Still undecided, but carrying seriously the thought that he must overlook no opportunity if he was to prove himself the successful man that his father had so ardently wished him to become, Bobby dropped into the Idlers" Club for lunch, where Nick Allstyne and Payne Winthrop hailed him as one returned from the dead.
"Just the chap," declared Nick. "Stan Rogers has written me that I"m to sc.r.a.pe the regular crowd together and come up to his new Canadian lodge for a hunt. Stag affair, you know. Real sport and no pink-coat pretense."
"Sorry, Nick," said Bobby, pluming himself a trifle upon his steadfastness to duty, "but I know what Stan"s stag affairs are like.
It would mean two weeks at least, and I could not spare that much time from the city."
"Business again!" groaned Payne in mock dismay. "This grasping greed for gain is blighting the most promising young men of our avaricious country. Why, it"s positively shameful, Bobby, when your father must have left you over three million."
"Two hundred and fifty thousand, so far as I"m allowed to inquire just now," corrected Bobby; "and I"m ordered to go into business with that and prove that I"m not such a blithering idiot that I can"t be trusted with the rest of it, whatever there is."
"But I thought you"d had your trial by fire and pulled out of it,"
interposed Nick. "I heard that you had sold your interests or something, and when I saw a new sign over the store I knew that it was true. Sensible thing, I call it."
"Sensible!" winced Bobby. "You"re allowing me a mighty pleasant way out of it, but the fact of the matter is that I lost in such a stinging way I"m bound to get back into the game and do nothing else until I win," and he explained how Silas Trimmer had performed upon him a neat and delicate operation in commercial surgery.
They were properly sympathetic; not that they cared much about business, but if Bobby had entered any game whatsoever in which he had been soundly beaten, they could quite understand his desire to stay in that game until he could show points on the right side.
"Nevertheless," Nick urged, "you ought to take a little breathing spell in between."
All through lunch, and through the game of billiards which followed, they strove to make him see the error of his ways, but Bobby was obdurate, and at last they gave him up as a bad job, with the grave prediction that later he would find himself nothing more nor less than a beast of burden. When he left them Bobby was surprised at himself.
For a time he had feared that in his declaration of such close attention to business he might be posing; but he found that to miss a stag hunting party, which heretofore had been one of his keenest delights, weighed upon him not at all; found actually that he would far rather stay in the city to engage in the game of finance which was unfolding before him! He came upon this surprising discovery while he was on his way across to a side street, where, on the fourth floor of a store and warehouse building, he let himself in at a wide door with a latch-key and entered the gymnasium of Biff Bates. That gentleman, in trunks, sweater and sandals, was padding all alone around and around the edge of the hall at a steady jog, which, after twenty solid minutes, had left no effect whatever upon his respiration.
"Getting fat as a butcher again," he announced as he trotted steadily around to Bobby, suddenly stopping short with an expansive grin across his wide face and a handshake that it took an athlete to withstand.
"Got to cut it down or it"ll put me on the blink. What"s the best thing you know, chum?"
"How does this. .h.i.t you?" asked Bobby, taking from his pocket the check Johnson had given him that morning.
Mr. Bates looked at it with his hands behind him.
"Pleased to make your acquaintance," he said to the slip of paper, nodding profoundly.
"Oh, everybody"s friendly to these," said Bobby, indorsing the check.
"It is for the new gymnasium," he explained. "Now, partner, turn loose and monopolize the physical training business of this city."
"Partner!" scorned Mr. Bates. "Look here, old pal, there"s only one way I"ll take this big ticket, and that is that you"ll drag down your split of the profits."
"But don"t I on this place?" protested Bobby.
"Nit!" retorted Mr. Bates with infinite scorn. "You put them right back into the business, but that don"t go any more. If we start this big joint it"s got to be partners right, see? Or else take back this wealthy handwriting. I don"t guess I want it, anyhow. From past performances you need all the money in the world, and ten thousand simoleons will put a crimp in any wad."
"No," laughed Bobby; "you"re saving it for me when you take it. I"ve just read a very nice note, left for me by the governor, that I"ll be a fool and lose anyhow."
Mr. Bates grinned.
"You will, all right, all right, if you"re going into business," he admitted, and stuffed the check in the upturned cuff of his sweater.
"After these profit-and-loss artists get your goat on all the starts your old man left you, maybe I"ll have to put up the eats and sleeps for you anyhow; huh?" and Mr. Bates laughed with keen enjoyment of this delicately expressed idea. "How are you going to divorce yourself from the rest of it, Bobby?"
