In which Johnny is singularly thrilled by A little conversation over the telephone

Mr. Gamble, on his arrival the following afternoon, found Miss Purry very coldly regretful that she had already disposed of her property for a working-girls’ home, at a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, having made a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reduction by way of a donation to the cause.  Johnny drove back into the city rapidly--for he was now only sixteen hours ahead of his schedule.  He was particularly out of sorts because Miss Purry had mentioned that the De Luxe Apartments Company had been after the plot.  It is small satisfaction to a loser to have his judgment corroborated.

There was a Bronx project, involving the promotion of a huge exclusive subdivision, which he had hoped to launch; but during his call on Miss Purry that scheme went adrift through the sudden disagreement of the uncertain Wobbles brothers who owned the land.  It was a day of failures; and at four o’clock he returned to the office and inscribed, upon the credit side of his unique little day-book, the laconic entry: 

“April 28.  Two flivvers. $0.”

Loring, pausing behind him and looking over his shoulder, smiled—­ and added a climax.  “Jacobs attached your account at the Garfield Bank to-day on that fifty-thousand-dollar note.”

“That’s my first good laugh to-day,” returned Johnny.  “I have no funds there.”

“Gresham thought you had,” said Loring quietly.  “A trap was laid to make him think so, and he walked right into it.”

“As soon as I have any place to keep a goat I’ll get Gresham’s,” declared Johnny.  “So he’s really in on it.”

“He’s scared,” stated Loring.

“I hope he’s right,” returned Johnny.  “I do wish they’d let me alone, though, till Thursday, June first.”

On Saturday, the twenty-ninth, and on Monday, the first of May, Johnny Gamble was compelled reluctantly to enter “flivvers” against his days’ labors; and on Tuesday at two o’clock Constance called him up.

“Guilty!” he acknowledged as soon as he heard her voice.  “I’m caught up with my schedule.  At four o’clock I’ll be ten thousand dollars behind.  Everything I touch crawls right back in its shell.”

“They’ll come out again,” she encouraged him.  “I didn’t call you up, as your score keeper, to tell you that from this hour you will be running in debt to yourself, but that one of your projects has come to life again.”

“Which one is that?” he eagerly inquired.

“The property owned by that lady on Riverside Drive.  I see by this morning’s paper that the working-girls’ home is not to be built.  I suppose you already know it, however.”

“I overlooked that scandal,” he confessed.  “Wasn’t the building to be ugly enough?”

“This was a little obscure paragraph,” she told him.  “It was rather a joking item, based upon the fact that there is a great deal of ill feeling among the neighbors, who clubbed together and bought the option to prevent a building of this character from being erected.  I’m so glad you didn’t know about it!”