Beneath the grandstand, Gresham caught up with a thin-faced and sandy-haired man whose colorless eyebrows and almost colorless eyes gave his waxlike countenance a peculiarly blank expression—much as if one had drawn a face and had forgotten to mark in the features. The man started nervously as Gresham touched him on the shoulder, and his thin lips parted in a frightened snarl.
"You have such a ghastly way of slipping up behind one," he complained, brushing the shoulder upon which Gresham had laid his hand.
"You're nervous, Collaton. I'm not Johnny Gamble," laughed Gresham.
"Suppose you were!" indignantly retorted Collaton. "I'm not avoiding Johnny." And he studied Gresham furtively.
"The Gamble-Collaton books are. Do you imagine there are any more outstanding accounts against your firm?"
"How should I know?" Collaton glanced about him uneasily.
"True enough—how should you?" agreed Gresham soothingly. "I'd feel rather sorry for Gamble if an old and forgotten note against your firm, upon which a judgment had been quietly secured 'by default', should turn up just now."
"I don't think one will," returned Collaton, searching Gresham's eyes. "Why?"
"Because he is almost certain to make a deposit in the Fourth National Bank in a short time."
"That's a very good reason," laughed Collaton, now certain of the eyes.
"If that deposit were to be attached," went on Gresham suavely, "it might embarrass him very much." There was a slight pause. "If you'll call me up to-night I'll let you know how much it will be and when he is likely to bank it."
"Why do you tell me this?" puzzled Collaton.
"Because I want him broke!" explained Gresham, his face suddenly twitching viciously in spite of himself.
Collaton thought it over carefully.
"What's your telephone number?" he accommodatingly inquired.
Colonel Bouncer, meanwhile, was flattered to have Polly Parsons pause at his seat as she came down the aisle, after an extended passage at arms with Val Russel, and tell him how young he looked.
"Gad, you'd make any man feel young and brisk!" he gallantly declared.
"Wasn't that Paul Gresham in Mrs. Boyden's box?"
"Yes; the very Paul," she assured him, glad that the colonel was making it so easy for her. "He's going to give you a new neighbor, Colonel. He's just been discussing a deal with Mr. Gamble for the vacant property next to your factory."
"Bless my soul!" ejaculated the colonel, rising hastily. "He hasn't actually sold it, has he?"
"He has given Mr. Gamble an option on it," Polly was happy to state.
"You don't say!" exploded the colonel. "Why, what does Johnny Gamble want with it?"
"He didn't tell; but I think he's organizing a shoe-manufacturing company," lied Polly glibly.
"Goodness me!" muttered the colonel, and, breathing heavily, he cursed his procrastination heartily to himself, threw discretion to the winds and hurried down to the Boyden box just as Gresham returned. His greeting to the other occupants was but perfunctory, and then he turned to Gresham with: "You haven't sold your property adjoining my factory, have you, Gresham?"
"Well, I've given Mr. Gamble an option on it," admitted Gresham reluctantly.
"For how much?"
"That would be telling," interposed Gamble.
"For how long is your option?" the colonel demanded.
"Thirty days."
"What are you buying it for—investment or improvement?"
"That would be telling again."
"Will you sell it?"
"Depends on the price."
"What'll you take for it?"
"Fifty-five thousand."
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the colonel. "Why, man, that's robbery! I'll never pay it. I'll take a chance on waiting until your option expires, then I'll do business with Gresham. Gresham, what will you want for the property if Gamble, or WHEN Gamble doesn't take it up?"
"Fifty thousand," said Gresham, and glanced darkly at Gamble.
Miss Joy interrupted with a laugh. Gresham looked at her inquiringly, but he did not ask her the joke. She volunteered an explanation, however.
"I'm just framing a definition of business ethics," she stated; "but really I don't see the difference between yours and Mr. Gamble's."
"Business ethics consists in finding a man who has some money, and hitting him behind the ear with a sand-bag," explained the colonel. "Even your price is a holdup, Gresham; but I think I can buy it for less when the time comes—if I want it."
"You'll have four months to make up your mind," said Gamble with a triumphant look at Constance.
"I thought your option was for only thirty days."
"It's renewable three times."
"Bless my soul!" shouted the colonel. "That puts an entirely different face upon the matter. If you don't want too much money for it, Gamble, I don't mind confessing that I'd like to build an extension to my factory on that property. Now that my defenses are down, soak me."
"I couldn't refuse a little thing like that. I'll soak you all I can. I said fifty-five thou-sand, you know."
"You didn't mean it, though!" expostulated the colonel.
