Produced by Annie McGuire [Illustration: Book Cover] MAKING MONEY [Illustration: "'Bojo, you must marry Doris,' she said brokenly"] MAKING MONEY BY OWEN JOHNSON AUTHOR OF "THE SALAMANDER," "STOVER AT YALE," "THE SIXTY-FIRST SECOND," ETC. _WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY_ _JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG_ [Illustration] NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS _Copyright, 1915, by_ FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE ARRIVAL 1 II FOUR AMBITIONS, AND THREE WAYS TO MAKE MONEY 16 III ON THE TAIL OF A TERRIER 31 IV BOJO'S FATHER 46 V DANIEL DRAKE, THE MULTI-MILLIONAIRE 58 VI BOJO OBEYS HIS GENERAL MANAGER 67 VII UNDER THE TICKER'S TYRANNY 75 VIII THE RETURN OF PATSIE 88 IX THE WEDDING BALL 100 X DRAKE'S GAME 111 XI BOJO BUTTS IN 122 XII SNOW MAGIC 133 XIII BOJO MAKES A DECISION 147 XIV THE CRASH 154 XV SUDDEN WEALTH 165 XVI BOJO BEGINS TO SPEND HIS QUARTER-MILLION 173 XVII PAYING THE PIPER--PLUS 184 XVIII BOJO FACES THE TRUTH 195 XIX A CHIP OF THE OLD BLOCK 207 XX BOJO HUNTS A JOB 213 XXI BOJO IN OVERALLS 222 XXII DORIS MEETS A CRISIS 234 XXIII THE LETTER TO PATSIE 247 XXIV PATSIE APPEALS FOR HELP 259 XXV DRAKE ADMITS HIS DANGER 270 XXVI A FIGHT IN MILLIONS 277 XXVII PATSIE'S SCHEME 288 XXVIII ONE LAST CHANCE 302 XXIX THE DELUGE 309 XXX THE AFTER-YEARS 323 ILLUSTRATIONS "'Bojo, you must marry Doris,' she said brokenly" _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE "'Say, you're a judge of muscle, aren't you?'" 40 "'Just you wait; you're going to be one of the big men some day!'" 104 "'Drina, dear child,' he said in a whisper" 144 "The message was the end of hope" 158 "'What does all the rest amount to?' she said breathlessly. 'I want you'" 208 "'He wants to see you now,' she said" 268 "'Your promise. No one is to know what I do'" 292 CHAPTER I THE ARRIVAL Toward the close of a pleasant September afternoon, in one of the years when the big stick of President Roosevelt was cudgeling the shoulders of malefactors of great wealth, the feverish home-bound masses which poured into upper Fifth Avenue with the awakening of the electric night were greeted by the strangest of all spectacles which can astound a metropolitan crowd harassed by the din of sounds, the fret and fury of the daily struggle which is the tyranny of New York. A very young man, of clean-cut limbs and boyish countenance, absolutely unhurried amidst the press, without a trace of preoccupation, worry, or painful mental concentration, was swinging easily up the Avenue as though he were striding among green fields, head up, shoulders squared like a grenadier, without a care in the world, so visibly delighted at the novelty of gay crowds, of towering buildings decked in electric garlands, of theatric shop-windows, that more than one perceiving this open enthusiasm smiled with a tolerant amusement. Now when a young man appears thus on Fifth Avenue, undriven, without preoccupation, without a contraction of the brows and particularly without that strained metropolitan gaze of trying to decide something of importance, either he is on his way to the station with a coveted vacation ahead or he has been in the city less than twenty-four hours. In the present instance the latter hypothesis was true. Tom Beauchamp Crocker, familiarly known as Bojo, had sent his baggage ahead, eager to enjoy the delights one enjoys at twenty-four, which the long apprenticeship of school and college is ended and the city is waiting with all the mystery of that uncharted dominion--The World. He went his way with long, swinging steps, smiling from the pure delight of being alive, amazed at everything: at the tangled stream of nations flowing past him; at the prodigious number of entrancing eyes which glanced at him from under provoking brims; at the sheer flights of blazing windows, shutting out the feeble stars; at the vigor and vitality on the sidewalks; at the flooded lights from sparkling shop windows; at the rolling procession of incalculable wealth on the Avenue. Everywhere was the stir of returning crowds, the end of the summer's hot isolation, the reopening of gilded theaters, the thronging of hotels, and the displays of radiant shop fronts, preparing for the winter's campaign. In the crush of the Avenue was the note of home-coming, in taxicabs and coupés piled high with luggage and brown-faced children hanging at the windows, acclaiming familiar landmarks with piping cries. Tradesmen and all the world of little business, all the world that must prepare to feed, clothe, and amuse the winter metropolis, were pouring in. And in the midst of this feverish awaking of luxury and pleasure one felt at every turn a new generation of young men storming every avenue with high imaginations, eager to pierce the multitudes and emerge as masters. Bojo himself had not woven his way three blocks before he felt this imperative need of a stimulating dream, a career to emulate--a master of industry or a master of men--and, sublimely confident, he imagined that some day, not too distant, he would take his place in the luxurious flight of automobiles, a personage, a future Morgan or a future Roosevelt, to be instantly recognized, to hear his name on a thousand lips, never doubting that life was only a greater game than the games he had played, ruled by the same spirit of fair play with the ultimate prize to the best man. In the crowd he perceived a familiar figure, a college mate of the class above him, and he hailed him with enthusiasm as though the most amazing and delightful thing in the world was to be out of college on Fifth Avenue and to meet a friend. "Foster! Hallo there!" At this greeting the young man stopped, shot out his hand, and rattled off in business manner: "Why, Bojo, how are you? How's it going? Making lots