"Bully old dad!" he said brokenly, and opened his watch-case, where the grim but humor-loving face of old John Burnit looked up at his beloved children.

"And now what are you going to do?" Agnes asked him presently, when they were calmer.

"Fight!" he vehemently declared. "For the governor's sake as well as my own."

"I just found another letter for you, sir," said Johnson, handing in the third of the missives to come in that day's mail from beyond the Styx. It was inscribed:

_To My Son Robert Upon the Occasion of His Declaring Fight Against the Politicians Who Robbed Him_

"Nothing but public laziness allows dishonest men to control public affairs. Any time an honest man puts up a sincere fight against a crook there's a new fat man in striped clothes. If you have a crawful and want to fight against dirty politics in earnest, jump in, and tell all my old friends to put a bet down on you for me. I'd as soon have you spend in that way the money I made as to buy yachts with it; and I can see where the game might be made as interesting as polo. Go in and win, boy."

"And now what are you going to do?" Agnes asked him, laughing this time.

"Fight!" he declared exultantly. "I'm going to fight entirely outside of my father's money. I'm going to fight with my own brawn and my own brain and my own resources and my own personal following! Why, Agnes, that is what the governor has been goading me to do. It is what all this is planned for, and the governor, after all, is right!"

CHAPTER XVIII

SOME EMINENT ARTISTS AMUSE MEESTER BURNIT WHILE HE WAITS

One might imagine, after Bobby's heroic declarations, that, like young David of old, he would immediately proceed to stride forth and slay his giant. There stood his Goliath, full panoplied, sneering, waiting; but alas! Bobby had neither sling nor stone. It was all very well to announce in fine frenzy that he would smash the Consolidated, destroy the political ring, drive Sam Stone and his henchmen out of town and wrest all his goods and gear from Silas Trimmer; but until he could find a place to plant his foot, descry an opening in the armor and procure an adequate weapon, he might just as well bottle his fuming and wait; so Bobby waited. In the meantime he stuck very closely to the Brightlight office, finding there, in the practice of petty economics and the struggle with well-nigh impossible conditions, ample food for thought. In a separate bank reposed the new fund of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which he kept religiously aside from the affairs of the Brightlight, and this fund also waited; for Bobby was not nearly so feverish to find instant employment for it as he had been with the previous ones--though he had endless chances.

People with the most unheard of schemes seemed to have a peculiar scent for unsophisticated money, and not only local experts in the gentle art of separation flocked after him, but out of town specialists came to him in shoals. To these latter he took great satisfaction in displaying the gem of his collection of post-mortem letters from old John Burnit:

"You don't need to go away from home to be skinned; moreover, it isn't patriotic."

That usually stopped them. He was growing quite sophisticated, was Bobby, quite able to discern the claws beneath the velvet paw, quite suspicious of all the ingenious gentlemen who wanted to make a fortune for him; and their frantic attempts to "get his goat," as Biff Bates expressed it, had become as good as a play to this wise young person, as also to the wise young person's trustee.

Agnes, who was helping Bobby wait, came occasionally to the office of the Brightlight on business, and nearly always Bobby had reduced to paper some gaudy new scheme that had been proposed to him, over which they both might laugh. In great hilarity one morning they were going over the prospectus of a plan to reclaim certain swamp lands in Florida, when the telephone bell rang, and from Bobby's difficulty in understanding and his smile as he hung up the receiver, Agnes knew that something else amusing had turned up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Little me to trot out and find an angel. Are you it?]

"It is from Schmirdonner," he explained as he turned to her again.

"He's the conductor of the orchestra at the Orpheum, you know. I gather from what he says that there are some stranded musicians here who probably speak worse English than myself, and he's sending them up to me to see about arranging a benefit for them. You'd better wait; it might be fun, or you might want to help arrange the benefit."

"No," disclaimed Agnes, laughing and drawing her impedimenta together for departure, "I'll leave both the fun and the philanthropy to you. I know you're quite able to take care of them. I'll just wait long enough to hear how we're to get rid of the water down in Florida. I suppose we bore holes in the ground and let it run out."

"By no means," laughed Bobby. "It's no where near so absurdly simple as that," and he turned once more to the prospectus which lay open on the desk before them.

