The Making of Bobby Burnit

Biff Bates laughed as he clambered into the tonneau with Bobby.

“If you’d make a billion dollars, Bobby, but didn’t get back your father’s business that Silas Trimmer snaked away from you, Johnson would think you’d overlooked the one best bet.”

“So would I,” said Bobby soberly, and he had but very little more to say until the chauffeur stopped at Bobby’s own door, where puffy old Applerod, who had been next to Johnson in his usefulness to old John Burnit, stood nervously awaiting him on the steps.

“Terrible, sir! Terrible!” spluttered Applerod the moment he caught sight of Bobby. “This open defiance of Mr. Stone will put entirely out of existence what little there is left of the Brightlight Electric Company.”

“Cheer up, Applerod, for death must come to us all,” encouraged Bobby. “Such shreds and fragments of the Brightlight as there are left would have been wiped out anyhow; and frankly, if you must have it, I put you in there as general manager, when I shifted Johnson to the Bulletin this morning, because there was nothing to manage.”

Applerod threw up his hands in dismay.

“And there will be less. Oh, Mr. Burnit, if your father were only here!”

Bobby, whose suavity Applerod had never before seen ruffled, turned upon him angrily.

“I’m tired hearing about my father, Applerod,” he declared. “I revere the governor’s memory too much to want to be made angry by the mention of his name. Hereafter, kindly catch the idea, if you can, that I am my own man and must work out my own salvation; and I propose to do it! Biff, you don’t mind if I put off seeing you until to-morrow? I have a dinner engagement this evening and very little time to dress.”

“His own man,” said Applerod sorrowfully when Bobby had left them. “John Burnit would be half crazy if he could know what a botch his son is making of things. I don’t see how a man could let himself be cheated four times in business.”

“I can tell you,” retorted Biff. “All his old man ever did for him was to stuff his pockets with kale, and let him grow up into the sort of clubs where one sport says: ‘I’m going to walk down to the corner.’ Says the other sport: ‘I’ll bet you see more red-headed girls on the way down than you do on the way back.’ Says the first sport: ‘You’re on for a hundred.’ He goes down to the corner and he comes back. ‘How about the red-headed girls?’ asks the second sport. ‘I lose,’ says the first sport; ‘here’s your hundred.’ Now, when Bobby is left real money, he starts in to play the same open-face game, and when one of these business wolves tells him anything Bobby don’t stop to figure whether the mut means what he says, or means something else that sounds like the same thing. Now, if Bobby was a simp they’d sting him in so many places that he’d be swelled all over, like an exhibition cream puff; but he ain’t a simp. It took him four times to learn that he can’t take a man’s word in business. That’s all he needed. Bobby’s awake now, and more than that he’s mad, and if I hear you make another crack that he ain’t about all the candy I’ll sick old Johnson on you,” and with this dire threat Biff wheeled, leaving Mr. Applerod speechless with red-faced indignation.

It was just a quiet family dinner that Bobby attended that night at the Ellistons’, with Uncle Dan and Aunt Constance Elliston at the head and foot of the table, and across from him the smiling face of Agnes. He was so good to look at that Agnes was content just to watch him, but Aunt Constance noted his abstraction and chided him upon it.

“Really, Bobby,” said she, “since you have gone into business you’re ruined socially.”

“Frankly, I don’t mind,” he replied, smiling. “I’d rather be ruined socially than financially. In spite of certain disagreeable features of it, I have a feeling upon me to-night that I’m going to like the struggle.”

“You’re starting a stiff one now,” observed Uncle Dan dryly. “Beginning an open fight against Sam Stone is a good deal like being suspended over Hades by a single hair – amidst a shower of Roman candles.”

“That’s putting it about right, I guess,” admitted Bobby; “but I’m relying on the fact that the public at heart is decent.”

“Do you remember, Bobby, what Commodore Vanderbilt said about the public?” retorted Uncle Dan. “They’re decent, all right, but they won’t stick together in any aggressive movement short of gunpowder. In the meantime, Stone has more entrenchments than even you can dream. For instance, I should not wonder but that within a very short time I shall be forced to try my influence with you in his behalf.”

“How?” asked Bobby incredulously.

“Well, I am trying to get a spur track from the X. Y. Z. Railroad to my factory on Spindle Street. The X. Y. Z. is perfectly willing to put in the track, and I’m trying to have the city council grant us a permit. Now, who is the city council?”

“Stone,” Bobby was compelled to admit.

