Kitabı oku: «The Making of Bobby Burnit», sayfa 8

CHAPTER XIV
BOBBY ENTERS A BUSINESS ALLIANCE, A SOCIAL ENTANGLEMENT AND A QUARREL WITH AGNES

The report of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Chalmers upon the Brightlight Electric Company was a complicated affair, but, upon the whole, highly favorable. It was an old establishment, the first electric company that had been formed in the city, and it held, besides some minor concessions, an ancient franchise for the exclusive supply of twelve of the richest down-town blocks, this franchise, made by a generous board of city fathers, still having twenty years to run. The concern’s equipment was old and much of it needed renewal, but its financial affairs were in good shape, except for a mortgage of a hundred thousand dollars held by one J. W. Williams.

“About this mortgage,” Mr. Chalmers advised Mr. Burnit; “its time limit expires within two months, and I have no doubt that is why Sharpe wants to put additional capital into the concern. Moreover, Williams is notoriously reputed a lieutenant of Sam Stone’s, and it is quite probable that Stone is the real holder of the mortgage.”

“I don’t see where it makes much difference, so long as the mortgage has to be paid, whether it is paid to Stone or to somebody else,” said Bobby reflectively.

“I don’t see any difference myself,” agreed Chalmers, “except that I am suspicious of that whole crowd, since Sharpe is only a figurehead for Stone. I find that Sharpe is credited with holding two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of the present stock. The majority of the Consumers Company and a good share of the United are also in his name. Just how all these facts have a bearing upon each other I can not at present state, but in view of the twenty years’ franchise, and of the fact that you will hold undisputed control, I do not see but that you have a splendid investment here. The contract for the city lighting of those twelve blocks is ironclad, and the franchise for exclusive private lighting and power is exclusive so long as ‘reasonably satisfactory service’ is maintained. As this has been undisputed for thirty years I don’t think you need have much fear upon that score,” and Chalmers smiled.

In the afternoon of that same day Sharpe called up.

“What dinner engagement have you for to-night?” he inquired.

“None,” replied Bobby, after a moment of hesitation.

“Then I want you to dine with me at the Spender. Can you make it?”

“I guess so,” replied Bobby reluctantly, after another hesitant pause. “What time, say?”

“About seven. Just inquire at the desk. I’ll have a dining-room reserved.”

Bobby was very thoughtful as he arrayed himself for dinner, and he was still more thoughtful when, a boy ushering him into the cozy little private dining-room, he found the over-dazzling young Mrs. Sharpe with her husband. She greeted the handsome young Mr. Burnit most effusively, clasping his hand warmly and rolling up her large eyes at him while Mr. Sharpe looked on with smiling approval. Bobby experienced that strange conflict which most men have known, a feeling of revulsion at war with the undoubted lure of the women. She was one of those who deliberately make appeal through their femininity alone.

“Such a pleasure to meet you,” she said in the most silvery of voices. “I have heard so much of Mr. Burnit and his polo skill.”

“It’s the best trick I do,” confessed Bobby, laughing.

“That’s because Mr. Burnit hasn’t found his proper forte as yet,” interposed Sharpe. “He was really cut out for the illuminating business.” And he led the way to the table, upon which Bobby had already noted that five places were laid.

“A couple of our friends might drop in,” said the host in explanation; “they usually do.”

“If it’s Sam and Billy we’re not going to wait for them,” said Mrs. Sharpe with a languishing glance at Bobby. “They’re always ages and ages late, if they come at all. Frank, where are those cocktails? I’m running down.”

She took the drink with an avidity Bobby was not used to seeing among his own women friends, and almost immediately it heightened her vivacity. There could be no question that she was a fascinating woman. Again Bobby had that strange sense of revulsion, and again he was conscious that, in spite of her trace of a tendency to indecorum, there was a subtle appeal in her; one, however, that he shrank from analyzing. Her talk was mostly of the places she had been, with almost pathetic little mention now and then of unattainable people. Evidently she craved social position, in spite of the fact that she was for ever shut out from it.

While they were upon the fish the door opened and two men came in. With a momentary frown Bobby recognized both; one of them the great Sam Stone, and the other William Garland, a rich young cigar manufacturer, quite prominent in public affairs. The latter he had met; the former he inspected quite curiously as he acknowledged the introduction.

