Chapter 12

AGNES DECIDES THAT SHE WILL WAIT

Applerod, his poise nearly recovered, bounded into the office where Johnson sat stolidly working away, his sense of personal contentedness enhanced by the presence of Biff Bates, who sat idly upon the flat-top desk, dangling his legs and waiting for Bobby. Mr. Applerod paid no attention whatever to Mr. Bates, that gentleman being quite beneath his notice, but with vast importance he laid down in front of Mr. Johnson the note which Bobby had given him.

"_Mr._ Johnson," he pompously directed, "you will please attend to this little matter as soon as possible."

"Applerod," said Johnson, glancing at the note and looking up with sudden fire, "does this mean that you are no longer even partially my employer?"

"That's it exactly."

"Then you, Applerod, don't you dare call me _Mr._ Johnson again!" And he shook a bony fist at his old-time work-fellow.

Biff Bates nearly fell off the desk, but with rare presence of mind restrained his glee.

Mr. Applerod, smiling loftily, immediately wielded his bludgeon.

"We should not quarrel over trifles," he stated commiseratingly. "We are once more companions in misfortune. There is no Applerod Addition. It is a swamp again."

"What do you mean?" asked Johnson incredulously, but suspending his indignation for the instant.

"This," said Applerod: "that the entire addition is a hundred-acre mud puddle this morning. You couldn't sell a lot in it to a blind man. Every cent that was invested in it is lost. The whole marsh was fed from underground springs that have come up through it and overflowed the place."

"Trimmer again," said Biff Bates, and slid off the desk; then he looked at his watch with a curious speculative smile.

"But if it is all lost," protested Johnson, looking again at the note and pausing in the making out of the check, "how do you come to get this?"

"He owed it to me," asserted Applerod. "I wanted to sell out when I first found that we were competing with Silas Trimmer, and young Burnit kept me from it by an injunction. He offered me ten thousand dollars for my interest once, but this morning when I went to accept that offer he would only give me this five thousand. It's just five thousand dollars that he's robbed me of."

"_Robbed!_" shrilled Johnson, jumping from his chair. "Applerod, you weigh a hundred and eighty pounds and I weigh a hundred and thirty-seven, but I can lick you the best day you ever lived; and by thunder and blazes! if you let fall another remark like that I'll knock your infernal head off!"

Mr. Johnson had on no coat, but he felt the urgent need to remove something, so he tore off one false sleeve, wadded it up in a little ball and slammed it on the floor with great vigor, tore off the other one, wadded it up and slammed that down. Biff Bates, quivering with joy, rang loudly upon a porcelain electric-light shade with his pencil and called: "Time!"

There was no employment for a referee, however, for Mr. Applerod, with astonishing agility, sprang to the door and held it half open, ready for a hurried exit in case of any other demonstration. It was shocking to think that he might be drawn into an undignified altercation--and with a mere clerk! Also, it might be dangerous.

"Nothing doing, chum," said Biff Bates disgustedly to his friend Johnson. "This bunch of mush-ripe bananas ain't even a quitter. He's a never-beginner. But you'll do fine, old scout. Come along with me. I got a treat for you."

Mr. Johnson, breathing scorn that alternately dented and inflated his nostrils, slowly donned his coat and hat without removing his eyes from Applerod, who, as the two approached the door, edged uncertainly away from it.

"I've got to go out, anyhow," said Johnson, addressing his remarks exclusively to Mr. Bates, but his glare exclusively to Mr. Applerod. "I'm going to put this check into the hands of Mr. Chalmers, so Mr. Robert don't get cheated by any yellow-livered _snake in the grass_!" And he spit out those last violent words with a sudden vehemence which made Mr. Applerod drop his shiny hat.

When Bobby came into the office a few minutes later he found Applerod, his hat upon his lap, waiting in one of the customers' chairs with stiff solemnity.

"Why aren't you at your desk, Applerod?" asked Bobby sharply. "You have an immense amount of unopened mail, and some of it may contain checks which will have to be sent back."

"Mr. Burnit," said Mr. Applerod, rising with great dignity and throwing back his shoulders, "I consider myself no longer in your employ. I have resigned."

Bobby looked at him thoughtfully and weighed rapidly in his mind a great many things. He remembered that his father had once said of the two men: "Johnson has a pea-green liver and is a pessimist, but he is honest. Applerod suffers from too much health and is an optimist, and I presume him to be honest, but I never tested it." Yet his father had seen fit to keep Applerod in his intimate employ all these years, recognizing in him material of value. Moreover, he had advised Bobby to keep both men, and Bobby, to-day more than ever, placed great faith in the wisdom of his father.

