Kitabı oku: «The Making of Bobby Burnit», sayfa 6
CHAPTER XI
BOBBY DISCOVERS AN ENEMY GREATER THAN SILAS TRIMMER
One circumstance only had occurred to give Bobby any anxiety. With the beginning of the thaw the water in Silas Trimmer’s eight acres had begun slowly to rise, and he saw with some dismay that by far the larger part of the great natural basin from which the surface water had been supplied to this swamp sloped from the northern end. Not having that expanse of one hundred and twenty acres to spread over, it might overflow, and in considerable trepidation he sought Jimmy Platt. That happy young gentleman only smiled.
“I calculated upon that,” he informed Bobby, “and built your retaining wall two feet higher than the normal spring level for that very reason. It will carry all the water than can shed down from those hills.”
Relieved, Bobby went ahead with the preparations for turning the Applerod Addition into money, and though he saw the water creeping up steadily against the other side of his wall, he displayed no anxiety until it had reached within three or four inches of the top. Then he took Platt out with him to have a look at it.
“Don’t you think you ought to get busy?” he inquired. “Hadn’t we better add another foot to this wall?”
“Not necessary,” said Jimmy, shaking his head positively. “This has been an unusual spring, but the wet weather is all over now, and you can see by the water-mark where the level has gone down a half inch since morning. All the moisture that has been trickling down here during the past week has been from the thawing out of the frozen hillsides, but those slopes are almost dust dry now.”
“Suppose it should rain again?” insisted Bobby, still worried.
“It couldn’t rain hard enough to fill up these four inches,” declared Platt with decision. “Look here, Mr. Burnit, I’d worry myself if there was any cause whatever. Do you suppose I’d want anything to happen to my biggest and best job so close to my wedding-day?”
“So you’ve set the time,” said Bobby, with eager pleasure. He had met Platt’s “best girl” and her mother out at the Addition, and liked her, as he did earnest young Platt.
“June the first,” replied Jimmy exultantly. “The date of your opening – in the evening.”
“Don’t forget to send me an invitation.”
“Will you come?” said Platt. He had wanted to ask Bobby before, but had not been quite sure that he ought.
“Come!” replied Bobby. “Indeed I shall – unless I happen to have a wedding of my own on that date.”
Bobby went away satisfied once more, and quite willing to give up the additional foot of wall. The work would entail considerable cost, and expense now was much more of an item than it had been a few months previously. Already he had spent upon this project over two hundred and ten thousand dollars; ten thousand he had given to Biff Bates; ten thousand he had used personally, so there was but an insignificant portion left of his two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Their “grand opening” would eat up another tidy little sum, for it was to be an expensive affair. The liberal advertising that had already appeared was augmented as the great day approached, a brass band had been engaged, a magnificent lunch, sufficient to feed an army, had been arranged for, and every available ‘bus and carry-all and picnic wagon in the city had been secured to transport all comers, free of charge, from the end of the car line to the new Addition. The price of vehicles was high, however, for Silas Trimmer had already engaged quite a number of them to run between the Applerod Addition and his own. During the week preceding June first, there had appeared, in the local papers, advertisements of about one-fourth the size that Bobby was using, calling attention to the opening of the Trimmer Addition, which was to be upon the same date.
On the evening of May twenty-ninth, Bobby found Silas pacing the top of the retaining wall which held in his swamp, and waited for the spider-like figure to come across and join him.
“Too bad you didn’t come in with me, or sell me your property at a reasonable figure,” said Bobby affably, willing, in spite of his recent bitter experience, to meet his competitor upon the same friendly grounds that he would a crack polo antagonist on the eve of contest. “It’s a shame that this could not all have been improved at one time.”
“I’d just as lief have my part of it the way it is,” said Silas. “It’s no good now, but it’s as good as yours,” and he climbed into his buggy and drove away laughing, leaving Bobby strangely dissatisfied and doubtful over that strange remark.
While he was still trying to unravel it, he noted that the water in Silas’ pond, which but a day or so previously had been down to fully nine inches from the top, was now climbing rapidly upward again; and there had been no rain for more than two weeks! The thing was inexplicable. He was still puzzling over this as he drove down the road and turned in at broad Burnit Avenue toward the club-house. The asphalt and the pavements were bone dry and as clean as a ball-room floor, and it seemed to him that the young grass was growing greener and higher here than anywhere.
