BOJO BEGINS TO SPEND HIS QUARTER-MILLION
At the sight of Fred DeLancy, Bojo checked himself. A glance from
Granning apprised him of the seriousness of the situation. He walked
over to the huddled figure and laid his hand on his shoulder.
"Hello there, Fred. It's Bojo."
DeLancy raised his head, looked out through glazed eyes, and slowly
withdrew his stare to the vacant fireplace, where a smoldering flicker
drew his mind.
"Found him an hour ago in a hell over in Eighth Avenue," said Marsh.
"Bad."
Granning beckoned him, and together they went into the bedroom, closing
the door.
"All right now. Guess he'll stay quiet. Pretty violent when we came
back," said Granning. "Wanted to throw himself out of the window."
"And the pistol," said Bojo, sick at the thought of what might have
been.
"Yes, we found that on him," said Granning gravely. "Lucky he got drunk
so quick, or that might have been serious." He hesitated and added: "He
swears he'll kill himself first chance. Guess I'd better keep my eye on
him to-night."
At this moment there was the sound of a scuffle from the den and a shout
from Marsh. They rushed in to find him grappling with Fred, who was
striving frantically to reach the window. For a moment the air was full
of shouts and sudden scurrying.
"Look out, he's got that paper-cutter!"
"In his right hand."
"All right, I've got him."
"Throw him over on the couch. Sit on him. That's it."
Under their combined weights, DeLancy was flung, hoarse and screaming
maledictions, to the couch, where despite objurgations and ravings
Granning secured his arms behind his back with a strap and hobbled his
legs. For half an hour Fred twisted and strove, raving and swearing or
suddenly weakly remorseful, bursting into tears, cursing himself and his
folly. The three sat silently, faces sternly masked, looking unwilling
on the ugly spectacle of human frenzy in the raw. At the end of this
time DeLancy became suddenly quiet and dropped off into sodden sleep.
"At last," said Granning, rising. "Best thing for him. Oh, he won't hear
us--talk all you like."
"How hard is he hit?" said Bojo anxiously.
Marsh shrugged his shoulder and swore.
"How hard, Granning?"
"Twenty thousand or more," said Granning gravely, "and there are some
bad sides to it." He shook his head, glanced at DeLancy, and added:
"Then there's the girl."
"Louise Varney?"
"The same--mother has been camping on the telephone all day. Not a very
calm person, mother--ugh--nasty business!"
"Rotten business," said Bojo, remorsefully. He went to the bay-window
and stood there gazing out into the sickly night, paling before the
first grays of the morning. He was subdued by this spectacle of the
other side of speculation, wondering how many similar scenes were taking
place in sleepless rooms somewhere in the dusky flight of roof-tops.
Marsh, misunderstanding his mood, said:
"How did it hurt you? You pulled through all right, didn't you?"
Bojo came back thoughtfully, evading the question with another.
"And you?"
"Oh, better than I expected," said Marsh with a wry face. "I say, you're
not--not cleaned out?"
Granning rose and with his heavy hand turned him around solicitously.
"How about it, son?"
For hours Bojo had been debating his answer to this inevitable question
without finding a solution. He drew his pocketbook and slowly extracted
the check. "Gaze on that," he said solemnly.
Granning took it, stared at it, and passed it to Marsh, who looked up
with an exclamation: "For God's sake, what does that mean?"
"It means," said Bojo slowly, "that I can tell you the truth now. We
haven't lost a cent; on the contrary--" he paused and emphasized the
next word--"_we_ have made a killing. We means you, Fred, and myself."
"I don't get it," said Marsh, frowning.
"The real object of the pool was not to bear Pittsburgh & New Orleans,
but to buy it. If I let you sell short, it was only to get others to
sell short. To-morrow I'll settle up with you and Fred, every cent
you've lost, plus--"
"Bojo, you're lying," said Marsh abruptly.
"I'm not, I--"
"And you're lying badly!"
"What about that check?"
"That's all right; Drake may have done what you said, but you never
knew--"
"Roscy, I swear."
"Hold up and answer this. Do you want me to believe, Tom Crocker, that
you deliberately told me and Fred DeLancy, your closest friends, a lie,
in order to get us to spread false information to _our_ friends, to ruin
our friends in order to make a killing for you? Well, a straight
answer."
Bojo was silent.
"No, no, Bojo; don't come to me with any cock-and-bull story like
that--"
"Roscy, it _is_ a lie. I was completely in the dark myself; but I won't
touch a cent of it until your losses are squared, every dollar of them!"
"So that's the game, eh?" said Marsh, laughing. "Well you go plump to
the devil!