"Mr. Applerod," said he, "I dislike to be harsh with you, but if you don't put up your hat and get at that bundle of mail I shall be compelled to consider discharging you. Where's Johnson?"

"He went out with Mr. Bates, sir."

When Bobby left, Applerod was industriously sorting the mail on his desk, preparing to open it.

Bobby let himself into the big new gymnasium and walked back through the deserted hall to the small room that was used for individual training. As he neared the door he could hear the sound of loud voices and the shuffling of feet, and heard the commanding voice of Biff Bates shout "Break!"

The door was locked, but through the slide window at the side a strange tableau met his eyes. Stooped and lean Johnson, as chalk-white of face as ever, had paunchy and thin-legged Silas Trimmer by the collar, and over Biff Bates' intervening body was trying to rain blows into the center of the circular smile, now flattened to an oval of distress.

"Break, Johnson, break!" begged Biff. "Don't put him out till you feed him all he's got coming." Thereupon he succeeded in extracting Mr. Trimmer from the grasp of Mr. Johnson and forced the former back upon a chair, where he began to fan him with a towel in most approved fashion.

"Let me out of this!" gasped Mr. Trimmer. "I'll have you arrested for assault and conspiracy."

"They'll only pinch a corpse, for the cops'll find me tickled to death when they get here," responded Mr. Bates gaily. "Now you're all right. Get up!"

"Let me out of this, I say!" commanded Mr. Trimmer frantically. "I'll run you into the penitentiary! I'll break you up in business! I'll hire thugs to break every bone in your body!"

"Is that all?" inquired Biff complacently, and grabbed him as he started to run around the room in a wild hunt for an outlet. "Stand up here and put up a fight or I'll punch you myself. I've been aching to do it for a year. That's why I got Doc Willets to dope it out to you that you was dyin' for training, and why I kept shifting your hour to when there was nobody here. Go to him, chum!"

Then ensued the strangest sparring match that the grinning and stealthily silent Bobby had ever seen. Johnson, with a true "tiger crouch" which he could not have avoided if he had wished, began dancing around and around the spherical body of Mr. Trimmer, without science and without precaution, keeping his two arms going like windmills, and occasionally landing a light blow upon some portion of Mr. Trimmer's unresisting anatomy; but finally a whirl so vigorous that it sent Johnson spinning upon his own heel, landed squarely beneath the jaw of Silas. That gentleman, with a puffed eye and a bleeding lip and two teeth gone, rose from his feet with the impact of the blow, and landed with a grunt in a huge basket of soiled bath-towels.

"Johnson," called the laughter-shaken voice of Bobby through the window, "I'm ashamed of you!"

Mr. Johnson looked up happily from his task of wiping away a little trickle of blood from his already swollen nose.

"Did you see me do it?" he demanded, thrilling with pride. "Mr. Burnit, I--I never had so much fun in my life. Never, never! By the way, sir," and even upon that triumphant moment his duty obtruded, "I have a letter for you that I brought away from the office," and through the window he handed one of the inevitable gray envelopes. It was inscribed:

_To My Son, Upon the Failure of Applerod's Swamp Scheme_

"In the midst of pleasure we are in pain," murmured Bobby, and tore open the letter. In it he read:

"My Dear Boy:

"A man must not only examine a business proposition from all sides, but must also turn it over and look well at the bottom. I never knew what was the matter with that swamp scheme, except Applerod, but I didn't want to know any more. You did.

"Well, you don't need wisdom. I've put one-half your fortune where it will yield you a living income. Try to cut at least one eye-tooth with the other half. Your trustee is instructed to give you another start.

"YOUR LOVING FATHER."

His trustee! Once more he must face her with failure; go to her beaten, and accept through her hands the means to gain himself another buffeting. He had not the heart to see her now, but he was not turned altogether coward, for leaving the scene of the late conflict abruptly, all its humor spoiled for him, he telephoned her what had happened and that he would be out in the evening.

"No, you must come now. I want you," she gently insisted, and when he had come to her she went directly to him and put both her hands upon his shoulders.

"It wasn't fair, Bobby; it wasn't fair!" she cried. "None of it is fair, and your father had no right to bind me down with promises when you need me so. I'm willing to break them all. Bobby, I'll marry you to-morrow if you say so."

He drew a long, trembling breath, and then he put his hands gently upon both her cheeks and kissed her on the forehead.

"Let's don't," he said simply. "I have my own blood up now, and I want to take this other chance. I want to play the game out to the end. You'll wait, won't you?"

She looked up at him through moist eyes. He was so big and so strong and so good, and already through the past year of earnest purpose there had come firm, new lines upon his face, lines that meant something in the ultimate building of character; and she recognized that perhaps stern old John Burnit had been right after all.

"Indeed, I can wait," she whispered. "Proudly, Bobby."