Suddenly he ordered his chauffeur to stop the machine. He had just passed a lot where, amid the tufts of green, his eye had caught the glint of water. Running back to it he saw that the center of that lot was covered by a small pool scarcely half an inch deep, through which the grass was growing dankly. This, too, was queer, for the hot sun and strong breeze of the past few days should have dried up every vestige of moisture. He walked along the sidewalk, studying each of the lots in turn. Here and there he discovered other small pools, and every lot bore the appearance of having just been freshly and too liberally watered. He stepped from the pavement upon the earth, and to his surprise his foot sank into it to the depth of an inch or more. For a while he was deeply worried, but presently it flashed upon him that all this soil had been dumped into the marsh, displacing the water, and that in this process it had naturally become soaked through and through. Of course it would take a long time to dry out and it would be all the better for its moisture. The rate at which grass was growing was proof enough of that.
On the next day, kept busy by the preparations for the big opening, Bobby did not get out to the Applerod Addition until evening again. As he neared it he met Silas Trimmer coming back in his buck-board, that false circle around his mouth very much in evidence.
“You ought to have had your opening yesterday. I’d have been tempted to buy a lot myself then,” shouted Silas as he passed, and Bobby was sure that the tone was a mocking one.
Consumed with anxiety, he hurried on to see how Silas’ swamp stood. Aghast, he found the level of the water a full inch higher than any point that it had ever before reached. Connecting this condition vaguely with that other phenomenon that he had noted, he whirled his runabout and ran back into Burnit Avenue. In twenty-four hours a remarkable change had been wrought. There were pools everywhere. The lot where he had first noticed it was now entirely covered with water, with barely the tips of the grass showing through. Frightened, he drove over the entire Addition, up one street and down another. In many places the lots were flooded. One entire block had become no more nor less than a pond. At other points the water, carrying with it the yellow soil, was flowing over his beautiful clean sidewalks and spreading its stain upon his immaculate streets. The darkness alone drove him from that inspection, and then it occurred to him to send once more for Jimmy Platt. At the first suburban telephone station he tried for nearly an hour to locate his man, but in vain. Later he tried it from his club, but could not reach him. That night was a sleepless one, and the next morning’s daybreak found him speeding out the roadway to the Applerod Addition.
Early as he was, however, he found young Platt there ahead of him and in despair. He had good cause. The whole north end of the Applerod Addition had turned black, and over the top of Bobby’s now grimy cement wall poured a broad, dark sheet of the murky swamp-water which had stained it. The pond of Silas Trimmer had overflowed in spite of all Platt’s confident figuring that it could not, and in spite of the fact that dry weather had prevailed for two solid weeks. That was the inexplicable part. Clear weather, and still the entire suburb was becoming practically submerged! With solid, dry soil surrounding it, wherever the eye could reach it had become but a morass of mud! Mud was smeared upon every path and every roadway, and Bobby’s automobile slipped and slid in the oily, yellow liquid that lay sluggishly in every gutter and blotched every rod of his clean asphalt.
Young Platt’s face blanched as he saw Bobby.
“I’ve made a miserable botch of it,” he confessed, torn with an agony of regret at his failure; “and I can’t see yet what I overlooked. I’d no right to tackle a man’s job like this!”
“You!” replied Bobby vehemently. “It was Trimmer who did this; somehow, someway he did it, and he flaunts it in our faces. Look there!” and he pointed to a huge signboard that had been erected overnight just opposite the entrance to Burnit Avenue. In huge, bold letters, surmounted by a giant hand that pointed the way, it told prospective investors to buy property in the high and dry Trimmer Addition, the words “High and Dry” being twice as large as any other lettering upon the board.
“It is surely a lot of nerve,” admitted Platt, “but it is rank nonsense to say that the man had anything to do with this catastrophe. It would have been impossible. Let’s look this thing over. Drive past the club-house to the extreme west side.”
Once more they traversed the mud of Burnit Avenue, and upon the dry, sloping ground the young engineer, cursing his inexperience, alighted and walked along the edge of the property, seeking a solution to the mystery. Still perplexed, he ascended the rising ground and looked musingly across at the yet swollen and clay-red river. Suddenly an exclamation escaped his lips.
“There’s your enemy,” he said to Bobby who had climbed up beside him, and pointed to the river. “The river bank, I am sure, must edge upon a tilted shale formation which dips just below this basin. Probably at all times some of the water from the river seeps down between two sand-separated layers of this formation to find its outlet in the marsh, and it is this water which, through a geological freak, has supplied that swamp for ages. In the spring, however, and in extraordinary flood times, it probably finds a higher and looser stratum, and rushes down here with all the force of a hydraulic stream. This spring it took it a long time to wet thoroughly all our made ground from the bottom upward. The frost, sinking deeper in this loose, wet soil than elsewhere, held it back, too, for a time, but as soon as this was thoroughly out of the ground the river overflow came up like a geyser.
