"My workroom is good enough!" he exploded. "I told it to Schnitt!"

"Is Schnitt your coat cutter?" asked Johnny, remembering what Constance and Close had said.

Ersten glowered at him.

"He was. Thirty-seven years he worked with me; then he tried to run my business. He is gone. Let him go!"

"He objected to the light in the workroom, didn't he?" went on the cross-examiner, carefully piecing the situation together bit by bit.

"He could see for thirty-seven years, till everybody talks about moving; then he goes crazy," blurted Ersten.

"Won't you look at this place?" he was urged. "Let me show it to you to-morrow."

"I stay where I am," sullenly declared Ersten, still angry. "We miss my train."

Close told the driver to go on. Before Ersten alighted at the terminal, Johnny made one more attempt upon him.

"If a majority of your best customers insisted that they liked the new shop better would you look at the other place?" he asked.

"My customers don't run my business either!" he puffed.

"Good-by," stated Mr. Kurzerhosen, who had been looking steadily at the opposite side of the street throughout the journey. "I thank you."

Close stared at Johnny in silence for a moment after their guests had gone.

"I told you so," he said. "You'll have to give him up as a bad job."

"He's beginning to look like a good job," a.s.serted Johnny. "He can be handled like wax, but you have to melt him. Schnitt's the real reason.

Do you know Schnitt?"

"I am happy to say I do not," laughed Close. "One like Ersten is enough."

"Somebody must lead me to him," declared Johnny. "I'm going to see Schnitt in the morning. I'd call to-night if I didn't have to be the big works at a Coney Island dinner party."

"I don't see how Schnitt can help you," puzzled Close.

"He's the tack in the tire. I can see what happened as well as if I had been there. Ersten knew he ought to move. Lofty tried to buy him and Schnitt tried to force him. Then he got his Dutch up. Schnitt left on account of it. Now Ersten won't do anything."

"You can't budge him an inch," prophesied the banker. "I know him."

"I'll coax him," stated Johnny determinedly. "There's a profit in him, and I have to have it!"

CHAPTER XV

IN WHICH WINNIE CHAPERONS THE ENTIRE PARTY TO CONEY ISLAND

At the last minute, Aunt Pattie Boyden fortunately contracted a toothache--and the Coney Island party was compelled to go unchaperoned.

They tried to be regretful and sympathetic as the six of them climbed into the big touring car, but Ashley Loring found them a solace.

"Never you mind," he soothed them--"Polly will chaperon us."

"You've lost your address book," declared that young lady indignantly.

"Polly Parsons is not the person you have in mind. I'll be old soon enough without that! The chaperon of this party is my adopted sister, Winnie."

"Oh, fun!" accepted the nominee with delight. "We had a course in that at school." And Winnie, in all the glory of her fluffy youthfulness, toyed carefully with the points of her Moorish collar. "I was elected chaperon of the Midnight Fudge Club, and the girls all said that I fooled Old Meow oftener than anybody!"

Thereafter there was no lull in the conversation; for Winnie, once started on school reminiscences, filled all gaps to overflowing; and Sammy Chirp, he of the feeble smile, whose diffidence had denied him the gift of language, gazed on her in rapt and happy stupefaction.

Meanwhile, Johnny Gamble found himself gazing as raptly at Constance until the chaperon, in a brief interlude between reminiscences, caught him at it. She reached over and touched him on the back of the hand with the tip of one soft pink finger. Immediately she held that finger to her right eye and closed her left one, and Johnny felt himself blushing like a school-boy.

There was a trace of resentment in his embarra.s.sment, he found. The strain of being compelled to make a million dollars, before he could tell this only desirable young woman in the world that he loved her, was beginning to oppress him. He wanted to tell her now; but it was a task beyond him to ask her to forfeit her own fortune until he could replace it by another. Times were hard, he reflected.

He was now twelve hours behind his schedule and possessed of sixty thousand dollars less than he should have. At nine o'clock to-morrow morning that deficit would begin to pile up again at the rate of five thousand dollars an hour. By comparison their auto seemed slow, and he spoke to the driver about it. How well Constance Joy was in sympathy with him and followed his thought, was shown by the fact that she heartily agreed with him, though they were already exceeding the Brooklyn speed limit.

"I not only want to be the chaperon but the dictator of this tour,"

declared Winnie when they alighted at the big playground. "I've never been here before, and I don't want anybody to tell me anything I'm going to see."

"It's your party," announced Johnny promptly. "Let's be plumb vulgar about it." And he thrust a big roll of bills into her hands.

"You're a darling!" she exclaimed, her eyes glistening with delight.

"May I kiss him, girls?"

"Ask Johnny," laughed Polly, but Johnny had disappeared behind the others of the party.

It took Winnie five minutes to chase him down, and she caught him, with the a.s.sistance of Constance, in the thickest crowd and in the best-lighted s.p.a.ce on Surf Avenue, where Constance held him while he received his reward.

"It's a new game," Johnny confessed, though blushing furiously. "I'll be 'it' any time you say."

"Once is enough," a.s.serted Winnie, entirely unruffled. "Your face is scratchy. Come on, you folks; I'm going to buy you a dinner." And, leading the way into the first likely-looking place, she ordered a comprehensive meal which started with pickles and finished with pie.

Her party was a huge success, for it laughed its way from one end of Coney to the other. It rode on wooden horses; on wobbling camels; in whirling tubs; on iron-billowed oceans; down trestled mountains; through painted caves--on everything which had rollers, or runners, or supporting arms. It withstood shocks and b.u.mps and dislocations and dizziness--and it ran squarely into Heinrich Schnitt!

Three tables, placed end to end at the rail of a Shoot-the-Chutes lake, were required to accommodate Heinrich Schnitt's party. First, there was Heinrich himself, white as wax and stoop-shouldered and extremely clean. At the other end of the table sat Mama Schnitt, who bulged, and always had b.u.t.ter on her thumb. To the right of Heinrich sat Gross.m.u.tter Schnitt, in a black sateen dress, with her back bowed like a new moon and her little old face withered like a dried white rose.

Next sat young Heinrich Schnitt and his wife, Milly, who was very fashionable and wore a lace shirt-waist--though she was not so fashionable that she was ashamed of any of the rest of the party.

Between young Heinrich and Milly sat their little Henry and little Rosa and little Milly and the baby, all stiffly starched and round-faced and red-cheeked. Besides these were Carrie, whose husband was dead; and Carrie's Louis; and Willie Schnitt with Flora Kraus, whom he was to marry two years from last Easter; and Lulu, who was pretty, and went with American boys in the face of broken-hearted opposition.

In front of each member of the party--except the baby--was a gla.s.s of beer and a "hot dog", and down the center of the long table were three pasteboard shoe boxes, full of fine lunch, flanking Flora Kraus' fancy basket of potato salad and fried chicken, as well prepared as any those Schnitts could put up.

It was Constance who, walking quietly with Johnny, discovered Heinrich Schnitt in the midst of his throng and casually remarked it.

"There's the nice old German who cuts my coats," she observed.

"Schnitt!" exclaimed Johnny, so loudly that she was afraid Schnitt might hear him. "Let me hear you talk to him."