Before they were through with it there suddenly erupted into the outer office, where Johnson and Applerod glared at each other day by day over their books, a pandemonium of gabbling. Agnes, with a little exclamation of dismay at the time she had wasted, rose in a hurry, and immediately after she pa.s.sed through the door there bounded into the room a rotund little German with enormous and extremely thick gla.s.ses upon his k.n.o.b of a nose, a grizzled mustache that poked straight up on both sides of that k.n.o.b, and an absurd toupee that flared straight out all around on top of the bald spot to which it was pasted. Behind him trailed a pudgy man of so exactly the Herr Professor's height and build that it seemed as if they were cast in the same spherical mold, but he was much younger and had jet black hair and a jet black mustache of such tiny proportions as to excite amazement and even awe.

Still behind him was as unusually large young woman, fully a head taller than either of the two men, who had an abundance of jet black hair, and was dressed in a very rich robe and wrap, both of which were somewhat soiled and worn.

"Signor R-r-r-r-icardo, der grosse tenore--Mees-ter Burnit,"

introduced the rotund little German, with a deep bow commensurate with the greatness of the great tenor. "Signorina Car-r-r-avaggio--Mees-ter Burnit. I, Mees-ter Burnit, _Ich bin_ Brofessor Fruhlingsvogel."

Bobby, for the lack of any other handy greeting, merely bowed and smiled, whereupon Signorina Caravaggio, stepping into a breach which otherwise would certainly have been embarra.s.sing, seated herself comfortably upon the edge of Bobby's desk and swung one large but shapely foot while she explained matters.

"It's like this, Mr. Burnit," she confidently began: "when that dried-up little heathen, Matteo, who tried to run the Neapolitan Grand Opera Company with stage money, got us this far on a tour that is a disgrace to the profession, he had a sudden notion that he needed ocean air; so he took what few little dollars were in the treasury and hopped right on into New York.

"Here we are, then, at the place we were merely 'to make connections,'

two hundred miles from our next booking and without enough money among us to buy a postage stamp. We haven't seen a cent of salary for six weeks, and the only thing we can do is to seize the props and scenery and costumes, see if they can be sold, and disband, unless somebody gallops to the rescue in a hurry. Professor Fruhlingsvogel happened to know another Dutchman here who conducts an orchestra at the Orpheum, and he sent us to you. He said you knew all the swell set and could start a benefit going if anybody in town could."

"Yes," said Bobby, smiling; "Schmirdonner telephoned me just a few minutes ago that the Herr Professor Fruhlingsvogel would be up to see me, and asked me to do what I could. How many of you are there?"

"Seventy-three," promptly returned Signorina Caravaggio, "and all hungry. Forty singers and an orchestra of thirty--seventy--besides props and the stage manager and Herr Fruhlingsvogel, who is the musical director."

"Where are you stopping?" asked Bobby, aghast at the size of the contract that was offered him.

"We're not," laughed the great Italian songstress. "We all went up and registered at a fourth-rate place they call the Hotel Larken, but that's as far as we got, for we were told before the ink was dry that we'd have to come across before we got a single biscuit; so there they are, scattered about the S. R. O. parts of that little two-by-twice hotel, waiting for little me to trot out and find an angel. Are you it?"

"I can't really promise what I can do," hesitated Bobby, who had never been able to refuse a.s.sistance where it seemed to be needed; "but I'll run down to the club and see some of the boys about getting up a subscription concert for you. How much help will you need?"

"Enough to land us on little old Manhattan Island."

"And there are over seventy of you to feed and take care of for, say, three days, and then to pay railroad fares for," mused Bobby, a little startled as the magnitude of the demand began to dawn upon him. "Then there's the music-hall, advertising, printing and I suppose a score of other incidentals. You need quite a pile of money. However, I'll go down to the club at lunch time and see what I can do for you."

"I knew you would the minute I looked at you," said the Signorina confidently, which was a compliment or not, the way one looked at it.

"But, say; I've got a better scheme than that, one that will let you make a little money instead of contributing. I understand the Orpheum has next week dark, through yesterday's failure of The Married Bachelor Comedy Company. Why don't you get the Orpheum for us and back our show for the week? We have twelve operas in our repertoire. The scenery and props are very poor, the costumes are only half-way decent and the chorus is the rattiest-looking lot you ever saw in your life; but they can sing. They went into the discard on account of their faces, poor things. Suppose you come over and have a look. They'd melt you to tears."

"That won't be necessary," hastily objected Bobby; "but I'll meet a lot of the fellows at lunch, and afterward I'll let you know."