“Mr. Burnit, your Applerod Addition is ruined, and it can never be saved, unless by some extraordinary means. Nature picked out this spot, centuries and centuries ago, for a swamp, and she’s going to have one here in spite of all that we can do. In five years this basin won’t be a thing but black water and weeds, with only that club-house as a decaying monument to your enterprise.”
Bobby controlled himself with an effort. His face was drawn and white; but part of that was from the anxiety of the past two days, and he took the blow stiff and erect, as a good soldier stands up to be disciplined. His eye roved over the work in which he had taken such pride, and already he could see in fancy the dank weeds growing up, and the croaking frogs diving into the oily surface, and the clouds of mosquitoes hovering over it again. Over the top of his retaining wall still poured the foul water which was to leaven all this, and he gazed upon it with a sharp intake of the breath.
“And to think that Silas Trimmer must have known all this, and led me to waste a fortune just so that he could reap the benefit of my advertising for his own vulture advantage!”
That, at first, was the part which hurt more than the overthrow of his plans, more than the loss of his money, more than the failure of his fight to carry out his father’s wishes for his success: that any one could play the game so unfairly, that there could be in all the world people so detestable, so unprincipled, so unsportsmanlike!
Slowly the vanquished pair descended the hill to where the automobile stood upon the solid, level sward, but before they climbed in Bobby shook hands with his engineer.
“Don’t blame yourself too much, old man,” he said. “It wasn’t a condition that you could foresee, and I’m mighty sorry if it hurts your reputation.”
“It ought to!” exclaimed Platt with deep self-revilement. “I should have investigated. I should not have taken anything for granted. I ought to have enough money so that you could sue me for damages and recover all you lost.”
“It couldn’t be done,” said Bobby miserably. “I’ve lost so much more than money.”
He did not tell Platt of Agnes, but that was the one thought into which all his failure had finally resolved. Agnes! How much longer must he wait for her? They had just passed the club-house when a light buggy turned into Burnit Avenue, driven furiously by a white-haired man in a white vest and a high silk hat.
“I accept your offer!” cried Applerod, as soon as he came within talking distance, his usually ruddy face now livid white.
“My offer,” repeated Bobby wonderingly.
“Yes; your offer of ten thousand dollars for my share in the Applerod Addition.”
Bobby was forced to laugh. It had needed but this to make the bitter jest of fortune complete.
“You refused that offer the day it was made, Applerod!” put in Platt indignantly. “I heard you. Anyhow, you dragged Mr. Burnit into this thing!”
“He’s not to blame for that,” said Bobby. “But still, I don’t think I care to buy any more of this property.” And he smiled grimly at the absurdity of it all.
“I’ll sue you for it!” shrieked Applerod, frantic from thwarted self-interest. “You prevented me from selling out at a profit when I had a chance! You bound me hand and foot when I knew that if Silas Trimmer had anything to gain by it we would lose! He knew all the time that this swamp was fed by underground springs. He bragged about it to me this morning as I passed him on the road. He told me last night I’d better come out here this morning.”
“I see,” said Bobby coldly, and he reached for his lever.
“Then you won’t hold good to your offer?” gasped the other.
Pale before, he had turned ashen now, and Bobby looked at him with quick compunction. Applerod, always so chubbily youthful for a man of his years, was grown suddenly old. He seemed to have shrunk inside his clothes, his face to have turned flabby, his eyes to have dimmed. After all, he was an old man, and the little that he had scraped together represented all that he could hope to amass in a none too provident lifetime. This day made him a pauper and there was no chance for a fresh start. Bobby himself was young and strong, and, moreover, his resources were by no means exhausted.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Applerod,” said he, after a moment of very sober thought. “Your property cost you in the neighborhood of four thousand. Interest since the time you first began to invest in it would bring it up to a little more than that. I’ll give you five thousand.”
“I won’t accept it. – Yes, I will! yes, I will!” he cried as Bobby impatiently reached again for his lever.
“Very well,” said Bobby, “wait a minute.” And tearing a leaf from his memorandum-book he wrote a note to Johnson to see to the transfer of the property and deliver to Applerod a check for five thousand dollars.
“That was more than generous; it was foolish,” protested Jimmy Platt, as they whirled away.
“No doubt,” admitted Bobby dryly. “But, if I’m forced to be a fool, I might as well have a well-finished job of it.”
CHAPTER XII
AGNES DECIDES THAT SHE WILL WAIT
Applerod, his poise nearly recovered, bounded into the office where Johnson sat stolidly working away, his sense of personal contentedness enhanced by the presence of Biff Bates, who sat idly upon the flat-top desk, dangling his legs and waiting for Bobby. Mr. Applerod paid no attention whatever to Mr. Bates, that gentleman being quite beneath his notice, but with vast importance he laid down in front of Mr. Johnson the note which Bobby had given him.
