“Have you really secured it?” he asked.

“I’m the winner,” Johnny cheerfully assured him.

“If it’s too much I’ll build that tunnel,” warned Lofty.

“Make me an offer.”

“A hundred and twenty-five thousand.”

“Nothing doing,” stated Johnny with a smile.  “There’s no use fussing up our time though.  I can tell you, to the cent, how much I must have.  At four o’clock to-day I shall be nineteen hours behind my schedule, and I want a day for a fresh start, which makes it twenty-six.  At five thousand an hour, that makes a hundred and thirty thousand dollars.  I paid Ersten a hundred thousand.  Grand total:  two hundred and thirty thousand.”

“I don’t understand your figures,” protested Lofty.

“It’s a private code,” laughed the leaseholder, “but that’s the price.”

“I won’t pay it,” threatened the young merchant.

“Build your tunnel then,” returned Johnny—­but pleasantly, nevertheless.  “Don’t let’s be nervous, Lofty.  I might ask you a lot more, but that’s the exact amount the system I’m playing calls for.  I don’t want any more and I won’t take any less!”

Lofty studied his face contemplatively for a moment and rang for his treasurer.

“How did you get Ersten?” he was curious to know; and Johnny told him, to their mutual enjoyment.

At the nearest drug store Johnny called up Constance.

“Heinrich Schnitt is fixing your coat!” he announced.

“Danke!” she cried.  “Did you get the lease?”

“Yes, and sold it to Lofty,” he enthusiastically informed her.  “The schedule is paid up until four o’clock to-morrow afternoon.”

“Oh!” she gasped.  “Wait a minute.”  He held the telephone while she consulted the score board and did some figuring.  “That makes five hundred thousand of your million!  Just half!”

“I’m coming around to see that diagram,” he hastily stated.

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH THE STRAW SAILOR HAT OF JOHNNY PLAYS AN EMBARRASSING ROLE

“My dear,” observed Mr. Courtney as he and his wife approached the jessamine summer-house,” do you pick your week-end guests from a city directory or do you draw the names from a hat?” Constance Joy, sitting in the summer-house with Johnny Gamble, rose and laughed lightly as a warning.

“My dear,” retorted Mrs. Courtney very sweetly indeed and all unheeding of the laugh, “I pick them by a better system than you employ when you invite stag parties.  You usually need to be introduced to your guests.  Just whom would you like to have me send home?”

“Paul Gresham for one,” replied Courtney bluntly, “and the entire Wobbles tribe, with their friend Birchard, for some more.”

“I could be perfectly happy without them myself, Ben,” sighed his wife, “but the Wobbles bachelors invite themselves whenever they please, and Paul Gresham was asked on account of Constance.”