Five Thousand an Hour: How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress Part 34

returned Polly, still good-naturedly. "And when a regular man like Johnny Gamble hustles out and gets one, just so he can ask to marry you, you ought to give a perfectly vulgar exhibition of joy!"

"You have put it very nicely," responded Constance. "If it would only buy as much! Do you know that my name is seldom mentioned except in connection with a million dollars? I must either marry one man or lose a million, or marry another who has made a million for that purpose."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" charged Polly. She glared at Constance a moment, bursting with more indignant things to say; but there were so many of them that they choked her in their attempted egress, and she swished angrily back to the lawn party, exploding most of the way.

At just this inopportune moment Johnny Gamble found his way into the peaceful library.

"Well, it's across!" he joyously confided, forgetting in his happiness the rebuffs of the day. "I have that million!" and he approached her with such an evident determination of making an exuberant proposal then and there that Constance could have shrieked. "I congratulate you," she informed him as she hastily rose. "You deserve it, I am sure. Kindly excuse me, won't you?" and she sailed out of the room.

Johnny, feeling all awkward joints like a calf, dropped his sailor straw hat, and Constance heard it rolling after her. With an effort she kept herself from running, knowing full well that if that hat touched her skirt she would drop!

Johnny looked at the hat in dumb reproach, but when he left the room he walked widely round it. He dared not touch it.

"Ow, I say, Mr. Gamble," drawled Eugene, pa.s.sing him in the doorway, "we've picked out the puppy."

While Johnny was still smarting from the burden of that information and wondering what spot of the globe would be most endurable at the present moment, Courtney came through the hall on some hostly errand.

"Say, Johnny," he blundered in an excess of well-meaning, "why don't you rest from business for a minute? Why aren't you out among some of these shady paths with Constance Joy? You've cinched your million, now go get the girl."

This was too much for the tortured Johnny, and the smoldering agony within him burst into flame.

"Look here, Courtney!" he declared with a vehemence which really seemed quite unnecessary, "I'm going to marry Constance Joy whether she likes it or not!"

A flash of white at the head of the stairs caught Johnny's eye. It was Constance! There was no hope that she had not heard!

"What's the matter?" asked Courtney, startled by the remarkable change in his countenance.

"I've got the stomach ache!" groaned Johnny with clumsy evasion, though possibly he was truthful after all.

"You must have some whisky," insisted Courtney, instantly concerned.

A servant came out of the library.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he remarked, "but I believe this must be your hat, Mr. Gamble."

Johnny broke one of his most rigid rules. He said: "d.a.m.n!"

CHAPTER XX

IN WHICH JOHNNY ASKS HIMSELF WHAT IS A MILLION DOLLARS, ANYWAY

Johnny Gamble in the following days was, as Loring put it, a scene of intense activity. It was part of his contract with the improvement company that he put their subdivision plans under way; and he planted himself in the center of the new offices while things circled round him at high speed. His persistent use of the fast-gear clutch came from the fact that he would not bind himself to work for them more than two weeks.

"They're handing me a shameful salary for it," he confided to Loring, "and I'm glad to get it because it pays up all my personal expenses during my forty-days' stunt and leaves me my million clear."

"Well," began Loring with a smile, "your million won't be"--he suddenly checked himself and then went on--"won't be a nice pretty sum of money unless it ends in the six round ciphers."

He had been about to tell Johnny that he owed fifteen thousand dollars to Constance Joy. Loring reflected, however, that this could be paid just as well after it was all over; that, if he told about it now, Johnny would drop everything to make that extra fifteen thousand; that, moreover, Constance had not yet given him permission to mention the matter; and, besides, there seemed to be a present coolness between Constance and Johnny which n.o.body understood. On the whole, it was better to keep his mouth shut; and he did it.

"It's rather a nice-sounding word,--million," he added by way of concealing his hesitation.

"I don't know," returned Johnny, full of his perplexity about Constance. "I'm tired of hearing the word. Sometimes it makes me sick to think of it."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" reproached Loring with a laugh.

"All right," agreed Johnny accommodatingly. "I'm used to that anyhow.

For one thing, I'm ashamed of being such a sucker. That old partner of mine not only stung me for every cent I could sc.r.a.pe together for two years, but actually had the nerve to try to sell the big tract of land we irrigated with money."

"To sell it!" exclaimed Loring in surprise.

"That's all," returned Johnny. "He went to the Western Developing Company with it two months ago and had them so worked up that they looked into the t.i.tle. They even sent a man out there to investigate."

"Flivver, I suppose?" guessed Loring.

"Rank," corroborated Johnny. "Washburn, of the Western Developing, was telling me about it yesterday. He said his man took one look at the land and came back offering to go six blocks out of his way on a busy Monday to see Collaton hung."

"We'd get up a party," commented Loring dryly, and Johnny hurried away to the offices of his Bronx concern.

He was a very unhappy Johnny these days and had but little joy in his million. If Constance did not care for it, nor for him, the fun was all gone out of everything. Work was his only relief, and he worked like an engine.

On one day, however, he was careful to do no labor, and that day was Friday, May nineteenth; Constance's birthday, and he had long planned to make that a gala occasion.

On the evening preceding he called at the house, but Aunt Pattie Boyden, who was more than anxious to have Constance marry the second cousin of Lord Yawpingham, told him with poorly concealed satisfaction that Constance was too ill to see him. He imagined that he knew what that meant, nevertheless, on the following morning he sent Constance a tremendous bouquet and went down into the midst of the crowds at Coney Island, where of all places in the world he could be most alone and most gloomy.

"What's a million dollars anyway?" he asked himself.

At ten o'clock on Sat.u.r.day morning Mr. Birchard came into the Bronx office with much smiling, presented his credentials duly signed by each of the five Wobbles brothers, received a check for a million dollars made out, by the written instructions of the brothers, to Frederick W.

Birchard, Agent, and departed still smiling.

"One step nearer," observed Johnny to Loring an hour or so later. "Next Sat.u.r.day I'll have the remaining two and a half million and will only pay out one and a half of it. The other million sticks with me."

"The other million?" repeated Loring. "Oh, yes, I see. The half-million you advanced and the half-million profit you make on this deal. For how much can you write your check now, Johnny?"

"If I wrote a check right this minute, to pay for a postage stamp, it would go to protest," laughed Johnny. "I guess I can stand it to be broke for a week though."

"You're a lucky cuss," commended Loring.

"In most things," admitted Johnny half-heartedly.

"In everything," insisted Loring. "By the way, Gresham was over here to see you yesterday while I was out."

"Gresham?" mused Johnny. "That's curious. He was at the Bronx office and also at my apartments. I 'phoned this morning, but was told he had gone out of town for a week."

"You probably missed something very important," returned Loring sarcastically. "Where were you yesterday anyhow?"