"I know how to make the Brightlight Electric Company yield me two hundred per cent. dividends within a year or less," he stated.

"Through Stone?" inquired Johnson.

"Through Stone," admitted Bobby, smiling at Johnson's penetration.

"I thought so. I guess your father has summed up, better than I could put it, all there is to be said upon that subject." And from his index-file he produced one of the familiar gray envelopes, inscribed:

_To My Son Robert Upon the Subject of Bribery_

"When a man sells his independence and the faith of his friends he is bankrupt. Both the taker and the giver of a bribe, even when it is called 'preferment,' are like dogs with fleas; they yelp in their sleep; only the man gets callous after a while and the dog doesn't. Whoever the fellow is that's trying to buy your self-respect, go soak him in the eye, and pay your fine."

"For once I agree most heartily with the governor," said Bobby, and as a result he did not go to see Stone. Moreover, Frank L. Sharpe was blackballed at the Idlers' Club with cheerful unanimity, and Bobby figuratively squared his shoulders to receive the blow that he was convinced must certainly fall.

CHAPTER XVI

AGNES APPEARS PUBLICLY WITH MRS. SHARPE AND BIFF BATES HAS A ONE-ROUND Sc.r.a.p

That night, though rather preoccupied by the grave consequences that might ensue on this flat-footed defiance of Stone and his crowd, Bobby went to the theater with Jack Starlett and Jack's sister and mother.

As they seated themselves he bowed gravely across the auditorium to Agnes and Aunt Constance Elliston, who, with Uncle Dan, were entertaining a young woman relative from Savannah. He did not know how the others accepted his greeting; he only saw Agnes, and she smiled quite placidly at him, which was far worse than if she had tilted her head. Through two dreary, interminable acts he sat looking at the stage, trying to talk small talk with the Starletts and remaining absolutely miserable; but shortly before the beginning of the last act he was able to take a quite new and gleeful interest in life, for the young woman from Savannah came fluttering into the Elliston box, bearing in tow the beautiful and vivacious Mrs. Frank L. Sharpe!

Bobby turned his opera-gla.s.ses at once upon that box, and pressed Jack Starlett into service. Being thus attracted, the ladies of the Starlett box, mystified and unable to extract any explanation from the two gleeful men, were compelled, by force of circ.u.mstances and curiosity, also to opera-gla.s.s and lorgnette the sufferers.

Like the general into which he was developing, Bobby managed to meet Agnes face to face in the foyer after the show. Tears of mortification were in her eyes, but still she was laughing when he strode up to her and with masterful authority drew her arm beneath his own.

"Your carriage is too small for four," Bobby calmly told Mr. Elliston, and, excusing himself from the Starletts, deliberately conducted Agnes to a hansom. As they got well under way he observed:

"You will notice that I make no question of being seen in public with--"

"Bobby!" she protested. "Violet did not know. The Sharpes visited in Savannah. His connections down there are quite respectable, and no doubt Mrs. Sharpe, who is really clever, held herself very circ.u.mspectly."

"Fine!" said Bobby. "You will notice that I am quite willing to listen to _you_. Explain some more."

"Bobby!" she protested again, and then suddenly she bent forward and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

Bobby was astounded. She was actually crying! In a moment he had her in his arms, was pressing her head upon his shoulder, was saying soothing things to her with perfectly idiotic volubility. For an infinitesimally brief s.p.a.ce Agnes yielded to that embrace, and then suddenly she straightened up in dismay.

"Good gracious, Bobby!" she exclaimed. "This hansom is all gla.s.s!"

He looked out upon the brilliantly lighted street with a reflex of her own consternation, but quickly found consolation.

"Well, after all," he reflected philosophically, "I don't believe anybody who saw me would blame me."

"You're a perfectly incorrigible Bobby," she laughed. "The only check possible to put upon you is to hold you rigidly to business. How are you coming out with the Brightlight Electric Company? I have been dying to ask you about it."

"I have a telephone in my office," he reminded her.

"I am completely ignoring that ungenerous suggestion," she replied.

"It wasn't sportsmanlike," he penitently admitted. "Well, the Brightlight Electric is still making money, and Johnson has stopped leaks to the amount of at least twenty thousand dollars a year, which will permit us to keep up the ten per cent. dividends, even with our increased capitalization, and even without an increase of business."

"Glorious!" she said with sparkling eyes.

"Too good to be true," he a.s.sured her. "They'll take it away from me."

"How is it possible?" she asked.

"It isn't; but it will happen, nevertheless," he declared with conviction.

He had already begun to spend his days and nights in apprehension of this, and as the weeks went on and nothing happened his apprehension grew rather than diminished.