"I"m not quite sure," said Bobby. "You know that big stretch of swamp land, out on the Millberg Road?"
"Where Paddy Dolan fell in and died from drinkin" too much water? Sure I do."
"Well, it has been suggested to me that I buy it, drain it, fill it, put in paved streets, cut it up into building lots and sell it."
"And build it full of these pale yellow shacks that the honest working slob buys with seventeen years of his wages, and then loses the shack?" Biff incredulously wanted to know.
"You guessed wrong, Biff," laughed Bobby. "Just selling the lots will be enough for me. What do you think of it?"
"I don"t know," said Mr. Bates thoughtfully. "I know they frame up such stunts and boost "em strong in the papers, and if any of these real-estate sharps is working just for their healths they"ve been stung from all I"ve seen of "em. But the main point is, who"s the guy that"s tryin" to lead you to it?"
"Oh, that part"s all right," replied Bobby with perfect a.s.surance.
"The man who wants me to finance this, and who has already bought some of the land, was one of my father"s right-hand men for nearly thirty years."
"Then that"s all right," agreed Mr. Bates. "But say!" he suddenly exclaimed as a new thought struck him; "it"s a wonder this right-mitt mut of your father"s didn"t make the old man fall for it long ago, if it"s such a hot m.u.f.fin."
"He did try it," confessed Bobby with hesitation for the second time that day; "but the governor always complained that he had too many other irons in the fire."
"He did, _did_ he?" Mr. Bates wanted to know, fixing accusing eyes on Bobby. "Then don"t be the fall guy for any other touting. Your old man knew this business dope from Sheepshead Bay to Oakland. You take it from me that this tip ain"t the one best bet."
Bobby left the gymnasium with a certain degree of dissatisfaction, not only with Mr. Applerod"s scheme but with the fact that wherever he went his father"s business wisdom was thrown into his teeth. That evening, drawn to the atmosphere into which events had plunged him, he dined at the Traders" Club. As he pa.s.sed one of the tables Silas Trimmer leered up at him with the circular smile, which, bisected by a row of yellow teeth and hooded with a bristle of stubby mustache, had now come to aggravate him almost past endurance. To-night it made him approach his dinner with vexation, and, failing to find the man he had sought, he finished hastily. As he went out, Silas Trimmer, though looking straight in his direction, did not seem to be at all aware of Bobby"s approach. He was deep in a business discussion with his priggish son-in-law.
"It"s a great opportunity," he was loudly insisting. "If I can secure that land I"ll drain and improve it and cut it up into building lots.
This city is ripe for a suburban boom."
That settled it with Bobby. No matter what arguments there might be to the contrary, if Silas Trimmer had his eye on that piece of property, Bobby wanted it.
Applerod, though eagerness brought him early, had no sooner entered the study next morning than Bobby, who was already dressed for business and who had his machine standing outside the door, met him briskly.
"Keep your hat on, Applerod," he ordered. "We"ll go right around and buy the rest of that property at once."
"I thought those figures I left last night would convince you," beamed Mr. Applerod.
There is no describing the delight and pride with which that highly-gratified gentleman followed the energetic young Mr. Burnit to the curb, nor the dignity with which, a few minutes later, he led the way into the office of one Thorne, real-estate dealer.
"Mr. Thorne, Mr. Robert Burnit," said Mr. Applerod, hastening straight to business. "Mr. Burnit has come around to close the deal for that Westmarsh property."
Mr. Thorne was suavity itself as he shook hands with Mr. Burnit, but the most aching regret was in his tone as he spoke.
"I"m very sorry indeed, Mr. Burnit," he stated; "but that property, which, by the way, seems very much in demand, pa.s.sed out of my hands yesterday afternoon."
"To whom?" Mr. Applerod excitedly wanted to know. "I think you might have let us have time to turn around, Thorne. I spoke about it to you yesterday morning, you know, and said that I felt quite hopeful Mr.
Burnit would buy it."
"I know," said Mr. Thorne, politely but coldly; "and I told you at the time we talked about it that I never hold anything in the face of a bona fide offer."
"But who has it?" Bobby insisted, more eager now to get it, since it had slipped away from him, than ever before.
"The larger portion of it, the ninety-two acres adjoining Mr.
Applerod"s twenty," Mr. Thorne advised him, "was taken up by Miles, Eddy and Company. The north eight acres are owned by Mr. Silas Trimmer, and I am quite positive, from what Mr. Trimmer told me, not two hours later, that this parcel is not for sale."