"As long as he avoids a close shave," supplemented Bobby. "But what brings you into the--the busy marts of trade so early in the morning?"

"My trusteeship," she answered him loftily, producing some doc.u.ments from her hand-bag. "And I'm in a hurry. Sign them papers."

"Them there papers," he kindly corrected, and seating himself at his desk he examined the minor transfers perfunctorily and signed them.

"I'm afraid I'm a failure as a trustee," she told him. "I ought to have had more power. I ought to have been authorized to keep you out of bad company. How came Mr. Sharpe to call on you, for instance?"

"To make my fortune," he gravely a.s.sured her. "Mr. Sharpe wants me to go into the Brightlight Electric Company with him."

"I can imagine your courteous adroitness in putting the man back in his place," she laughed. "How preposterous! Why, he's utterly impossible!"

"Ye-e-es?" questioned Bobby. "But you know, Agnes, this isn't a pink-tea affair. It's business, which is at the other end of the world."

"You're not honestly defending him, Bobby?" she protested incredulously. "Why, I do believe you are considering the man seriously!"

"Why not?" he persisted, arguing against his own convictions as much as against hers. "We want me to make some money, don't we? To make a success that will let me marry you?"

"I'm not to say so, remember," she reminded him.

"Father put no lock on my tongue, though," he reminded her in turn; "so I'll just lay down the dictum that as soon as I succeed in any one business deal I'm going to marry you, and I don't care whether the commodity I handle is electricity or potatoes."

"But Frank L. Sharpe!" she exclaimed, with shocked remembrance of certain whispered stories she had heard.

"Really, I don't see where he enters into it," persisted Bobby. "The Brightlight Electric Company is a stock corporation, in which Mr.

Sharpe happens to own some shares; that is all."

She shook her head.

"I can't seem to like it," she told him, and rose to go.

The door opened, and Johnson, with much solemnity, though in his eyes there lurked a twinkle, brought in a card which, with much stiff ceremony, he handed to Bobby.

"Professor Henry H. Bates," read Bobby in some perplexity, then suddenly his brow cleared and he laughed uproariously. "Come right in, Biff," he called.

In response to this invitation there entered upon Agnes' vision a short, chunky, broad-shouldered young man in a checked green suit and red tie, who, finding himself suddenly confronted by a dazzlingly beautiful young lady, froze instantly into speechless awkwardness.

"This is my friend and partner, Mr. Biff--Mr. Henry H. Bates--Miss Elliston," introduced Bobby, smiling.

Agnes held out her hand, which suddenly seemed to dwindle in size as it was clasped by the huge palm of Mr. Bates.

"I have heard so much of you from Mr. Burnit, and always nice things,"

she said, smiling at him so frankly that Mr. Bates, though his face flushed red, instantly thawed.

"Bobby's right there with the boost," commented Mr. Bates, and then, not being quite satisfied with that form of speech, he huskily corrected it to: "Burnit's always handing out those pleasant words."

This form of expression seeming also to be somewhat lacking in polish, he relapsed into more redness, and wiped the strangely moist palms of his hands upon the sides of his coat.

"He doesn't talk about any but pleasant people," Agnes a.s.sured him.

After she had gone Mr. Bates looked dazedly at the door through which she had pa.s.sed out, then turned to Bobby.

"Carries a full line of that conversation," he commented, "but I like to fall for it. And say! I'll bet she's game all right; the kind that would stick to a guy when he was broke, in jail and had the smallpox.

That's your steady, ain't it, Bobby?"

Coming from any one else this query might have seemed a trifle blunt, but Bobby understood precisely how Mr. Bates meant it, and was gratified.

"She's the real girl," he admitted.

"I'm for her," stoutly a.s.serted Mr. Bates, as he extracted a huge wad of crumpled bills from his trousers pocket. "Any old time she wants anybody strangled or stabbed and you ain't handy, she can call on your friend Biff. Here's your split of last month's pickings at the gym.

One hundred and eighty-one large, juicy simoleons; count 'em, one hundred and eighty-one!" And he threw the money on the desk.

"Everything paid?" asked Bobby.

"Here's the receipts," and from inside his vest Mr. Bates produced them. "Ground rent, light, heat, payroll, advertising, my own little old weekly envelope and everything; and I got one-eighty-one in my other kick for my share."

"Very well," said Bobby; "you just put this money of mine into a fund to buy further equipments when we need them."

"Nit and nix; also no!" declared Mr. Bates emphatically. "This time the bet goes as she lays. You take a real money drag-down from now on."

"Mr. Johnson," called Bobby through the open door, "please take charge of this one hundred and eighty-one dollars, and open a separate account for my investment in the Bates Athletic Hall. It might be, Biff," he continued, turning to Mr. Bates, "that yours would turn out to be the only safe business venture I ever made."

"It ain't no millionaire stunt, but it sure does pay a steady divvy,"

Mr. Bates a.s.sured him. "I see a man outside sc.r.a.ping the real-estate sign off the door. Is he going to paint a new one?"

"I don't know," said Bobby, frowning. "I shall, of course, get into something very shortly, but I've not settled on anything as yet. The best thing that has turned up so far is an interest in the Brightlight Electric Company offered me to-day by Frank L. Sharpe."

"What!" shrieked Biff in a high falsetto, and slapped himself smartly on the wrist. "Has he been here? I thought it seemed kind of close.

Give me a cigarette till I fumigate."

"What's the matter with the Brightlight Electric Company?" demanded Bobby.

"Nothing. It's a cinch so far as I know. But Sharpe! Why, say, Bobby, all the words I'd want to use to tell you about him have been left out of the dictionary so they could send it through the mails."

Bobby frowned. The certain method to have him make allowances for a man was to attack that man. When he arrived at the Idlers' Club at noon, however, he was given another opportunity for Christian charity.

Nick Allstyne and Payne Winthrop and Stanley Rogers were discussing something with great indignation when he joined them, and Nick drew him over to the bulletin board, where was displayed the application of Frank L. Sharpe, proposed by Clarence Smythe, Silas Trimmer's son-in-law, and seconded by another undesirable who had twice been posted for non-payment of dues.

"There is only one thing about this that commends itself to me, and that is the immaculate and colossal nerve of the proceeding," declared Nick indignantly. "The next thing you know somebody will propose Sam Stone."

At this they all laughed. The Idlers' Club was the one inst.i.tution that stood in no awe of the notorious "boss" of the city and of the state; a man who had never held an office, but who, until the past two years, had controlled all offices; whose methods were openly dishonest; who held underground control of every public utility and a score of private enterprises. The idea of Stone as an applicant for membership in the Idlers' Club was a good joke, but the actual application of Sharpe was too serious for jesting. Nevertheless, all this turmoil over the mere name of the man worked a strange reaction in Bobby Burnit.

"After all, business is business," he declared to himself, "and I don't see where Sharpe's personality figures in this Brightlight Electric deal, especially since I am to have control."

Accordingly he directed Chalmers and Johnson to make a thorough investigation of that corporation.

CHAPTER XIV

BOBBY ENTERS A BUSINESS ALLIANCE, A SOCIAL ENTANGLEMENT AND A QUARREL WITH AGNES