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It looked good to Bobby, that late extra of the Bulletin, and the force that he had kept on duty to get it out greeted him, as he walked through the office, with a running fire of comment and congratulation that was almost like applause. He had bought a copy on the street as he came in, and as he spread it out there came upon him a thrill of realization that this ought to be the beginning of the end.
It was. The fact that Bobby, through the Bulletin, had forced this action, made him a power to be reckoned with; and straws, whole bales of them, began to show which way the wind was blowing.
One morning a delegation headed by the Reverend Doctor Larynx waited upon him. The Reverend Doctor was a minister of great ingenuity and force, who sought the salvation of souls through such vital topics as Shall Men Go Coatless in Summer? The Justice of Three-Cent Car Fares, and The Billboards Must Go. All public questions, civic, state or national, were thoroughly thrashed out in the pulpit of the Reverend Larynx, and turned adrift with the seal of his condemnation or approval duly fixed upon them; and he managed to get his name and picture in the papers almost as often as the man who took eighty-seven bottles of Elixo and still survived. With him were four thoroughly respectable men of business, two of whom wore side-whiskers and the other two of whom wore white bow-ties.
“Fine business, Mr. Burnit,” said the Reverend Doctor Larynx in a loud, hearty voice, advancing with three strides and clasping Bobby’s hand in a vise-like grip; for he was a red-blooded minister, was the Reverend Doctor Larynx, and he believed in getting down among the “pee-pul.” “The Bulletin has proved itself a mighty fine engine of reform, and the reputable citizens of this municipality now see a ray of hope before them.”
“I’m afraid that the reputable citizens,” ventured Bobby, “have no one but themselves to blame for their past hopeless condition. They’re too selfish to vote.”
“You have hit the nail on the head,” declaimed the Reverend Larynx with a loud, hearty laugh, “but the Bulletin will rouse them to a sense of duty. Last night, Mr. Burnit, the Utopian Club was formed with an initial membership of over seventy, and it selected a candidate for mayor of whom the Bulletin is bound to approve. Shake hands with Mr. Freedom, the Utopian Club’s candidate for mayor, Mr. Burnit.”
Bobby shook hands with Mr. Freedom quite nicely, and studied him curiously.
He was one of the two who wore side-whiskers and a habitual Prince Albert, and he displayed a phenomenal length from lower lip to chin, which, by reason of his extremely high and narrow forehead, gave his features the appearance of being grouped in tiny spots somewhere near the center of a long, yellow cylinder. Mr. Freedom, he afterward ascertained, was a respectable singing-teacher.
“Professor Freedom,” went on the Reverend Doctor Larynx, still loudly and heartily, “has the time to devote to this office, as well as the ideal qualifications. He has no vices whatever. He does not even smoke nor use tobacco in any form, and under his régime the saloons of this town would be turned into vacant store-rooms, if there are laws to make possible such action.”
“I do not want the saloons put out of business,” declared Bobby. “I merely want them vacated at twelve every night, without exception.”
When Doctor Larynx and his delegation went away in wrath the leader was already preparing his sermon upon The Iniquity of the Sons of Rich Fathers.
On the following day a delegation from the business men’s club waited upon him. The business men’s club wanted a business administration. This crowd Bobby handled differently. Upon his desk, tabulated in advance against just such an emergency, he had statistics concerning all the business men’s administrations that had been tried in various cities, and he submitted this statement without argument. It needed none.
“Politics is in itself a distinct business,” he explained. “You would not one of you take up the duties of a surveyor without previous training. The only trouble is that there are no restrictions placed upon politicians. I propose to use them, but to regulate them.”
He did not convert the delegation by this one interview, but he did by cultivating these men and others of their kind separately. He ate luncheons and dinners with them at the Traders’ Club, played billiards with them, smoked and talked with them; and the burden of his talk was Chalmers. When he finally got ready for his campaign the business men were with him unanimously, at least outwardly. Inwardly, there were reservations, for the matter of special privileges was one to be very gravely considered; and special privileges, at a price not entirely prohibitive, was the bulwark of Stone’s régime.
“But the Stone régime,” Bobby advised them, coming brutally to the point and telling them what he knew of their own affairs and Stone’s, “is about to come to an end. The handwriting is on the wall, and you might just as well climb into the band wagon, for at last I have the public on my side.”