Stone gave one the idea that he was extremely heavy; not that he was so grossly stout, although he was large, but he seemed to convey an impression of tremendous weight. His features and his expression were heavy, his eyes were heavy-lidded, and he was taciturnity itself. He gave Bobby a quick scrutiny from head to foot, and in that instant had weighed him, measured him, catalogued and indexed him for future reference for ever. Stone’s only spoken word had been a hoarse acknowledgment of his introduction, and as soon as the entrée came on he attacked it with a voracious appetite, which, however, did not prevent him from weighing and absorbing in silence every word that was spoken in his hearing. Bobby found himself wondering how this unattractive man could have secured his tremendous following, in spite of the fact that Stone “never broke a promise and never went back on a friend,” qualities which would go far toward establishing any man in the esteem of mankind.

It was not until the appearance of the salad that any allusion was made to business, and then Garland, upon an impatient signal from Stone, turned to Bobby with the suavity of which he was thorough master.

“Mr. Sharpe tells me that you consider taking a dip into the public utilities line,” he suggested.

Instantly three of them bent an attention upon Bobby so straight that it might have been palpable even to him, had not Stone suddenly lighted a match to attract their attention, and glared at them.

“I have already decided,” said Bobby frankly, seeing no reason for fencing. “My legal and business advisers tell me that it would be a good investment, and I am ready to take hold of the Brightlight Electric as soon as the formalities can be arranged.”

Stone grunted his approval, and immediately rose, looking at his watch.

“Pleased to have met you, Mr. Burnit,” he rumbled hoarsely, and took his coat and hat. “Sorry I can’t stay. Promised to meet a man.”

“Coming back?” asked Garland.

“Might,” responded the other, and was gone.

As soon as Stone had left, the trifle of strain that had been apparent prior to Bobby’s very decided statement that he would go into the business, was lifted; and Mrs. Sharpe, pink of cheek and sparkling of eye and exhilarated by the wine to her utmost of purely physical attractiveness, moved when the coffee was served to a chair between Bobby and Garland, and, gifted with a purring charm, exerted herself to the utmost to please the new-comer. She puzzled Bobby. The woman was an entirely new type to him, and he could not fathom her.

With the clearing of the table more champagne was brought, and Bobby began to have an uneasy dread of a “near-orgie,” such as was associated in the minds of the knowing ones with this crowd. Sharpe, however, quickly removed this fear, for, pushing aside his own glass with a bare sip after it had been filled, he drew forth a pencil and produced some papers which he spread before Bobby.

“I imagined that you would have a very favorable report on the Brightlight Electric,” he said with a smile, “so I took the liberty of bringing along an outline of my plan for reorganization. If Mr. Garland and Mrs. Sharpe will excuse us for talking shop we might glance over them together.”

“You’re selfish,” pouted Mrs. Sharpe quite prettily, but, nevertheless, she turned her exclusive attention to Garland for the time being.

With considerable interest Bobby plunged into the business at hand. Here was a well-established concern that had been doing business for three decades, which had been paying ten per cent. dividends for years, and which would doubtless continue to do so for many years to come. An opportunity to obtain control of it solved his problem of investment at once, and he strove to approach its intricacies with intelligence. He became vaguely aware, by and by, that just behind him Garland and Mrs. Sharpe were carrying on a most animated conversation in an undertone interspersed with much laughter, and once, with a start of annoyance, he overheard Garland telling a slightly risqué story, at which Mrs. Sharpe laughed softly and with evident relish. He glanced around involuntarily. Garland had his arm across the back of her chair, and they were leaning toward each other in a close proximity which Bobby reflected with sudden savageness could not possibly occur if that were his wife; nor was he much softened by the later reflection that, in the first place, a woman of her type never could have been his wife, and that, in the second place, it was not the man who was to blame, nor the woman so much, as Sharpe himself. Indeed, Bobby somehow gained the impression that the others flouted and despised Sharpe and held him as a weakling.

His glance was but a fleeting one, and he turned from them with a look which Sharpe, noting, misinterpreted.

“I had hoped,” he said, “to go into this thing very thoroughly, so that we could begin the reorganization at once, with the preliminaries completely understood; but if we are detaining you from any engagement, Mr. Burnit – ”

“Not at all, not at all,” the highly-interested Bobby hastened to assure him. “I have no engagements whatever to-night, and my time is entirely at your disposal.”

“Then let’s drop down to the theater,” suddenly interposed Mrs. Sharpe. “You can talk your dust-dry business there just as well as here. Billy, telephone down to the Orpheum and see if they have a box.”

