Kitabı oku: «The Making of Bobby Burnit», sayfa 16

CHAPTER XXVII
AUNT CONSTANCE ELLISTON LOSES ALL HER PATIENCE WITH A CERTAIN PROSAIC COURTSHIP

That night, with a grave new responsibility upon him and a grave new elation, sturdier and stronger than he had ever been in his life, and more his own master, Bobby went out to see Agnes.

“Agnes, when my father made you my trustee,” he said, “he laid upon you the obligation that you were not to marry me until I had proved myself either a success or a failure, didn’t he?”

“He did,” assented Agnes demurely.

“But you are no longer my trustee. The last money over which you had nominal control has reverted to the main fund, which is in the hands of Mr. Barrister; so that releases you.”

Agnes laughed softly and shook her head.

“The obligation wasn’t part of the trusteeship,” she reminded him.

“But if I choose to construe it that way,” he persisted, “and declare the obligation null and void, how soon could you get ready to be married to the political boss of this town and one of its leading business men? Agnes,” he went on, suddenly quite serious, “I can not do without you any longer. I have waited long enough. I need you and you must come to me.”

“I’ll come if you insist,” she said simply, and laid both her hands in his. “But, Bobby, let’s think about this a minute. Let’s think what it means. I have been thinking of it many, many days, and really and truly I don’t like to give up, because of its bearing upon our future strength. Yesterday I drove down Grand Street and looked up at that Trimmer and Company sign, and so long as that is there, Bobby, I could not feel right about our deserting the colors, as it were; that is, unless you have definitely given up the fight.”

“Given up!” repeated Bobby quickly. “Why, I have just begun. I’ve been to school all this time, Agnes, and to a hard school, but now I’m sure I have learned my lesson. I have won a fight or two; I have had the taste of blood; I’m going after more; I’m going to win.”

“I’m sure that you will,” she repeated. “Think how much better satisfied we will be after you have done so.”

“Yes, but think, too, of the time it will take,” he protested. “First of all I must earn money; that is, I must make the Bulletin pay. I can do that. It is on the edge of earning its way right now, but I owe twenty-five thousand dollars. It is going to take a long, long time for me to win this battle, and in it I need you.”

“I am always right here, Bobby,” she reminded him. “I have never failed you when you needed me, have I? But maybe it won’t take so long. You say you are going to make the Bulletin pay. If you do that counts for a business success, enough to release you on that side. But really, Bobby, how difficult a task would it be to get back control of your father’s store?”

“Hopeless, just now,” said he.

“How much money would it take?”

“Well, not so very much in comparison with the business itself,” he told her. “I own two hundred and sixty thousand dollars’ worth of stock, Trimmer owns two hundred and forty thousand, while sixty thousand more are scattered among his relatives and dependents. That stock is not for sale, that is the trouble; but if I could buy twenty-one thousand dollars of it I could do what I liked with the entire concern.”

“Then Bobby, let’s not think of anything else but how to get that stock. Let’s insist on having that for our wedding present.”

Bobby regarded her gravely for a long time.

“Agnes, you’re a brick!” he finally concluded. “You’re right, as you have always been. We’ll wait. But you don’t know, oh, you don’t know how hard that is for me!”

“It is not the easiest thing in the world for me,” she gently reminded him.

From the time that she had laid her hands in his he had held them, and now he had gathered them to him, pressing them upon his breast. Suddenly, overcome by his great longing for her, he clasped her in his arms and held her, and pressed his lips to hers. For a moment she yielded to that embrace and closed her eyes, and then she gently drew away from him.

“We mustn’t indulge in that sort of thing very much,” she reminded him, “or we’re likely to lose all our good resolutions.”

“Good resolutions,” declared Bobby, “are a nuisance.”

She smiled and shook her head.

“Look at the people who haven’t any,” she reminded him.

It was perhaps half an hour later when an idea which brought with it a smile came to her.

“We’ve definitely resolved now to wait until you have either accomplished what you set out to do, or completely failed, haven’t we?”

“Yes,” he assented soberly.

“Then I’m going to open one of the letters your father left for us. I have been dying with curiosity to know what is in it,” and hurrying up to her secretary she brought down one of the inevitable gray envelopes, addressed:

To My Children Upon the Occasion of Their Deciding to Marry Before the Limit of My Prohibition

“What I can not for the life of me understand is why the devil you didn’t do it long ago!”

Bobby was so thoroughly awake to the underlying principle of Agnes’ contention that even this letter did nothing to change his viewpoint.

“For it isn’t him, it is us, or rather it is me, who is to be considered,” he declared. “But it does seem to me, Agnes, as if for once we had got the better of the governor.”

