Part 17 (2/2)

”That's my first good laugh to-day,” returned Johnny. ”I have no funds there.”

”Gresham thought you had,” said Loring quietly. ”A trap was laid to make him think so, and he walked right into it.”

”As soon as I have any place to keep a goat I'll get Gresham's,”

declared Johnny. ”So he's really in on it.”

”He's scared,” stated Loring.

”I hope he's right,” returned Johnny. ”I do wish they'd let me alone, though, till Thursday, June first.”

On Sat.u.r.day, the twenty-ninth, and on Monday, the first of May, Johnny Gamble was compelled reluctantly to enter ”flivvers” against his days'

labors; and on Tuesday at two o'clock Constance called him up.

”Guilty!” he acknowledged as soon as he heard her voice. ”I'm caught up with my schedule. At four o'clock I'll be ten thousand dollars behind.

Everything I touch crawls right back in its sh.e.l.l.”

”They'll come out again,” she encouraged him. ”I didn't call you up, as your score keeper, to tell you that from this hour you will be running in debt to yourself, but that one of your projects has come to life again.”

”Which one is that?” he eagerly inquired.

”The property owned by that lady on Riverside Drive. I see by this morning's paper that the working-girls' home is not to be built. I suppose you already know it, however.”

”I overlooked that scandal,” he confessed. ”Wasn't the building to be ugly enough?”

”This was a little obscure paragraph,” she told him. ”It was rather a joking item, based upon the fact that there is a great deal of ill feeling among the neighbors, who clubbed together and bought the option to prevent a building of this character from being erected. I'm so glad you didn't know about it!”

Her enthusiasm was contagious. Johnny himself was glad. It seemed like a terrific waste of time to have to wait a month before he could tell her what he thought of her; but he had to have that million!

”You're a careful score keeper,” he complimented her. ”I'll go right after that property. Does the item say who controls it now?”

”I have the paper before me. I'll read you the names,” she returned with businesslike preparedness: ”Mr. James Jameson-Guff, Mr. G. W.

Mason, Mr. Martin Sheats, Mr. Edward Kettle.”

”All the neighbors,” he commented. ”They don't like honest working-girls, I guess. That's a fine crowd of information you've handed me. I ought to give you a partners.h.i.+p in that million.”

”You just run along or you'll be too late!” she urged him. ”I'll take my commission in the five-thousand-dollar hours you donate to the Babies' Fund Fair. By the way, from whom do you suppose that option was purchased?”

”Gresham?” inquired Johnny promptly and with such a thrill of startled intensity in his tone that Constance could not repress a giggle.

”No, James Collaton,” she informed him. ”That's all the news. Hurry, now! Report to me, won't you, as soon as you find out whether you can secure the property? I haven't made an entry on my score board since last Wednesday night. Good-by.”

”Good-by,” said Johnny reluctantly; but he held the telephone open, trying to think of something else to say until he heard the click which told him that she had hung up.

Last Wednesday night! Why, that was the night he had given the dinner in celebration of his pa.s.sing the quarter-of-a-million mark; and after he had taken her home from the dinner she had sat up to rule and mark that elaborate score board! Somehow his lungs felt very light and buoyant.

<script>