CHAPTER XI

BOBBY DISCOVERS AN ENEMY GREATER THAN SILAS TRIMMER

One circumstance only had occurred to give Bobby any anxiety. With the beginning of the thaw the water in Silas Trimmer's eight acres had begun slowly to rise, and he saw with some dismay that by far the larger part of the great natural basin from which the surface water had been supplied to this swamp sloped from the northern end. Not having that expanse of one hundred and twenty acres to spread over, it might overflow, and in considerable trepidation he sought Jimmy Platt. That happy young gentleman only smiled.

"I calculated upon that," he informed Bobby, "and built your retaining wall two feet higher than the normal spring level for that very reason. It will carry all the water than can shed down from those hills."

Relieved, Bobby went ahead with the preparations for turning the Applerod Addition into money, and though he saw the water creeping up steadily against the other side of his wall, he displayed no anxiety until it had reached within three or four inches of the top. Then he took Platt out with him to have a look at it.

"Don't you think you ought to get busy?" he inquired. "Hadn't we better add another foot to this wall?"

"Not necessary," said Jimmy, shaking his head positively. "This has been an unusual spring, but the wet weather is all over now, and you can see by the water-mark where the level has gone down a half inch since morning. All the moisture that has been trickling down here during the past week has been from the thawing out of the frozen hillsides, but those slopes are almost dust dry now."

"Suppose it should rain again?" insisted Bobby, still worried.

"It couldn't rain hard enough to fill up these four inches," declared Platt with decision. "Look here, Mr. Burnit, I'd worry myself if there was any cause whatever. Do you suppose I'd want anything to happen to my biggest and best job so close to my wedding-day?"

"So you've set the time," said Bobby, with eager pleasure. He had met Platt's "best girl" and her mother out at the Addition, and liked her, as he did earnest young Platt.

"June the first," replied Jimmy exultantly. "The date of your opening--in the evening."

"Don't forget to send me an invitation."

"Will you come?" said Platt. He had wanted to ask Bobby before, but had not been quite sure that he ought.

"Come!" replied Bobby. "Indeed I shall--unless I happen to have a wedding of my own on that date."

Bobby went away satisfied once more, and quite willing to give up the additional foot of wall. The work would entail considerable cost, and expense now was much more of an item than it had been a few months previously. Already he had spent upon this project over two hundred and ten thousand dollars; ten thousand he had given to Biff Bates; ten thousand he had used personally, so there was but an insignificant portion left of his two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Their "grand opening" would eat up another tidy little sum, for it was to be an expensive affair. The liberal advertising that had already appeared was augmented as the great day approached, a brass band had been engaged, a magnificent lunch, sufficient to feed an army, had been arranged for, and every available 'bus and carry-all and picnic wagon in the city had been secured to transport all comers, free of charge, from the end of the car line to the new Addition. The price of vehicles was high, however, for Silas Trimmer had already engaged quite a number of them to run between the Applerod Addition and his own. During the week preceding June first, there had appeared, in the local papers, advertisements of about one-fourth the size that Bobby was using, calling attention to the opening of the Trimmer Addition, which was to be upon the same date.

On the evening of May twenty-ninth, Bobby found Silas pacing the top of the retaining wall which held in his swamp, and waited for the spider-like figure to come across and join him.

"Too bad you didn't come in with me, or sell me your property at a reasonable figure," said Bobby affably, willing, in spite of his recent bitter experience, to meet his competitor upon the same friendly grounds that he would a crack polo antagonist on the eve of contest. "It's a shame that this could not all have been improved at one time."

"I'd just as lief have my part of it the way it is," said Silas. "It's no good now, but it's as good as yours," and he climbed into his buggy and drove away laughing, leaving Bobby strangely dissatisfied and doubtful over that strange remark.

While he was still trying to unravel it, he noted that the water in Silas' pond, which but a day or so previously had been down to fully nine inches from the top, was now climbing rapidly upward again; and there had been no rain for more than two weeks! The thing was inexplicable. He was still puzzling over this as he drove down the road and turned in at broad Burnit Avenue toward the club-house. The asphalt and the pavements were bone dry and as clean as a ball-room floor, and it seemed to him that the young grass was growing greener and higher here than anywhere.

