AGNES APPEARS PUBLICLY WITH MRS. SHARPE AND BIFF BATES HAS A ONE-ROUND
SCRAP
That night, though rather preoccupied by the grave consequences that
might ensue on this flat-footed defiance of Stone and his crowd, Bobby
went to the theater with Jack Starlett and Jack's sister and mother.
As they seated themselves he bowed gravely across the auditorium to
Agnes and Aunt Constance Elliston, who, with Uncle Dan, were
entertaining a young woman relative from Savannah. He did not know how
the others accepted his greeting; he only saw Agnes, and she smiled
quite placidly at him, which was far worse than if she had tilted her
head. Through two dreary, interminable acts he sat looking at the
stage, trying to talk small talk with the Starletts and remaining
absolutely miserable; but shortly before the beginning of the last act
he was able to take a quite new and gleeful interest in life, for the
young woman from Savannah came fluttering into the Elliston box,
bearing in tow the beautiful and vivacious Mrs. Frank L. Sharpe!
Bobby turned his opera-glasses at once upon that box, and pressed Jack
Starlett into service. Being thus attracted, the ladies of the
Starlett box, mystified and unable to extract any explanation from the
two gleeful men, were compelled, by force of circumstances and
curiosity, also to opera-glass and lorgnette the sufferers.
Like the general into which he was developing, Bobby managed to meet
Agnes face to face in the foyer after the show. Tears of mortification
were in her eyes, but still she was laughing when he strode up to her
and with masterful authority drew her arm beneath his own.
"Your carriage is too small for four," Bobby calmly told Mr. Elliston,
and, excusing himself from the Starletts, deliberately conducted Agnes
to a hansom. As they got well under way he observed:
"You will notice that I make no question of being seen in public
with--"
"Bobby!" she protested. "Violet did not know. The Sharpes visited in
Savannah. His connections down there are quite respectable, and no
doubt Mrs. Sharpe, who is really clever, held herself very
circumspectly."
"Fine!" said Bobby. "You will notice that I am quite willing to listen
to _you_. Explain some more."
"Bobby!" she protested again, and then suddenly she bent forward and
pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.
Bobby was astounded. She was actually crying! In a moment he had her
in his arms, was pressing her head upon his shoulder, was saying
soothing things to her with perfectly idiotic volubility. For an
infinitesimally brief space Agnes yielded to that embrace, and then
suddenly she straightened up in dismay.
"Good gracious, Bobby!" she exclaimed. "This hansom is all glass!"
He looked out upon the brilliantly lighted street with a reflex of her
own consternation, but quickly found consolation.
"Well, after all," he reflected philosophically, "I don't believe
anybody who saw me would blame me."
"You're a perfectly incorrigible Bobby," she laughed. "The only check
possible to put upon you is to hold you rigidly to business. How are
you coming out with the Brightlight Electric Company? I have been
dying to ask you about it."
"I have a telephone in my office," he reminded her.
"I am completely ignoring that ungenerous suggestion," she replied.
"It wasn't sportsmanlike," he penitently admitted. "Well, the
Brightlight Electric is still making money, and Johnson has stopped
leaks to the amount of at least twenty thousand dollars a year, which
will permit us to keep up the ten per cent. dividends, even with our
increased capitalization, and even without an increase of business."
"Glorious!" she said with sparkling eyes.
"Too good to be true," he assured her. "They'll take it away from me."
"How is it possible?" she asked.
"It isn't; but it will happen, nevertheless," he declared with
conviction.
He had already begun to spend his days and nights in apprehension of
this, and as the weeks went on and nothing happened his apprehension
grew rather than diminished.
In the meantime, the Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company went
pompously on. The great combine was formed, the fifty million dollars'
worth of stock was opened for subscription, and the company gave a
vastly expensive banquet in the convention hall of the Hotel Spender,
at which a thousand of the city's foremost men were entertained, and
where the cleverest after-dinner speakers to be obtained talked in
relays until long after midnight. Those who came to eat the rich food
and drink the rare wine and lend their countenances to the stupendous
local enterprise, being shrewd business graduates who had cut their
eye-teeth in their cradles, smiled and went home without any thought
of investing; but the hard-working, economical chaps of the offices
and shops, men who felt elated if, after five years of slavery, they
could show ten hundred dollars of savings, glanced in awe over this
magnificent list of names in the next day's papers. If the stock of
the Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company was considered a good
investment by these generals and captains and lieutenants of finance,
who, of course, attended this Arabian Nights banquet as investors, it
must certainly be a good investment for the corporals and privates.