They were still laughing over the unexpectedness of the letter when Aunt Constance came in, and they showed it to her.

“Good!” she exclaimed, dwelling longer upon the inscription than upon the letter itself. “I think you’re quite sensible, and I’ll arrange the finest wedding for Agnes that has ever occurred in the Elliston family. You must give me at least a couple of months, though. When is it to come off? Soon, I suppose?”

Carefully and patiently they explained the stand they had taken. At first she thought they were joking, and it took considerable reiteration on their part for her to understand that they were not.

“I declare I have no patience with you!” she avowed. “Of all the humdrum, prosaic people I ever saw, you are the very worst! There is no romance in you. You’re as cool about it as if marriage were a commercial partnership. Oh, Dan!” and she called her husband from the library. “Now what do you think of this?” she demanded, and explained the ridiculous attitude of the young people.

“Great!” decided Uncle Dan. “Allow me to congratulate you,” and he shook hands heartily with both Agnes and Bobby, whereat Aunt Constance denounced him as being a sordid soul of their own stripe and went to bed in a huff. She got up again, however, when she heard Agnes retire to her own room for the night, and came in to wrestle with that young lady in spirit. She found Agnes, however, obdurate in her content, and ended by becoming an enthusiastic supporter of the idea. “Although I did have my heart so set on a fine wedding,” she plaintively concluded. “I have been planning it for ages.”

“Just keep on planning, auntie,” replied Agnes. “No doubt you will acquire some brilliant new ideas before the time comes.”

So this utterly placid courtship went on in its old tranquil way, with Bobby a constant two and three nights a week visitor to the Elliston home, and with the two young people discussing business more frequently than anything else; for Bobby had learned to come to Agnes for counsel in everything. Just now his chief burden of conversation was the letting of the new waterworks contract, which, with public sentiment back of him, he had fought off until after the Stone administration had ended. Hamilton Ferris, an old polo antagonist of his, represented one of the competing firms as its president, and Bobby had been most anxious that he should be the successful bidder, as was Agnes; for Bobby had brought Ferris to dinner at the Ellistons and to call a couple of times during his stay in the city, and all of the Ellistons liked him tremendously. Bobby was quite crestfallen when the opening of the bids proved Ferris to be the second lowest man.

“I’ve tried hard enough for it,” declared Ferris during a final dinner at the Ellistons that night. “There isn’t much doing this year, and I figured closer than anybody in my employ would dared to have done. In view of my estimate I can not for the life of me see how your local company overbid us all by over a million dollars.”

“It is curious,” admitted Bobby, still much puzzled.

“It’s rather unsportsmanlike in me to whine,” resumed Ferris, “but I am bound to believe that there is a colored gentleman in the woodpile somewhere.”

“That would be no novelty,” returned Bobby. “Ever since I bought the Bulletin I have been gunning for Ethiopians amid the fuel and always found them. The Middle West Construction Company, however, is a new load of kindling to me. I never heard of it until it was announced this morning as the lowest bidder.”

“Nobody ever heard of it,” asserted Ferris. “It was no doubt organized for the sole purpose of bidding on this job. Probably when you delve into the matter you will discover the fine Italian hand of your political boss.”

“Hardly,” chuckled Uncle Dan, indulging in his recent propensity to brag on Bobby. “Our local boss was Sam Stone, and Bobby has just succeeded in running him and two of his expert wire workers out of the country.”

“If anybody here is the political boss it is Bobby,” observed Agnes, laughing.

“I’m sorry to have to suspect him,” laughed Ferris. “Well, there is no use crying over spilled milk; but I had hoped to bring Mrs. Ferris out for a good long visit.”

“Give your wife my regards, Mr. Ferris, and tell her she must come anyhow,” insisted Mrs. Elliston. “Since I have heard that you married the daughter of my old schoolmate, I have been wanting the Keystone Construction Company to have a big contract here more than you have, I think.”

“Sounds very nice, Constance,” said her husband dryly, “but I doubt if any woman ever wanted to see the daughter of her old schoolmate as badly as any man ever wanted to make a million dollars. Bobby, I’ll make you a small bet. I’ll bet your new construction company is composed of the shattered fragments of the old Stone crowd. I’ll even bet that Silas Trimmer is in it.”

“If he is,” suddenly declared Agnes, “I’m going to go into the detective business,” whereat Uncle Dan enjoyed himself hugely. Her vindictiveness whenever the name of Silas Trimmer was mentioned had become highly amusing to him, in spite of the fact that he admired her for it.

