Bojo was silent.

"No, no, Bojo; don't come to me with any c.o.c.k-and-bull story like that--"

"Roscy, it _is_ a lie. I was completely in the dark myself; but I won't touch a cent of it until your losses are squared, every dollar of them!"

"So that's the game, eh?" said Marsh, laughing. "Well you go plump to the devil!

"Roscy!" said Bojo, jumping up and seizing his arm. "At least let me square up what you lost. Hold up. Wait a second, don t go off half-c.o.c.ked! Fred's got to be hauled out of this; it's not only bankruptcy, it's a darned sight worse--it's his word, his honor--a woman's money, too. You know him--he's weak, he won't stand up under it.

Good G.o.d, you don't want me to have his life on my conscience?"

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to make Fred believe what I told you--it's the only way. If you play into the game he'll believe it. Good Lord, Roscy, this thing's bad enough as it is. You don't think I could profit one cent while you fellows were cleaned out by my own fault?"

"Look here," said Marsh, sitting down, "it isn't your fault. I gambled, that's all, and lost. I gambled before on your advice and won.

Fifty-fifty, that's all. Now Fred's different. I'll admit it. You can do what you please with him; that's between you two. If you've got to make him believe I'm doing the same, to make him take the money--all right; but if you come around again to me with any such insulting proposition, Tom Crocker, there'll be trouble."

Bojo clasped and unclasped his hands in utter helplessness. Then he glanced at Granning.

"You've done what you could," said Granning, shaking his head.

"A rotten mess. I feel rotten," said Bojo slowly.

Marsh, relenting, clapped him on the shoulder affectionately. "Mighty white of you, Bojo--and don't think for a moment any one's blaming you!"

"I'm not sure how I feel myself," said Bojo slowly.

"Drake used you, Tom," said Granning quietly. "He'd figured out you'd be watched--the old decoy game."

"No, no," said Bojo warmly. "He did not, I'm sure of that. He particularly warned me not to do anything on my own hook without consulting him. It was my fault-- I jumped at conclusions!"

Granning and Marsh laughed.

"By George, if I thought that!" said Bojo, rising up.

"Don't think anything," said Marsh quietly. "It's all in the game anyhow!" Suddenly he stopped and, the journalistic instinct awakening, said: "You say Drake bought Pittsburgh & New Orleans--what do you mean?"

"Bought control, of course, and sold it back at midnight to Gunther & Co. for a profit of ten millions."

"Repeat that," said Marsh, aghast. "Good Lord! What? When? Where was the sale? For G.o.d's sake, Bojo, don't you know you've got the biggest story of the year? Three-twenty now. It's 'good-night' to our composing-room at half past. Talk it fast and I can make it."

Hastily, under his prompting, Bojo recalled details and sc.r.a.ps of information. Three minutes later Marsh was at the telephone and they heard the shouted frantic orders.

"_Morning Post?_ Who's on the long wait? Hill? Give him to me--on the jump. d.a.m.n it, this is Marsh! h.e.l.lo, Ed? Hold your press men for an extra. We've got a smashing beat. Front page and the biggest head you can put on! Play it up for all you're worth. Ready: Dan Drake bought control...." The outlines in staccato, dramatic sentences, followed, then directions to get Gunther, Drake, Fontaine, and others on the wire.

Then silence, and Marsh burst through the room and down the stairs in a racket that threatened to wake the house.

Granning and Bojo sat on, watching the restless, heavy figure on the couch, too feverishly awake for sleep, talking in broken phrases, while the white mists came into the room and the city began to wake. At four o'clock Doris called up from long distance. Bojo had completely forgotten her in the tension of the night and rather guiltily hastened to rea.s.sure her. Gladys was at her side, anxious to hear from Fred, to learn if she might come to his a.s.sistance, wondering why he had not sent her word--alarmed.

He invented a lie to clear the situation--a friend who was in desperate straits--with whom Fred was watching out the night.

At six o'clock DeLancy rose up suddenly, disheveled and haggard, staring at them, bewildered at the pressure of the straps. "What the devil's happened?"

Granning rose and released him. "You were rather obstreperous last night, young man," he said quietly. "We were afraid you might dent the fire-escape or carry off the mantel. How are you?"

"Oh, good G.o.d!" said DeLancy, sinking his head in his hands with a groan, suddenly recalling the pool.

"If you hadn't gone off like a bad Indian," said Bojo sternly, "you'd be celebrating in a different way." Then, as Fred without interest continued oblivious, he went over and struck him a resounding blow between the shoulders. "Wake up there. I've been trying to beat it into you all night. We haven't lost a cent. The pool went through like a charm. Drake fooled the whole bunch!"

"What--what do you mean?" said DeLancy, staring up.

"The running down was only the first step; the real game was to buy up the control. All our selling short was just bluff, charged up to the expense account and nothing else."

"All bluff," repeated Fred in a daze. "I don't seem to understand. I can't get it."

"Well, get this then--feast your eyes on it," said Bojo, sitting beside him, his arm about his shoulder and the check held before his eyes.

"That's profit--my part out of ten millions Drake cleaned up by selling out to the Gunther crowd. Listen." He repeated in detail the story of the night, adding: "Now do you see it? Every cent we lost bearing the stock goes to expenses--that's understood."

"You mean--" DeLancy rose, steadied himself, and lurched against a chair. "You mean what I lost--what I--"

"What you've lost and Louise's losses, too," said Bojo quickly--"every cent is paid by the pool. There wasn't the slightest question about that!"

"Is that the truth?"

"Yes."

Fred's sunken eyes rested on Bojo's an interminable moment, and the agony written on that fevered face steeled Crocker in his resolve.

Presently DeLancy, as though convinced, turned away.

"Good Lord, I thought I was done for!" he said in a whisper. His lip trembled, he caught at his throat, and the next moment his racked body was shaken with convulsive sobs.

"Let yourself go, Fred; it's all right--everything's all right," said Bojo hastily. He left the den, nodding to Granning, and went to his bedroom. His bag was still on the bed, where he had thrown it unopened.

He took out his clothes mechanically, feeling the weariness of the wasted night, and suddenly on the top of a folded jacket he found a card, in Patsie's writing; a few words only, timidly offered.

"I hope, oh, I do hope everything will come all right," and below these two lines that started reveries in his eyes, the signature was not Patsie, but Drina.

When he came into the den again after a hasty toilet, DeLancy had got hold of himself again.

"Better, old boy?" said Bojo, pulling his ear.

"If you knew--if you knew what I'd been through," said Fred with a quick breath.

"I know," said Bojo, shuddering instinctively. "Now let's get to business. You'll feel a lot better when you tidy up your bank account.

What did you lose?"

"I say, Bojo," said DeLancy, avoiding his glance, "on your honor straight this is all right, isn't it?"

"Sure!"