of money?" "I've just arrived," said Crocker, somewhat taken back. "That so? You're looking fine. I'm in the devil of a rush--call me up at the club some time. Good luck." He was gone with purposeful steps, lost in the quick, nervous crowd before Crocker with a thwarted sense of comradeship could recover himself. A little later another acquaintance responded to his greeting, hesitated, and offered his hand. "Hello, Bojo, how are things? You look prosperous; making lots of money, I suppose. Glad to have seen you--so long." For a second time he felt a sense of disappointment. Every one seemed in a hurry, oppressed by the hundred details to be crowded into the too short day. He became aware of this haste in the air and in the street. In this speed-driven world even the great stone flights seemed to have risen with the hour. Dazzling electric signs flashed in and out, transferring themselves into bewildering combinations with the necessity of startling this wonder-surfeited city into an instant's recognition. Electricity was in the vibrant air, in the scurrying throngs, in the nervous craving of the crowd for excitement after drudgery, to be out, to be seen in brilliant restaurants, to go with the rushing throngs, keyed to a higher tension, avid of lights and thrumming sounds. Insensibly he felt the stimulus about him, his own gait adjusted itself to the rush of those who jostled past him. He began to watch for openings, to dart ahead, to slip through this group and that, weaving his way as though there was something precious ahead, an object to be gained by the first arrival. All at once he perceived how unconsciously he had surrendered to the subtle spirit of contention about him, and pulled himself up, laughing. At this moment an arm was slipped through his and he turned to find a classmate, Bob Crowley, at his side. "Whither so fast? "Just in. I'm bound for the diggings." "Fred DeLancy's been asking about you for a week. I saw Marsh and old Granny yesterday. The Big Four still keeping together? "Yes, we're going to stick together. How are you?" "Oh, so-so." "Making money?" The salutation came like a trick to his lips before he noticed the adoption. Crowley looked rather pleased. "Thanks, I've got a pretty good thing. If you've got any loose change I can put you on to a cinch. Step into the club a moment. You'll see a lot of the crowd." At the club, an immense hotel filled with businesslike young men rushing in and rushing out, thronging the grill-room with hats and coats on, an eye to the clock, Bojo was acclaimed with that rapturous campus enthusiasm which greets a returned hero. The tribute pleased him, after the journey through the indifferent multitude. It was something to return as even a moderate-sized frog to the small puddle. He wandered from group to group, ensconced at round tables for a snatched moment before the call of the evening. The vitality of these groups, the conflict of sounds in the low room, bewildered him. Speculation was in the air. The bonanza age of American finance was reaching its climax. Immense corporations were being formed overnight and stocks were mounting by bounds. All the talk in corners was of this tip and that while in the jumble staccato sentences struck his ear. "A sure thing, Joe-- I'll tell you where I got it." "They say Harris cleaned up two thousand last week." "The amalgamation's bound to go through." "I'm in the bond business now; let me talk to you." "Two more years in the law school, worse luck." "At the P. and S." "They say the Chicago crowd made fifteen millions on the rise--" "I ran across Bozer last week." "Hello, Bill, you old scout, they tell me you're making money so fast--" All the talk was of business and opportunity, among these graduates of a year or two, eager and restless, all keen, all confident of arriving, all watching with vulture-like sharpness for an opportunity for a killing: a stock that was bound to shoot up or to tumble down. Every one seemed to be making money or certain to do so soon, cocksure of his opinion, prognosticating the trend of industry with sure mastery. Bojo was rather dazed by this academic fervor for material success; it gave him the feeling that the world was after all only a postgraduate course. He had left a group, with a beginning of critical amusement, when a hand spun him around and he heard a well-known voice cry: "Bojo--you old sinner--you come right home!" It was Roscoe Marsh, chum of chums, rather slight, negligently dressed among these young men of rather precise elegance, but dominating them all by the shock of an aggressive personality that stood out against their factoried types. Just as the generality of men incline to the fashions of conduct, philosophy, and politics of the day, there are certain individualities constituted by nature to be instinctively of the opposition. Marsh, finding himself in a complacent society, became a terrific radical, perhaps more from the necessity of dramatic sensations which was inherent in his brilliant nature than from a profound conviction. His features were irregular, the nose powerful and aquiline, the eyebrows arched with a suggestion of eloquence and imagination, the eyes gray and domineering, the mouth wide and expressive of every changing thought, while the outstanding ears on the thin, curved head completed an accent of oddity and obstinacy which he himself had characterized good-humoredly when he had described himself as looking like a poetical calf. Roscoe Marsh, the father--editor, politician, and capitalist, one of the figures of the last generation--had died, leaving him a fortune. "What the deuce are you wasting time in this collection of fashion-plates and messenger-boys for?" said Marsh when the greetings were over. "Come out into the air where we can talk sense. When did