“Go right ahead,” said Bobby approvingly. “If you find anything that will enable me to give that gentleman a financial backset I’ll see that you get a handsome reward. In the meantime I’m going to find out something about the Middle West Construction Company myself.”

Accordingly he asked his managing editor about that concern the first thing in the morning.

Ben Jolter lit his old pipe, folded his bare arms and patted them alternately in speculative enjoyment.

“I have something like two pages of information about them, if we could use it,” he announced. “I have been getting reports from the entire scouting brigade ever since the contract was let yesterday, and you may now prepare for a shock. The largest stock-holders of the concern are Silas Trimmer and Frank Sharpe, and the minor stock-holders, almost to a man, consist of those who had their little crack at the public crib under your old, time-tried and true friend, Sam Stone.”

“I admit that I am properly shocked,” responded Bobby.

“It hinges together beautifully,” Jolter went on. “The whole waterworks project was a Stone scheme, and Stone people – even though Stone himself is wiped out – secure the contract. The last expiring act of the Stone administration was to employ Ed Scales as chief engineer until the completion of the waterworks, which may occupy eight or ten years, and the contract with Scales is binding on the city unless he can be impeached for cause. Scales was city engineer under the previous reform spasm, but Stone probably found him good material and kept him on. The waterworks plans were prepared under his supervision and he got them ready for bidding. Now what’s the answer?”

“Easy,” returned Bobby. “The city loses.”

“Right,” agreed Jolter; “but how? I don’t see that we can do anything. Scales, having prepared the plans, is the logical man to see that they are carried out, and he is perfectly competent. His record is clean, so that he owns no property, nor does any of his family – although that may be because he never had a chance. The Middle West Construction Company, though just incorporated, is financially sound, thoroughly bonded, and, moreover, has put into the hands of the city ample guarantee for its twenty per cent. forfeit as required by the terms of the contract. There isn’t a thing that the Bulletin can do except to boost local enterprise with a bit of reservation, then lay low and wait for developments.”

“I dislike to do it,” objected Bobby. “It hurts me to think of mentioning Stone or Trimmer in any complimentary way whatsoever.”

Jolter laughed. “You’re a fine and consistent enemy,” he said.

“I guess I came by it honestly,” smiled Bobby, and from a drawer in his desk took one of the gray John Burnit letters.

“‘Always forgive your enemies,’” read Jolter aloud; “‘that is, after you are good and even with them.’”

“Here goes for them, then,” said Jolter, passing back the letter with an approving chuckle. “We’ll let them go right ahead, and in the meantime the Bulletin will do a lot of real nifty old sleuthing.”

But the Bulletin’s sleuthing brought nothing wrong to light, and work upon the big waterworks contract was begun with a rush.

In the meantime Agnes, true to her threat, was doing some investigating on her own account. She renewed her girlhood acquaintance with Trimmer’s daughter, who was now Mrs. Clarence Smythe, and with others of the Trimmer connection, and she saw these women folk frequently for the sole purpose of gathering up any scraps of information that might drop. The best she could gather, however, was that Clarence Smythe and Silas Trimmer were no longer upon very friendly terms; that Mrs. Smythe had quarreled with her father about Clarence; also that Clarence’s Trimmer and Company stock was in Mrs. Smythe’s name. These scraps of information, slight as they were, she religiously brought to Bobby. When the new waterworks began Agnes saved all the newspaper clippings relating to that tremendous undertaking, and she frequently drove out there of evenings after the workmen had all gone home; with just what purpose she could not say, but she felt impelled, as she half-sheepishly confessed to her Uncle Dan, to “keep an eye on the job.” She kept up her absurd surveillance in spite of all Uncle Dan’s ridicule, and one evening she came home in a state of quivering excitement. She called up Bobby at once.

“Bobby,” she wanted to know, “has the city decided to cut down expenses on the waterworks, or have the plans been changed for any reason?”

“Not that the public knows about,” replied Bobby. “Why?”

“The pumping station is not so big as the newspapers said it was to be. It is over thirty feet shorter and over twenty feet narrower.”

“How do you know?” demanded Bobby.

“I took Wilkins out there with me to-night and had him measure it for me with a yard-stick while the watchman had gone for his supper,” replied Agnes triumphantly.

Bobby stopped to laugh.

“Impossible,” said he. “You have measured it wrong or misunderstood it in some way or other.”

“You go out and measure it for yourself,” insisted Agnes.

Partly to humor her and partly because his interest had been aroused, Bobby went out the next night and measured the pumping station, the excavation for which was already completed, and to his astonishment found that Agnes’ measurements were correct. He immediately wrote to Ferris about it, told him the present dimensions and asked him upon what basis he had figured. In place of replying Ferris came on. Arriving in the city on Saturday, on Sunday he and Bobby went out to the site, and Ferris examined the new waterworks with a deliberation which well-nigh got him into serious trouble with the watchman.