At last he had. For a solid year he had been trying to understand the peculiar apathy of the public, and he did not understand it yet. They seemed to like Stone and to look upon his wholesale corruption as a joke; but by constant hammering, by showing the unredeemable cussedness of Stone and his crowd, he had produced some impression – an impression that, alas! was of the surface only – until the investigating committee began its sessions. When it became understood, however, that certain of the thieves might actually be sent to the penitentiary, then who so loud in their denunciation as the public? Why, Stone had robbed them right and left; why, Stone was an enemy to mankind; why, Stone and all his friends were monsters whom it were a good and a holy thing to skewer and flay and cast into everlasting brimstone!
Facts were uncovered that set the entire city in turmoil. More than fifty men who had never been born had been carried upon the city and county pay-rolls, and half of their salaries went directly into Stone’s pocket, the other half going to the men who conducted this paying enterprise. Contracts for city paving and other improvements were let to favored bidders at an enormous figure, and Stone personally had one-fourth of the huge profits on “scamped” work, another fourth going to those who arranged the details and did the collecting. Innumerable instances of this sort were brought out; but the biggest scandal of all, in that it involved men who should have been unassailable, was that of the banks. The relentless probe brought out the fact that all city and county funds had been distributed among four banks, the deposits yielding no revenue whatever to either commonwealth. These funds, however, had paid privately two per cent. interest, and this interest was paid in cash, in sealed envelopes, to the city and county auditors and treasurers, who took the envelopes unbroken to Stone for distribution. The amounts thus diverted from the proper channels totaled to an enormous figure, and, as this money was the most direct and approachable, Chalmers, who had the interesting rôle of inquisitor, set out to get it. The officials who had been longest at the crib, grown incautious were now men of property, and by the use of red-hot pincers Chalmers was able to restore nearly sixty thousand dollars of stolen money, with the possibility of more in sight.
It was upon the heels of this that Chalmers’ candidacy for mayor was announced, and the manner in which the Stone machine dropped to pieces was laughable. Chalmers, and the entire slate so carefully prepared by Bobby in conjunction with the shrewd old fox, Cal Lewis, won by a majority so overwhelming as to be almost unanimous. Immediately upon Chalmers’ election heads began to drop, and the first to go was Cooley, chief of police, in whom, four years later, Bobby recognized the driver of his ice wagon. Coincident with the election came well-founded rumors of grand jury indictments. Two of Stone’s closest and busiest lieutenants, who were most in danger of being presented with nice new suits of striped clothing, quietly converted their entire property into cash and then just as quietly slipped away to Honduras.
Late one afternoon, as Bobby sat alone in his room in the almost deserted Bulletin building, so worried over his business affairs that he had no time for elation over his political and personal triumphs, the door opened and Stone stood before him. The pouches under Stone’s eyes were heavier and darker, his cheeks drooped flabbily and he seemed to have fallen away inside his clothes, but upon his face there sat the same stern impassiveness. Bobby instantly rose, having good cause to want to be well planted upon his feet with this man near him. Stone carefully closed the door behind him and advanced to the other side of Bobby’s desk.
“Well, you win,” he said huskily.
Bobby drew a long breath.
“It has cost me a lot of money, Mr. Stone. It has left me almost flat broke – but I got you.”
“I give you credit,” admitted Stone. “I didn’t think anybody could do it, least of all a kid; but you got me and you got me good. It’s been a hard fight for all of us, I guess. I’m a little run down,” and he hesitated curiously; “my doctor says I got to take an ocean trip.” He suddenly blazed out: “Damn it, you might as well be told! I’m running away!”
Bobby found himself silent. For two years he had planned and hoped for this moment of victory. Now that the exultant moment had come he found himself feeling strangely sorry for this big man, in spite of his unutterable rascality.
“I ain’t coming back,” Stone went on after a pause, “and there’s something I want to ask you to do for me.”
“I should be glad to do it, Mr. Stone, if it is anything I can allow myself to do.”
“Aw, cut it!” growled Stone. “Look here. I got a list of some poor mutts I been looking out for, and I’ve just set aside a wad to keep it going. I want you to look after ’em and see that the money gets spread around right. I know you’re square. I don’t know anybody else to give it to.”