“Mr. Johnson,” he pompously directed, “you will please attend to this little matter as soon as possible.”
“Applerod,” said Johnson, glancing at the note and looking up with sudden fire, “does this mean that you are no longer even partially my employer?”
“That’s it exactly.”
“Then you, Applerod, don’t you dare call me Mr. Johnson again!” And he shook a bony fist at his old-time work-fellow.
Biff Bates nearly fell off the desk, but with rare presence of mind restrained his glee.
Mr. Applerod, smiling loftily, immediately wielded his bludgeon.
“We should not quarrel over trifles,” he stated commiseratingly. “We are once more companions in misfortune. There is no Applerod Addition. It is a swamp again.”
“What do you mean?” asked Johnson incredulously, but suspending his indignation for the instant.
“This,” said Applerod: “that the entire addition is a hundred-acre mud puddle this morning. You couldn’t sell a lot in it to a blind man. Every cent that was invested in it is lost. The whole marsh was fed from underground springs that have come up through it and overflowed the place.”
“Trimmer again,” said Biff Bates, and slid off the desk; then he looked at his watch with a curious speculative smile.
“But if it is all lost,” protested Johnson, looking again at the note and pausing in the making out of the check, “how do you come to get this?”
“He owed it to me,” asserted Applerod. “I wanted to sell out when I first found that we were competing with Silas Trimmer, and young Burnit kept me from it by an injunction. He offered me ten thousand dollars for my interest once, but this morning when I went to accept that offer he would only give me this five thousand. It’s just five thousand dollars that he’s robbed me of.”
“Robbed!” shrilled Johnson, jumping from his chair. “Applerod, you weigh a hundred and eighty pounds and I weigh a hundred and thirty-seven, but I can lick you the best day you ever lived; and by thunder and blazes! if you let fall another remark like that I’ll knock your infernal head off!”
Mr. Johnson had on no coat, but he felt the urgent need to remove something, so he tore off one false sleeve, wadded it up in a little ball and slammed it on the floor with great vigor, tore off the other one, wadded it up and slammed that down. Biff Bates, quivering with joy, rang loudly upon a porcelain electric-light shade with his pencil and called: “Time!”
There was no employment for a referee, however, for Mr. Applerod, with astonishing agility, sprang to the door and held it half open, ready for a hurried exit in case of any other demonstration. It was shocking to think that he might be drawn into an undignified altercation – and with a mere clerk! Also, it might be dangerous.
“Nothing doing, chum,” said Biff Bates disgustedly to his friend Johnson. “This bunch of mush-ripe bananas ain’t even a quitter. He’s a never-beginner. But you’ll do fine, old scout. Come along with me. I got a treat for you.”
Mr. Johnson, breathing scorn that alternately dented and inflated his nostrils, slowly donned his coat and hat without removing his eyes from Applerod, who, as the two approached the door, edged uncertainly away from it.
“I’ve got to go out, anyhow,” said Johnson, addressing his remarks exclusively to Mr. Bates, but his glare exclusively to Mr. Applerod. “I’m going to put this check into the hands of Mr. Chalmers, so Mr. Robert don’t get cheated by any yellow-livered snake in the grass!” And he spit out those last violent words with a sudden vehemence which made Mr. Applerod drop his shiny hat.
When Bobby came into the office a few minutes later he found Applerod, his hat upon his lap, waiting in one of the customers’ chairs with stiff solemnity.
“Why aren’t you at your desk, Applerod?” asked Bobby sharply. “You have an immense amount of unopened mail, and some of it may contain checks which will have to be sent back.”
“Mr. Burnit,” said Mr. Applerod, rising with great dignity and throwing back his shoulders, “I consider myself no longer in your employ. I have resigned.”
Bobby looked at him thoughtfully and weighed rapidly in his mind a great many things. He remembered that his father had once said of the two men: “Johnson has a pea-green liver and is a pessimist, but he is honest. Applerod suffers from too much health and is an optimist, and I presume him to be honest, but I never tested it.” Yet his father had seen fit to keep Applerod in his intimate employ all these years, recognizing in him material of value. Moreover, he had advised Bobby to keep both men, and Bobby, to-day more than ever, placed great faith in the wisdom of his father.
“Mr. Applerod,” said he, “I dislike to be harsh with you, but if you don’t put up your hat and get at that bundle of mail I shall be compelled to consider discharging you. Where’s Johnson?”
“He went out with Mr. Bates, sir.”
