The Making of Bobby Burnit

“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.

CHAPTER XV

A STRANGE CONNECTION DEVELOPS BETWEEN ELECTRICITY AND POLITICS

Chalmers, during Bobby’s absence, secured all the secret information that he could concerning the Brightlight Electric, but nothing to its detriment transpired in that investigation, and when he returned, Bobby, very sensibly as he thought, completed his investment. He paid his two hundred and fifty thousand dollars into the coffers of the company, and, at the first stock-holders’ meeting, voting this stock and the ten shares he had bought from Sharpe at a hundred and seventy-two, he elected his own board of directors, consisting of Chalmers, Johnson, Applerod, Biff Bates and himself, giving one share of stock to each of the other four gentlemen so that they would be eligible. The remaining two members whom he allowed to be elected were Sharpe and J. W. Williams, and the board of directors promptly elected Bobby president and treasurer, Johnson secretary and Chalmers vice-president – a result which gave Bobby great satisfaction. Once he had been frozen out of a stock company; this time he had absolute control, and he found great pleasure in exercising it, though against Chalmers’ protest. With swelling triumph he voted to himself, through his “dummy” directors, the salary of the former president – twelve thousand dollars a year – though he wondered a trifle that President Eastman submitted to his retirement with such equanimity, and after he walked away from that meeting he considered his business career as accomplished. He was settled for life if he wished to remain in the business, the salary added to the dividends on two hundred and sixty thousand dollars worth of stock bringing his own individual income up to a quite respectable figure. If there were no further revenue to be derived from the estate of John Burnit, he felt that he had a very fair prospect in life, indeed, and could, no doubt, make his way very nicely.

He had been unfortunate enough to find Agnes Elliston “not at home” upon the two occasions when he had called since their disagreement upon the subject of the Sharpes, but now he called her up by telephone precisely as if nothing had happened, and explained to her how good his prospects were; good enough, in fact, he added, that he could look matrimony very squarely in the eye.

“Allow me to congratulate you,” said Agnes sweetly. “I presume I’ll read presently about the divorce that precedes your marriage,” and she hung up the receiver; all of which, had Bobby but paused to reflect upon it, was a very fair indication that all he had to do was to jump in his automobile and call on Aunt Constance Elliston, force his way upon the attention of Agnes and browbeat that young lady into an immediate marriage. He chose, on the contrary, to take the matter more gloomily, and Johnson, after worrying about him for three dismal days, consulted Biff Bates. But Biff, when the problem was propounded to him, only laughed.

“His steady has lemoned him,” declared Biff. “Any time a guy’s making plenty of money and got good health and ain’t married, and goes around with an all-day grouch, you can play it for a one to a hundred favorite that his entry’s been scratched in the solitaire diamond stakes.”

“Uh-huh,” responded the taciturn Johnson, and stalked back with grim purpose to the Electric Company’s office, of which Bobby and Johnson and Applerod had taken immediate possession.

The next morning Johnson handed to Bobby one of the familiar gray envelopes, inscribed:

To My Son Upon the Occasion of His Having a Misunderstanding with Agnes Elliston

He submitted the envelope with many qualms and misgivings, though without apology, but one glance at Bobby’s face as that young gentleman read the inscription relieved him of all responsibility in the matter, for if ever a face showed guilt, that face was the face of Bobby Burnit. In the privacy of the president’s office Bobby read the briefest note of the many that his forethoughted father had left behind him in Johnson’s charge:

“You’re a blithering idiot!”

That was all. Somehow, that brief note seemed to lighten the gloom, to lift the weight, to remove some sort of a barrier, and he actually laughed. Immediately he called up the Ellistons. He received the information from the housekeeper that Agnes and Aunt Constance had gone to New York on an extended shopping trip, and thereby he lost his greatest and only opportunity to prove that he had at last been successful in business. That day, all the stock which Frank L. Sharpe had held began to come in for transfer, in small lots of from ten to twenty shares, and inside a week not a certificate stood in Sharpe’s name. All the stock held by Williams also came in for transfer. Bobby went immediately to see Sharpe, and, very much concerned, inquired into the meaning of this. Mr. Sharpe was as pleasant as Christmas morning.

“To tell you the truth, Mr. Burnit,” said he, “there were several very good reasons. In the first place, I needed the money; in the second place, you were insistent upon control and abused it; in the third place, since the increased capitalization and change of management the quotations on Brightlight Electric dropped from one-seventy-two to one-sixty-five, and I got out before it could drop any lower. You will give me credit for selling the stock privately and in small lots where it could not break the price. However, Mr. Burnit, I don’t see where the sale of my stock affects you in any way. You have the Brightlight Electric now in good condition, and all it needs to remain a good investment is proper management.”