To Bobby he handed a list of some fifty names and addresses, with monthly amounts set down opposite them. They were widows and orphans and helpless creatures of all sorts and conditions, blind and deaf and crippled, whom Stone, in the great passion that every man has for some one to love and revere him, and in the secret tenderness inseparable from all big natures, had made his pensioners.
“There ain’t a soul on earth knows about these but me, and every one of ’em is wise to it that if they ever blat a word about it the pap’s cut off. I don’t want a thing, not even a hint, printed about this – see? I ain’t afraid that you’ll use it in the paper after me asking you not to, so I don’t ask you for any promise.”
“I’ll do it with pleasure,” offered Bobby.
“Well, I guess that’s about all,” said Stone, and turned to go.
Bobby came from behind his desk.
“After all, Stone,” he said, with some hesitation, “I’m sorry to lose an enemy so worth while. I wish you good luck wherever you are going,” and he held out his hand.
Stone looked at the proffered hand and shook his head.
“I’d rather smash your face,” he growled, and passed out of the door.
It was the last that Bobby ever saw of him, and all that the Bulletin carried about his flight was the “fact,” not at all too prominently displayed for the man’s importance as a public figure, that Stone’s health was in jeopardy and that he was about to take an ocean voyage upon the advice of his physician; and on that day Stone’s picture disappeared from the place it had occupied upon the front page of the Bulletin.
It was a victory complete and final, but it was not without its sting, for on that same day Bobby faced an empty exchequer. It was Johnson who brought him the sad but not at all unexpected tidings, at a moment when Chalmers and Agnes happened to be in the office. Seeing them, Johnson hesitated at the door.
“What is it, Johnson?” asked Bobby.
“Oh, nothing much,” said Mr. Johnson with a pained expression. “I’ll come back again.”
He had a sheet of paper with him and Bobby held out his hand for it. Still hesitating, old Johnson brought it forward and laid it down on Bobby’s desk.
“You know you told me, sir, to bring this to you.”
Had the others not been present he would have added the reminder that he had been instructed to bring this statement a week in advance of the time when Bobby should no longer be able to meet his payroll. Bobby looked up from the statement without any thought of reserve before these three.
“Well, it’s come. I’m broke.”
“Not so much a calamity in this instance as it has been in others,” said Agnes sagely. “Fortunately, your trustee is right here, and your trustee’s lawyer, who has two hundred and fifty thousand dollars still to your account.”
Bobby listened in frowning silence, and old Johnson, who had prepared himself before he came upstairs for such a contingency, quietly laid upon Bobby’s desk one of the familiar gray envelopes and withdrew. It was inscribed:
To My Son Robert, Upon the Turning Over to Him of His Sixth and Last Experimental Fund“If a man fails six times he’d better be pensioned and left to live a life of pleasant ease; for everybody has a right to be happy, and not all can gain happiness through their own efforts. So, if you fail this last time, don’t worry, my boy, but take measures to cut your garment according to the income from a million and a half dollars, invested so safely that it can yield you but two per cent. If the fault of your ill success lies with anybody it lies with me, and I blame myself bitterly for it many times as I write this letter.
“Remember, first, last and always, that I want you to be happy.”
Bobby passed the letter to Agnes and the envelope to Chalmers.
“This is a little premature,” he said, smiling at both of them, “for I’m not applying for the sixth portion.”
Agnes looked up at him in surprise.
“Not applying for it?”
“No,” he declared, “I don’t want it. I understand there is a provision that I can not use two of these portions in the same business.”
Both Chalmers and Agnes nodded.
“I don’t want money for any other business than the Bulletin,” declared Bobby, “and if my father has it fixed so that he won’t help me as I want to be helped, I don’t want it at all.”
“There is another provision about which you perhaps don’t know,” Chalmers informed him; “if you refuse this money it reverts to the main fund.”
Bobby studied this over thoughtfully.
“Let it revert,” said he. “I’ll sink or swim right here.”