When Bobby left, Applerod was industriously sorting the mail on his desk, preparing to open it.
Bobby let himself into the big new gymnasium and walked back through the deserted hall to the small room that was used for individual training. As he neared the door he could hear the sound of loud voices and the shuffling of feet, and heard the commanding voice of Biff Bates shout “Break!”
The door was locked, but through the slide window at the side a strange tableau met his eyes. Stooped and lean Johnson, as chalk-white of face as ever, had paunchy and thin-legged Silas Trimmer by the collar, and over Biff Bates’ intervening body was trying to rain blows into the center of the circular smile, now flattened to an oval of distress.
“Break, Johnson, break!” begged Biff. “Don’t put him out till you feed him all he’s got coming.” Thereupon he succeeded in extracting Mr. Trimmer from the grasp of Mr. Johnson and forced the former back upon a chair, where he began to fan him with a towel in most approved fashion.
“Let me out of this!” gasped Mr. Trimmer. “I’ll have you arrested for assault and conspiracy.”
“They’ll only pinch a corpse, for the cops’ll find me tickled to death when they get here,” responded Mr. Bates gaily. “Now you’re all right. Get up!”
“Let me out of this, I say!” commanded Mr. Trimmer frantically. “I’ll run you into the penitentiary! I’ll break you up in business! I’ll hire thugs to break every bone in your body!”
“Is that all?” inquired Biff complacently, and grabbed him as he started to run around the room in a wild hunt for an outlet. “Stand up here and put up a fight or I’ll punch you myself. I’ve been aching to do it for a year. That’s why I got Doc Willets to dope it out to you that you was dyin’ for training, and why I kept shifting your hour to when there was nobody here. Go to him, chum!”
Then ensued the strangest sparring match that the grinning and stealthily silent Bobby had ever seen. Johnson, with a true “tiger crouch” which he could not have avoided if he had wished, began dancing around and around the spherical body of Mr. Trimmer, without science and without precaution, keeping his two arms going like windmills, and occasionally landing a light blow upon some portion of Mr. Trimmer’s unresisting anatomy; but finally a whirl so vigorous that it sent Johnson spinning upon his own heel, landed squarely beneath the jaw of Silas. That gentleman, with a puffed eye and a bleeding lip and two teeth gone, rose from his feet with the impact of the blow, and landed with a grunt in a huge basket of soiled bath-towels.
“Johnson,” called the laughter-shaken voice of Bobby through the window, “I’m ashamed of you!”
Mr. Johnson looked up happily from his task of wiping away a little trickle of blood from his already swollen nose.
“Did you see me do it?” he demanded, thrilling with pride. “Mr. Burnit, I – I never had so much fun in my life. Never, never! By the way, sir,” and even upon that triumphant moment his duty obtruded, “I have a letter for you that I brought away from the office,” and through the window he handed one of the inevitable gray envelopes. It was inscribed:
To My Son, Upon the Failure of Applerod’s Swamp Scheme
“In the midst of pleasure we are in pain,” murmured Bobby, and tore open the letter. In it he read:
“My Dear Boy:
“A man must not only examine a business proposition from all sides, but must also turn it over and look well at the bottom. I never knew what was the matter with that swamp scheme, except Applerod, but I didn’t want to know any more. You did.
“Well, you don’t need wisdom. I’ve put one-half your fortune where it will yield you a living income. Try to cut at least one eye-tooth with the other half. Your trustee is instructed to give you another start.
“Your Loving Father.”
His trustee! Once more he must face her with failure; go to her beaten, and accept through her hands the means to gain himself another buffeting. He had not the heart to see her now, but he was not turned altogether coward, for leaving the scene of the late conflict abruptly, all its humor spoiled for him, he telephoned her what had happened and that he would be out in the evening.
“No, you must come now. I want you,” she gently insisted, and when he had come to her she went directly to him and put both her hands upon his shoulders.
“It wasn’t fair, Bobby; it wasn’t fair!” she cried. “None of it is fair, and your father had no right to bind me down with promises when you need me so. I’m willing to break them all. Bobby, I’ll marry you to-morrow if you say so.”
He drew a long, trembling breath, and then he put his hands gently upon both her cheeks and kissed her on the forehead.
“Let’s don’t,” he said simply. “I have my own blood up now, and I want to take this other chance. I want to play the game out to the end. You’ll wait, won’t you?”
She looked up at him through moist eyes. He was so big and so strong and so good, and already through the past year of earnest purpose there had come firm, new lines upon his face, lines that meant something in the ultimate building of character; and she recognized that perhaps stern old John Burnit had been right after all.
“Indeed, I can wait,” she whispered. “Proudly, Bobby.”