Immediately vivid results were shown. Immense electric signs,
furnished at less than cost and some of them as big as the buildings
upon the roofs of which they were erected, began to make
constellations in the city sky; buildings in the principal down-town
squares were studded, for little or nothing, with outside incandescent
lights as thickly as wall space could be found for them, and the men
whose only automobiles are street-cars awoke to the fact that their
city was becoming intensely metropolitan; that it was blazing with the
blaze of Paris and London and New York; that all this glittering
advancement was due to the great new Consolidated Illuminating and
Power Company, and more applications for stock were made!
Every applicant was supplied, but the treasury stock of the company
having been sold out, the scrip had to come from some place else, and
it came through devious, secret ways from the holdings of such men as
Stone and Garland and Sharpe.
During the grand orgie of illumination the election came on; the price
of gas and electricity went gloriously and recklessly down, and the
men who were identified with the triumphantly successful new
illuminating company were the leading figures in the campaign. The
puerile "reform party," the blunders of whose incompetence had been
ridiculous, was swept out of existence; Garland was elected mayor by
the most overwhelming majority that had ever been known in the city,
and with him was elected a council of the same political faith. Sam
Stone, always in the background, always keeping his name out of the
papers as much as possible, came once more to the throne, and owned
the city and all its inhabitants and all its business enterprises and
all its public utilities, body and soul.
One night, shortly after the new officials went into power, there was
no light in the twelve blocks over which the Brightlight Company had
exclusive control, nor any light in the outside districts it supplied.
This was the first time in years that the company, equipped with an
emergency battery of dynamos which now proved out of order, had ever
failed for an instant of proper service. Candles, kerosene lamps and
old gas fixtures, the rusty cocks of which had not been turned in a
decade, were put hastily in use, while the streets were black with a
blackness particularly Stygian, contrasted with the brilliantly
illuminated squares supplied by the Consolidated Company. All night
long the mechanical force, attended by the worried but painfully
helpless Bobby, pounded and tapped and worked in the grime, but it was
not until broad daylight that they were able to discover the cause of
trouble. For two nights the lights ran steadily. On the third night,
at about seven-thirty, they turned to a dull, red glow, and slowly
died out. This time it was wire trouble, and through the long night as
large a force of men as could be mustered were tracing it. Not until
noon of the next day was the leak found.
It was a full week before that section of the city was for the third
time in darkness, but when this occurred the business men of the
district, who had been patient enough the first night and enduring
enough the second, loosed their reins and became frantic.
At this happy juncture the Consolidated Company threw an army of
canvassers into those twelve monopolized blocks, and the canvassers
did not need to be men who could talk, for arguments were not
necessary. The old, worn-out equipment of the Brightlight Electric,
and the fact that it was managed and controlled by men who knew
nothing whatever of the business, its very president a young fellow
who had probably never seen a dynamo until he took charge, were
enough.
Bobby, passing over Plum Street one morning, was surprised to see a
large gang of men putting in new poles, and when he reached the office
he asked Johnson about it. In two minutes he had definitely
ascertained that no orders had been issued by the Brightlight Electric
Company nor any one connected with it, and further inquiry revealed
the fact that these poles were being put up by the Consolidated. He
called up Chalmers at once.
"I knew I'd hear from you," said Chalmers, "and I have already been at
work on the thing. Of course, you saw what was in the papers."
"No," confessed Bobby. "Only the sporting pages."
"You should read news, local and general, every morning," scolded
Chalmers. "The new city council, at their meeting last night, granted
the Consolidated a franchise to put up poles and wires in this
district for lighting."
"But how could they?" expostulated Bobby. "Our contract with the city
has several years to run yet, and guarantees us exclusive privilege to
supply light, both to the city and to private individuals, in those
twelve blocks."
"That cleverly unobtrusive joker clause about 'reasonably satisfactory
service,'" replied Chalmers angrily. "By the way, have you
investigated the cause of those accidents very thoroughly? Whether
there was anything malicious about them?"
Bobby confessed that he had not thought of the possibility.
"I think it would pay you to do so. I am delving into this thing as
deeply as I can, and with your permission I am going to call your
father's old attorney, Mr. Barrister, into consultation."
"Go ahead, by all means," said Bobby, worried beyond measure.
At five o'clock that evening Con Ripley came jauntily to the plant of
the Brightlight Electric Company. Con was the engineer, and the world
was a very good joke to him, although not such a joke that he ever
overlooked his own interests. He spruced up considerably outside of
working hours, did Con, and, although he was nearing forty, considered
himself very much a ladies' man, also an accomplished athlete, and
positively the last word in electrical knowledge. He was donning his
working garments in very leisurely fashion when a short,
broad-shouldered, thickset young man came back toward him from the
office.
