“We’ll consider that a bargain,” offered Gamble.

“All right,” returned Courtney, smiling.  “We’ll shake hands on it in the good old-fashioned way.”  And they did so, under Colonel Bouncer’s earnestly interested approval.

“Tell him your troubles,” urged the colonel.  “If it were my case, Ben, I’d be yelling for help as long as I had breath in my body.”

“It’s very simple,” explained Courtney.  “I imagined that a big hotel at the new terminal station would be the best investment in New York.  I spoke to a number of my financially active friends about it and they were enthusiastic.  I had verbal promises in one day’s work of all the money necessary to finance the thing.  I found that the big vacant plot across from the station was held at a prohibitive price.  Mallard & Tyne had, with a great deal of labor, collected the selling option on the adjoining block, fronting the terminal.  They held it at two and a quarter millions.  My friends, at an infernal luncheon, authorized me, quite orally, indeed, to secure the cheaper site without a moment’s delay, especially since it was rumored that Morton Washer was contemplating the erection of a hotel upon that very spot.”

“I see the finish,” laughed Johnny.  “Mad with fear, you dashed right down there and broke yourself!  Then Union Pacific fell off an eighth; they killed an insurrecto in Mexico; the third secretary of a second-rate life-insurance company died and Wall Street put crape on the door.  All your friends got cold feet and it was the other fellow who had urged you to buy that property.  The colonel says you dropped a hundred and twenty-five thousand.  That’s a stiff option.  Can’t you get any of it back?”

“Get it back!” groaned Courtney.  “They’re after the balance.  It wasn’t an option—­it was a contract.  If I don’t pay the remainder at the end of the ninety days they’ll sue me; and I have several million dollars’ worth of property that I can’t hide.”

Gamble shrugged his shoulders resignedly.

“Your only chance is to build or sell,” he decided.  “It’s your property, all right.  Have you offered it?”

“Old Mort Washer wants it—­confound him!  I’ve discovered that the day after I bought this ground he told my friends that he intended to buy the big piece and build in competition; and they ran like your horse—­Angora—­last Saturday, Gamble.  Now Washer offers to buy this ground for two and an eighth millions—­just the amount for which I will be sued.”

“Leaving you to try to forget the hundred and twenty-five thousand you’ve already spent,” figured Gamble.  “Nice cheery thought of Washer’s!  Of course you applauded?”

“With a brick—­if I’d had one!” declared Courtney still angry.

Johnny smiled and looked thoughtfully out over the sunlit greensward.  There were electrifying plays down there; but, “fan” though he was, he did not see them.  Something in the tingle of it, however, seemed to quicken his faculties.