you come?" "An hour ago." "Fred and Granny have been here all summer. You're a pampered darling, Bojo, to get a summer off. What was it--heart interest?" "Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies," said Bojo with a half laugh and a whirl of his cane. "By George, Roscy, it's good to be here!" "We'll get you to work." "Who could help it? I say, is every one making money in this place? I've heard nothing else since I landed." "On paper, yes, but you don't make money till you hear it chink, as lots will find out," said Marsh with a laugh. "However, this place's a regular mining-camp--every one's speculating. I say, what are you going to do?" "Oh, I'm going into Wall Street too, I suppose. I spent a month with Dan Drake." "--And daughter." "And daughters," said Bojo, smiling. "I think I'll have a good opening there--after I learn the ropes, of course." "Drake, eh," said Marsh reflectively, naming one of the boldest manipulators of the day. "Well, you ought to get plenty of excitement out of that. No use my tempting you with a newspaper job, then. But how about your Governor?" Bojo became quiet, whistling to himself. "I've got a bad half-hour there," he said solemnly. "I've got to fight it out with the old man as soon as he arrives. You know what he thinks of Wall Street." "I like your Governor." "So do I. The trouble is we're too much alike." "So you've made up your mind?" "I have; no mills and drudgery for me." "Well, if you've made up your mind, you've made it up," said Marsh a little anxiously. In college the saying was that Marsh would sputter but Crocker would stick, and this byword expressed the difference between them. One attacked and the other entrenched. Crocker had an intense admiration for Marsh, for whom he believed all things possible. As they walked side by side, Bojo was the more agreeable to the eye; there was an instinctive sense of pleasing about him. He liked most men, so genuinely interested in their problems and point of view that few could resist his good nature. Mentally and in the knowledge of the world he was much the younger. There was a boyishness and an unsophistication about him that was in the clear forehead and laughing brown eyes, in the spontaneous quality of his smile, the spring in his feet, the general enthusiasm for all that was new or difficult. But underneath this easy manner there was a dangerous obstinacy ready to flare up at an instant's provocation, which showed in the lower jaw slightly undershot, which gave the lips a look of being pugnaciously compressed. He was implacable in a hatred or a fight, blind to the faults of a friend, and stubborn in his opinions. "What sort of quarters have we got?" asked Bojo, who had left the detail to his three friends. "The queerest spot in New York--the cave of Ali Baba. Wait till you see it--you'd never believe it. Hidden as safe as a needle in a haystack. No more than a stone's throw from here, and you'd never guess it." He stopped, for at this moment they entered Times Square under the shadow of the incredible tower, dazzled by the sudden ambuscade of lights which flamed about them. Marsh, who could never brook waiting, without having altered his pace made a wide detour amid a jam of automobiles, dodged two surface cars and a file of trucks, and arrived at the opposite curb considerably after Crocker, who had waited for the direct route. Neither perceived how characteristic of their divergent temperaments this incident had been. But Marsh, whose spirit was irreverence, exclaimed contemptuously: "The Great White Way. What a sham!" He extended his arm with an extravagant gesture, as much as to say, "I could change all that," and continued: "Look at it. There are not ten buildings on it that will last five years. Take away the electric advertisements and you'll see it as it is--a main street in a mining town. All the rest is shanty civilization, that will come tumbling down like a pack of cards. Look at it; a few hidden theaters with an entrance squeezed between a cigar-store and a haberdashery, restaurants on one floor, and the rest advertisements." "Still it gives you quite a feeling," said Bojo in dissent, caught in the surging currents of automobiles and the mingled throngs of late workers and early pleasure-seekers. "There's an exhilaration about it all. It does wake you up." "Think of a city of five thousand millionaires that can build a hundred business cathedrals a year, that has an opera house with the front of a warehouse and calls a row of squatty booths luxury. Well, never mind; here we are. Rub your eyes." They had left the roar and brilliancy of the curiously blended mass behind, plunging down a squalid side street with tenements in the dark distances, when Marsh came to a stop before two green pillars, above which a swaying sign announced-- WESTOVER COURT BACHELOR APARTMENTS Before Bojo could recover from his astonishment, he found himself conducted through a long, irregular monastic hall flooded with mellow lights and sudden arches, and as bewilderingly introduced, in a sort of Arabian Nights adventure, into an oasis of quiet and green things. They were in an inner court shut in from the outer world by the rise of a towering wall at one end and at the other by the blazing glass back of a great restaurant. In the heart of the noisiest, vilest, most brutal struggle of the city lay this little bit of the Old World, decked in green plots, with vine-covered fountain and a stone Cupid perched on tip-toe, and above a group of dream trees filling the lucent yellow and green enclosure with a miraculous foliage. Lights blazed in a score of windows above them, while at four medieval entrances, of curved doorways under sloping green aprons, the suffused glow of iron lanterns seemed like distant signals lost in a fog. Everything