Polly Parsons burst into the boudoir of Constance Joy, every feather on her lavender hat aquiver with indignation. "What do you think!" she demanded. "Johnny Gamble's lost his million dollars!"
Constance, nursing a pale-faced headache, had been reclining on the couch at the side of a bouquet of roses four feet across; but now she sat straight up and smiled, and the sparkle which had been absent for days came back into her eyes.
"No!" she exclaimed. "Really, has he?"
Polly regarded her in amazement. "You act as if you are glad of it," she said.
"I am," confessed Constance, and breaking off one of the big red roses she rose, surveyed herself in the glass, tried the effect of it against her dark hair and finally pinned it on her dressing-gown.
Polly plumped into a big rocking-chair to vent her indignation.
"I don't see anything to giggle at!" she declared. "Johnny Gamble's a friend of mine. I'm going home."
"Don't, Polly," laughed Constance. "Why, this is one of Johnny's roses;" and she gave it an extra touch—really a quite affectionate one.
"I'm all mussed up in my mind," complained Polly in a maze of perplexity. "Johnny Gamble made a million dollars so he could ask you to throw away your million and marry him, and you were so tickled with the idea that you kept score for him."
Constance smiled irritatingly.
"I kept score because it was fun. He never told me why he wanted the money."
"You may look like an innocent kid, but you knew that much," accused Polly.
Constance flushed, but she sat down by Polly to laugh.
"To tell you the truth, Polly, I did suspect it," she admitted.
"Yes, and you liked it," asserted Polly.
Constance flushed a little more deeply.
"It was flattering," she acknowledged, "but really, Polly, it brought me into a most humiliating position. At the Courtneys' house-party I overheard Mr. Courtney tell his wife that Mr. Gamble was making a million dollars in order to marry me; and Johnny was with me at the time!"
The hint of a twinkle appeared in Polly's indignant eyes as she began to comprehend the true state of affairs.
"Suppose he did?" she demanded. "Everybody knew it."
Constance immediately took possession of the indignation and made it her own.
"They had no business to know it!"
Polly smiled.
"Every place I went that day I heard the same thing," continued Constance much aggrieved—"Johnny Gamble's million, and me, and Gresham, and the million dollars I would have to forfeit if I didn't marry Paul. It was million, million, wherever I turned!"
"The million-dollar bride," laughed Polly.
"Don't!" cried Constance. "Please don't, Polly! You've done quite enough. Even you came to me out there that day to tell me that now Johnny had made his million and was coming to propose to me. Why, you knew it before I did."
"I'm sorry I found it out," apologized Polly. "I got it from Loring."
"Why didn't you say that it was Loring who told you?" demanded Constance, disposed now to be indignant at everything.
"I didn't know you were jealous," retorted Polly.
"Jealous!" exclaimed Constance. "Why, Johnny wasn't even civil to any other girl."
Polly smiled knowingly.
"Then why did you quarrel with him?"
"I didn't," denied Constance. "He came the minute you left and I'd have screamed if he had proposed then, so I went away. He dropped his straw hat, and it rolled after me and nearly touched me. He dropped it every time I saw him that day. Also he added the final indignity—I overheard him tell Mr. Courtney that he intended to marry me whether I liked it or not. Now, Polly, seriously, what would you have done if anything like that had happened to you?"
Polly waited to gain her self-control.
"I'd have taken the hat away from him," she declared.
Constance sailed once more.
"I didn't think of that," she admitted.
"No, and instead here's what you've done," Polly pointed out to her: "You turned Johnny loose to look after himself, and he isn't capable of it since he fell in love; so for the last two weeks he's been as savage as any ordinary business man. That's one thing. For another, you've made yourself sick just pining and grieving for a sight of Johnny Gamble."
"I haven't!" indignantly denied Constance, and to prove that assertion her eyes filled with tears. She covered them with her handkerchief and Polly petted her, and they both felt better. "I think I'll dress," declared Constance after she had been thus refreshed. "My headache's much improved and I think I'd like to go somewhere." She hesitated a moment.
"You know everybody was to have gathered here to join Courtney's Decoration Day party this afternoon," she added.
"Yes, I remember that," retorted Polly, "but I didn't like to rub it in. Shall I call up everybody and tell them it's on again?"
"Please," implored Constance, "and, Polly—"
"Yes?"
"Tell Johnny to bring his Baltimore straw hat."
While Polly was trying to get his number, Johnny Gamble sat face to face with his old partner.
"You have your nerve to come to me," he said, as the eyebrowless young man sat himself comfortably in Johnny's favorite leather arm-chair.
"There's nobody else to go to," explained Collaton, with an attempt at jauntiness. "I'm dead broke, and if I don't have two thousand dollars to-morrow I'll quite likely be pinched."
"I'm jealous," stated Johnny. "I had intended to do it myself."
"I've been expecting you to," acknowledged Collaton. "That's one of the reasons I came to you."