"You're Con Ripley?" said the new-comer by way of introduction.
"Maybe," agreed Con. "Who are you?"
"I'm the Assistant Works," observed Professor Henry H. Bates.
"Oh!" said Mr. Ripley in some wonder, looking from the soft cap of Mr.
Bates to the broad, thick tan shoes of Mr. Bates, and then back up to
the wide-set eyes. "I hadn't heard about it."
"No?" responded Mr. Bates. "Well, I came in to tell you. I don't know
enough about electricity to say whether you feed it with a spoon or
from a bottle, but I'm here, just the same, to notice that the juice
slips through the wires all right to-night, all right."
"The hell you are!" exclaimed Mr. Ripley, taking sudden umbrage at
both tone and words, and also at the physical attitude of Mr. Bates,
which had grown somewhat threatening. "All right, Mr. Works," and Mr.
Ripley began to step out of his overalls; "jump right in and push
juice till you get black in the face, while I take a little vacation.
I've been wanting a lay-off for a long time."
"You'll lay on, Bo," dissented Mr. Bates. "Nix on the vacation. That's
just the point. You're going to stick on the job, and I'm going to
stick within four feet of you till old Jim-jams Jones shakes along to
get his morning's morning; and it will be a sign of awful bad luck for
you if the lights in this end of town flicker a single flick any time
to-night."
"Is that it?" Mr. Ripley wanted to know. "And if they should happen to
flicker some what are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know yet," said Biff. "I'll knock your block off first and
think about it afterward!"
Mr. Ripley hastily drew his overalls back on and slipped the straps
over his shoulders with a snap.
"You'll tell me when you're going to do it, won't you?" he asked
banteringly, and, a full head taller than Mr. Bates, glared down at
him a moment in contempt. Then he laughed. "I'll give you ten to one
the lights will flicker," he offered to bet. "I wouldn't stop such a
cunning chance for exercise for real money," and, whirling upon his
heel, Mr. Ripley started upon his usual preliminary examination of
dynamos and engines and boilers.
Quite nonchalantly Mr. Bates, puffing at a particularly villainous
stogie and with his hands resting idly in his pockets, swung after Mr.
Ripley, keeping within almost precisely four feet of him. In the
boiler-room, Ripley, finding Biff still at his heels, said to the
fireman, with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder:
"Rocksey, be sure you keep a good head of steam on to-night if you're
a friend of mine. This is Mr. Assistant Works back here, and he's come
in to knock my block off if the lights flicker."
"Rocksey," a lean man with gray beard-bristles like pins and with
muscles in astounding lumps upon his grimy arms, surveyed Mr. Bates
with a grin which meant volumes.
"Ring a bell when it starts, will you, Con?" he requested.
To this Biff paid not the slightest attention, gazing stolidly at the
red fire where it shone through the holes of the furnace doors; but
when Mr. Ripley moved away Biff moved also. Ripley introduced Biff in
much the same terms to a tall man who was oiling the big,
old-fashioned Corliss, and a sudden gleam came into the tall man's
eyes as he recognized Mr. Bates, but he turned back to his oiling
without smile or comment. Ripley eyed him sharply.
"You'll hold the sponge and water-bottle for me, won't you, Daly?" he
asked, with an evident attempt at jovial conciliation.
Daly deliberately wiped the slender nose of his oil can and went on
oiling.
"What's the matter?" asked Ripley with a frown. "Got a grouch again?"
"Yes, I have," admitted Daly without looking up, and shrugged his
shoulders.
"Then cut it out," said Ripley, "and look real unpeeved when somebody
hands you tickets to the circus."
From that moment Mr. Ripley seemed to take a keen delight in goading
Mr. Bates. He took a sudden dash half-way down the length of the long
room, as if going to the extreme other end of the plant, then suddenly
whirled and retraced his steps to meet Biff coming after him; made an
equally sudden dart for the mysterious switch-board, and seized a
lever as if to throw it, but suddenly changed his mind, apparently,
and went away, leaving Mr. Bates to infer that the throwing of that
particular lever would leave them all in darkness; later, with Biff
ready to spring upon him, he threw that switch to show that it had no
important function to perform at all. To all these and many more
ingenious tricks to humiliate him, Mr. Bates paid not the slightest
attention, but, as calmly and as impassively as Fate, kept as nearly
as he could to the four-foot distance he had promised.
