“You’re foolish,” returned Gresham, holding his temper through the superiority which had always nettled Collaton.  “You like money and I’m showing you a way to get it from Johnny Gamble.”

The waiter brought the drinks.  Collaton paid for them, tossed off his own and rose.

“I’ve had all of that money I want,” he declared.  “Whatever schemes you have in the future you will have to work yourself, and whatever trouble comes of it you may also enjoy alone—­because I’ll throw you.”

“You would find difficulty in doing that,” Gresham observed with a smile.  “I fancy that, if I were to send the missing books of the defunct Gamble-Collaton Irrigation Company to Mr. Gamble, you would be too busy explaining things on your account to bother with my affairs to any extent.”

“I was in jail once,” Collaton told him with. quiet intensity.  “If I ever go again the man who puts me there will have to go along, so that I will know where to find him when I get out.  Good-by.”

“Wait a minute,” said Gresham.  “Your digestion is bad or else you made a recent winning in your favorite bucket-shop.  Now listen to me:  Whatever Johnny Gamble’s doing at the present time is of no consequence.  Let him go through with the deal he has on and think he has scared you off.  I’ll only ask you to make one more attempt against him.  That’s all that will be necessary, for it will break him and at the same time destroy Miss Joy’s confidence in him.  He has over a third of a million dollars.  We can get it all.”

“Excuse me,” refused Collaton.  “If I ran across Johnny Gamble’s pocket-book in a dark alley I’d walk square around it without stopping to look for the string to it.”

Gresham rose.

“Then you won’t take any part in the enterprise?”

“Not any,” Collaton assured him with a wave of negation.  “If Johnny will let me alone I’ll let him alone, and be glad of the chance.”

Later, Gresham saw Johnny come back and speak to Heinrich Schnitt; but he had no curiosity about it.  Whatever affairs Johnny had in hand just now he might carry through unmolested, for Gresham was busy with larger plans for his future undoing.

CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH JOHNNY PLANS A REHEARSAL BETWEEN OLD FRIENDS

Johnny Gamble was waiting at the store when Louis Ersten came down the next morning.  Mr. Ersten walked in with a portentous frown on his brow and began to take off his coat as he strode back toward the cutting room.  He frowned still more deeply as Johnny confronted him.

“Again!” he exclaimed, looking about him in angry despair as if he had some wild idea of calling a porter.  “First it’s Lofty; then it’s some slick real estate schemer; then it’s you!  I will not sell the lease!”

“I won’t say lease this time,” Johnny hastily assured him.

“Then that is good,” gruffly assented Ersten with a trace of a sarcastic snarl.