"Roscy!" said Bojo, jumping up and seizing his arm. "At least let me
square up what you lost. Hold up. Wait a second, don t go off
half-cocked! Fred's got to be hauled out of this; it's not only
bankruptcy, it's a darned sight worse--it's his word, his honor--a
woman's money, too. You know him--he's weak, he won't stand up under it.
Good God, you don't want me to have his life on my conscience?"
"What do you want to do?"
"I want to make Fred believe what I told you--it's the only way. If you
play into the game he'll believe it. Good Lord, Roscy, this thing's bad
enough as it is. You don't think I could profit one cent while you
fellows were cleaned out by my own fault?"
"Look here," said Marsh, sitting down, "it isn't your fault. I gambled,
that's all, and lost. I gambled before on your advice and won.
Fifty-fifty, that's all. Now Fred's different. I'll admit it. You can do
what you please with him; that's between you two. If you've got to make
him believe I'm doing the same, to make him take the money--all right;
but if you come around again to me with any such insulting proposition,
Tom Crocker, there'll be trouble."
Bojo clasped and unclasped his hands in utter helplessness. Then he
glanced at Granning.
"You've done what you could," said Granning, shaking his head.
"A rotten mess. I feel rotten," said Bojo slowly.
Marsh, relenting, clapped him on the shoulder affectionately. "Mighty
white of you, Bojo--and don't think for a moment any one's blaming you!"
"I'm not sure how I feel myself," said Bojo slowly.
"Drake used you, Tom," said Granning quietly. "He'd figured out you'd be
watched--the old decoy game."
"No, no," said Bojo warmly. "He did not, I'm sure of that. He
particularly warned me not to do anything on my own hook without
consulting him. It was my fault-- I jumped at conclusions!"
Granning and Marsh laughed.
"By George, if I thought that!" said Bojo, rising up.
"Don't think anything," said Marsh quietly. "It's all in the game
anyhow!" Suddenly he stopped and, the journalistic instinct awakening,
said: "You say Drake bought Pittsburgh & New Orleans--what do you mean?"
"Bought control, of course, and sold it back at midnight to Gunther &
Co. for a profit of ten millions."
"Repeat that," said Marsh, aghast. "Good Lord! What? When? Where was the
sale? For God's sake, Bojo, don't you know you've got the biggest story
of the year? Three-twenty now. It's 'good-night' to our composing-room
at half past. Talk it fast and I can make it."
Hastily, under his prompting, Bojo recalled details and scraps of
information. Three minutes later Marsh was at the telephone and they
heard the shouted frantic orders.
"_Morning Post?_ Who's on the long wait? Hill? Give him to me--on the
jump. Damn it, this is Marsh! Hello, Ed? Hold your press men for an
extra. We've got a smashing beat. Front page and the biggest head you
can put on! Play it up for all you're worth. Ready: Dan Drake bought
control...." The outlines in staccato, dramatic sentences, followed,
then directions to get Gunther, Drake, Fontaine, and others on the wire.
Then silence, and Marsh burst through the room and down the stairs in a
racket that threatened to wake the house.
Granning and Bojo sat on, watching the restless, heavy figure on the
couch, too feverishly awake for sleep, talking in broken phrases, while
the white mists came into the room and the city began to wake. At four
o'clock Doris called up from long distance. Bojo had completely
forgotten her in the tension of the night and rather guiltily hastened
to reassure her. Gladys was at her side, anxious to hear from Fred, to
learn if she might come to his assistance, wondering why he had not sent
her word--alarmed.
He invented a lie to clear the situation--a friend who was in desperate
straits--with whom Fred was watching out the night.
At six o'clock DeLancy rose up suddenly, disheveled and haggard, staring
at them, bewildered at the pressure of the straps. "What the devil's
happened?"
Granning rose and released him. "You were rather obstreperous last
night, young man," he said quietly. "We were afraid you might dent the
fire-escape or carry off the mantel. How are you?"
"Oh, good God!" said DeLancy, sinking his head in his hands with a
groan, suddenly recalling the pool.
"If you hadn't gone off like a bad Indian," said Bojo sternly, "you'd be
celebrating in a different way." Then, as Fred without interest
continued oblivious, he went over and struck him a resounding blow
between the shoulders. "Wake up there. I've been trying to beat it into
you all night. We haven't lost a cent. The pool went through like a
charm. Drake fooled the whole bunch!"
"What--what do you mean?" said DeLancy, staring up.
"The running down was only the first step; the real game was to buy up
the control. All our selling short was just bluff, charged up to the
expense account and nothing else."
"All bluff," repeated Fred in a daze. "I don't seem to understand. I
can't get it."
