"Thought it a brilliant idea," glibly returned Mr. Trimmer. "In fact, I think it was he who first suggested such a possibility, seeing very clearly the increased trade and the increased profits that would accrue from such an extension, which would, in fact, be simply the doubling of our already big stores without additional capitalization.

We worked out two or three plans for the consolidation, but in the later years your father was very slow about making actual extensions or alterations in his merchandising business, preferring to expend his energies on his successful outside enterprises. I feel sure, however, that he would have come to it in time, for the development is so logical, so much in keeping with the business methods of the times."

Here again was insidious flattery, the insinuation that Bobby must be thoroughly aware of "the business methods of the times."

"Of course, the idea is new to me," said Bobby, a.s.suming as best he could the air of business reserve which seemed appropriate to the occasion; "but I should say, in a general way, that I should not care to give up the ident.i.ty of the John Burnit Store."

"That is a fine and a proper spirit," agreed Mr. Trimmer, with great enthusiasm. "I like to see it in a young man, but I've no doubt that we can arrange that little matter. Of course, we would have to incorporate, say, as the Burnit-Trimmer Mercantile Corporation, but while having that name on the front of both buildings, it might not be a bad idea, for business as well as sentimental reasons, to keep the old signs at the tops of both, just as they now are. Those are little details to discuss later; but as the stock of the new company, based upon the present invoice values of our respective concerns, would be practically all in your hands and mine, this would be a very amicable and easily arranged matter. I tell you, Mr. Burnit, this is a tremendous plan, attractive to the public and immensely profitable to us, and I do not know of anything you could do that would so well as this show you to be a worthy successor to John Burnit; for, of course, it would scarcely be a credit to you to carry on your father's business without change or advance."

It was the best and the most crafty argument Mr. Trimmer had used, and Bobby carried away from the Traders' Club a glowing impression of this point. His father had built up this big business by his own unaided efforts. Should Bobby leave that legacy just where he had found it, or should he carry it on to still greater heights? The answer was obvious.

CHAPTER IV

AGNES EMPHATICALLY DECIDES THAT SHE DOES NOT LIKE A CERTAIN PERSON

At the theater that evening, Bobby, to his vexation, found Agnes Elliston walking in the promenade foyer with the well-set-up stranger.

He pa.s.sed her with a nod and slipped moodily into the rear of the Elliston box, where Aunt Constance, perennially young, was entertaining Nick Allstyne and Jack Starlett, and keeping them at a keen wit's edge, too. Bobby gave them the most perfunctory of greetings, and, sitting back by himself, sullenly moped. He grumbled to himself that he had a headache; the play was a humdrum affair; Trimmer was a bore; the proposed consolidation had suddenly lost its prismatic coloring; the Traders' Club was crude; Starlett and Allstyne were utterly frivolous. All this because Agnes was out in the foyer with a very likely-looking young man.

She did not return until the end of that act, and found Bobby ready to go, pleading early morning business.

"Is it important?" she asked.

"Who's the chap with the silky mustache?" he suddenly demanded, unable to forbear any longer. "He's a new one."

The eyes of Agnes gleamed mischievously.

"Bobby, I'm astonished at your manners," she chided him. "Now tell me what you've been doing with yourself."

"Trying to grow up into John Burnit's truly son," he told her with some trace of pompous pride, being ready in advance to accept his rebuke meekly, as he always had to do, and being quite ready to cover up his grievous error with a change of topic. "I had no idea that business could so grip a fellow. But what I'd like to find out just now is who is my trustee? It must have been somebody with horse sense, or the governor would not have appointed whoever it was. I'm not going to ask anything I'm forbidden to know, but I want some advice. Now, how shall I learn who it is?"

"Well," replied Agnes thoughtfully, "about the only plan I can suggest is that you ask your father's legal and business advisers."

He positively beamed down at her.

"You're the dandy girl, all right," he said admiringly. "Now, if you would only----"

"Bobby," she interrupted him, "do you know that we are standing up here in a box, with something like a thousand people, possibly, turned in our direction?"

He suddenly realized that they were alone, the others having filed out into the promenade, and, placing a chair for her in the extreme rear corner of the box, where he could fence her off, sat down beside her.