"After lunch!" exclaimed the Signorina with a most expressive placing of her hands over her belt, whereat the Herr Professor and Der Grosse Tenore both turned most wistfully to Bobby to see what effect this weighty plea might have upon him. "Lunch!" she repeated. "If you would carry a fork-full of steaming spaghetti into the Hotel Larken at this minute you'd start a riot. Why, Mr. Burnit, if you're going to do anything for us you've got to get into action, because we've been up since seven and we still want our breakfasts."

"Breakfast!" exclaimed Bobby, looking hastily at his watch. It was now eleven-thirty. "Come on; we'll go right over to the Larken, wherever that may be," and he exhibited as much sudden haste as if he had seen seventy people actually starving before his very eyes.

Just as the quartette stepped out of the office, Biff Bates, just coming in, bustled up to Bobby with:

"Can I see you just a minute, Bobby? Kid Mills is coming around to my place this afternoon."

"Haven't time just now, Biff," said Bobby; "but jump into the machine with us and I'll do the 'chauffing.' That will make room for all of us. We can talk on the way to the Hotel Larken. Do you know where it is?"

"Me?" scorned Biff. "If there is an inch of this old town I can't put my finger on in the dark, blindfolded, I'll have that inch dug out and thrown away."

At the curb, with keen enjoyment of the joke of it all, Bobby gravely introduced Mr. Biff Bates, ex-champion middle-weight, to these imported artists, but, very much to his surprise, Signorina Caravaggio and Professor Bates struck up an instant and animated conversation anent Biff's well-known and justly-famous victory over Slammer Young, and so interested did they become in this conversation that instead of Biff's sitting up in the front seat, as Bobby had intended, the eminent instructor of athletics manoeuvered the Herr Professor into that post of honor and climbed into the tonneau with Signor Ricardo and the Signorina, with the latter of whom he talked most volubly all the way over, to the evidently vast annoyance of Der Grosse Tenore.

The confusion of tongues must have been a very tame and quiet affair as compared to the polyglot chattering which burst upon Bobby's ears when he entered the small lobby of the Hotel Larken. The male members of the Neapolitan Grand Opera Company, almost to a man, were smoking cigarettes. There were swarthy little men and swarthy big men, there seeming to be no medium sizes among them, while the women were the most wooden-featured lot that Bobby had ever encountered, and the entire crowd was swathed in gay but dingy clothing of the most nondescript nature. Really, had Bobby not been a.s.sured that they were grand opera singers he would have taken them for a lot of immigrants, for they had that same unhappy expression of worry. The princ.i.p.als could be told from the chorus and the members of the orchestra from the fact that they stood aloof from the rest and from one another, gloomily nursing their grievances that they, each one the most ill.u.s.trious member of the company, should thus be put to inconvenience! It was a monstrous thing that they, the possessors of glorious voices which the entire world should at once fall down and worship, should be actually hungry and out of money! It was, oh, unbelievable, atrocious, barbarous, positively inhuman!

With the entrance of the Signorina Caravaggio, bearing triumphantly with her the neatly-dressed and altogether money-like Bobby Burnit, one hundred and forty wistful eyes, mostly black and dark brown, were immediately focused in eager interest upon the possible savior. Behind the desk, perplexed and distracted but still grimly firm, stood frowzy Widow Larken herself, drawn and held to the post of duty by this vast and unusual emergency. Not one room had Madam Larken saved for all these alien warblers, not one morsel of food had she loosed from her capacious kitchen; and yet not one member of the company had she permitted to stray outside her doors while Signorina Caravaggio and Signor Ricardo and the Herr Professor Fruhlingsvogel had gone out to secure an angel, two stout porters being kept at the front door to turn back the restless. If provision could be made to pay the bills of this caravan, the Widow Larken--who was shaped like a pillow with a string tied around it and wore a face like a huge, underdone apple dumpling--was too good a business woman to overlook that opportunity.

Bobby took one sweeping glance at that advancing circle of one hundred and forty eyes and turned to Widow Larken.

"I will be responsible for the hotel bills of these people until further notice," said he.

The Widow Larken, looking intently at Bobby's scarf-pin, relented no whit in her uncompromising att.i.tude.

"And who might you be?" she demanded, with a calm brow and cold determination.

"I am Robert J. Burnit," said Bobby. "I'll give you a written order if you like--or a check."