The Making of Bobby Burnit

“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.”

CHAPTER XIII

IN WHICH A CHARMING GENTLEMAN OFFERS AN INVESTMENT WITHOUT A FLAW

It was pretty, in the succeeding days, to see Agnes poring over advertisements and writing down long lists of suggested enterprises for investigation, enterprises which proved in every case to be in the midst of an already too thickly contested field, or to be hampered by monopoly, or subject to some other vital drawback. There seemed to be a strange dearth of safe and suitable commercial ventures, a fact over which Bobby and Agnes together puzzled almost nightly. There was to be no false start this time; no stumbling in the middle of the race; no third failure. The third time was to be the charm. And yet too much time must not be wasted. They both began to feel rather worried about this.

Of course, there was a letter, in the familiar gray envelope. It had been handed to Bobby by Johnson upon the day the second check for two hundred and fifty thousand had been paid over by Chalmers upon Agnes’ order, and it read:

To My Son Robert, Upon His Third Attempt to Make Money

“The man who has never failed has been either too lucky or too timid to have much tried and tested worth. The man who always fails is too useless to talk about. As you’ve failed twice you’re neither too lucky nor too timid. It remains to be seen if you are too useless.

“Remember that money isn’t the only audible thing in this world; but it makes more noise than anything else. A vast number of people call money vulgar; but, if you’ll notice, this opinion is chiefly held by those who haven’t been able to secure any of it.

“I wouldn’t have you sacrifice any decent principle to get it, because that is not necessary; but go get money of your own, and see what a difference there is between dollars. A dollar you’ve made is as different from a dollar that’s given to you as your children are from other people’s.”

“If only the governor had pointed out some good business for me to go into,” complained Bobby as he read this letter over with Agnes.

She shook her head soberly. She realized, more than he possibly could, as yet, just where Bobby’s weaknesses lay. She had worried over them not a little, of late, and she was just as anxious as old John Burnit had been to have him correct those defects; and she, like Bobby’s father, was only thankful that they were not defects of manliness, of courage or of moral or mental fiber. They were only defects of training, for which the elder Burnit, as he had himself confessed, was responsible.

“That isn’t what he wanted at all, Bobby,” she protested. “The very fact of your two past failures shows just how right he was in making you find out things for yourself. The chief trouble, I am afraid, is that you have been too ready to furnish the money and let others spend it for you.”

“I know,” said Bobby. “I have been too willing to take everybody’s word, I guess; but I have always been able to do that in my crowd, and it is rather a dash to me to find that in business you can not do it. However, I have reformed.”

He said this so self-confidently that Agnes laughed.

“Yes,” she admitted, “you are convinced that Silas Trimmer is a thief and a rascal, and you would not take his word for anything. You are convinced that Applerod’s judgment is useless and that your own does not amount to much, but I still believe that the next plausible looking and plausible talking man who comes to you can engage you in any business that seems fair on the surface.”

“I deserve what you say,” he confessed, but somewhat piqued, nevertheless. “However, I don’t think you are giving me credit for having learned any lesson at all. Why, only to-day you ought to have heard me turning down a proposition to finance a new and improved washing-machine. Sounded very good and feasible, too. The man was a good talker and thoroughly earnest and honest, I am sure. I really did want to help the fellow start his business, but somehow or other I could not seem to like the idea of washing-machines; such a sudsy sort of business.”

Agnes laughed the sort of a laugh that always made him want to catch hold of her, but if he had any intentions in that respect they were interfered with just now by Uncle Dan, who strolled into the parlor in his dressing-jacket and with a cigar tilted in the corner of his mouth.

“How’s the Commercial Board of Strategy coming on?” he inquired as he offered Bobby a cigar.

“Fine!” declared Bobby; “except that it can not think of a stratagem.”

“I think you are very selfish not to help us out, Uncle Dan,” declared Agnes. “With all your experience you ought to be able to suggest something for Bobby to go into that would be a nice business and perfectly safe and make him lots of money without requiring too much experience to start with.”

“Young lady,” said Uncle Dan severely, “if I knew a business of that kind I’d sell some of the stock of my factory and go into it myself; but I don’t. The fact is, there are no business snaps lying around loose. You have to make one, and that takes not just money, but work and brains.”