Bobby was far too unsuspecting to understand that he had been deliberately trapped. Though not of the ultra-exclusives, his social position was an excellent one and he had the entrée everywhere. To be seen publicly with young Burnit was a step upward, as Mrs. Sharpe saw it, in that forbidding and painful social climb.

Bobby started with dismay when Garland stepped to the telephone, but he was fairly caught, and he realized it in time to check the involuntary protest that rose to his lips. He had acknowledged that his time was free and at their disposal, and he regretted deeply that no good, handy lie came to his rescue.

They arrived at the theater between acts, and with the full blaze of the auditorium upon them. Bobby’s comfort was not at all heightened when Stone almost immediately followed them in. He had firmly made up his mind as they entered to obtain a place in the rear corner of the box, where he could not be seen; but he was not prepared for the generalship of Mrs. Sharpe, who so manœuvered it as to force him to the very edge, between herself and Garland, and, as she turned to him with a laughing remark which, in pantomime, had all the confidential understanding of most cordial and intimate acquaintanceship, Bobby glanced apprehensively across at the other side of the proscenium-arch. There, in the opposite box, staring at him in shocked amazement, sat Agnes Elliston!

“But Agnes,” protested Bobby at the Elliston home next day, “I could not possibly help it.”

“No?” she inquired incredulously. “I don’t imagine that any one strongly advised you to have anything to do with Mr. Sharpe – and it was through him that you met her. Perhaps it is just as well that it happened, however, because it has shown you just how you were about to become involved.”

Bobby swallowed quite painfully. His tongue was a little dry.

“Well, the fact of the matter is,” he admitted, reddening and stammering, “that I have already ‘become involved,’ if that’s the way you choose to put it; for – for – I signed an agreement with Sharpe, and an application for increase of capitalization, this morning.”

“You don’t mean it!” she gasped. “How could you?”

“Why not?” he demanded. “Agnes, it seems quite impossible for you to divorce business and social affairs. I tell you they have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The opportunity Sharpe offered me is a splendid one. Chalmers and Johnson investigated it thoroughly, and both advise me that it is quite an unusually good chance.”

“You didn’t seem to be able to divorce business and social affairs last night,” she reminded him rather sharply, returning to the main point at issue and ignoring all else.

There was the rub. She could not get out of her mind the picture of Mrs. Sharpe chatting gaily with him, smiling up at him and all but fawning upon him, in full view of any number of people who knew both Agnes and Bobby.

“You have made a deliberate choice of your companions, Mr. Burnit, after being warned against them from more than one source,” she told him, aflame with indignant jealousy, but speaking with the rigidity common in such quarrels, “and you may abide by your choice.”

“Agnes!” he protested. “You don’t mean – ”

“I mean just this,” she interrupted him coldly, “that I certainly can not afford to be seen in public, and don’t particularly care to entertain in private, any one who permits himself to be seen in public with, or entertained in private by, the notorious Mrs. Frank L. Sharpe.”

They were both of them pale, both trembling, both stiffened by hurt and rebellious pride. Bobby gazed at her a moment in a panic, and saw no relenting in her eyes, in her pose, in her compressed lips. She was still thinking of the way Mrs. Sharpe had looked at him.

“Very well,” said he, quite calmly; “since our arrangements for this evening are off, I presume I may as well accept that invitation to dine at Sharpe’s,” and with this petty threat he left the house.

At the Idlers’ he was met by a succession of grins that were more aggravating because for the most part they were but scantily explained. Nick Allstyne, indeed, did take him into a corner, with a vast show of secrecy, requested him to have an ordinance passed, through his new and influential friends, turning Bedlow Park into a polo ground; while Payne Winthrop added insult to injury by shaking hands with him and most gravely congratulating him – but upon what he would not say. Bobby was half grinning and yet half angry when he left the club and went over for his usual half hour at the gymnasium. Professor Henry H. Bates was also grinning.

“See you’re butting in with the swell mob,” observed Mr. Bates cheerfully. “Getting your name in the paper, ain’t you, along with the fake heavyweights and the divorces?” and before Bobby’s eyes he thrust a copy of the yellowest of the morning papers, wherein it was set forth that Mr. and Mrs. Frank L. Sharpe had entertained a notable box party at the Orpheum, the night before, consisting of Samuel Stone, William Garland and Robert Burnit, the latter of whom, it was rumored, was soon to be identified with the larger financial affairs of the city, having already contracted to purchase a controlling interest in the Brightlight Electric Company. The paper had more to say about the significance of Bobby’s appearance in this company, as indicating the new political move which sought to ally the younger business element with the progressive party that had been so long in safe, sane and conservative control of municipal affairs, except for the temporary setback of the recent so-called “citizens’ movement” hysteria. Bobby frowned more deeply as he read on, and Mr. Bates grinned more and more cheerfully.

