"Hello, Dennis!" he said, perceiving back of an enormous chocolate éclair the human anaconda famine and opportunity had at this moment made of Finnegan, the discoverer of the double adjective.
"Hello yourself!"
"How's the bank account?" said Skippy lightly, for etiquette forbade any reference to the half-dollar parted with on the Wednesday before.
"Why, bless my immortal soul, you old rambunctious, skipping Zockarooster, are you setting them up?" said Brian de Boru, pretending to misunderstand.
Skippy disdained a reply. Al, after all, was but running true to form, but this was the basest ingratitude—the serpent's tooth in the fair landscape of friendship.
"If he'd at least offered to share that éclair I—I could—" said Skippy to himself, and then stopped in silence before the future Finnegan had thrown to the winds. For he liked Dennis and Dennis would have made such an ideal publicity man.
He passed like a poor relation at a wedding feast, and as he passed with many a stammered hint, and eloquently pleading eyes, his faith in his kind began to ooze away. Of course it was the end of the month, yet of twenty friends who had fed from his hand, when his hand had been hospitable, not one stirred to the commonest of human impulses. And so gloomy, alone and misunderstood, like the young Napoleon at Brienne, John C. Bedelle, with the consciousness of future greatness, moved out from the uncomprehending crowd. At the door Toots Cortrelle arrived with unmistakably jingling pockets, and seeing him, cried with the zest of young hunger certain of gratification:
"Hullo, Skippy, old sockbutts!"
"Couldn't lend me a quarter or a dime, could you?" said Skippy solemnly.
"Why not?"
"You can, Toots—you can, honest?"
"With ease and pleasure. This is the way it is done," said Toots, who proceeded to transfer a quarter from his pocket to the astounded Skippy, with the classic manner of a prestidigitator.
"What's happened?" said Skippy, feeling that the situation demanded some explanation.
"Maiden aunt and birthday," said Toots joyfully. "Al, take Mr. Bedelle's order and make mine a triple jigger, coffee with chocolate syrup!"
When ten minutes later, gorged and sated, with his faith in humanity somewhat restored, Skippy separated from his benefactor, he turned to Toots and said solemnly:
"Old friend, I shall remember this!"
"All right—turn about's fair play. Ta-ta and so long," said Cortrelle, all unsuspecting of the future Destiny had built up for him.
"Yes, some day I shall remember," said Skippy solemnly to himself. And as he trudged back to his room at the Kennedy, there to map out the future operations of the Bathtub Trust, he allowed his imagination to dwell delightfully on that momentous future date when the debt of friendship should be paid. He saw himself in a gorgeous marble-lined office, protected by an outer fringe of obsequious secretaries, a box of expensive cigars on his shining mahogany desk, and before him in respectful attention Toots Cortrelle, now grown a man, but worn and wasted with the buffeting years, and he saw the light of hope spurting upward in the tired eyes as he heard himself saying:
"Cortrelle, once long ago, you did something I told you I should remember. You have forgotten it. I never forget. For that I am going to put you in charge of my whole South American trade at a salary—" Here Skippy paused somewhat perplexed before continuing, awed at his own munificence—"at a salary of over three thousand dollars a year!"
But just as Toots with tears in his eyes was starting to grasp his hand, Skippy's foot tripped over a step and he rolled ignominiously down the terrace and fetched up in a heap among the gravel.
"Oh, please do it again!" said the voice of Snorky Green from an upper window.
"You go to blazes!" exclaimed Skippy, rising wrathfully. But all at once his anger left him. Snorky Green was his roommate and partner of his secrets, and the secret that had been locked up within him these last momentous hours simply had to be told.
CHAPTER V
The Golden Shower
TEN minutes later Snorky Green was standing in a daze, one hand on an open Bible—taken for the occasion from the room of the Pink Rabbit—and gazing into the flushed countenance of his roommate, who was saying:
"Snorky, are you a Christian?"
"Say, what do you—"
"No matter—you believe in God!"
"Sure I do."
"Then swear!"
"Swear what?"
"Swear never to reveal to man, woman or child what I am about to disclose to you."
"I swear!"
"As I am a Christian and believe in God."
"As I am a Christian and believe in God."
"And if I do may God strike with his afflictions those I love best—"
"Oh, I say—"
"Say it."
Snorky reluctantly subscribed to this terrible oath and five minutes later the Secret was his.
"Great Jehosophat!"
"Do you see it?"
"Do I see it?" Snorky tore from his throat the collar that was stifling him. "My aunt's cat's pants!" he said solemnly. "Skippy, we'll be billionaires!"
"We'll buy a yacht and live on Fifth Avenue," said Skippy, who for sentimental reasons suppressed any reference to Lillian Russell.
"Say this is so big we've got to take every precaution," said Green, whose imagination was on more practical lines. "No one must even suspect until we've got this drawn up and patented."
"That's what worries me."
Snorky Green cautiously opened the door and investigated the hall, then returning drew up his chair and said in a confidential whisper:
"Skippy, when this goes through every bathtub in the country will go in the scrap heap. Think of that!"
"I have thought of that."
"It'll do what the pneumatic tube did to the bicycle."
"What the trolley did to the horse-car!"
"It's revolutionary."
"It is."
"Enormous!"
"Stupendous!"
They shook hands and Skippy, bursting with happiness, said impulsively:
"Old friend, whatever I make—you're down for half."
"No, no. Two-thirds to you—one-third to me," said Snorky, as Cæsar putting from him the proffered crown.
"I won't have it—share and share alike," said Skippy in a rush of emotion.
"But, Skippy, do you realize what even one-third will mean!" said Snorky, in a voice trembling with the vision of the future. He went nervously to the desk and returned with pad and pencil. "Write down these figures."
"Ought we to?"