"I admire you," observed Johnny dryly. "You bled me for two years, and yet you have the ingrowing gall to come and tell me you're broke."
"Well, it's the truth," defended Collaton. "Look here, Johnny; I've heard that you made a lot of money in the last few weeks, but you haven't had any more attachments against you, have you?"
"You bet I haven't," returned Johnny savagely. "I've been waiting for just one more attempt, and then I intended—"
"I know," interrupted Collaton. "You intended to beat Gresham and Jacobs and me to a pulp; and then have us pinched for disorderly conduct, and try to dig up the evidence at the trial."
"Well, something like that," admitted Johnny with a grin.
"I knew it," corroborated Collaton. "I told them when to stop."
"I guess you'll be a good witness," surmised Johnny. "How deep were you in on this Birchard deal? How much did you get?"
"Did Gresham and Birchard pull something?" inquired Collaton with such acute interest that Johnny felt sure he had taken no part in that swindle.
"Well, yes," agreed Johnny with a wince, as he thought of his lost million. "They did pull a little trick. Did you know Birchard very well?"
"I wouldn't say what I know about Birchard except on a witness-stand," chuckled Collaton, "but I can tell you this much: if he got anything, throw it a good-by kiss; for he can rub himself out better than any man I ever saw. He's practised hiding till he doesn't know himself where he is half of the time."
"I've passed him up," stated Johnny. "The only people I'm after are Gresham and Jacobs and you."
"I wonder if you wouldn't pin a medal on one of us if he'd give you the other two," conjectured Collaton, smoothing his freckled cheek and studying Johnny with his head on one side.
"We're not coining medals this year," declared Johnny, "but if it's you you're talking about, and you'll give me Gresham and Jacobs, I'll promise you a chance to stand outside the bars and look in at them."
"It's a bet," decided Collaton promptly. "I split up with Gresham two or three weeks ago at Coney Island, when he wanted me to go in on a big scheme against you, and I suppose it was this Birchard stunt. I told him I'd had enough. Your money began to look troublesome to me. That was the day you were down there with the girl."
"There's no girl in this," warned Johnny. "Now tell me just what you can do."
"Will you wipe me off the slate?"
"Clean as a whistle," promised Johnny. "If my lawyer lets you be convicted I'll go to jail in your place."
"It's like getting over-change by mistake," gratefully returned Collaton. "I'm tired of the game, Johnny, and if I can get out of this I'll stay straight the balance of my life."
"You'll die in the top tier, with the pentitentiary chaplain writing your farewell letters," prophesied Johnny. "What did you say you could do?"
"Well, I can incriminate not only Jacobs but Gresham in those phoney attachments, and I can hand you the Gamble-Collaton books," set forth Collaton. "Gresham got them away from me to take care of and then held them over me as a threat; but I got them back yesterday by offering to pound his head off. He's a bigger coward than I am."
"How much money did you say you wanted?" inquired Johnny.
"Five thousand," returned Collaton cheerfully.
"You said two."
"I have to have two and I need the rest. I thought maybe I could sell you my interest in The Gamble-Collaton Irrigation Company. There's several thousand acres of land out there, you know."
"I haven't laid a finger on you yet," Johnny reminded him, "but if you make another offer to sell me that land I don't know how I'll stand the strain."
"Well, say you give me the money for fun then," amended Collaton. "I didn't know anything about this Birchard deal, but since you've mentioned it I can piece together a lot of things that mean something now. I'll help you chase that down, and you can afford to spare me five thousand. Why, Johnny, I'm a poor sucker that has made the unfortunate financial mistake of being crooked; and you're the luckiest cuss in the world. To begin with, you're square; and that's the biggest stroke of luck that can happen. Everybody likes you, you're a swift money-maker, and you've got a girl—now don't get chesty—that would make any man go out and chew bulldogs."
Johnny reflected over that statement and turned a trifle bitter. He had no million dollars; he had no friends; he had no girl! He contemplated calling the police.
The telephone bell rang.
"Hello, Polly," he said vigorously into the interrupting instrument, and then Collaton, watching him anxiously, saw his face light up like a Mardi Gras illumination. "Bring my Baltimore straw hat!" jubilated Johnny. "Polly, I'll bring one if I have to go to Baltimore to get it." He paused, and the transmitter in front of his face almost glistened with reflected high-lights. "Engagements! For to-day?" exulted Johnny. "I'm at liberty right now. How soon may I come over?" He listened again with a wide-spread grin. Collaton rolled a cigarette with black tobacco and brown paper, lighted it and smiled comfortably. "Can't I talk to Constance a minute?" implored Johnny, trying to push in the troublous tremolo stop. "Oh, is she? All right; I'll be over in about twenty minutes. No, I won't make it an hour, I said twenty minutes;" and still smiling with imbecile delight he hung up the receiver and turned to Collaton with a frown.
"I think I can raise that two thousand for you," he decided. "Now tell me just what you know about Gresham and Birchard."
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