It was about ten o'clock when Biff, interested for a moment in the
switch-board, suddenly missed Ripley, and looking about him hastily he
saw the fireman standing in the door of the boiler-room grinning at
him, while the other workmen--all of whom were of the old regime--were
also enjoying his discomfort; but Daly, catching his eye, nodded
significantly toward the side-door which led upon the street. It was
an almost imperceptible nod, but it was enough for Biff, and he dashed
out of that door. Half a block ahead of him he saw Ripley hurrying,
and took after him with that light, cat-like run which is the height
of effortless and noiseless speed. Ripley, looking back hastily,
hurried into a saloon, and he had scarcely closed the door when Biff
entered after him, in time to see his man standing at the telephone,
receiver in hand. It was the work of but an instant to grab Ripley by
the arm and jerk him away from the 'phone. Quickly recovering his
balance, with a lunge of his whole body Ripley shot a swift fist at
the man who had interfered with him, but Biff, without shifting his
position, jerked his head to one side and the fist shot harmlessly by.
Before another blow could be struck, or parried, the bartender, a
brawny giant, had rushed between them.
"Let us alone, Jeff," panted Ripley. "I've got all I can stand for
from this rat."
"Outside!" said Jeff with cold finality. "You can beat him to a pulp
in the street, Con, but there'll be no scrimmage in this place without
me having a hand in it."
Ripley considered this ultimatum for a moment in silence, and then, to
Biff's surprise, suddenly ran out of the door. It was a tight race to
the plant, and there, with Biff not more than two arms' length behind
him, Ripley jerked at a lever hitherto untouched, and instantly the
place was plunged into complete darkness.
"There!" screamed Ripley.
A second later Biff had grappled him, and together they went to the
floor. It was only a moment that the darkness lasted, however, for
tall Tom Daly stood by the replaced switch, looking down at them in
quiet joy. Immediately with the turning on of the light Biff scrambled
to his feet like a cat and waited for Ripley to rise. It was Ripley
who made the first lunge, which Biff dexterously ducked, and
immediately after Biff's right arm shot out, catching his antagonist a
glancing blow upon the side of the cheek; a blow which drew blood.
Infuriated, again Ripley rushed, but was blocked, and for nearly a
minute there was a swift exchange of light blows which did little
damage; then Biff found his opening, and, swinging about the axis of
his own spine, threw the entire force of his body behind his right
arm, and the fist of that arm caught Ripley below the ear and dropped
him like a beef, just as Bobby came running back from, the office.
"What are you doing here, Biff? What's the matter?" demanded Bobby, as
Ripley, dazed, struggled to his feet, and, though weaving, drew
himself together for another onslaught.
"Matter!" snarled Biff. "I landed on a frame-up, that's all. This
afternoon I saw Sharpe and this Ripley together in a bum wine-room on
River Street, swapping so much of that earnest conversation that the
partitions bulged, and I dropped to the double-cross that's being
handed out to you. I've been trying to telephone you ever since, but
when I couldn't find you I came right down to run the plant. That's
all."
"You're all right, Biff," laughed Bobby, "but I guess we'll call this
a one-round affair, and I'll take charge."
"Don't stop 'em!" cried Daly savagely, turning to Bobby. "Hand it to
him, Biff. He's a crook and an all-round sneak. He beat me out of this
job by underhand means, and there ain't a man in the place that ain't
tickled to death to see him get the beating that's coming to him.
Paste him, Biff!"
"Biff!" repeated Mr. Ripley, suddenly dropping his hands. "Biff who?"
"Mr. Biff Bates, the well-known and justly celebrated ex-champion
middleweight," announced Bobby with a grin. "Mr. Ripley--Mr. Bates."
"Biff Bates!" repeated Con Ripley. "Why didn't some of you guys tell
me this was Biff Bates? Mr. Bates, I'm glad to meet you." And with
much respect he held forth his hand.
"Go chase yourself," growled Mr. Bates, in infinite scorn.
Ripley replied with a sudden volley of abuse, couched in the vilest of
language, but to this Biff made no reply. He dropped his hands in his
coat pockets, and, considering his work done, walked over to the wall
and leaned against it, awaiting further developments.
"Daly," asked Bobby sharply, breaking in upon Ripley's tirade, "are
you competent to run this plant?"
"Certainly, sir," replied Daly. "I should have had the job four years
ago. I was promised it."
"You may consider yourself in charge, then. Mr. Ripley, if you will
walk up to the office I'll pay you off."