The next day he went to his bank and tried to borrow money. They liked Bobby very much indeed over at the bank. He was a vigorous young man, a young man of affairs, a young man who had won a great public victory, a young man whom it was generally admitted had done the city an incalculable amount of good; but they could not accept Bobby nor the Bulletin as a business proposition. Had they not seen the original fund dwindle and dwindle for two years until now there was nothing left? Wouldn’t another fund dwindle likewise? It is no part of a bank’s desire to foreclose upon securities. They are quite well satisfied with just the plain interest. Moreover, the Bulletin wasn’t such heavy security, anyhow.
Bobby tried another bank with like results, and also some of his firm business friends at the Traders’ Club. In the midst of his dilemma President De Graff of the First National came to him.
“I understand you have been trying to borrow some money, Burnit?”
It sounded to Bobby as if De Graff had come to gloat over him, since he had been instrumental in dragging De Graff and the First National through the mire.
“Yes, sir, I have,” he nevertheless answered steadily.
“Why didn’t you come to us?” demanded De Graff.
“To you?” said Bobby, amazed. “I never thought of you in that connection at all, De Graff, after all that has happened.”
De Graff shrugged his shoulders.
“That was like pulling a tooth. It hurt and one dreaded it, but it was so much better when it was out. Until you jumped into the fight Stone had me under his thumb. The minute the exposure came he had no further hold on me. It is the only questionable thing I ever did in my life, and I’m glad it was exposed. I admire you for it, even though it will hurt me in a business way for a long time to come. But about this money now. How much do you need at the present time?”
“I’d like an account of about twenty-five thousand.”
“I can let you have it at once,” said De Graff, “and as much more as you need, up to a certain reasonable point that I think will be amply sufficient.”
“Is this Stone’s money?” asked Bobby with sudden suspicion.
De Graff smiled.
“No,” said he, “it is my own. I have faith in you, Burnit, and faith in the Bulletin. Suppose you step over to the First National with me right away.”
CHAPTER XXVII
AUNT CONSTANCE ELLISTON LOSES ALL HER PATIENCE WITH A CERTAIN PROSAIC COURTSHIP
That night, with a grave new responsibility upon him and a grave new elation, sturdier and stronger than he had ever been in his life, and more his own master, Bobby went out to see Agnes.
“Agnes, when my father made you my trustee,” he said, “he laid upon you the obligation that you were not to marry me until I had proved myself either a success or a failure, didn’t he?”
“He did,” assented Agnes demurely.
“But you are no longer my trustee. The last money over which you had nominal control has reverted to the main fund, which is in the hands of Mr. Barrister; so that releases you.”
Agnes laughed softly and shook her head.
“The obligation wasn’t part of the trusteeship,” she reminded him.
“But if I choose to construe it that way,” he persisted, “and declare the obligation null and void, how soon could you get ready to be married to the political boss of this town and one of its leading business men? Agnes,” he went on, suddenly quite serious, “I can not do without you any longer. I have waited long enough. I need you and you must come to me.”
“I’ll come if you insist,” she said simply, and laid both her hands in his. “But, Bobby, let’s think about this a minute. Let’s think what it means. I have been thinking of it many, many days, and really and truly I don’t like to give up, because of its bearing upon our future strength. Yesterday I drove down Grand Street and looked up at that Trimmer and Company sign, and so long as that is there, Bobby, I could not feel right about our deserting the colors, as it were; that is, unless you have definitely given up the fight.”
“Given up!” repeated Bobby quickly. “Why, I have just begun. I’ve been to school all this time, Agnes, and to a hard school, but now I’m sure I have learned my lesson. I have won a fight or two; I have had the taste of blood; I’m going after more; I’m going to win.”
“I’m sure that you will,” she repeated. “Think how much better satisfied we will be after you have done so.”
“Yes, but think, too, of the time it will take,” he protested. “First of all I must earn money; that is, I must make the Bulletin pay. I can do that. It is on the edge of earning its way right now, but I owe twenty-five thousand dollars. It is going to take a long, long time for me to win this battle, and in it I need you.”
“I am always right here, Bobby,” she reminded him. “I have never failed you when you needed me, have I? But maybe it won’t take so long. You say you are going to make the Bulletin pay. If you do that counts for a business success, enough to release you on that side. But really, Bobby, how difficult a task would it be to get back control of your father’s store?”
“Hopeless, just now,” said he.
“How much money would it take?”