“Of course. I have already arranged to pay quite a sum of money to the capable and honest city councilman of that ward. The capable and honest councilman will go to Stone and give up about three-fourths of what I pay him. Then Stone will pass the word out to the other councilmen that he’s for Alderman Holdup’s spur track permit, and I get it. Very simple arrangement, and satisfactory, but, if they do not shove that measure through at their meeting to-morrow night, before Stone finds out any possible connection between you and me, the price of it will not be money. I’ll be sent to you.”

“I see,” said Bobby in dismay. “In other words, it will be put flatly up to me; I’ll either have to quit my attacks on Stone, or be directly responsible for your losing your valuable spur track.”

“Exactly,” said Uncle Dan.

Bobby drew a long breath.

“I’m very much afraid, Mr. Elliston, that you will have to do without your spur.”

Uncle Dan’s eyes twinkled.

“I’m willing,” said he. “I have a good offer to sell that branch of my plant anyhow, and I think I’ll dispose of it. I have been very frank with you about this, so that you will know exactly what to expect when other people come at you. You will be beset as you never were before.”

“I have been looking for an injunction, myself.”

“You will have no injunction, for Stone scarcely dares go publicly into his own courts,” said Uncle Dan, with a pretty thorough knowledge, gained through experience, of the methods of the “Stone gang”; “though he might even use that as a last resort. That will be after intimidation fails, for it is quite seriously probable that they will hire somebody to beat you into insensibility. If that don’t teach you the proper lesson, they will probably kill you.”

Agnes looked up apprehensively, but catching Bobby’s smile took this latter phase of the matter as a joke. Bobby himself was not deeply impressed with it, but before he went away that night Uncle Dan took him aside and urged upon him the seriousness of the matter.

“I’ll fight them with their own weapons, then,” declared Bobby. “I’ll organize a counter band of thugs, and I’ll block every move they make with one of the same sort. Somehow or other I think I am going to win.”

“Of course you will win,” said Agnes confidently, overhearing this last phrase; and with that most prized of all encouragement, the faith in his prowess of the one woman, Bobby, for that night at least, felt quite contemptuous of the grilling fight to come.

His second issue of the Bulletin contained on the front page a three-column picture of Sam Stone, with the same caption, together with a full-page article, written by Dillingham from data secured by himself and the others who were put upon the “story.” This set forth the main iniquities of Sam Stone and his crew of municipal grafters. In the third day’s issue the picture was reduced to two columns, occupying the left-hand upper corner of the front page, where Bobby ordered it to remain permanently as the slogan of the Bulletin; and now Dillingham began his long series of articles, taking up point by point the ramifications of Stone’s machine, and coming closer and closer daily to people who would much rather have been left entirely out of the picture.

It was upon this third day that Bobby, becoming apprehensive merely because nothing had happened, received a visit from Frank Sharpe. Mr. Sharpe was as nattily dressed as ever, and presented himself as pleasantly as a summer breeze across fields of clover.

“I came in to see you about merging the Brightlight Electric Company with the Consolidated, Mr. Burnit,” said Mr. Sharpe in a chatty tone, laying his hat, cane and gloves upon Bobby’s desk and seating himself comfortably.

From his face there was no doubt in Mr. Sharpe’s mind that this was a mere matter of an interview with a satisfactory termination, for Mr. Sharpe had done business with Bobby before; but something had happened to Bobby in the meantime.

“When I get ready for a merger of the Brightlight with the Consolidated I’ll tell you about it; and also I’ll tell you the terms,” Bobby advised him with a snap, and for the first time Mr. Sharpe noted what a good jaw Bobby had.

“I should think,” hesitated Sharpe, “that in the present condition of the Brightlight almost any terms would be attractive to you. You have no private consumers now, and your contract for city lighting, which you can not evade except by bankruptcy, is losing you money.”

“If that were news to me it would be quite startling,” responded Bobby, “but you see, Mr. Sharpe, I am quite well acquainted with the facts myself. Also, I have a strong suspicion that you tampered with my plant; that your hired agents cut my wires, ruined my dynamos and destroyed the efficiency of my service generally.”

“You will find it very difficult to prove that, Mr. Burnit,” said Sharpe, with a sternness which could not quite conceal a lurking smile.

“I’m beginning to like difficulty,” retorted Bobby. “I do not mind telling you that I was never angry before in my life, and I’m surprised to find myself enjoying the sensation.”

