"You're after my balance," he said. "It's twelve dollars and thirty-seven cents."
"Well, you see, Mr. Gamble, under the circumstances—" hesitated Mr. Close.
"I know," interrupted the applicant; "you can only say I'm good for twelve-thirty-seven. I don't ask you to back me. If anybody 'phones you, just say I'm a good boy."
Mr. Close almost smiled again.
"So far as the moral risk is concerned I shall have no hesitation in speaking most highly of you," he granted.
"And don't laugh when you say it," Johnny admonished, smiling cheerfully, for he knew that Close always did better than he promised. "Tell them this, can't you?—I've banked with you for five years. I've run about a ton of money through your shop. I've been broke a dozen times and I never left a debt behind me. I've been trusted and I always made good. I guess you could say all that if you stopped to take a couple of breaths, couldn't you?"
"I shall certainly say those things if I am asked about them," replied Mr. Close, considering them carefully, one by one. "Don't hesitate to refer to me. I'll do the best I conscientiously can for you."
Johnny stood waiting for the stream of the traffic to stop for the cross-current, so that he could go over to the subway, when a big blue touring car stopped just in front of him, and the driver, a hearty young woman all in blue, including plumes and shoes, hailed him joyously.
"Jump in, Johnny!" she invited. "I found a four-leaf clover this morning—and here I'm lucky already. Sammy, run into the drug store for some chocolates. Johnny, sit up here with me."
Sammy Chirp, who tied his own cravats and did them nicely, smiled feebly in recognition of Johnny Gamble, lugged Miss Polly Parson's bouquet, parasol, fan, hand-bag and coat back into the tonneau and went upon his errand.
"Thanks, Sammy," said Johnny, and clambered into young Chirp's place in the car. "Where are you going to take me?"
"Any place you say," rejoined Polly.
"Drive over on Seventh Avenue, then," he directed. "There's a lot of shack property around the new terminal station. I want to build a smashing big hotel over there. I don't see why somebody hasn't done it."
Polly puzzled over that matter considerably herself.
"It doesn't seem possible that New York would overlook a bet like that," she declared, and obeying the traffic policeman's haughty gesture, turned briskly off Broadway.
"Why not?" he demanded. "New York grabs a cinch. The cinch has been kicking around loose for fifty years. New York pats herself on the pink bald spot. 'Nothing gets by me!' she says."
"New York's the best town in the world!" Polly flared.
"I wasn't insulting your friend," apologized Johnny, and looked at his watch. "Great Scott! It's ten-thirty!" he exploded. "I owe myself seventy-five hundred dollars. All I've done is to decide on a Terminal Hotel Company. Want some stock, Polly?"
"I'll take all I can reach if you're leading it around," she assured him. "I can't take much, but I'll make Daddy Parsons go in, and I'll be a nuisance to every moneyed man I know."
"By the by, where's the fifteen thousand I made Saturday?" Johnny asked.
"In my bank," she replied. "I just deposited it."
"Why did you take it away from me—if it's any of my business?" he wanted to know.
"I was afraid they'd snatch it from you," she returned. "Gresham was all peeved up because you took fifteen thousand away from him in front of Constance. Loring saw Gresham and your old partner talking together immediately afterward; and he told me that they might frame up some crooked scheme to grab the money. I didn't have a chance to explain, so I asked you to indorse the check to me."
"Do you think Collaton's crooked?" Johnny asked with a queer smile.
"I can think he's crooked without batting an eyelash. I can think it about Gresham too."
"Why do you have that idea about Gresham?"
"Because I don't like him," she triumphantly argued.
"Shake!" invited Johnny. "I know six reasons why I can do without him. What are your six?"
"One is because I don't like him, and another is because he's going to marry Constance, and the other four are because I don't like him," she calmly summed up.
"Does Constance say he's going to marry her?" he inquired crisply.
"Not in so many words."
"Then I don't believe it. I wouldn't marry him for six millions."
"Constance can't be so careless. If they break you they can't sprint fast enough to keep it; but if they take it away from Constance she's broke."
"It's ten-forty!" groaned Johnny. "I'm slow on that million. Constance'll think I'm loafing."
"Is she interested?"
"She promised last night to keep score. Gresham was there. I looked, any minute, to see him bite himself in the neck and die of poison. Polly, he can't have her."
"You'd better tell Constance about that," laughed Polly. "Why, Johnny, you had never seen her or heard of her forty-eight hours ago!"
"I know; I didn't have the right chances when I was young!"
Polly gazed upon him admiringly.
"I've seen swift love affairs before, but you've set a new record!" she exclaimed. "Well, I'm for you, Johnny. Since poor Billy's parents adopted me and made me a cousin of Constance, I can trot up her stone steps any minute; and she treats me as if I'd had my first bottle in a pink-silk boudoir. I'll make it my business to run up there twice a day and boost for you."
"Don't be too strong!" Johnny hastily warned her. "Boost half of the time if you want to, but be sure and knock the other half."
"I guess it would be better," soberly agreed Polly—"even with Constance. Here's your terminal station. Pick out your corner and drive a claim stake."
Polly obligingly drove slowly around three sides of the huge new terminal. Directly opposite the main entrance was a vacant plot of ground, with a frontage of an entire block and a depth of four hundred feet. Big white signs upon each corner told that it was for sale by Mallard & Tyne. They stopped in front of this location, while both Johnny and Polly ranged their eyes upward, by successive steps, to the roof garden which surmounted the twentieth story of Johnny's imaginary Terminal Hotel.
"It's a nifty-looking building, Johnny!" she complimented him as they turned to each other with sheepish smiles.
"I'm going to tear it down and put up a better one," he briskly told her. "I'll hand you a piece of private information. If the big railroad company which built this terminal station doesn't own that blank space it's a fool—and I don't think it is. If it does the property will be held for ever for the increase in value. Let's look at these other blocks. The buildings on the one next to it are worth about a plugged nickel apiece—and that would make exactly as good a location."
"But, Johnny; you couldn't build a hotel in forty days!"
"Build it! I don't want to. I only want to promote it."
"Does a promoter never build?" asked Polly.
"Not if he can escape," replied Johnny. "All a promoter ever wants to do is to collect the first ninety-nine years' profits and promote something else. Drive me up to the address on that real estate sign and I'll pay you whatever the clock says and let you go."
"The clock says a one-pound box of chocolates," she promptly estimated. "Wait, though. I did send for some!" And she looked back into the tonneau. "Why, drat it all! I mislaid Sammy!" she gasped.
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