In the meantime, the Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company went pompously on. The great combine was formed, the fifty million dollars'

worth of stock was opened for subscription, and the company gave a vastly expensive banquet in the convention hall of the Hotel Spender, at which a thousand of the city's foremost men were entertained, and where the cleverest after-dinner speakers to be obtained talked in relays until long after midnight. Those who came to eat the rich food and drink the rare wine and lend their countenances to the stupendous local enterprise, being shrewd business graduates who had cut their eye-teeth in their cradles, smiled and went home without any thought of investing; but the hard-working, economical chaps of the offices and shops, men who felt elated if, after five years of slavery, they could show ten hundred dollars of savings, glanced in awe over this magnificent list of names in the next day's papers. If the stock of the Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company was considered a good investment by these generals and captains and lieutenants of finance, who, of course, attended this Arabian Nights banquet as investors, it must certainly be a good investment for the corporals and privates.

Immediately vivid results were shown. Immense electric signs, furnished at less than cost and some of them as big as the buildings upon the roofs of which they were erected, began to make constellations in the city sky; buildings in the princ.i.p.al down-town squares were studded, for little or nothing, with outside incandescent lights as thickly as wall s.p.a.ce could be found for them, and the men whose only automobiles are street-cars awoke to the fact that their city was becoming intensely metropolitan; that it was blazing with the blaze of Paris and London and New York; that all this glittering advancement was due to the great new Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company, and more applications for stock were made!

Every applicant was supplied, but the treasury stock of the company having been sold out, the scrip had to come from some place else, and it came through devious, secret ways from the holdings of such men as Stone and Garland and Sharpe.

During the grand orgie of illumination the election came on; the price of gas and electricity went gloriously and recklessly down, and the men who were identified with the triumphantly successful new illuminating company were the leading figures in the campaign. The puerile "reform party," the blunders of whose incompetence had been ridiculous, was swept out of existence; Garland was elected mayor by the most overwhelming majority that had ever been known in the city, and with him was elected a council of the same political faith. Sam Stone, always in the background, always keeping his name out of the papers as much as possible, came once more to the throne, and owned the city and all its inhabitants and all its business enterprises and all its public utilities, body and soul.

One night, shortly after the new officials went into power, there was no light in the twelve blocks over which the Brightlight Company had exclusive control, nor any light in the outside districts it supplied.

This was the first time in years that the company, equipped with an emergency battery of dynamos which now proved out of order, had ever failed for an instant of proper service. Candles, kerosene lamps and old gas fixtures, the rusty c.o.c.ks of which had not been turned in a decade, were put hastily in use, while the streets were black with a blackness particularly Stygian, contrasted with the brilliantly illuminated squares supplied by the Consolidated Company. All night long the mechanical force, attended by the worried but painfully helpless Bobby, pounded and tapped and worked in the grime, but it was not until broad daylight that they were able to discover the cause of trouble. For two nights the lights ran steadily. On the third night, at about seven-thirty, they turned to a dull, red glow, and slowly died out. This time it was wire trouble, and through the long night as large a force of men as could be mustered were tracing it. Not until noon of the next day was the leak found.

It was a full week before that section of the city was for the third time in darkness, but when this occurred the business men of the district, who had been patient enough the first night and enduring enough the second, loosed their reins and became frantic.

At this happy juncture the Consolidated Company threw an army of canva.s.sers into those twelve monopolized blocks, and the canva.s.sers did not need to be men who could talk, for arguments were not necessary. The old, worn-out equipment of the Brightlight Electric, and the fact that it was managed and controlled by men who knew nothing whatever of the business, its very president a young fellow who had probably never seen a dynamo until he took charge, were enough.

Bobby, pa.s.sing over Plum Street one morning, was surprised to see a large gang of men putting in new poles, and when he reached the office he asked Johnson about it. In two minutes he had definitely ascertained that no orders had been issued by the Brightlight Electric Company nor any one connected with it, and further inquiry revealed the fact that these poles were being put up by the Consolidated. He called up Chalmers at once.

"I knew I'd hear from you," said Chalmers, "and I have already been at work on the thing. Of course, you saw what was in the papers."

"No," confessed Bobby. "Only the sporting pages."

"You should read news, local and general, every morning," scolded Chalmers. "The new city council, at their meeting last night, granted the Consolidated a franchise to put up poles and wires in this district for lighting."

"But how could they?" expostulated Bobby. "Our contract with the city has several years to run yet, and guarantees us exclusive privilege to supply light, both to the city and to private individuals, in those twelve blocks."

"That cleverly un.o.btrusive joker clause about 'reasonably satisfactory service,'" replied Chalmers angrily. "By the way, have you investigated the cause of those accidents very thoroughly? Whether there was anything malicious about them?"

Bobby confessed that he had not thought of the possibility.

"I think it would pay you to do so. I am delving into this thing as deeply as I can, and with your permission I am going to call your father's old attorney, Mr. Barrister, into consultation."

"Go ahead, by all means," said Bobby, worried beyond measure.