about them was so remote from the stress and fury out of which they had stepped, that Bojo exclaimed in astonishment: "Impossible!" "Isn't it bully?" said Marsh enthusiastically. "Ali Baba Court I call it. That's what a touch of imagination can do in New York. I say, look over here. What do you think of this for a quiet pipe at night?" He drew him under the trees, where a table and comfortable chairs were waiting. Above the low roofs high against the blue-black sky the giant city came peeping down upon them from the regimented globes of fire on the Astor roof. A milky flag drifted lazily across an aigrette of steam. To the right, the top of the Times Tower, divorced from all the ugliness at its feet, rose like an historic campanile played about by timid stars. Over the roof-tops the hum of the city, never stilled, turned like a great wheel, incessantly, with faint, detached sounds pleasantly audible: a bell; a truck moving like a shrieking shell; the impertinent honk of taxis; urchins on wheels; the shattering rush of distant iron bodies tearing through the air; an extra cried on a shriller note; the ever-recurring pipe of a police whistle compelling order in the confusion; fog horns from the river, and underneath something more elusive and confused, the churning of great human masses passing and repassing. Marsh gave a peculiar whistle and instantly at a window on the second floor a shadowy figure appeared, the sash went up with a bang, and a cheery voice exclaimed: "Hello, below there! Is that Bojo with you? Come up and show your handsome map!" "Coming, Freddie, coming," said Bojo with a laugh, and, plunging into a swinging entrance, he found himself in a cozy den, almost thrown off his feet by the greetings of a little fellow who dived at him with the frenzy of a faithful dog. "Well, old fashion-plate, how are you?" Bojo said at last, flinging him across the room. "Been into any more trouble?" "Nope. That is, not lately," said DeLancy, picking himself up. "Haven't a chance, living with two policemen. What kept you all this time? Fallen in love?" "None of your damned business. By George, this looks homelike," said Bojo to turn the conversation. On the walls were a hundred mementoes of school and college, while a couple of lounges and several great chairs were indolently grouped about the fireplace, where a fire was laid. "I say, Roscy, has the infant really been behaving?" "Well, we haven't bailed, him out yet," said Marsh meditatingly. Fred DeLancy had been in trouble all his life and out of it as easily. Trouble, as he himself expressed it, woke up the moment he went out. He had been suspended and threatened with expulsion for one scrape after another more times than he could remember. But there was something that instantly disarmed anger in the odd star-pointing nose, the twinkly eyes, and the wide mouth set at a perpetual grin. One way or another he wriggled through regions where angels fear to tread, assisted by much painful effort on the part of his friends. "I'm getting frightfully serious," he said with mock contrition. "I'm getting to be an old man; the cares of life and all that sort of stuff." He broke off and flung himself at the piano, where he started an improvisation: "The cares of life, This dreadful strife, I'll take a wife-- No, change the rhyme I haven't time For matrimony--O! Leave that to handsome Bojo Bojo's in love, Blush like a dove-- "No, doves don't blush," he said, swinging around. "Do they or don't they? Anyhow, a dove in love might-- To continue: "Bojo's in love, Blush like a dove, Won't tell her name, I'll guess the same--" But at this moment, just as a pillow came hurtling through the air, the doorway was ruled with a great body and George Granning came crowding into the room, hand out, a smile on his honest, open face. "Hello, Tom, it's good to see you again." "The government can go on," said DeLancy joyfully. "We're here!" As the four sat grouped about the room they presented one of those strange combinations of friendship which could only result from the process of American education. Four more dissimilar individualities could not have been molded together except by the curious selective processes of an academic society system. The Big Four, as they had been dubbed (there is always a Big Four in every school and college), had come from Andover linked by the closest ties, and this intimacy had never relaxed, despite all the incongruous opposition of their beginnings. Marsh was a New Yorker, an aristocrat by inheritance and by force of fortune; Crocker a Yankee, son of a keen, self-made father, who had fought his way up to a position of mastery in the woolen mills of New England; DeLancy from Detroit, of more modest means, son of a small business man, to whom his education had meant a genuine sacrifice; while George Granning, older by many years than the rest, was evidence of that genius for evolution that stirs in the American mass. They knew but little of his history beyond what he had chosen to confide in his silent, reserved way. He had the torso of a stevedore, the neck and hands of the laborer, while the boulder-like head, though devoid of the lighter graces of imagination and wit, had certain immovable qualities of persistence and determination in the strongly hewn jaw and firm, high-cheekbones. He was tow-headed and blue-eyed, of unfailing good humor, like most men of great strength. Only once had he been known to lose his temper, and that was in a football match in his first year in the varsity. His opponent, doubtless hoping to intimidate the freshman, struck him a blow across the face under cover of the first scrimmage. Before the half was over the battering he had received from the enraged Granning was so terrific that he had to be transferred to the other side of the line. Granning