“Well, young man, your fair city is stung,” declared Ferris. “The trenches are not so deep as specified by two feet, and from their width I can tell that the foundation walls are to be at least six inches thinner. I bid on the best grade of Portland cement for that job. It was spelled with a B, however, in my copy of the specification, and I asked your man Scales about it. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘that’s a misprint in the typewriting,’ and he changed the B to P with a lead pencil. Under that shed are about a thousand barrels of Bortland cement. I never heard of that brand, but I can tell cement when I see it, and this stuff will have no more adhesive power than plain mud. Bedford stone was specified. They have several car-loads of stone dumped down here which is not Bedford stone at all. I could tell a piece of Bedford in the dark. This is an inferior rock which will discolor in six months and will disintegrate in five years.”

Bobby thought the thing over quietly for some minutes.

“About the dimensions of the building, Ferris, you might possibly be mistaken, might you not?” asked Bobby.

“Impossible,” returned Ferris. “I have not figured on many jobs for years, but our chief estimator had been sent down to Cuba when this thing came up and I did the work myself, so I have a very vivid memory of it and can not possibly have it confused with any other bid. Moreover, we have all those things on record in our office and I looked it up before I came away. The dimensions of the power house and pumping station were to be one hundred and ninety by one hundred and sixty feet. The present dimensions are one hundred and fifty-eight by one hundred and thirty-three.”

Bobby was thoughtfully silent for a while.

“Do you remember who else bid on the contract?” he inquired presently.

“Every one of them,” smiled Ferris. “I can give you their addresses and the names of the people to wire to if that is what you want. We meet them on every big job.”

“Do you mind wiring yourself?” asked Bobby. “They would be more apt to give you confidential information.”

“With pleasure,” agreed Ferris, and wrote the telegrams.

On the following morning Bobby received answers at his office to all but one of his telegrams, and the information was unanimous that the original plans had called for a building one hundred and ninety by one hundred and sixty feet.

“Now I begin to understand,” said Ferris. “This was the first set of important plans I ever saw in which the dimensions were not marked, but they were most accurately drawn to scale, one-fourth inch to the foot. They are probably using the same drawings with an altered scale, although it would be an absurdly clumsy trick. If that is the case it is easy to see how the Middle West Construction Company could under-bid us by more than a million dollars and still make more money than we figured on.”

Bobby reached for the telephone.

“Get me the mayor’s office,” he called to the girl at his private telephone exchange. “Will you ‘stick around’ to see the fuss?” he inquired with grim pleasure, as he hung up the receiver.

Ferris grinned as he noted the light of battle dawning in Bobby’s eyes.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “It depends on the size and duration of the fuss.”

“If you don’t stay I’ll have you subpœnaed. I may have to, anyhow. As for the size of the fuss, I can promise you a bully one if what you surmise is correct.”

His telephone bell rang and Bobby turned to it quickly.

“Hello, Chalmers!” he began, then laughed. “Beg pardon, Agnes; I thought it was the mayor’s office;” he apologized, then listened intently. There were a few eager queries, and when Bobby hung up the telephone receiver it was with great satisfaction. “I haven’t seen as much fun in sight since I began my fight on Stone,” he declared. “Miss Elliston, who has developed a marvelous new capacity for finding out other men’s business secrets through their women folk, has just telephoned me the results of her last night’s detective work. It seems that Silas Trimmer, one of the heavy backers of the Middle West Construction Company, has just negotiated a loan upon his stock in the mercantile establishment of Trimmer and Company, my share of which was known as the John Burnit Store until Trimmer beat me out of control. I understand that Trimmer has mortgaged everything to the hilt to go into this waterworks deal.”

The bell rang again. This time it was Chalmers.

“Say, Chalmers,” said Bobby, “I want you to get me some sort of a legal document that will allow me to take possession of and examine all the books, papers and drawings of the city engineer’s department, including the waterworks engineer’s office… Yes, you can, Chalmers,” he insisted, against an obvious protest. “There is some legal machinery you can put in motion to get it, and I want it right away. Moreover, I want you to secure me somebody to serve the writ and to keep it quiet.”

Then he explained briefly what had been partly discovered and partly surmised. Next Bobby sent for Jolter and laid the facts before him, to the great joy of that aggressive gentleman. Then he called up Biff Bates, and made an appointment with him to meet him at Jimmy Platt’s office in half an hour. He would have telephoned Platt, but the engineer had no telephone.