimed in astonishment:
"Impossible!"
"Isn't it bully?" said Marsh enthusiastically. "Ali Baba Court I call
it. That's what a touch of imagination can do in New York. I say, look
over here. What do you think of this for a quiet pipe at night?"
He drew him under the trees, where a table and comfortable chairs were
waiting. Above the low roofs high against the blue-black sky the giant
city came peeping down upon them from the regimented globes of fire on
the Astor roof. A milky flag drifted lazily across an aigrette of steam.
To the right, the top of the Times Tower, divorced from all the ugliness
at its feet, rose like an historic campanile played about by timid
stars. Over the roof-tops the hum of the city, never stilled, turned
like a great wheel, incessantly, with faint, detached sounds pleasantly
audible: a bell; a truck moving like a shrieking shell; the impertinent
honk of taxis; urchins on wheels; the shattering rush of distant iron
bodies tearing through the air; an extra cried on a shriller note; the
ever-recurring pipe of a police whistle compelling order in the
confusion; fog horns from the river, and underneath something more
elusive and confused, the churning of great human masses passing and
repassing.
Marsh gave a peculiar whistle and instantly at a window on the second
floor a shadowy figure appeared, the sash went up with a bang, and a
cheery voice exclaimed:
"Hello, below there! Is that Bojo with you? Come up and show your
handsome map!"
"Coming, Freddie, coming," said Bojo with a laugh, and, plunging into a
swinging entrance, he found himself in a cozy den, almost thrown off his
feet by the greetings of a little fellow who dived at him with the
frenzy of a faithful dog.
"Well, old fashion-plate, how are you?" Bojo said at last, flinging him
across the room. "Been into any more trouble?"
"Nope. That is, not lately," said DeLancy, picking himself up. "Haven't
a chance, living with two policemen. What kept you all this time? Fallen
in love?"
"None of your damned business. By George, this looks homelike," said
Bojo to turn the conversation. On the walls were a hundred mementoes of
school and college, while a couple of lounges and several great chairs
were indolently grouped about the fireplace, where a fire was laid. "I
say, Roscy, has the infant really been behaving?"
"Well, we haven't bailed, him out yet," said Marsh meditatingly.
Fred DeLancy had been in trouble all his life and out of it as easily.
Trouble, as he himself expressed it, woke up the moment he went out. He
had been suspended and threatened with expulsion for one scrape after
another more times than he could remember. But there was something that
instantly disarmed anger in the odd star-pointing nose, the twinkly
eyes, and the wide mouth set at a perpetual grin. One way or another he
wriggled through regions where angels fear to tread, assisted by much
painful effort on the part of his friends.
"I'm getting frightfully serious," he said with mock contrition. "I'm
getting to be an old man; the cares of life and all that sort of stuff."
He broke off and flung himself at the piano, where he started an
improvisation:
"The cares of life,
This dreadful strife,
I'll take a wife--
No, change the rhyme
I haven't time
For matrimony--O!
Leave that to handsome Bojo
Bojo's in love,
Blush like a dove--
"No, doves don't blush," he said, swinging around. "Do they or don't
they? Anyhow, a dove in love might-- To continue:
"Bojo's in love,
Blush like a dove,
Won't tell her name,
I'll guess the same--"
But at this moment, just as a pillow came hurtling through the air, the
doorway was ruled with a great body and George Granning came crowding
into the room, hand out, a smile on his honest, open face.
"Hello, Tom, it's good to see you again."
"The government can go on," said DeLancy joyfully. "We're here!"
As the four sat grouped about the room they presented one of those
strange combinations of friendship which could only result from the
process of American education. Four more dissimilar individualities
could not have been molded together except by the curious selective
processes of an academic society system. The Big Four, as they had been
dubbed (there is always a Big Four in every school and college), had
come from Andover linked by the closest ties, and this intimacy had
never relaxed, despite all the incongruous opposition of their
beginnings.
Marsh was a New Yorker, an aristocrat by inheritance and by force of
fortune; Crocker a Yankee, son of a keen, self-made father, who had
fought his way up to a position of mastery in the woolen mills of New
England; DeLancy from Detroit, of more modest means, son of a small
business man, to whom his education had meant a genuine sacrifice; while
George Granning, older by many years than the rest, was evidence of that
genius for evolution that stirs in the American mass. They knew but
little of his history beyond what he had chosen to confide in his
silent, reserved way.
He had the torso of a stevedore, the neck and hands of the laborer,
while the boulder-like head, though devoid of the lighter graces of
imagination and wit, had certain immovable qualities of persistence and
determination in the strongly hewn jaw and firm, high-cheekbones. He
was tow-headed and blue-eyed, of unfailing good humor, like most men of
great strength. Only once had he been known to lose his temper, and that
was in a football match in his first year in the varsity. His opponent,
doubtless hoping to intimidate the freshman, struck him a blow across
the face under cover of the first scrimmage. Before the half was over
the battering he had received from the enraged Granning was so terrific
that he had to be transferred to the other side of the line.
Granning had worked his way through Andover by menial service at the
beginning, gradually advancing by acquiring the agencies for commercial
fields and doing occasional tutoring. His summers had been given over to
work in foundries and in preparation for the business career he had
chosen long ago. He was deeply religious in a quiet, unostentatious way.
That there had been stormy days in the beginning, tragedies perhaps, the
friends divined; besides, there were lines in his face, stern lines of
pain and hardship, that had been softened but could never disappear.