Five Thousand an Hour: How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress
CHAPTER XIII
IN WHICH JOHNNY BUYS A PRESENT AND HATCHES A SCHEME
Johnny, relying like a lost mariner on Polly Parsons and Constance Joyto help him pick out a present for his only mother, approached Lofty'swith a diffidence amounting to awe. In that exclusive shop he wouldmeet miles of furbelowed femininity, but he would not have venturedunprotected into those fluffed and billowed aisles for anything shortof a penance.
Being a philosopher, however, he kept his mind active in as many otherdirections as possible, like a child deliberately feasting uponthoughts of Santa Claus though on the way to a promised spanking.
"There's a hoodoo on this block," Johnny observed as they were caughtin the traffic crush almost in front of their destination.
"Lofty and Ersten must be the hoodooers, then," laughed Polly."Everybody else has gone away."
Johnny looked at the towering big Lofty establishment, which occupiedhalf the block, and at the dingy little ladies' tailoring shop, downaround the other corner, with speculative curiosity. About both, aswidely different as they were, there was the same indefinableappearance of prosperity, as if the solid worth from within shoneheavily through.
"Lofty's couldn't move and Ersten wouldn't," supplemented Constance.
"Not that Dutchman!" returned Polly, laughing again as she peered intothe low dark windows of the ladies' tailoring shop. "I was in the otherday, and he told me three times that he would be right there to make mywalking frocks for the next thirteen years."
"He was having a quarrel with Mr. Schnitt about the light in theworkroom when I was in," observed Constance, "but he told me the samething, in his enjoyable German way, and he seemed almost angry aboutit."
"That's the extent of his lease," guessed Johnny shrewdly. "They'retrying to get it away from him."
"I wonder why," speculated Constance.
"It's as simple as spending money," Johnny announced. "Lofty intendsbuilding an extension."
"They won't tear down Ersten's shop," Polly confidently asserted.
"They'll move him in a wheelbarrow some night," Johnny prophesied. "IfI could grab his lease I could play a few hours."
Both the girls laughed at him for that speech.
"You'll be gray before the thirty-first of May," warned Polly.
"It turns anybody gray to dig up a million," agreed Johnny. "It's agood guess, though, Polly. I counted seven new white ones this morning."
"That's a strange coincidence," commented Constance, with a secretlyanxious glance at his hair. "You're just seven hours behind yourschedule."
Johnny shook his head.
"That schedule goes round like an electric fan," he soberly declared.
"And there's no switch," Constance reminded him.
"Gresham," Johnny suggested with a smile.
Polly cast a sidelong glance at the pretty cousin into whose family shehad been adopted. The subject of Gresham was a painful one; and Johnnyfelt his blundering bluntness keenly.
"There isn't any Gresham," laughingly asserted Polly. "There never wasany Gresham. Let's go to Coney Island to-night."
Both Constance and Johnny gave Polly a silent but sincere vote ofthanks.
Willis Lofty, who continued the progressive fortune of his father byprowling about the vast establishment with a microscopic eye,approached Polly with more than a shopkeeper's alacrity.
"You promised to send for me to be your clerk the next time you camein," he chided her.
"I didn't come in this time," she gaily returned. "Mr. Gamble is thecustomer," and she introduced Constance and the two gentlemen. "Mr.Gamble wants to buy a silk shawl for a blue-eyed mother with gray wavyhair and baby-pink cheeks."
"There are a lot of pretty shawls here," Constance added, "but none ofthem seems quite good enough for this kind of a mother."
Young Lofty, himself looking more like a brisk and natty college youthwho had come in to buy a gift for his own mother than the successfulbusiness man he was, glanced at the embarrassed Johnny with thoroughunderstanding.
"I think I know what you want," he said pleasantly; and, calling a boy,he gave him some brief instructions. "We have some very beautifulsamples of French embroidered silks, just in yesterday, and if I canget them away from our buyer you may have your choice. There's adelicate gray, worked in pink, which would be very becoming to a motherof that description. They're quite expensive, but, I believe, are worththe money."
"That's what I want," stated Johnny. "I understand you're going tobuild an extension, Mr. Lofty."
The girls gasped and then almost tittered.
Young Lofty ceased immediately to be the suave master of friendlyfavors and became the harassed slave of finance.
"I don't know where you secured your information," he protested.
"I'm a fancy guesser," returned Johnny with a grin.
"I wish you were right," said Lofty soberly. "We have quietly gainedpossession of nearly all the property in the block, but we're not quiteready to build, nevertheless."
"I can finish the sad story," sympathized Johnny. "One granite-headedladies' tailor threatens to block the way for thirteen years."
Lofty was surprised by the accuracy of his knowledge. "I'd like toborrow your guesser," he admitted.
Johnny and the girls looked at each other with smiles of infantileglee. They were delighted that they had deduced all this while waitingfor a traffic Napoleon to blow his whistle.
"Somebody's been telling," surmised Lofty. "The worst of it is, we ownthe original lease. Father covered the entire block, in fact."
Johnny's thorough knowledge of New York business conditions enabled himto make another good conjecture.
"Your firm has made money too fast," he remarked. "Your father hoped tobuild in twenty years, and you need to build in seven."
"He provided much better than that," returned Lofty in quick defense ofhis father's acumen. "He only allowed ten-year leases; but the oneoccupied by Ersten came to him with a twenty-year life on it. We'vebought off all the other tenants, at startlingly extravagant figures insome cases; but Ersten won't listen."
"Did you rattle your keys?" inquired Johnny, much interested.
"As loudly as possible," returned Lofty, smiling. "I went up threesteps at a time until I had offered him a hundred thousand; then Iquit. Money wouldn't buy him."
"Then you can't build," innocently remarked Constance.
Willis Lofty immediately displayed his real age in his eyes and hisjaws.
"I'll tear down the top part of his building and put a tunnel aroundhim if necessary," he asserted.
"You won't like that any better than Ersten," commented Johnny. "Ithink I'll have to make another guess for you."
"I like your work," replied Lofty with a smile. "Let's hear it."
"All right. I guess I'll buy Ersten's lease for you."
"You'll have to find another answer, I'm afraid," Lofty hopelesslystated. "I've had a regiment of real estate men helping me devil Erstento death, but he won't sell."
"Of course he'll sell," declared Johnny confidently. "You can buyanything in New York if you go at it right. Each deal is like a Chinesepuzzle. You never do it twice alike."
"Try this one," urged Lofty. "There's a good commission in it."
"Commission? Not for Johnny!" promptly refused that young man; "I'llbuy it myself, and hold you up for it."
"If you come at me too strongly I'll build that tunnel," warned Lofty.
"I'll figure it just below tunnel prices," Johnny laughingly assuredhim. The gray shawl with the pink relief came up just then, and allfour of them immediately bought it for Johnny's sole surviving mother.