“I’m afraid it needs more than that,” retorted Bobby. “I’m afraid it needs to be in a position to make more money for other people than for myself;” through which remark it may be seen that, though perhaps a trifle slow, Bobby was learning.

Another lesson awaited him. On the following morning every paper in the city blazed with the disquieting information that the Consumers’ Electric Light and Power Company and the United Illuminating and Fuel Company were to be consolidated! Out of the two old concerns a fifty-million-dollar corporation was to be formed, and a certain portion of the stock was to be sold in small lots, as low, even, as one share each, so that the public should be given a chance to participate in this unparalleled investment. Oh, it was to be a tremendous boon to the city!

Bobby, much worried, went straight to Chalmers.

“So far as I can see you have all the best of the bargain,” Chalmers reassured him. “The Consumers’, already four times watered and quoted at about seventy, is to be increased from two to five million before the consolidation, so that it can be taken in at ten million. The Union, already watered from one to nine million in its few brief years, takes on another hydraulic spurt and will be bought for twenty million. Of the thirty million dollars which is to be paid for the old corporation, nineteen million represents new water, the most of which will be distributed among Stone and his henchmen. The other twenty million will go to the dear public, who will probably be given one share of common as a bonus with each share of preferred, and pay ten million sweaty dollars for it. Do you think this new company expects to pay dividends? On their plants, worth at a high valuation, five million dollars, and their new capital of ten million, a profit must be earned for fifty million dollars’ worth of stock, and it can not be done. Within a year I expect to see Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company stock quoted at around thirty. By that time, however, Stone and his crowd will have sold theirs, and will have cleaned up millions. Brightlight Electric was probably too small a factor to be considered in the consolidation. Did you pay off that mortgage? Then Stone has his hundred thousand dollars; the back salary list of Stone’s henchmen has been paid up with your money; Sharpe and Williams have converted their stock and Stone’s into cash at a fancy figure; Eastman is to be taken care of in the new company and they are satisfied. In my estimation you are well rid of the entire crowd, unless they have some neat little plan for squeezing you. But I’ll tell you what I would do. I would go direct to Stone, and see what he has to say.”

Bobby smiled ironically at himself as he climbed the dingy stairs up which it was said that every man of affairs in the city must sooner or later toil to bend the knee, but he was astonished when he walked into the office of Stone to find it a narrow, bare little room, with the door wide open to the hall. There was an old, empty desk in it – for Stone never kept nor wrote letters – and four common kitchen chairs for waiting callers. At the desk near the one window sat Stone, and over him bent a shabby-looking man, whispering. Stone, grunting occasionally, looked out of the window while he listened, and when the man was through gave him a ten-dollar bill.

“It’s all right,” Stone said gruffly. “I’ll be in court myself at ten o’clock to-morrow morning, and you may tell Billy that I’ll get him out of it.”

Another man, a flashily-dressed fellow, was ahead of Bobby, and he, too, now leaned over Stone and whispered.

“Nothing doing,” rumbled Stone.

The man, from his gestures, protested earnestly.

“Nix!” declared Stone loudly. “You threw me two years ago this fall, and you can’t come back till you’re on your uppers good and proper. I don’t want to see you nor hear of you for another year, and you needn’t send any one to me to fix it, because it can’t be fixed. Now beat it. I’m busy!”

The man, much crestfallen, “beat it.” Bobby was thankful that there was no one else waiting when it was his turn to approach the Mogul. Stone shook hands cordially enough.

“Mr. Stone,” inquired Bobby, “how does it come that the Brightlight Electric Company was not offered a chance to come into this new consolidation?”

“How should I know?” asked Stone in reply.

“It is popularly supposed,” suggested Bobby, smiling, “that you know a great deal about it.”

Mr. Stone ignored that supposition completely.

“Mr. Burnit, how much political influence do you think you could swing?”

“Frankly, I never thought of it,” said Bobby surprised.

“You belong to the Idlers’ Club, you belong to the Traders’ Club, to the Fish and Game, the Brassie, the Gourmet, and the Thespian Clubs. You are a member of the board of governors in three of these clubs, and are very popular in all of them. A man like you, if he would get wise, could swing a strong following.”

“Possibly,” admitted Bobby dryly; “although I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

“One-third of the members of the Traders’ Club do not vote, more than half of the members of the Fish and Game and the Brassie do not vote, none of the members of the other clubs vote at all,” went on Mr. Stone. “They ain’t good citizens. If you’re the man that can stir them up the right way you’d find it worth while.”