“Here’s where it happens,” he observed. “On the level, Bobby, did they hook you up on this electric deal?”

“What’s the matter with it?” demanded Bobby. “After thorough investigation by my own lawyer and my own bookkeeper, the Brightlight proves to have been a profitable enterprise for a great many years, and is in as good condition now as it ever was. Why shouldn’t I go into it?”

Biff winked.

“Because it’s no fun being the goat,” he replied. “Say, tell me, did you ever earn a pull with this bunch?”

“No.”

“Well, then, why should they hand you anything but the buzzer? If this is a good stunt don’t you suppose they’d keep it at home? Don’t you suppose that Stone could go out and get half the money in this town, if he wanted it, to put behind a deal that was worth ten per cent. a year and pickings? I don’t care what your lawyer or what Johnson says about it, I know the men. This boy Garland is a good sport, all right, but he’s for the easy-money crowd every time – and they’re going to make the next mayor out of him. Our local Hicks would rather be robbed by a lot of friendly stick-up artists than have their money wasted by a lot of wooden-heads, and after this election the old Stone gang will have their feet right back in the trough; yes! This is the way I figure the dope. They’ve framed it up to dump the Brightlight Electric, and you’re the fall guy. So wear pads in your derby, because the first thing you know the hammer’s going to drop on your coco.”

“How do you find out so much, Biff?” returned Bobby, smiling.

“By sleeping seven hours a day in place of twenty-four. If some of the marks I know would only cough up for a good, reliable alarm clock they’d be better off.”

“Meaning me, of course,” said Bobby. “For that I’ll have to manhandle you a little. Where’s your gloves?”

For fifteen minutes they punched away at each other with soft gloves as determinedly and as energetically as if they were deadly enemies, and then Bobby went back up to his own office. He found Applerod jubilant and Johnson glum. Already Applerod heard himself saying to his old neighbors: “As Frank L. Sharpe said to me this morning – ,” or: “I told Sharpe – ,” or: “Say! Sam Stone stopped at my desk yesterday – ,” and already he began to shine by this reflected glory.

“I hear that you have decided to go into the Brightlight Electric,” he observed.

“Signed all the papers this morning,” admitted Bobby.

“Allow me to congratulate you, sir,” said Applerod, but Johnson silently produced from an index case a plain, gray envelope, which he handed to Bobby.

It was inscribed:

To My Son Upon His Putting Good Money Into any Public Service Corporation

and it read:

“When the manipulators of public service corporations tire of skinning the dear public in bulk, they skin individual specimens just to keep in practice. If you have been fool enough to get into the crowd that invokes the aid of dirty politics to help it hang people on street-car straps, just write them out a check for whatever money you have left, and tell your trustee you are broke again; because you are not and never can be of their stripe, and if you are not of their stripe they will pick your bones. Turn a canary loose in a colony of street sparrows and watch what happens to it.”

Bobby folded up the letter grimly and went into his private room, where he thought long and soberly. That evening he went out to Sharpe’s to dinner. As he was about to ring the bell, he stopped, confronted by a most unusual spectacle. Through the long plate-glass of the door he could see clearly back through the hall into the library, and there stood Mrs. Sharpe and William Garland in a tableau “that would have given Plato the pip,” as Biff Bates might have expressed it had he known about Plato. At that moment Sharpe came silently down the stairs and turned, unobserved, toward the library. Seeing that his wife and Garland were so pleasantly engaged, he very considerately turned into the drawing-room instead, and as he entered the drawing-room he lit a cigarette! Bobby, vowing angrily that there could never be room in the Brightlight for both Sharpe and himself, did not ring the bell. Instead, he dropped in at the first public telephone and ’phoned his regrets.

“By the way,” he added, “how soon will you need me again?”

“Not before a week, at least,” Sharpe replied.

“Very well, then,” said Bobby; “I’ll be back a week from to-day.”

Immediately upon his arrival down-town he telegraphed the joyous news to Jack Starlett, in Washington, to prepare for an old-fashioned loafing bee.