Bobby was still more astonished to find himself laying his fist tensely upon his desk. The lurking smile was now gone entirely from Mr. Sharpe’s face.

“I must admit, Mr. Burnit, that your affairs have turned out rather unfortunately,” he said, “but I think that they might be remedied for you a bit, perhaps. Suppose you go and see Stone.”

“I do not care to see Mr. Stone,” said Bobby.

“But he wants to see you,” persisted Sharpe. “In fact, he told me so this morning. I’m quite sure you would find it to your advantage to drop over there.”

“I shall never enter Mr. Stone’s office until he has vacated it for good,” said Bobby; “then I might be induced to come over and break up the furniture. If Stone wants to see me I’m keeping fairly regular office hours here.”

“It is not Mr. Stone’s habit to go to other people,” bluffed Sharpe, growing somewhat nervous; for it was one of Stone’s traits not to forgive the failure of a mission. He had no use for extenuating circumstances, He never looked at anything in this world but results.

Bobby took down the receiver of his house telephone.

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Jolter, please,” said he.

Sharpe rose to go.

“Just wait a moment, Mr. Sharpe,” said Bobby peremptorily, and Sharpe stopped. “Jolter,” he directed crisply, turning again to the ’phone, “kindly step into my office, will you?”

A moment later, while Sharpe stood wondering, Jolter came in, and grinned as he noted Bobby’s visitor.

“Mr. Jolter,” asked Bobby, “have we a good portrait of Mr. Sharpe?”

Jolter, still grinning, stated that they had.

“Have a three-column half-tone made of it for this evening’s Bulletin.”

Sharpe fairly spluttered.

“Mr. Burnit, if you print my picture in the Bulletin connected with anything derogatory, I’ll – I’ll – ”

Bobby waited politely for a moment.

“Go ahead, Mr. Sharpe,” said he. “I’m interested to know just what you will do, because we’re going to print the picture, connected with something quite derogatory. Now finish your threat.”

Sharpe gazed at him a moment, speechless with rage, and then stamped from the office.

Jolter, quietly chuckling, turned to Bobby.

“I guess you’ll do,” he commented. “If you last long enough you’ll win.”

“Thanks,” said Bobby dryly, and then he smiled. “Say, Jolter,” he added, “it’s bully fun being angry. I’m just beginning to realize what I have been missing all these years. Go ahead with Sharpe’s picture and print anything you please about him. I guess you can secure enough material without going out of the office, and if you can’t I’ll supply you with some.”

Jolter looked at his watch and hurried for the door. Minutes were precious if he wanted to get that Sharpe cut made in time for the afternoon edition. At the door, however, he turned a bit anxiously.

“I suppose you carry a gun, don’t you?”

“By no means,” said Bobby. “Never owned one.”

“I’d advise you to get a good one at once,” and Jolter hurried away.

That evening’s edition of the Bulletin contained a beautiful half-tone of Mr. Sharpe. Above it was printed: “The Bulletin’s Rogues’ Gallery,” and beneath was the caption: “Hadn’t this man better go, too?”

CHAPTER XXIV

EDITOR BURNIT DISCOVERS THAT HE IS FIGHTING AN ENTIRE CITY INSTEAD OF ONE MAN

At four o’clock of that same day Mr. Brown came in, and Mr. Brown was grinning. In the last three days a grin had become the trade-mark of the office, for the staff of the Bulletin was enjoying itself as never before in all its history.

“Stone’s in my office,” said Brown. “Wants to see you.”

Bobby was interestedly leafing over the pages of the Bulletin. He looked leisurely at his watch and yawned.

“Tell Mr. Stone that I am busy, but that I will receive him in fifteen minutes,” he directed, whereupon Mr. Brown, appreciating the joke, grinned still more expansively and withdrew.

Bobby, as calmly as he could, went on with his perusal of the Bulletin. To deny that he was somewhat tense over the coming interview would be foolish. Never had a quarter of an hour dragged so slowly, but he waited it out, with five minutes more on top of it, and then he telephoned to Brown to know if Stone was still there. He was relieved to find that he was.

“Tell him to come in,” he ordered.

If Stone was inwardly fuming when he entered the room he gave no indication of it. His heavy face bore only his habitually sullen expression, his heavy-lidded eyes bore only their usual somberness, his heavy brow had in it no crease other than those that time had graven there. With the deliberateness peculiar to him he planted his heavy body in a big arm-chair opposite to Bobby, without removing his hat.