"What did I mean then?"
"You meant forty thousand."
"As a mind-reader you're a flivver," chided Gamble. "I'll let you down one notch, Colonel. I'll make it fifty thousand—and not one cent less."
The colonel looked at him sorrowfully.
"Do you really mean that, Johnny?" he inquired.
"I really mean it."
"Well, if you say you really mean it you really mean it. I know you well enough for that," admitted the colonel with a sigh. "It's a rank robbery though. I'll take you, Johnny."
Gamble turned to Gresham.
"If you don't mind, I'll just transfer my option to the colonel," he suggested.
"The game is in your hands—for the present," Gresham acknowledged.
"We'll just fix it up that way, then, Colonel. Polly, lend me your fountain-pen again. Colonel, you may hand me your check for seventeen thousand five hundred. You may pay the balance of the money to Gresham—upon delivery, I suppose, of the deed."
"Surely," said the colonel nonchalantly; and, producing his own fountain-pen and check-book, he wrote Johnny Gamble's check, while Gamble wrote a transfer of his option. Constance watched that unquestioning operation between the two gentlemen with puzzled brows.
"You're not taking this matter to your lawyer, Colonel," she observed.
"Certainly not!" he replied in surprise. "I've known Johnny Gamble for years, and I'd take his word for my entire bank-account."
"I must confess that business ethics has me more confused than ever," laughed Constance. "You just now accused Mr. Gamble of robbing you."
It was the colonel's turn to laugh.
"I'd have paid him sixty thousand," he advised her, placing the option affectionately in his pocket-book. "It's worth that to me. I've been afraid to broach the matter to Gresham for a month, for fear he'd want seventy-five when he found out I had to have it. I'm getting it cheaper through Gamble."
A fleeting trace of guilt upon Gresham's countenance told that this surmise was the truth, and Constance shook her head.
"I don't suppose I shall ever understand it," she confessed.
"I don't, myself," observed Gamble, passing the colonel's check between his fingers quite happily. "I can loaf three hours now on that two-hundred-hour stunt, thanks to you, Gresham."
"You had your start by luck," Gresham reminded him.
"Not at all," insisted Gamble cheerfully. "I would have borrowed the money from the colonel to buy that option. How's that for ethics, Miss Joy?"
"It's quite in keeping with your methods of the day," rejoined Gresham. "I still insist that you took an unfair advantage of me."
The colonel, who regretted to be compelled to dislike anybody, turned upon Gresham a dissatisfied eye.
"Oh, play the game or stay out of it!" he advised. "I'll see you at my lawyer's to-morrow at eleven. Come with me a minute, Johnny. I want you to meet a friend of mine who has a big real estate deal on tap, and he may not go back on our train to-night."
Johnny Gamble made his adieus from the Boyden box with reluctance. The horses were lining up at the barrier for the last race, and he might not return in time. While he was bidding a thoroughly inadequate good-by to Constance, Loring came up hastily and called Polly from the box.
"Sammy Chirp called my attention to Gresham and Collaton talking together rather furtively down under the grandstand a few minutes ago," he said. "I have a curious impression that they mean harm to Gamble."
"It was Gresham got the harm. Johnny just beat him to a fifteen-thousand-dollar profit."
"So that was it," said Loring with a frown. "Tell him to watch out. They were about to attach his bank-account the last time he paid an unexpected note," and he lounged into the box.
Polly followed Johnny Gamble when he started to rejoin the colonel.
"Do me a favor, please, Johnny," she begged.
"Certainly," he returned. "Do you know what it is?"
"Here's my fountain-pen. Indorse that check over to me, won't you?"
"What's the joke?" he asked.
"I don't want you to have the money. I'm in a hurry now."
"Well, I'm broke again," laughed Johnny in perfect confidence; and he indorsed the check.
"The most thoroughgoing plebe I ever saw," Gresham commented, looking after Gamble. "It's so fortunate that one is only compelled to meet him in public places."
Constance glanced at him curiously and hurried to the rear rail of the box. She barely mentioned Mr. Gamble's name, and it was surprising how easily he heard her and how quickly he came back.
"I forgot to ask you to call," she said. "If you can spare any time from your pursuit of that million dollars we should be glad to see you at the house—Aunt Pattie and I."
"Will you be busy to-morrow evening?" he briskly inquired.
"There's no one expected but Mr. Gresham," she informed him with a smile at his precipitancy.
"I'll be there," he stated with businesslike decisiveness. "I'll bring along from five to twenty thousand dollars' worth of time and use up as much of it as you'll let me."
"I'll have a meter," she laughed.
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