Suddenly he ordered his chauffeur to stop the machine. He had just passed a lot where, amid the tufts of green, his eye had caught the glint of water. Running back to it he saw that the center of that lot was covered by a small pool scarcely half an inch deep, through which the grass was growing dankly. This, too, was queer, for the hot sun and strong breeze of the past few days should have dried up every vestige of moisture. He walked along the sidewalk, studying each of the lots in turn. Here and there he discovered other small pools, and every lot bore the appearance of having just been freshly and too liberally watered. He stepped from the pavement upon the earth, and to his surprise his foot sank into it to the depth of an inch or more. For a while he was deeply worried, but presently it flashed upon him that all this soil had been dumped into the marsh, displacing the water, and that in this process it had naturally become soaked through and through. Of course it would take a long time to dry out and it would be all the better for its moisture. The rate at which grass was growing was proof enough of that.

On the next day, kept busy by the preparations for the big opening, Bobby did not get out to the Applerod Addition until evening again. As he neared it he met Silas Trimmer coming back in his buck-board, that false circle around his mouth very much in evidence.

"You ought to have had your opening yesterday. I'd have been tempted to buy a lot myself then," shouted Silas as he passed, and Bobby was sure that the tone was a mocking one.

Consumed with anxiety, he hurried on to see how Silas' swamp stood. Aghast, he found the level of the water a full inch higher than any point that it had ever before reached. Connecting this condition vaguely with that other phenomenon that he had noted, he whirled his runabout and ran back into Burnit Avenue. In twenty-four hours a remarkable change had been wrought. There were pools everywhere. The lot where he had first noticed it was now entirely covered with water, with barely the tips of the grass showing through. Frightened, he drove over the entire Addition, up one street and down another. In many places the lots were flooded. One entire block had become no more nor less than a pond. At other points the water, carrying with it the yellow soil, was flowing over his beautiful clean sidewalks and spreading its stain upon his immaculate streets. The darkness alone drove him from that inspection, and then it occurred to him to send once more for Jimmy Platt. At the first suburban telephone station he tried for nearly an hour to locate his man, but in vain. Later he tried it from his club, but could not reach him. That night was a sleepless one, and the next morning's daybreak found him speeding out the roadway to the Applerod Addition.

Early as he was, however, he found young Platt there ahead of him and in despair. He had good cause. The whole north end of the Applerod Addition had turned black, and over the top of Bobby's now grimy cement wall poured a broad, dark sheet of the murky swamp-water which had stained it. The pond of Silas Trimmer had overflowed in spite of all Platt's confident figuring that it could not, and in spite of the fact that dry weather had prevailed for two solid weeks. That was the inexplicable part. Clear weather, and still the entire suburb was becoming practically submerged! With solid, dry soil surrounding it, wherever the eye could reach it had become but a morass of mud! Mud was smeared upon every path and every roadway, and Bobby's automobile slipped and slid in the oily, yellow liquid that lay sluggishly in every gutter and blotched every rod of his clean asphalt.

Young Platt's face blanched as he saw Bobby.

"I've made a miserable botch of it," he confessed, torn with an agony of regret at his failure; "and I can't see yet what I overlooked. I'd no right to tackle a man's job like this!"

"You!" replied Bobby vehemently. "It was Trimmer who did this; somehow, someway he did it, and he flaunts it in our faces. Look there!" and he pointed to a huge signboard that had been erected overnight just opposite the entrance to Burnit Avenue. In huge, bold letters, surmounted by a giant hand that pointed the way, it told prospective investors to buy property in the high and dry Trimmer Addition, the words "High and Dry" being twice as large as any other lettering upon the board.

"It is surely a lot of nerve," admitted Platt, "but it is rank nonsense to say that the man had anything to do with this catastrophe. It would have been impossible. Let's look this thing over. Drive past the club-house to the extreme west side."

Once more they traversed the mud of Burnit Avenue, and upon the dry, sloping ground the young engineer, cursing his inexperience, alighted and walked along the edge of the property, seeking a solution to the mystery. Still perplexed, he ascended the rising ground and looked musingly across at the yet swollen and clay-red river. Suddenly an exclamation escaped his lips.

"There's your enemy," he said to Bobby who had climbed up beside him, and pointed to the river. "The river bank, I am sure, must edge upon a tilted shale formation which dips just below this basin. Probably at all times some of the water from the river seeps down between two sand-separated layers of this formation to find its outlet in the marsh, and it is this water which, through a geological freak, has supplied that swamp for ages. In the spring, however, and in extraordinary flood times, it probably finds a higher and looser stratum, and rushes down here with all the force of a hydraulic stream. This spring it took it a long time to wet thoroughly all our made ground from the bottom upward. The frost, sinking deeper in this loose, wet soil than elsewhere, held it back, too, for a time, but as soon as this was thoroughly out of the ground the river overflow came up like a geyser.

