Johnny walked into the Lofty establishment with the feeling of a Napoleon. "How much will you give me for the Ersten lease?" he suggested out of a clear sky.

Young Willis Lofty sighed in sympathy with his bank-account.

"Have you really secured it?" he asked.

"I'm the winner," Johnny cheerfully a.s.sured him.

"If it's too much I'll build that tunnel," warned Lofty.

"Make me an offer."

"A hundred and twenty-five thousand."

"Nothing doing," stated Johnny with a smile. "There's no use fussing up our time though. I can tell you, to the cent, how much I must have. At four o'clock to-day I shall be nineteen hours behind my schedule, and I want a day for a fresh start, which makes it twenty-six. At five thousand an hour, that makes a hundred and thirty thousand dollars. I paid Ersten a hundred thousand. Grand total: two hundred and thirty thousand."

"I don't understand your figures," protested Lofty.

"It's a private code," laughed the leaseholder, "but that's the price."

"I won't pay it," threatened the young merchant.

"Build your tunnel then," returned Johnny--but pleasantly, nevertheless. "Don't let's be nervous, Lofty. I might ask you a lot more, but that's the exact amount the system I'm playing calls for. I don't want any more and I won't take any less!"

Lofty studied his face contemplatively for a moment and rang for his treasurer.

"How did you get Ersten?" he was curious to know; and Johnny told him, to their mutual enjoyment.

At the nearest drug store Johnny called up Constance.

"Heinrich Schnitt is fixing your coat!" he announced.

"Danke!" she cried. "Did you get the lease?"

"Yes, and sold it to Lofty," he enthusiastically informed her. "The schedule is paid up until four o'clock to-morrow afternoon."

"Oh!" she gasped. "Wait a minute." He held the telephone while she consulted the score board and did some figuring. "That makes five hundred thousand of your million! Just half!"

"I'm coming around to see that diagram," he hastily stated.

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH THE STRAW SAILOR HAT OF JOHNNY PLAYS AN EMBARRa.s.sING ROLE

"My dear," observed Mr. Courtney as he and his wife approached the jessamine summer-house, "do you pick your week-end guests from a city directory or do you draw the names from a hat?" Constance Joy, sitting in the summer-house with Johnny Gamble, rose and laughed lightly as a warning.

"My dear," retorted Mrs. Courtney very sweetly indeed and all unheeding of the laugh, "I pick them by a better system than you employ when you invite stag parties. You usually need to be introduced to your guests.

Just whom would you like to have me send home?"

"Paul Gresham for one," replied Courtney bluntly, "and the entire Wobbles tribe, with their friend Birchard, for some more."

"I could be perfectly happy without them myself, Ben," sighed his wife, "but the Wobbles bachelors invite themselves whenever they please, and Paul Gresham was asked on account of Constance."

Constance, in the summer-house, laughed again, although less happily than before, and dropped her portfolio as loudly as possible, while Johnny Gamble merely grinned.

"That's what I wondered about," persisted the grizzled financier, as oblivious to the noises from within the jessamine bower as his wife had been. "I should have thought that on Constance's account you would have dropped Gresham."

"How absurd!" laughed Mrs. Courtney. "Why, she is to marry him!"

"I don't believe it!" indignantly denied Courtney. "She got him in a will with a million dollars, and it isn't enough!"

Constance's foot, twitching nervously, rustled a dry leaf, and her heart popped into her throat lest the noise should be heard. The time had pa.s.sed for wishing to be discovered.

Johnny Gamble had ceased to grin and was looking scared.

"Mr. Gresham is of a very old family," Mr. Courtney's wife reminded him.

"Age is no recommendation for an egg," her husband kindly informed her.

"Gresham is second cousin to Lord Yawpingham, and if they had any sense of shame they'd murder each other for the relationship."

"Oh, Ben, I'm sure you're harsh," protested the optimistic Mrs.

Courtney.

"I'm so charitable as to be almost weak," he insisted with a grin.

"Seriously; though, Lucy, Gresham's not square. He tried to destroy Johnny Gamble's credit with me two or three weeks ago in a most underhanded manner."

There was a moment of silence, during which the pair in the bower gazed straight up at nothing.

"You seem to like Mr. Gamble," mused Mrs. Courtney. "Everybody does, however. Where is he from?"

"Some little town up the state," returned Courtney indifferently. "He's a fine young fellow, square as a die and a hustler! He's going to marry Constance Joy."

Johnny Gamble, turning the color of a tomato, dropped his sailor straw hat, and its edge hit the tiled floor with a noise like the blow of an ax. Constance could have murdered him for it. They missed a lot of conversation just about then.

Courtney and his wife rounded the corner of the bower and paused a moment before turning into it.

"Really, Ben," defended Mrs. Courtney, returning to the criticism that her husband by now wished he had not made, "except for the epidemic of Wobbleses this would have been a delightful week-end party: Constance, Polly, fluffy little Winnie, Mrs. Follison and our own two girls; Mr.

Loring, Val Russel, Bruce Townley, Sammy Chirp, Mr. Gamble and Mr.

Gresham. For your entertainment you'll have Mr. Washer, Mr. Close and Colonel Bouncer, with whom you will play poker from the time they reach here this afternoon until they go away Monday morning."

"It was a good party!" agreed Courtney, "By the way, I owe my poker guests to Johnny Gamble. He asked if they would be here, and seemed to want them. He's a live member! Did I ever tell you how he helped me skin old Mort Washer?" And, changing his mind about entering the jessamine bower, Mr. Courtney, explaining with great glee the skinning of his friend Mort Washer, took the other path and the two strolled away without having seen or heard the luckless eavesdroppers.

The miserable pair in the bower, exhibiting various shades of red, looked steadfastly out into the blue, blue sky for some minutes in stupefied silence. Johnny presently picked up his sailor straw hat and surveyed the nick in its brim with ingenuous interest.

"I bought that hat in Baltimore," he inanely observed.