“But just now,” evaded Bobby, “whom did you say I should see about this consolidation?”

“Sharpe,” snapped Stone. “Good day, Mr. Burnit.” And Bobby walked away rather belittled in his own estimation.

He had been offered an excellent chance to become one of Stone’s political lieutenants, had been given an opportunity to step up to the pie counter, to enjoy the very material benefits of the Stone style of municipal government; and in exchange for this he had only to sell his fellows. He knew now that his visit to Sharpe would be fruitless, that before he could arrive at Sharpe’s office that puppet would have had a telephone message from Stone; yet, his curiosity aroused, he saw the thing through. Mr. Sharpe, upon his visit, met Bobby as coldly as the January morning when the Christmas bills come in.

“We don’t really care for the Brightlight Electric in the combination at all,” said Mr. Sharpe, “but if you wish to come in at a valuation of five hundred thousand I guess we can find a place for you.”

“Let me understand,” said Bobby. “By a valuation of five hundred thousand dollars you mean that the Brightlight stock-holders can exchange each share of their stock for one share in the Consolidated?”

“That’s it, precisely,” said Mr. Sharpe without a smile.

“You’re joking,” objected Bobby. “My stock in the Brightlight is worth to-day one hundred and fifty dollars a share. My two hundred and sixty thousand dollars’ worth of stock in the Consolidated would not be worth par, even, to-day. Why do you make this discrimination when you are giving the stock-holders of the Consumers’ an exchange of five shares for one, and the stock-holders of the United an exchange of twenty shares for nine?”

“We need both those companies,” calmly explained Sharpe, “and we don’t need the Brightlight.”

“Is that figure the best you will do?”

“Under the circumstances, yes.”

“Very well then,” said Bobby; “good day.”

“By the way, Mr. Burnit,” Sharpe said to him with a return of the charming smile which had been conspicuously absent on this occasion, “we needn’t consider the talk entirely closed as yet. It might be possible that we would be able, between now and the first of the next month, when the consolidation is to be completed, to make you a much more liberal offer to come in with us; to be one of us, in fact.”

Bobby sat down again.

“How soon may I see you about it?” he asked.

“I’ll let you know when things are shaped up right. By the way, Mr. Burnit, you are a very young man yet, and just starting upon your career. Really you ought to look about you a bit and study what advantages you have in the way of personal influence and following.”

“I have never counted that I had a ‘following.’”

“I understand that you have a very strong one,” insisted Sharpe. “What you ought to do is to see Mr. Stone.”

“I have been to see him,” replied Bobby with a smile.

“So I understand,” said Sharpe dryly. “By the way, next Tuesday I am to be voted upon in the Idlers’. You are on the board of governors up there, I believe?”

“Yes,” said Bobby steadily.

Sharpe studied him for a moment.

“Well, come around and see me about this consolidation on Wednesday,” he suggested, “and in the meantime have another talk with Stone. By all means, go and see Stone.”

“Johnson,” asked Bobby, later, “what would you do if a man should ask you to sell him your personal influence, your self-respect and your immortal soul?”

“I’d ask his price,” interposed Applerod with a grin.

“You’d never get an offer,” snapped Johnson to Applerod, “for you haven’t any to sell. Why do you ask, Mr. Burnit?”

Bobby regarded Johnson thoughtfully for a moment.

“I know how to make the Brightlight Electric Company yield me two hundred per cent. dividends within a year or less,” he stated.

“Through Stone?” inquired Johnson.

“Through Stone,” admitted Bobby, smiling at Johnson’s penetration.

“I thought so. I guess your father has summed up, better than I could put it, all there is to be said upon that subject.” And from his index-file he produced one of the familiar gray envelopes, inscribed:

To My Son Robert Upon the Subject of Bribery

“When a man sells his independence and the faith of his friends he is bankrupt. Both the taker and the giver of a bribe, even when it is called ‘preferment,’ are like dogs with fleas; they yelp in their sleep; only the man gets callous after a while and the dog doesn’t. Whoever the fellow is that’s trying to buy your self-respect, go soak him in the eye, and pay your fine.”

“For once I agree most heartily with the governor,” said Bobby, and as a result he did not go to see Stone. Moreover, Frank L. Sharpe was blackballed at the Idlers’ Club with cheerful unanimity, and Bobby figuratively squared his shoulders to receive the blow that he was convinced must certainly fall.