"Well, get this then--feast your eyes on it," said Bojo, sitting beside
him, his arm about his shoulder and the check held before his eyes.
"That's profit--my part out of ten millions Drake cleaned up by selling
out to the Gunther crowd. Listen." He repeated in detail the story of
the night, adding: "Now do you see it? Every cent we lost bearing the
stock goes to expenses--that's understood."
"You mean--" DeLancy rose, steadied himself, and lurched against a
chair. "You mean what I lost--what I--"
"What you've lost and Louise's losses, too," said Bojo quickly--"every
cent is paid by the pool. There wasn't the slightest question about
that!"
"Is that the truth?"
"Yes."
Fred's sunken eyes rested on Bojo's an interminable moment, and the
agony written on that fevered face steeled Crocker in his resolve.
Presently DeLancy, as though convinced, turned away.
"Good Lord, I thought I was done for!" he said in a whisper. His lip
trembled, he caught at his throat, and the next moment his racked body
was shaken with convulsive sobs.
"Let yourself go, Fred; it's all right--everything's all right," said
Bojo hastily. He left the den, nodding to Granning, and went to his
bedroom. His bag was still on the bed, where he had thrown it unopened.
He took out his clothes mechanically, feeling the weariness of the
wasted night, and suddenly on the top of a folded jacket he found a
card, in Patsie's writing; a few words only, timidly offered.
"I hope, oh, I do hope everything will come all right," and below these
two lines that started reveries in his eyes, the signature was not
Patsie, but Drina.
When he came into the den again after a hasty toilet, DeLancy had got
hold of himself again.
"Better, old boy?" said Bojo, pulling his ear.
"If you knew--if you knew what I'd been through," said Fred with a quick
breath.
"I know," said Bojo, shuddering instinctively. "Now let's get to
business. You'll feel a lot better when you tidy up your bank account.
What did you lose?"
"I say, Bojo," said DeLancy, avoiding his glance, "on your honor
straight this is all right, isn't it?"
"Sure!"
"I ought to take it--there's no reason why--you're not telling me a fake
story?"
"I certainly am not," said Bojo cheerily, taking up his check-book at
the desk. "Come on now."
But DeLancy, unconvinced, still wavered.
"How about Roscy?" he said slowly, his eyes fixed, his mouth parted as
though hanging on the answer.
"The same thing goes with Roscy, naturally," said Bojo, carelessly.
DeLancy drew a long breath and approached.
"How much? Confess up!"
"Twenty-seven thousand eight hundred."
Bojo restrained a start of amazement.
"Say twenty-eight flat," he said carefully. "Does that include Louise
Varney's account?"
"Yes, everything," said DeLancy slowly. He stood at the desk, staring,
while Bojo wrote a check, watching the traveling pen as though still
incredulous.
"There you are, old rooster, and good luck," said Bojo.
"Here, I say, you've made it out for thirty-eight thousand, said
DeLancy, taking the check.
"Ten thousand is profits, sure."
"Here, I say, that's not right. I couldn't take that--no, never, Bojo!"
"Shut up and be off with you!" said Bojo. "You don't think for a moment
I'd use my friends and not see they got a share of the winnings, do
you?"
"It doesn't seem right," said DeLancy again. He gazed at the check, a
prey to conflicting desires.
"Rats!"
"I don't feel as though I ought to."
Bojo, watching his struggle with his conscience a moment, perceived the
inherent weakness at the bottom of his nature, suddenly feeling a sense
of distance intervening in the old friendship, sadly disillusioned. When
he spoke, it was abruptly, as a superior:
"Shut up, Fred--you're going to take it, and that's all!
"How can I thank you?
"Don't."
He turned on his heel and went back to his room to hide the flash of
scorn that came to his eyes. "Great Heavens," he thought, "is that the
way men behave under great tests?"
But all at once he added, "And myself?"
For at the bottom there was an uneasy stirring feeling, awakened by the
sudden incredulous laugh of his friends that had greeted his assertion
of Drake's innocence, which was bringing him to a realization that he
was to face a decision more profoundly significant to his own
self-esteem than any he had yet confronted.
"Thank heaven for one thing--nothing happened to Fred! That's settled. I
have nothing on my conscience," he said with a sigh. The ten thousand he
had added represented in a confused way a tribute to that conscience, to
those others, unknown and unvisualized, whom unwittingly he might have
caused to suffer.
"Bojo!"
"Hello! What is it?"
He came out hurriedly at the sound of Granning's voice.
"Roscy on the 'phone.... What?... Good God!"
"What's that? What's happened?" he cried, as Fred came rushing out.
"Forshay--committed suicide--this morning--at his club--cut his
throat!"