had worked his way through Andover by menial service at the beginning, gradually advancing by acquiring the agencies for commercial fields and doing occasional tutoring. His summers had been given over to work in foundries and in preparation for the business career he had chosen long ago. He was deeply religious in a quiet, unostentatious way. That there had been stormy days in the beginning, tragedies perhaps, the friends divined; besides, there were lines in his face, stern lines of pain and hardship, that had been softened but could never disappear. CHAPTER II FOUR AMBITIONS, AND THREE WAYS TO MAKE MONEY They dined that night on the top of the Astor roof, where in the midst of aërial gardens one forgot that another city waited toiling below. Their table was placed by an embrasure from which they could scan the dark reaches toward the west where the tenements of the city, broken by the occasional uprising of a blatant sign, mathematically divided into squares by rows of sentinel lights, rolled somberly toward the river. To the south, vaguely defined by the converging watery darkness, the city ran down to flaming towers in the glistening haze that seemed a luminous vapor rising from dazzling avenues. Wherever the eye could see myriad lights were twinkling: brooding and fraught with the dark mystery of lonely, distant river banks; red, green and golden on the rivers, crossing busily on a purposeful way; intruding and bewildering in the service of industry from steel skeletons against the sky; magic and dreamlike on the fairy spread of miraculous bridges; winking and dancing with the spirit of gaiety from the theaters below and the roof gardens above; that in the summer, suddenly spread a new and brilliant city of the night above the tired metropolis of the day. Looking down on these myriad points of light one seemed to have suddenly come upon the nesting of the stars; where planets and constellations germinated and took flight toward the swarming firmament. The incomparable drama of the spectacle affected the four young men on the threshold of life in a different way. Bojo, to whom the sensation was new, felt a sort of prophetic stimulation as though in the glittering sweep below lay the jewel which he was to carry off. Granning, who had broken into the monastic routine of his life to make an exception of this gathering of the clans, looked out in reverence, stirred to deeper questionings of the spirit. Marsh, more dramatically attuned, felt a sensation of weakness, as though suddenly confronted with the gigantic scheme of the multitude; he felt the impotence of single effort. While DeLancy, who dined thus every night, seeing no further than the festooned gardens, the brilliant splashes of color, the faces of women flushed in the yellow glow of candle-lights, hearing only the pleasant thrumming sounds of a hidden orchestra, rattled on in his privileged way. "Well, now that the Big Four is together again, let's divide up the city." He sent a sweeping gesture toward the stenciled stretch of blocks below and continued: "Boscy, what'll you have? Take your choice. I'll have a couple of hotels, a yacht and a box at the opera. Next bidder, please!" But Bojo without attention to this chatter said: "Remember the night before we went to college and we picked out what we intended to make. Came pretty close to it too, didn't we?" Marsh looked up quickly, seized by a sudden dramatic suggestion. "Well, here we are again. I'll tell you what we'll do. Let's tell the truth--no buncombe--just what each expects to get out of life." "But will we tell the truth?" said Bojo doubtfully. "I will." "Of course we all want to make a million first," said Fred DeLancy, laughing. "Roscy's got his, so I suppose he wants ten. First place, is it admitted each of us wants a million? Every properly brought up young American ought to believe in that, oughtn't he?" "Freddie, behave yourself," said Bojo severely. "Be serious." "Serious," said DeLancy, with an offended air. "I'll be more serious than any of you and I'll tell more of the truth and when I do you won't believe me." "Go on, Roscy, start first." "Freddie's right in one respect. I intend to treble what I've got in ten years or go bankrupt," said Marsh instantly. He flung the stub of his cigar out into the night, watched it a moment in earthbound descent, and then leaned forward over the table, elbows down, hands clasped, the lights laying deep shadows about the hollowed eyes, the outstanding ears accentuating the irregularity and oddity of the head. "I'm not sure but that would be the best thing for me. If I had to start at the bottom I believe I'd do something. I mean something big." A half-concealed smile passed about the group, accustomed to the speaker's dramatic instincts. "Well, I've got to start at life in a different way. The trouble is, in this American scheme I have no natural place unless I make one. Abroad I could settle down to genteel loafing and find a lot of other congenial loafers, who would gamble, hunt, fish, race, globe-trot, beat up Africa in search of big sport, or drift around fashionable capitals for a bit of amusement; either that or if I wanted to develop along the line of brains there's a career in politics or a chance at diplomacy. Here we are developing millionaires as fast as we can turn them out and never thinking how we can employ them. What's the result? The daughters of great fortunes marry foreign titles as fast as they get the chance in order to get the opportunity to enjoy their wealth to the fullest, because here there is no class so limited and circumscribed without national significance as our so-called Four Hundred; the sons either become dissipated loafers, professional amateurs of sport, or are condemned to piling more dollars on dollars, which is an