Polly cast a sidelong glance at the pretty cousin into whose family she had been adopted. The subject of Gresham was a painful one; and Johnny felt his blundering bluntness keenly.

"There isn't any Gresham," laughingly a.s.serted Polly. "There never was any Gresham. Let's go to Coney Island to-night."

Both Constance and Johnny gave Polly a silent but sincere vote of thanks.

Willis Lofty, who continued the progressive fortune of his father by prowling about the vast establishment with a microscopic eye, approached Polly with more than a shopkeeper's alacrity.

"You promised to send for me to be your clerk the next time you came in," he chided her.

"I didn't come in this time," she gaily returned. "Mr. Gamble is the customer," and she introduced Constance and the two gentlemen. "Mr.

Gamble wants to buy a silk shawl for a blue-eyed mother with gray wavy hair and baby-pink cheeks."

"There are a lot of pretty shawls here," Constance added, "but none of them seems quite good enough for this kind of a mother."

Young Lofty, himself looking more like a brisk and natty college youth who had come in to buy a gift for his own mother than the successful business man he was, glanced at the embarra.s.sed Johnny with thorough understanding.

"I think I know what you want," he said pleasantly; and, calling a boy, he gave him some brief instructions. "We have some very beautiful samples of French embroidered silks, just in yesterday, and if I can get them away from our buyer you may have your choice. There's a delicate gray, worked in pink, which would be very becoming to a mother of that description. They're quite expensive, but, I believe, are worth the money."

"That's what I want," stated Johnny. "I understand you're going to build an extension, Mr. Lofty."

The girls gasped and then almost t.i.ttered.

Young Lofty ceased immediately to be the suave master of friendly favors and became the hara.s.sed slave of finance.

"I don't know where you secured your information," he protested.

"I'm a fancy guesser," returned Johnny with a grin.

"I wish you were right," said Lofty soberly. "We have quietly gained possession of nearly all the property in the block, but we're not quite ready to build, nevertheless."

"I can finish the sad story," sympathized Johnny. "One granite-headed ladies' tailor threatens to block the way for thirteen years."

Lofty was surprised by the accuracy of his knowledge. "I'd like to borrow your guesser," he admitted.

Johnny and the girls looked at each other with smiles of infantile glee. They were delighted that they had deduced all this while waiting for a traffic Napoleon to blow his whistle.

"Somebody's been telling," surmised Lofty. "The worst of it is, we own the original lease. Father covered the entire block, in fact."

Johnny's thorough knowledge of New York business conditions enabled him to make another good conjecture.

"Your firm has made money too fast," he remarked. "Your father hoped to build in twenty years, and you need to build in seven."

"He provided much better than that," returned Lofty in quick defense of his father's ac.u.men. "He only allowed ten-year leases; but the one occupied by Ersten came to him with a twenty-year life on it. We've bought off all the other tenants, at startlingly extravagant figures in some cases; but Ersten won't listen."

"Did you rattle your keys?" inquired Johnny, much interested.

"As loudly as possible," returned Lofty, smiling. "I went up three steps at a time until I had offered him a hundred thousand; then I quit. Money wouldn't buy him."

"Then you can't build," innocently remarked Constance.

Willis Lofty immediately displayed his real age in his eyes and his jaws.

"I'll tear down the top part of his building and put a tunnel around him if necessary," he a.s.serted.

"You won't like that any better than Ersten," commented Johnny. "I think I'll have to make another guess for you."

"I like your work," replied Lofty with a smile. "Let's hear it."

"All right. I guess I'll buy Ersten's lease for you."

"You'll have to find another answer, I'm afraid," Lofty hopelessly stated. "I've had a regiment of real estate men helping me devil Ersten to death, but he won't sell."

"Of course he'll sell," declared Johnny confidently. "You can buy anything in New York if you go at it right. Each deal is like a Chinese puzzle. You never do it twice alike."

"Try this one," urged Lofty. "There's a good commission in it."

"Commission? Not for Johnny!" promptly refused that young man; "I'll buy it myself, and hold you up for it."

"If you come at me too strongly I'll build that tunnel," warned Lofty.

"I'll figure it just below tunnel prices," Johnny laughingly a.s.sured him. The gray shawl with the pink relief came up just then, and all four of them immediately bought it for Johnny's sole surviving mother.

CHAPTER XIV

IN WHICH JOHNNY TRIES TO MIX BUSINESS WITH SKAT

Louis Ersten, who puffed redly wherever he did not grayly bristle, met Johnny Gamble half-way. Johnny's half consisted in stating that he had come to see Mr. Ersten in reference to his lease. Mr. Ersten's half consisted in flatly declining to discuss that subject on the premises.

"Here--I make ladies' suits," he explained. "If you come about such a business, with good recommendations from my customers, I talk with you.

Otherwise not."

"I'll talk any place you say," consented Johnny. "Where do you lunch?"

"At August Schoppenvoll's," replied Mr. Ersten with no hint of an intention to disclose where August Schoppenvoll's place might be. "At lunch-time I talk no business; I eat."

The speculator studied those forbidding bushy brows in silence for a moment. Beneath them, between heavy lids, glowed a pair of very stern gray eyes; but at the outward corner of each eye were two deep, diverging creases, which belied some of the sternness.

"Where do you sleep?" Johnny asked.

"I don't talk business in my sleep," a.s.serted Mr. Ersten stoutly, and then he laughed with considerable heartiness, pleased immensely with his own joke and not noticing that it was more than half Johnny's.

After all, Johnny had only implied it; he had said it! Accordingly he relented a trifle. "From four to half-past five, at Schoppenvoll's, I play skat," he added.

"Thank you," said Johnny briskly, and started for the nearest telephone directory. "I'll drop in on you."

"Well," returned Ersten resignedly, "it won't do you any good."