“Well, not so very much in comparison with the business itself,” he told her. “I own two hundred and sixty thousand dollars’ worth of stock, Trimmer owns two hundred and forty thousand, while sixty thousand more are scattered among his relatives and dependents. That stock is not for sale, that is the trouble; but if I could buy twenty-one thousand dollars of it I could do what I liked with the entire concern.”
“Then Bobby, let’s not think of anything else but how to get that stock. Let’s insist on having that for our wedding present.”
Bobby regarded her gravely for a long time.
“Agnes, you’re a brick!” he finally concluded. “You’re right, as you have always been. We’ll wait. But you don’t know, oh, you don’t know how hard that is for me!”
“It is not the easiest thing in the world for me,” she gently reminded him.
From the time that she had laid her hands in his he had held them, and now he had gathered them to him, pressing them upon his breast. Suddenly, overcome by his great longing for her, he clasped her in his arms and held her, and pressed his lips to hers. For a moment she yielded to that embrace and closed her eyes, and then she gently drew away from him.
“We mustn’t indulge in that sort of thing very much,” she reminded him, “or we’re likely to lose all our good resolutions.”
“Good resolutions,” declared Bobby, “are a nuisance.”
She smiled and shook her head.
“Look at the people who haven’t any,” she reminded him.
It was perhaps half an hour later when an idea which brought with it a smile came to her.
“We’ve definitely resolved now to wait until you have either accomplished what you set out to do, or completely failed, haven’t we?”
“Yes,” he assented soberly.
“Then I’m going to open one of the letters your father left for us. I have been dying with curiosity to know what is in it,” and hurrying up to her secretary she brought down one of the inevitable gray envelopes, addressed:
To My Children Upon the Occasion of Their Deciding to Marry Before the Limit of My Prohibition“What I can not for the life of me understand is why the devil you didn’t do it long ago!”
Bobby was so thoroughly awake to the underlying principle of Agnes’ contention that even this letter did nothing to change his viewpoint.
“For it isn’t him, it is us, or rather it is me, who is to be considered,” he declared. “But it does seem to me, Agnes, as if for once we had got the better of the governor.”
They were still laughing over the unexpectedness of the letter when Aunt Constance came in, and they showed it to her.
“Good!” she exclaimed, dwelling longer upon the inscription than upon the letter itself. “I think you’re quite sensible, and I’ll arrange the finest wedding for Agnes that has ever occurred in the Elliston family. You must give me at least a couple of months, though. When is it to come off? Soon, I suppose?”
Carefully and patiently they explained the stand they had taken. At first she thought they were joking, and it took considerable reiteration on their part for her to understand that they were not.
“I declare I have no patience with you!” she avowed. “Of all the humdrum, prosaic people I ever saw, you are the very worst! There is no romance in you. You’re as cool about it as if marriage were a commercial partnership. Oh, Dan!” and she called her husband from the library. “Now what do you think of this?” she demanded, and explained the ridiculous attitude of the young people.
“Great!” decided Uncle Dan. “Allow me to congratulate you,” and he shook hands heartily with both Agnes and Bobby, whereat Aunt Constance denounced him as being a sordid soul of their own stripe and went to bed in a huff. She got up again, however, when she heard Agnes retire to her own room for the night, and came in to wrestle with that young lady in spirit. She found Agnes, however, obdurate in her content, and ended by becoming an enthusiastic supporter of the idea. “Although I did have my heart so set on a fine wedding,” she plaintively concluded. “I have been planning it for ages.”
“Just keep on planning, auntie,” replied Agnes. “No doubt you will acquire some brilliant new ideas before the time comes.”
So this utterly placid courtship went on in its old tranquil way, with Bobby a constant two and three nights a week visitor to the Elliston home, and with the two young people discussing business more frequently than anything else; for Bobby had learned to come to Agnes for counsel in everything. Just now his chief burden of conversation was the letting of the new waterworks contract, which, with public sentiment back of him, he had fought off until after the Stone administration had ended. Hamilton Ferris, an old polo antagonist of his, represented one of the competing firms as its president, and Bobby had been most anxious that he should be the successful bidder, as was Agnes; for Bobby had brought Ferris to dinner at the Ellistons and to call a couple of times during his stay in the city, and all of the Ellistons liked him tremendously. Bobby was quite crestfallen when the opening of the bids proved Ferris to be the second lowest man.