"Mr. Burnit, your Applerod Addition is ruined, and it can never be saved, unless by some extraordinary means. Nature picked out this spot, centuries and centuries ago, for a swamp, and she's going to have one here in spite of all that we can do. In five years this basin won't be a thing but black water and weeds, with only that club-house as a decaying monument to your enterprise."

Bobby controlled himself with an effort. His face was drawn and white; but part of that was from the anxiety of the past two days, and he took the blow stiff and erect, as a good soldier stands up to be disciplined. His eye roved over the work in which he had taken such pride, and already he could see in fancy the dank weeds growing up, and the croaking frogs diving into the oily surface, and the clouds of mosquitoes hovering over it again. Over the top of his retaining wall still poured the foul water which was to leaven all this, and he gazed upon it with a sharp intake of the breath.

"And to think that Silas Trimmer must have known all this, and led me to waste a fortune just so that he could reap the benefit of my advertising for his own vulture advantage!"

That, at first, was the part which hurt more than the overthrow of his plans, more than the loss of his money, more than the failure of his fight to carry out his father's wishes for his success: that any one could play the game so unfairly, that there could be in all the world people so detestable, so unprincipled, so _unsportsmanlike_!

Slowly the vanquished pair descended the hill to where the automobile stood upon the solid, level sward, but before they climbed in Bobby shook hands with his engineer.

"Don't blame yourself too much, old man," he said. "It wasn't a condition that you could foresee, and I'm mighty sorry if it hurts your reputation."

"It ought to!" exclaimed Platt with deep self-revilement. "I should have investigated. I should not have taken anything for granted. I ought to have enough money so that you could sue me for damages and recover all you lost."

"It couldn't be done," said Bobby miserably. "I've lost so much more than money."

He did not tell Platt of Agnes, but that was the one thought into which all his failure had finally resolved. Agnes! How much longer must he wait for her? They had just passed the club-house when a light buggy turned into Burnit Avenue, driven furiously by a white-haired man in a white vest and a high silk hat.

"I accept your offer!" cried Applerod, as soon as he came within talking distance, his usually ruddy face now livid white.

"My offer," repeated Bobby wonderingly.

"Yes; your offer of ten thousand dollars for my share in the Applerod Addition."

Bobby was forced to laugh. It had needed but this to make the bitter jest of fortune complete.

"You refused that offer the day it was made, Applerod!" put in Platt indignantly. "I heard you. Anyhow, you dragged Mr. Burnit into this thing!"

"He's not to blame for that," said Bobby. "But still, I don't think I care to buy any more of this property." And he smiled grimly at the absurdity of it all.

"I'll sue you for it!" shrieked Applerod, frantic from thwarted self-interest. "You prevented me from selling out at a profit when I had a chance! You bound me hand and foot when I knew that if Silas Trimmer had anything to gain by it we would lose! He knew all the time that this swamp was fed by underground springs. He bragged about it to me this morning as I passed him on the road. He told me last night I'd better come out here this morning."

"I see," said Bobby coldly, and he reached for his lever.

"Then you won't hold good to your offer?" gasped the other.

Pale before, he had turned ashen now, and Bobby looked at him with quick compunction. Applerod, always so chubbily youthful for a man of his years, was grown suddenly old. He seemed to have shrunk inside his clothes, his face to have turned flabby, his eyes to have dimmed. After all, he was an old man, and the little that he had scraped together represented all that he could hope to amass in a none too provident lifetime. This day made him a pauper and there was no chance for a fresh start. Bobby himself was young and strong, and, moreover, his resources were by no means exhausted.

"I'll tell you what I'll do, Applerod," said he, after a moment of very sober thought. "Your property cost you in the neighborhood of four thousand. Interest since the time you first began to invest in it would bring it up to a little more than that. I'll give you five thousand."

"I won't accept it.--Yes, I will! yes, I will!" he cried as Bobby impatiently reached again for his lever.

"Very well," said Bobby, "wait a minute." And tearing a leaf from his memorandum-book he wrote a note to Johnson to see to the transfer of the property and deliver to Applerod a check for five thousand dollars.

"That was more than generous; it was foolish," protested Jimmy Platt, as they whirled away.

"No doubt," admitted Bobby dryly. "But, if I'm forced to be a fool, I might as well have a well-finished job of it."