“I don’t believe in beating around the bush, Mr. Burnit,” said he, with a glance over his shoulder to make sure that the door was closed. “Of course you’re after something. What do you want?”

Bobby looked at him in wonder. He had heard much of Stone’s bluntness, and now he was fascinated by it. Nevertheless, he did not forget his own viewpoint.

“Oh, I don’t want much,” he observed pleasantly, “only just your scalp; yours and the scalps of a few others who gave me my education, from Silas Trimmer up and down. I think one of the things that aggravated me most was the recent elevation of Trimmer to the chairmanship of your waterworks commission. Trivial as it was, this probably had as much to do with my sudden determination to wipe you out, as your having the Brightlight’s poles removed from Market Street.”

Stone laid a heavy hand easily upon Bobby’s desk. It was a strong hand, a big hand, brown and hairy, and from the third pudgy finger glowed a huge diamond.

“As far as Trimmer is concerned,” said he, quite undisturbed, “you can have his head any minute. He’s a mutt.”

“You don’t need to give me Mr. Trimmer’s head,” replied Bobby, quite as calmly. “I intend to get that myself.”

“And as for the Brightlight,” continued Stone as if he had not been interrupted, “I sent Sharpe over to see you about that this morning. I think we can fix it so that you can get back your two hundred and fifty thousand. The deal’s been worth a lot more than that to the Consolidated.”

“No doubt,” agreed Bobby. “However, I’m not looking, at the present moment, for a sop to the Brightlight Company. It will be time enough for that when I have forced the Consolidated into the hands of a receiver.”

Stone looked at Bobby thoughtfully between narrowed eyelids.

“Look here, young fellow,” said he presently. “Now, you take it from me, and I have been through the mill, that there ain’t any use holding a grouch. The mere doing damage don’t get you anything unless it’s to whip somebody else into line with a warning. I take it that this ain’t what you’re trying to do. You think you’re simply playing a grouch game, table stakes; but if you’ll simmer down you’ll find you’ve got a price. Now, I’d rather have you with me than against me. If you’ll just say what you want I’ll get it for you if it’s in reach. But don’t froth. I’ve cleaned up as much money as your daddy did, just by keeping my temper.”

“I’m going to keep mine, too,” Bobby informed him quite cheerfully. “I have just found that I have one, and I like it.”

Stone brushed this triviality aside with a wave of his heavy hand.

“Quit kidding,” he said, “and come out with it. I see you’re no piker, anyhow. You’re playing for big game. What is it you want?”

“As I said before, not very much,” declared Bobby. “I only want to grind your machine into powder. I want to dig up the rotten municipal control of this city, root and branch. I want to ferret out every bit of crookedness in which you have been concerned, and every bit that you have caused. I want to uncover every man, high or low, for just what he is, and I don’t care how well protected he is nor how shining his reputation, if he’s concerned in a crooked deal I’m going after him – ”

“There won’t be many of us left,” Stone interrupted with a smile.

“ – I want to get back some of the money you have stolen from this city,” continued Bobby; “and I want, last of all, to drive you out of this town for good.”

Stone rose with a sigh.

“This is the only chance I’ll give you to climb in with the music,” he rumbled. “I’ve kept off three days, figuring out where you were leading to and what you were after. Now, last of all, what will you take to call it off?”

“I have told you the price,” said Bobby.

“Then you’re looking for trouble and you must have it, eh?”

“I suppose I must.”

“Then you’ll get it,” and without the sign of a frown upon his brow Mr. Stone left the office.

The next morning things began to happen. The First National Bank called up the business office of the Bulletin and ordered its advertisement discontinued. Not content alone with that, President De Graff called up Bobby personally, and in a very cold and dignified voice told him that the First National was compelled to withdraw its patronage on account of the undignified personal attacks in which the Bulletin was indulging. Bobby whistled softly. He knew De Graff quite well; they were, in fact, upon most intimate terms, socially.

“I should think, De Graff,” Bobby remonstrated, “that of all people the banks should be glad to have all this crookedness rooted out of the city. As a matter of fact, I intended shortly to ask your coöperation in the formation of a citizens’ committee to insure honest politics.”

“I really could not take any active part in such a movement, Mr. Burnit,” returned De Graff, still more coldly. “The conservatism necessary to my position forbids my connection with any sensational publicity whatsoever.”

An hour later, Crone, the advertising manager, came up to Bobby very much worried, to report that not only the First National but the Second Market Bank had stopped their advertising, as had Trimmer and Company, and another of the leading dry-goods firms.