absurdity." "I grieve for the millionaire," interjected DeLancy flippantly. "And yet you want to triple what you've got," said Bojo with a smile. "I'm coming to that--wait. Now the idea of money grubbing is distasteful to me. What I want is a great opportunity which only money can give. I have, I suppose, if a conservative estimate could be made, pretty close to two million dollars--which means around one hundred thousand a year. Now if I want to settle down and marry, that's a lot; but if I want to go in and compete with other men, the leaders, that's nothing at all. Now the principal interest I've got ahead is the _Morning Post_; it's not all mine, but the controlling share is. It's a good conservative nursery rocking-horse. It can go rocking on for another twenty years, satisfied with its little rut. Now do you understand why I want more money? I want a million clear to throw into it. I don't want it to be a profitable high-class publication--I want it to be _the_ paper in New York." "But are you willing to go slow, to learn every rope first?" said Granning with a shake of his head. "You know I am," said Marsh impatiently. "I've plugged at it harder than any one on the paper this summer and last too." "Yes, you work hard--and play hard too," Granning admitted. Marsh accepted the admission with a pleased smile and continued enthusiastically: "Exactly. Win or lose, play the limit! That's my motto, and there's something glorious in it. I'm going to work hard, but I'm going to play just as hard. I want to live life to its fullest; I want to get every sensation out of it. And when I'm ready I'm going to make the paper a force, I'm going to make myself feared. I want to round myself out. I want to touch everything that I can, but above all I want to be on the fighting line. After this period of financial buccaneering there's going to come a great period--a radical period, the period of young men." "Roscy, you want to be noticed," said DeLancy. "I admit it. If you had what I have, wouldn't you? I repeat, I want the sensation of living in the big way. Granning shakes his head-- I know what he's thinking." "Roscy, you're a gambler," said Granning, but without saying all he thought. "I am, but I'm going to gamble for power, which is different, and that's the first step to-day; that's what they all have done." "You haven't told us what your ambition is," said Bojo. "I want to make of the _Morning Post_ not simply a great paper but a great institution," said Marsh seriously. "I believe the newspaper can be made the force that the church once was. Now the church was dominant only as it entered into every side of the life of the community; when it was not simply the religious and political force, but greater still, the social force. I believe the newspaper will become great as it satisfies every need of the human imagination. There are papers that print a Sunday sermon. I would have a religious page every day, just as you print a woman's page and a children's page. I'd run a legal bureau free or at nominal charges, and conduct aggressive campaigns against petty abuses. I'd organize the financial department so as to make it personal to every subscriber, with an investment bureau which would offer only a carefully selected list for conservative investors and would refuse to deal in seven per cent. bonds and fifteen per cent. shares. I would have a great auditorium where concerts and plays would be given at no higher price than fifty cents." "Hold up! How could you get plays on such conditions?" said DeLancy, who had been held breathless by this Utopian scheme. "Any manager in the city with a sense of publicity would jump at the chance of giving an afternoon performance, expenses paid, under such conditions, especially as the list would be guaranteed. Then, above all, I'd give the public fiction, the best I could get and first hand. What do you think gives _Le Petit Parisien_ and _Le Petit Journal_ a circulation of about a million each and all over France? Serial novels. Do you know the circulation of papers in New York? There are only three over a hundred thousand and the greatest has hardly a quarter of a million. However, I won't go on. You see my ideas make an institution--the modern institution, replacing and absorbing all past institutions." "And what else do you want?" said Bojo, laughing. "I want that by the time I'm thirty-five. I want ten millions and I want to be at forty either senator or ambassador to Paris or London. I want to build a yacht that will defend the American cup and to own a horse that will win the derby. "And will you marry?" "The most beautiful woman in America." The four burst into laughter simultaneously, none more heartily than Marsh, who added: "Remember, we're to tell the truth, and that's what I'd like to do." He concluded: "Win or lose, play the limit. Never mind, Granny; when I'm broke, you'll give me a job. Up to you. Confess." Granning began diffidently, for he was always slow at speech and the fluency of Marsh's recital intimidated him. "I don't know that there's anything so interesting in my future," he began, turning the menu nervously in his hands and fixing a spot on the tablecloth where a wine stain broke the white monotony. "You see, I'm different from you fellows. You're facing life in a different sort of way. I'm not sure but what there's more danger in it than you think, but the fact is you're all looking for the gamble. You want what you want, Roscy, by the time you're thirty-five. Bojo and Fred want a million by the time they're thirty. You're looking for the easy way--the quick way. You may get it and then you may not. You've got friends, opportunities--perhaps you will." "That's where you'll never learn, you old fossil," said Marsh. "If you'd get out and meet people, why, some time you'd