He began to describe to her the plan of Silas Trimmer, and as he went on his enthusiasm mounted. The thing had caught his fancy. If he could only increase the profits of the John Burnit Store in the very first year, it would be a big feather in his cap. It would be precisely what his father would have desired! Agnes listened attentively all through the fourth act to his glowing conception of what the reorganized John Burnit Company would be like. He was perfectly contented now. His headache was gone; such occasional glimpses as he caught of the play were delightful; Mr. Trimmer was a genius; the Traders' Club a fascinating introduction to a new life; Starlett and Allstyne a joyous relief to him after the sordid cares of business. In a word, Agnes was with him.

"Do you think your father would accept this proposition?" she asked him after he was all through.

"I think he would at my age," decided Bobby promptly.

"That is, if he had been brought up as you have," she laughed. "I think I should study a long time over it, Bobby, before I made any such important and sweeping change as this must necessarily be."

"Oh, yes," he agreed with an a.s.sumption of deep conservatism; "of course I'll think it over well, and I'll take good, sound advice on it."

"I have never seen Mr. Trimmer," mused Agnes. "I seldom go into his store, for there always seems to me something shoddy about the whole place; but to-morrow I think I shall make it a point to secure a glimpse of him."

Bobby was delighted. Agnes had always been interested in whatever interested him, but never so absorbedly so as now, it seemed. He almost forgot the stranger in his pleasure. He forgot him still more when, dismissing his chauffeur, he seated Agnes in the front of the car beside him, with Starlett and Allstyne and Aunt Constance in the tonneau, and went whirling through the streets and up the avenue. It was but a brief trip, not over a half-hour, and they had scarcely a chance to exchange a word; but just to be up front there alone with her meant a whole lot to Bobby.

Afterward he took the other fellows down to the gymnasium, where Biff Bates drew him to one side.

"Look here, old pal!" said Bates. "I saw you real chummy with T. W.

Tight-Wad Trimmer to-night."

"Yes?" admitted Bobby interrogatively.

"Well, you know I don't go around with my hammer out, but I want to put you wise to this mut. He's in with a lot of political graft, for one thing, and he's a sure thing guy for another. He likes to take a flyer at the bangtails a few times a season, and last summer he welshed on Joe Poog's book; claimed Joe misunderstood his fingers for two thousand in place of two hundred."

"Well, maybe there was a mistake," said Bobby, loath to believe such a monstrous charge against any one whom he knew.

"Mistake nawthin'," insisted Biff. "Joe Poog don't take finger bets for hundreds, and Trimmer never did bet that way. He's a born welsher, anyhow. He looks the part, and I just want to tell you, Bobby, that if you go to the mat with this crab you'll get up with the marks of his pinchers on your windpipe; that's all."

Early the next morning--that is, at about ten o'clock--Bobby bounced energetically into the office of Barrister and c.o.ke, where old Mr.

Barrister, who had been his father's lawyer for a great many years, received him with all the unbending grace of an ebony cane.

"I have come to find out who were the trustees appointed by my father, Mr. Barrister," began Bobby, with a cheerful air of expecting to be informed at once, "not that I wish to inquire about the estate, but that I need some advice on entirely different matters."

"I shall be glad to serve you with any legal advice that you may need," offered Mr. Barrister, patting his finger-tips gently together.

"Are you the trustee?"

"No, sir"--this with a dusty smile.

"Who is, then?"

"The only information which I am at liberty to give you upon that point," said Mr. Barrister drily, "is that contained in your father's will. Would you care to examine a copy of that doc.u.ment again?"

"No, thanks," declined Bobby politely. "It's too truthful for comfort."

From there he went straight to his own place of business, where he asked the same question of Johnson. In reply, Mr. Johnson produced, from his own personal and private index-file, an oblong gray envelope addressed:

_To My Son Robert, Upon His Inquiring About the Trusteeship of My Estate_

Opening this in the privacy of his own office, Bobby read:

"As stated in my will, it is none of your present business."

"Up to Bobby again," the son commented aloud. "Well, Governor," and his shoulders straightened while his eyes snapped, "if you can stand it, I can. Hereafter I shall take my own advice, and if I lose I shall know how to find the chap who's to blame."

He had an opportunity to "go it alone" that very morning, when Johnson and Applerod came in to him together with a problem. Was or was not that Chicago branch to be opened? The elder Mr. Burnit had considered it most gravely, but had left the matter undecided. Mr. Applerod was very keenly in favor of it, Mr. Johnson as earnestly against it, and in his office they argued the matter with such heat that Bobby, accepting a typed statement of the figures in the case, virtually turned them out.

"When must you have a decision?" he demanded.