"You don't mean it!" she gasped. "How could you?"

"Why not?" he demanded. "Agnes, it seems quite impossible for you to divorce business and social affairs. I tell you they have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The opportunity Sharpe offered me is a splendid one. Chalmers and Johnson investigated it thoroughly, and both advise me that it is quite an unusually good chance."

"You didn't seem to be able to divorce business and social affairs last night," she reminded him rather sharply, returning to the main point at issue and ignoring all else.

There was the rub. She could not get out of her mind the picture of Mrs. Sharpe chatting gaily with him, smiling up at him and all but fawning upon him, in full view of any number of people who knew both Agnes and Bobby.

"You have made a deliberate choice of your companions, Mr. Burnit, after being warned against them from more than one source," she told him, aflame with indignant jealousy, but speaking with the rigidity common in such quarrels, "and you may abide by your choice."

"Agnes!" he protested. "You don't mean--"

"I mean just this," she interrupted him coldly, "that I certainly can not afford to be seen in public, and don't particularly care to entertain in private, any one who permits himself to be seen in public with, or entertained in private by, the notorious Mrs. Frank L.

Sharpe."

They were both of them pale, both trembling, both stiffened by hurt and rebellious pride. Bobby gazed at her a moment in a panic, and saw no relenting in her eyes, in her pose, in her compressed lips. She was still thinking of the way Mrs. Sharpe had looked at him.

"Very well," said he, quite calmly; "since our arrangements for this evening are off, I presume I may as well accept that invitation to dine at Sharpe's," and with this petty threat he left the house.

At the Idlers' he was met by a succession of grins that were more aggravating because for the most part they were but scantily explained. Nick Allstyne, indeed, did take him into a corner, with a vast show of secrecy, requested him to have an ordinance pa.s.sed, through his new and influential friends, turning Bedlow Park into a polo ground; while Payne Winthrop added insult to injury by shaking hands with him and most gravely congratulating him--but upon what he would not say. Bobby was half grinning and yet half angry when he left the club and went over for his usual half hour at the gymnasium.

Professor Henry H. Bates was also grinning.

"See you're b.u.t.ting in with the swell mob," observed Mr. Bates cheerfully. "Getting your name in the paper, ain't you, along with the fake heavyweights and the divorces?" and before Bobby's eyes he thrust a copy of the yellowest of the morning papers, wherein it was set forth that Mr. and Mrs. Frank L. Sharpe had entertained a notable box party at the Orpheum, the night before, consisting of Samuel Stone, William Garland and Robert Burnit, the latter of whom, it was rumored, was soon to be identified with the larger financial affairs of the city, having already contracted to purchase a controlling interest in the Brightlight Electric Company. The paper had more to say about the significance of Bobby's appearance in this company, as indicating the new political move which sought to ally the younger business element with the progressive party that had been so long in safe, sane and conservative control of munic.i.p.al affairs, except for the temporary setback of the recent so-called "citizens' movement" hysteria. Bobby frowned more deeply as he read on, and Mr. Bates grinned more and more cheerfully.

"Here's where it happens," he observed. "On the level, Bobby, did they hook you up on this electric deal?"

"What's the matter with it?" demanded Bobby. "After thorough investigation by my own lawyer and my own bookkeeper, the Brightlight proves to have been a profitable enterprise for a great many years, and is in as good condition now as it ever was. Why shouldn't I go into it?"

Biff winked.

"Because it's no fun being the goat," he replied. "Say, tell me, did you ever earn a pull with this bunch?"

"No."

"Well, then, why should they hand you anything but the buzzer? If this is a good stunt don't you suppose they'd keep it at home? Don't you suppose that Stone could go out and get half the money in this town, if he wanted it, to put behind a deal that was worth ten per cent. a year and pickings? I don't care what your lawyer or what Johnson says about it, I know the men. This boy Garland is a good sport, all right, but he's for the easy-money crowd every time--and they're going to make the next mayor out of him. Our local Hicks would rather be robbed by a lot of friendly stick-up artists than have their money wasted by a lot of wooden-heads, and after this election the old Stone gang will have their feet right back in the trough; yes! This is the way I figure the dope. They've framed it up to dump the Brightlight Electric, and you're the fall guy. So wear pads in your derby, because the first thing you know the hammer's going to drop on your coco."

"How do you find out so much, Biff?" returned Bobby, smiling.

"By sleeping seven hours a day in place of twenty-four. If some of the marks I know would only cough up for a good, reliable alarm clock they'd be better off."

"Meaning me, of course," said Bobby. "For that I'll have to manhandle you a little. Where's your gloves?"

For fifteen minutes they punched away at each other with soft gloves as determinedly and as energetically as if they were deadly enemies, and then Bobby went back up to his own office. He found Applerod jubilant and Johnson glum. Already Applerod heard himself saying to his old neighbors: "As Frank L. Sharpe said to me this morning--," or: "I told Sharpe--," or: "Say! Sam Stone stopped at my desk yesterday--," and already he began to shine by this reflected glory.

"I hear that you have decided to go into the Brightlight Electric," he observed.

"Signed all the papers this morning," admitted Bobby.

"Allow me to congratulate you, sir," said Applerod, but Johnson silently produced from an index case a plain, gray envelope, which he handed to Bobby.

It was inscribed:

_To My Son Upon His Putting Good Money Into any Public Service Corporation_

and it read:

"When the manipulators of public service corporations tire of skinning the dear public in bulk, they skin individual specimens just to keep in practice. If you have been fool enough to get into the crowd that invokes the aid of dirty politics to help it hang people on street-car straps, just write them out a check for whatever money you have left, and tell your trustee you are broke again; because you are not and never can be of their stripe, and if you are not of their stripe they will pick your bones. Turn a canary loose in a colony of street sparrows and watch what happens to it."