strike a man with a nice fat contract in his pocket looking for just the reliable--" he stopped, not wishing to add, "old plodder that you are." Granning shook his head emphatically. Among these boyish types he seemed of another generation, a rather roughly hewn type of a district leader of fixed purpose and irresistible momentum. "Not for me," he said decisively. "There's one thing I've got strong, where I have the start over you and a good thing it is, too: I know my limitations. I'm not starting where you are. My son will; I'm not. Hold up; it's the truth, and the truth is what we're telling. You can gamble with life--you've got something to fall back on. I'm the fellow who's got to build. Yes, I'll be honest. I want to make a million, too, I suppose, as Fred said, like every American does. After all, if you're out to make money, it's a good thing to try for something high. There isn't much chance for romance in what I'm doing. I've got to go up step by step, but it means more to me to get a fifty-dollar raise than that next million can mean to you, Roscy. That's because I look back, because I remember." He stopped and the memories of the existence out of which he had dragged himself, of which he never spoke, threw thoughtful shadows over the broad forehead. All at once, taking a knife, he drew a long straight line on the table, inclining upward like the slope of a hill, with a cross at the bottom and one at the top, while the others looked on, puzzled. "You see there's not much banging of drums or dancing in what I've got ahead and not much to tell until I get there. You know how a mole travels; well, that's me." He laid his finger on the cross at the bottom and then shifted it to the cross at the top. "Here's where I go in and here's where I come out. In between doesn't count." "And what besides that?" said Bojo. "Well," said Granning simply, "I don't know what else. I'd like to get off for a couple of months and see Europe and what they're doing over in France and Germany in the steel line." "But all that'll happen. What would you really like to get out of life?" said Marsh, smiling--"you old unimaginative bear!" "I'd like to go into politics in the right sort of way; I think every man ought. Perhaps I'll marry, have a home and all that sort of thing some day. I think what I'd like best would be to get a chance to run a factory along certain lines I've thought out--a cooperative arrangement in a way. There's so much to be worked out along the lines of organization and efficiency." He thought over the situation a moment and then concluded with sudden diffidence as though surprised at the daring of his self-confession. "That's about all there is to it, I guess." When he had ended thus clumsily, DeLancy took up immediately, but without that spirit of good-humored raillery which was characteristic. When he spoke in matter-of-fact, direct phrases, the three friends looked at him in astonishment, realizing all at once an undivined intent underneath all the lightness of that attitude by which they had judged him. "One thing Granning said strikes at me--knowing your limitations," he said with a certain defiance, as though aware that he was going to shock them. "I suppose you fellows think of me as a merry little jester, an amusing loafer, happy-go-lucky and all that sort of stuff. Well, you're mistaken. I know my limitations, I know what I can do and what I can't. I'm just as anxious to get ahead as any of you, and you can bet I don't fool myself. I don't sit down and say, 'Freddie, you've got railroads in your head--you're an organizer--you'd shine at the bar--you'd push John Rockefeller off the map,' or any of that rot. No, sir! I know where I stand. On a straight out-and-out proposition I wouldn't be worth twenty dollars a week to any one. But just the same I'm going to have my million and my automobile in five years. Dine with me five years from this date and you'll see." "Well, Fred, what's the secret? How are you going to do it?" said Bojo, a little suspicious of his seriousness. But DeLancy as though still aware of the necessity of further explanations before his pronouncement continued: "I said I didn't fool myself and I don't. I haven't got ability like Granning over here, who's entirely too modest and who'll end by being an old money-bags--see if he doesn't. I haven't got a bunch of greenbacks left me or behind me like Roscy or Bojo. My old dad's a brick; he's scraped and pinched to put me through college on the basis of you fellows. Now it's up to me. I haven't got what you fellows have got, but I've got some very valuable qualities, very valuable when you keep in mind what you can do with them. I have a very fine pair of dancing legs, I play a good game of bridge and a better at poker, I can ride other men's horses and drive their automobiles in first-rate style, I wear better clothes than my host with all his wad, and you bet that impresses him. I know how to gather in friends as fast as you can drum up circulation, I can liven up any party and save any dinner from going on the rocks, I can amuse a bunch of old bores until they get to liking themselves; in a word, I know how to make myself indispensable in society and the society that counts." "What the deuce is he driving at?" Marsh broke in with a puzzled expression. "Why am I sitting down in a broker's office drawing fifty dollars a week, just to smoke long black cigars? Because I know a rap what's going on? No. Because I know people, because I'm a cute little social runner who brings custom into the office; because my capital is friends and I capitalize my friends." "Oh, come now, Fred, that's rather hard," said Bojo, feeling the note of bitterness in this cynical self-estimate. "It's the truth. What do you think that old fraud of a Runker, my boss, said to me last week when I dropped in an hour late? 