“Let’s catch Mr. Courtney at the end of the game,” he suggested to the colonel; and then, turning directly to Constance, he added with a laugh:  “I think I’ll play hooky.  I don’t want to break up the party.”

“If you think you see an opportunity for that million, the official scorer insists upon saying good-by,” she laughed in return, and held out her hand.

Johnny shook the hand with both pleasure and reluctance, and obediently left.

“I’m offering my pet vanity parasol against a sliver of chewing-gum on Johnny,” Polly confided to Loring.  “I could see it in his eye that Mr. Courtney will be invited to help him make that million.”

“Somebody ought to warn Courtney,” Gresham commented sarcastically.

“Why warn him?” demanded Loring.  “I’ll guarantee that any proposition Johnny makes him will be legitimate.”

“No doubt,” agreed Gresham.  “A great many sharp practices are considered legitimate nowadays.”

“I object, also, to the term ’sharp practices’,” responded Loring warmly.  “I don’t believe there’s a man in New York with a straighter and cleaner record than Gamble’s.  Every man with whom he has ever done business, except possibly yourself, speaks highly of him and would trust him to any extent; and he does not owe a dollar in the world.”

“Doesn’t he?” snarled Gresham.  “There’s an unsatisfied attachment for fifteen thousand dollars resting against him at the Fourth National Bank at this very moment.”

Loring’s indignation gave way immediately to grave concern.

“So that’s why Close was trying to get him on the ’phone all afternoon!” he mused.

“Mr. Gresham,” called Polly sharply, “how do you come to know about this so quickly?”

Gresham cursed himself and the blind hatred which had led him into making this slip; and he was the more uncomfortable because not only Loring and Polly but Constance had turned upon him gravely questioning eyes.

“Such things travel very rapidly in commercial circles,” he lamely explained.

“I had no idea that you were a commercial circle,” retorted Polly.  “I wonder who’s crooked.”  Gresham laughed shortly.  “It isn’t Johnny!” she indignantly asserted.  “I know how Johnny’s fifteen thousand was saved from this attachment, but I wouldn’t tell where it is—­even here.”

Polly and Loring looked at each other understandingly.

“I suppose that was an old Gamble-Collaton account,” Loring surmised with another speculative glance at Gresham.  “I am quite certain that Johnny knows nothing whatever of this claim—­let alone the attachment.  The operations of his big irrigation failure were so extensive that, with the books lost, he can never tell when an additional claim may be filed against him.  If suit is made in an obscure court, and Collaton, who hasn’t a visible dollar, answers summons and confesses judgment for the firm, Johnny has no recourse.”