“Of course,” said Crone, “your editorial policy is your own, but I’m afraid that it is going to be ruinous to your advertising.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” admitted Bobby dryly, and that was all the satisfaction he gave Crone; but inwardly he was somewhat disturbed.

He had not thought of the potency of this line of attack. While he knew nothing of the newspaper business, he had already made sure that the profit was in the advertising. He sent for Jolter.

“Ben,” he asked, “what is the connection between the First National and the Second Market Banks and Sam Stone?”

“Money,” said the managing editor promptly. “Both banks are depositories of city funds.”

“I see,” said Bobby slowly. “Do any other banks enjoy this patronage?”

“The Merchants’ and the Planters’ and Traders’ hold the county funds, which are equally at Stone’s disposal.”

Bobby heard this news in silence, and Jolter, after looking at him narrowly for a moment, added:

“I’ll tell you something else. Not one of the four banks pays to the city or the county one penny of interest on these deposits. This is well known to the newspapers, but none of them has dared use it.”

“Go after them,” said Bobby.

“Moreover, it is strongly suspected that the banks pay interest privately to Stone, through a small and select ring in the court-house and in the city hall.”

“Go after them.”

“I suppose you know the men who will be involved in this,” said Jolter.

“Some of my best friends, I expect,” said Bobby.

“And some of the most influential citizens in this town,” retorted Jolter. “They can ruin the Bulletin. They could ruin any business.”

“The thing’s crooked, isn’t it?” demanded Bobby.

“As a dog’s hind leg.”

“Go after them, Jolter!” Bobby reiterated. Then he laughed aloud. “De Graff just telephoned me that ‘the conservatism of his position forbids him to take part in any sensational publicity whatsoever.’”

Comment other than a chuckle was superfluous from either one of them, and Jolter departed to the city editor’s room, to bring joy to the heart of the staff.

It was “Bugs” Roach who scented the far-reaching odor of this move with the greatest joy.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” he delightedly commented. “A grand jury investigation. Oh, listen to the band!”

Before noon the Merchants’ and the Planters’ and Traders’ Banks had withdrawn their advertisements.

At about the same hour a particularly atrocious murder was committed in one of the suburbs. Up in the reporters’ room of the police station, Thomas, of the Bulletin, and Graham, of the Chronicle, were indulging in a quiet game of whist with two of the morning newspaper boys, when a roundsman stepped to the door and called Graham out. Graham came back a moment later after his coat, with such studied nonchalance that the other boys, eternally suspicious as police reporters grow to be, looked at him narrowly, and Thomas asked him, also with studied nonchalance:

“The candy-store girl, or the one in the laundry office?”

“Business, young fellow, business,” returned Graham loftily. “I guess the Chronicle knows when it has a good man. I’m called into the office to save the paper. They’re sending a cub down to cover the afternoon. Don’t scoop him, old man.”

“Not unless I get a chance,” promised Thomas, but after Graham had gone he went down to the desk and, still unsatisfied, asked:

“Anything doing, Lieut.?”

“Dead as a door-nail,” replied the lieutenant, and Thomas, still with an instinct that something was wrong, still sensitive to a certain suppressed tingling excitement about the very atmosphere of the place, went slowly back to the reporters’ room, where he spent a worried half-hour.

The noonday edition of the Chronicle carried, in the identical columns devoted in the Bulletin to a further attack on Stone, a lurid account of the big murder; and the Bulletin had not a line of it! A sharp call from Brown to Thomas, at central police, apprised the latter that he had been “scooped,” and brought out the facts in the case. Thomas hurried down-stairs and bitterly upbraided Lieutenant Casper.

“Look here, you Thomas,” snapped Casper; “you Bulletin guys have been too fresh around here for a long time.”

In Casper’s eyes – Casper with whom he had always been on cordial joking terms – he saw cruel implacability, and, furious, he knew himself to be “in” for that most wearing of all newspaper jobs – “doing police” for a paper that was “in bad” with the administration. He needed no one to tell him the cause. At three-thirty, Thomas, and Camden, who was doing the city hall, and Greenleaf Whittier Squiggs, who was subbing for the day on the courts, appeared before Jim Brown in an agonized body. Thomas had been scooped on the big murder, Camden and G. W. Squiggs had been scooped, at the city hall and the county building, on the only items worth while, and they were all at white heat; though it was a great consolation to Squiggs, after all, to find himself in such distinguished company.