'Young man, what do you come to the office for--for afternoon tea?' And what did I answer? I said 'Boss, you know what you've got me here for, and do you want me to tell you what you ought to say? You ought to say, "Mr. DeLancy, you've been working very hard in our interest these nights and though we can't give you an expense account, you must be more careful of your health. I don't want to see you burning the candle at both ends. Sleep late of mornings."' And what did he say, the old humbug? He burst out laughing and raised my salary. He knew I was wise." "Well, what's the point of all this?" said Granning after the laugh. "Never heard you take so long coming to the point before." "The point is this: there're three ways of making money and only three: to have it left you like Roscy, to earn it like Granning, and to marry it--" "Like you!" "Like me!" The others looked at him with constraint, for at that period there was still a prejudice against an American man who made a marriage of calculation. Finally Granning said: "You won't do that, Freddie!" "Indeed I will," said DeLancy, but with a nervous acceleration. "My career is society. Oh, I don't say I'm going to marry for money and nothing else. It's much easier than that. Besides, there's the patriotic motive, you know. I'm saving an American fortune for American uses, American heiresses for American men. Sounds like American styles for American women," he added, trying to take the edge off the declaration with a laugh. "After all, there's a lot of buncombe about it. A broken-down foreigner comes over here with a reputation like a Sing-Sing favorite, and because he calls himself Duke he's going to marry the daughter of Dan Drake to pay up his debts and the Lord knows for what purposes in the future--and do you fellows turn your back on him and raise your eyebrows as you did a moment ago? Not at all. You're tickled to death to go up and cling to his ducal finger. Am I right, Roscy?" "Yes, but--" "But I'm an American and will make a damned sight better husband, and American children will inherit the money instead of its being swallowed up by a rotten aristocracy. There's the answer." "It's the way you say it, Fred," said Bojo uneasily. "Because I have the nerve to say it. This is all I'm worth and this is the only way to get what we all want." "You'll never do it," said Granning with decision; "not in the way you say it." "Granning, you're a babe in the woods. You don't know what life is," said DeLancy, laughing boisterously. "After all, what are you going to do? You're going to put away the finest days of your life to come out with a pile when you're middle-aged and then what good will it do you? I knew I'd shock you. Still there it is--that's flat!" He drew back, lighting a cigar to cover his retreat and said: "Bojo next. I dare you to be as frank." Bojo, thus interrogated, took refuge in an evasive answer. The revelations he had listened to gave him a keen sense of change. On this very evening when they had come together for the purpose of celebrating old friendship, it seemed to him that the parting of their ways lay clearly before him. "I don't know what I shall do," he said at last. "No, I'm not dodging; I don't know. Much depends on certain circumstances." He could not say how vividly their different announced paths represented to him the difficulties of his choice. "I'd like to do something more than just make money, and yet that seems the most natural thing, I suppose. Well, I'd like a chance to have a year or two to think things over, see all kinds of men and activities--but I don't know, by next week I may be at the bottom--striking out for myself and glad of a chance." He stopped and they did not urge him to continue. After DeLancy's flat exposition each had a feeling of the danger of disillusionment. Besides, Fred and Roscoe were impatient to be off, Fred to a roof garden, Marsh to the newspaper. Bojo declined DeLancy's invitation, alleged the necessity of unpacking, in reality rather desirous of being alone or of a quieter talk with Granning in the new home. "Here's to us, then," said Marsh, raising his glass. "Whatever happens the old combination sticks together." Bojo raised his glass thoughtfully, feeling underneath that there was something irrevocably changed. The city was outside sparkling and black, but there was a new feeling in the night below, and the more he felt the multiplicity of its multifold expressions the more it came to him that what he would do he would do alone. CHAPTER III ON THE TAIL OF A TERRIER When he returned with Granning into the court and upstairs to their quarters a telegram greeted him from the floor as he opened the door. It was from his father, brief and businesslike. Arrive to-morrow. Wish to see you at three at office. Important. J. B. CROCKER. He stood by the fireplace tearing it slowly to pieces, feeling the approach of reality in his existence, a little frightened at its imminence. "Not bad news," said Granning, settling his great bulk on the couch and reaching for a pipe from the rack. But at this instant a smiling Japanese valet ushered in the trunks. "This is Sweeney," said Granning with an introductory wave. "He's one of four. We gave up trying to remember their names, so Fred rechristened them. The others are Patsy, O'Rourke, and Houlahan. Sweeney speaks perfect English, if you ask him for a telephone book he'll rush out and bring you a taxicab. Understand, eh, Sweeney?" "Velly well, yes, sir," said Sweeney, smiling a pleased smile. "How the deuce do you work it then?" said Bojo, prying open his trunk. "Oh, it's quite simple. Fred discovered the combination. All you have to remember
{'title': 'Making Money by Owen Johnson', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}