Bobby folded up the letter grimly and went into his private room, where he thought long and soberly. That evening he went out to Sharpe's to dinner. As he was about to ring the bell, he stopped, confronted by a most unusual spectacle. Through the long plate-gla.s.s of the door he could see clearly back through the hall into the library, and there stood Mrs. Sharpe and William Garland in a tableau "that would have given Plato the pip," as Biff Bates might have expressed it had he known about Plato. At that moment Sharpe came silently down the stairs and turned, un.o.bserved, toward the library.

Seeing that his wife and Garland were so pleasantly engaged, he very considerately turned into the drawing-room instead, _and as he entered the drawing-room he lit a cigarette_! Bobby, vowing angrily that there could never be room in the Brightlight for both Sharpe and himself, did not ring the bell. Instead, he dropped in at the first public telephone and 'phoned his regrets.

"By the way," he added, "how soon will you need me again?"

"Not before a week, at least," Sharpe replied.

"Very well, then," said Bobby; "I'll be back a week from to-day."

Immediately upon his arrival down-town he telegraphed the joyous news to Jack Starlett, in Washington, to prepare for an old-fashioned loafing bee.

CHAPTER XV

A STRANGE CONNECTION DEVELOPS BETWEEN ELECTRICITY AND POLITICS

Chalmers, during Bobby's absence, secured all the secret information that he could concerning the Brightlight Electric, but nothing to its detriment transpired in that investigation, and when he returned, Bobby, very sensibly as he thought, completed his investment. He paid his two hundred and fifty thousand dollars into the coffers of the company, and, at the first stock-holders' meeting, voting this stock and the ten shares he had bought from Sharpe at a hundred and seventy-two, he elected his own board of directors, consisting of Chalmers, Johnson, Applerod, Biff Bates and himself, giving one share of stock to each of the other four gentlemen so that they would be eligible. The remaining two members whom he allowed to be elected were Sharpe and J. W. Williams, and the board of directors promptly elected Bobby president and treasurer, Johnson secretary and Chalmers vice-president--a result which gave Bobby great satisfaction. Once he had been frozen out of a stock company; this time he had absolute control, and he found great pleasure in exercising it, though against Chalmers' protest. With swelling triumph he voted to himself, through his "dummy" directors, the salary of the former president--twelve thousand dollars a year--though he wondered a trifle that President Eastman submitted to his retirement with such equanimity, and after he walked away from that meeting he considered his business career as accomplished. He was settled for life if he wished to remain in the business, the salary added to the dividends on two hundred and sixty thousand dollars worth of stock bringing his own individual income up to a quite respectable figure. If there were no further revenue to be derived from the estate of John Burnit, he felt that he had a very fair prospect in life, indeed, and could, no doubt, make his way very nicely.

He had been unfortunate enough to find Agnes Elliston "not at home"

upon the two occasions when he had called since their disagreement upon the subject of the Sharpes, but now he called her up by telephone precisely as if nothing had happened, and explained to her how good his prospects were; good enough, in fact, he added, that he could look matrimony very squarely in the eye.

"Allow me to congratulate you," said Agnes sweetly. "I presume I'll read presently about the divorce that precedes your marriage," and she hung up the receiver; all of which, had Bobby but paused to reflect upon it, was a very fair indication that all he had to do was to jump in his automobile and call on Aunt Constance Elliston, force his way upon the attention of Agnes and browbeat that young lady into an immediate marriage. He chose, on the contrary, to take the matter more gloomily, and Johnson, after worrying about him for three dismal days, consulted Biff Bates. But Biff, when the problem was propounded to him, only laughed.

"His steady has lemoned him," declared Biff. "Any time a guy's making plenty of money and got good health and ain't married, and goes around with an all-day grouch, you can play it for a one to a hundred favorite that his entry's been scratched in the solitaire diamond stakes."

"Uh-huh," responded the taciturn Johnson, and stalked back with grim purpose to the Electric Company's office, of which Bobby and Johnson and Applerod had taken immediate possession.

The next morning Johnson handed to Bobby one of the familiar gray envelopes, inscribed:

_To My Son Upon the Occasion of His Having a Misunderstanding with Agnes Elliston_

He submitted the envelope with many qualms and misgivings, though without apology, but one glance at Bobby's face as that young gentleman read the inscription relieved him of all responsibility in the matter, for if ever a face showed guilt, that face was the face of Bobby Burnit. In the privacy of the president's office Bobby read the briefest note of the many that his forethoughted father had left behind him in Johnson's charge:

"You're a blithering idiot!"

That was all. Somehow, that brief note seemed to lighten the gloom, to lift the weight, to remove some sort of a barrier, and he actually laughed. Immediately he called up the Ellistons. He received the information from the housekeeper that Agnes and Aunt Constance had gone to New York on an extended shopping trip, and thereby he lost his greatest and only opportunity to prove that he had at last been successful in business. That day, all the stock which Frank L. Sharpe had held began to come in for transfer, in small lots of from ten to twenty shares, and inside a week not a certificate stood in Sharpe's name. All the stock held by Williams also came in for transfer. Bobby went immediately to see Sharpe, and, very much concerned, inquired into the meaning of this. Mr. Sharpe was as pleasant as Christmas morning.

"To tell you the truth, Mr. Burnit," said he, "there were several very good reasons. In the first place, I needed the money; in the second place, you were insistent upon control and abused it; in the third place, since the increased capitalization and change of management the quotations on Brightlight Electric dropped from one-seventy-two to one-sixty-five, and I got out before it could drop any lower. You will give me credit for selling the stock privately and in small lots where it could not break the price. However, Mr. Burnit, I don't see where the sale of my stock affects you in any way. You have the Brightlight Electric now in good condition, and all it needs to remain a good investment is proper management."