“I’m perfectly willing to work,” declared Bobby.

“And you don’t mean to say that he hasn’t brains!” objected Agnes.

“No-o-o,” admitted Uncle Dan. “I am quite sure that Bobby has brains, but they have not been quite – a – a – well, say solidified, yet. You’re not allowed to smoke in this parlor, Bobby. Mrs. Elliston wants a quiet home game of whist; sent me to bring you up.”

Secretly, old Dan Elliston was himself puzzling a great deal over a career for Bobby, but up to the moment had not found anything that he thought safe to propose. Not having a good idea he was averse to discussing any project whatsoever, and so, each time that he was consulted upon the subject, he was as evasive as this about it, and Bobby each morning dragged perplexedly into the handsome offices of the defunct Applerod Addition, where Applerod and Johnson were still working a solid eight hours a day to straighten out the affairs of that unfortunate venture.

Those offices were the dullest quarters Bobby knew, for they contained nothing but the dead ashes of bygone money; but one morning business picked up with a jerk. He found a mine investment agent awaiting him when he arrived, and before he was through with this clever conversationalist a man was in to get him to buy a racing stable. Affairs grew still more brisk as the morning wore on. Within the next two hours he had politely but firmly declined to buy a partnership in a string of bucket shops, to refinance a defunct irrigation company, to invest in a Florida plantation, to take a tip on copper, and to back an automobile factory which was to enter business upon some designs of a new engine stolen by a discharged workman.

“How did all these people find out that I have two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to invest?” impatiently demanded Bobby, after he had refused the allurements of a patent-medicine scheme, the last of that morning’s lot.

There followed a dense silence, in the midst of which old Johnson looked up from the book in which he was entering a long, long list of items on the wrong side of the profit and loss account, and jerked his lean thumb angrily in the direction of Applerod.

“Ask him,” he said.

Chubby-faced old Applerod, excessively meek of spirit to-day, suffered a moment of embarrassment under the accusing eyes of young Burnit.

“The newspapers, sir,” he admitted, twisting uncomfortably in his swivel chair. “The reporters were here yesterday afternoon with the idea that since you haven’t announced any future plans, the failure of our real estate scheme —my real estate scheme,” he corrected in response to a snort and a glare from Johnson – “had left you penniless. Of course I wasn’t going to let them go away with that impression, so I told them that you had another two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to invest, with probably more to follow, if necessary.”

“And of course,” groaned Bobby, “it is all in print, with ingenious trimmings.”

From a drawer in his desk Johnson quietly drew copies of the morning papers, each one folded carefully to an article in which, under wide variations of embarrassing head-lines, the facts of Bobby’s latest frittering of his father’s good money were once more facetiously, even gleefully, set forth and embellished, with added humorous speculations as to how he would probably cremate his new fund. Bobby was about to turn into his own room to absorb his humiliation in secret when Applerod hesitantly stopped him.

“Another thing, sir,” he said. “Mr. Frank L. Sharpe called up early this morning to know when he would find you in, and I took the liberty of telling him that you would very likely be here at ten o’clock.”

Bobby frowned slightly at the mention of that name. He knew of Sharpe vaguely as a man whose private life had been so scandalous that society had ceased to shudder at his name – it simply refused to hear it; a man who had even secured advancement by obligingly divorcing his first wife so that the notorious Sam Stone could marry her.

“What did he want?” he asked none too graciously.

“I don’t know, sir,” said Applerod; “but he telephoned me again just as you were getting rid of this last caller. I told him that you were here and he said that he would be right over.”

Bobby made no reply to this, but went thoughtfully into his room and closed the door after him. In less than five minutes the door opened, and Mr. Applerod, his voice fairly oily with obsequiousness, announced Mr. Frank L. Sharpe! Why, here is a man whose name was in the papers every morning, noon and night! Mr. Sharpe had taken a trip to New York on behalf of the Gas Company; Mr. Sharpe had returned from his trip to New York on behalf of the Gas Company; Mr. Sharpe had entertained at the Hotel Spender; Mr. Sharpe had made a speech; Mr. Sharpe had been interviewed; Mr. Sharpe had been indisposed for half a day!