Skippy Bedelle Part 4

Under 2,000,000 he wrote the figure five and slowly noted the colossal result.

"Do you realize what that means?"

"It means ten million dollars!"

"No, it means more than that--it means that if the Bathtub Combine came to us to-day and offered us a million dollars--it would be suicide to accept it!"

Skippy's eyes dilated with excitement. Slowly he tore the sheet of paper in two.

"Burn it--take no chances," said Snorky, who proceeded to light a match.

"And that's only the United States," said Skippy in a whisper.

"There's Canada and the British Empire!"

"But Englishmen carry rubber tubs with them."

"They can be educated."

"The French don't bathe," said Skippy mournfully.

"That'll come."

"Holy cats, Rockefeller won't be in it!" said Skippy, who was suffocating. "Snorky, what I said goes! Money isn't everything.

No--sentiment's bigger. Fifty-fifty, I said, and fifty-fifty it stands!"

"Then I'll put money into it," said Snorky, offering his hand. "I'll go to my father. But not now--not a word until we get the patent. If any one gets the idea we're lost!"

Skippy jumped at the sound of Butsy White's elephantine descent of the stairs.

"And Skippy," said Snorky Green, with a sudden realization of a man's frailties, "whatever you do--never tell a woman. You understand?"

Skippy, whose relations with the opposite s.e.x were of the cat-and-dog variety, solemnly raised his hand.

"I swear."

"Now to be practical. I say, Skippy, we do have to invent the regulator, you know."

CHAPTER VI

METHODS OF A FINANCIER

WHEN, after a dream-ridden night, Skippy started across the campus to morning chapel, the urchin's wabble had gone from his legs forever. He moved with firm and measured tread, shoulders thrown back and head erect, every inch a man, and his glance was set into the future with proud recognition of his place in the complex scheme of things. The imagination, which returns after the sense of humor, was still drowsy with the painful waking effort in chapel, but as he proceeded to Memorial Hall, the glittering future approached a little nearer. Some day he, John C. Bedelle, would return to the old school a patron and a benefactor!

"They ought to have a gymnasium," he thought, appraising the campus in a burst of generosity. "I'll give it to them. I'll give them a gym that'll beat anything hollow. I'll give them the finest architect in the country. I will! And when it's all built and ready to dedicate--" But all at once as he started to visualize himself before the applauding crowd Snorky Green jogged his elbow:

"Skippy--Gee, I've got it!"

"What?"

"Sh--s.h.!.+ You know--the invention! Meet me in the room after first recitation. Mum's the word!"

A little unworthy feeling of jealousy came to Skippy at this announcement; almost a feeling of having been defrauded. Yet after all he had only himself to blame. The temptation of the future had beguiled him from the present necessity. He slid into his seat, conveniently protected, by the broad back of Tubby Banks, from the searching gaze of Lucius Ca.s.sius Hopkins, better known as the Roman, who presently would number him among the flunked. Then when the attack centered among the R's and S's, across the room, he drew forth a pencil and attacked the problem of a practical foot regulator. But immediately the deplorable deficiency of his education struck him. What preparation had he for his life's vocation? Of mathematics he knew absolutely nothing! The priceless years had been squandered on mere Latin, English prose, French verbs and the vexing grammars.

"I must have a scientific education," he said, drawing rough outlines on the margin of Caesar's Gallic Wars. "How in the deuce am I to begin? A foot's sort of different. Shall I make it a b.u.t.ton to press on or a sort of slipper to push up and down?"

There was a cut of the famous bridge across the Rhine, but a hurried examination brought him no comfort. He looked over at Snorky across the aisles and Snorky winked back at him in the triumph of achievement.

Still if Snorky was to share in the fabulous returns it was only right that Snorky should contribute to the practical details! The truth is that Skippy in calmer mood had already begun to regret the impulse of the day before. Five million dollars after all was a good deal to give away in a gesture, even to the chum of chums!

"What the deuce got into me?" he thought gloomily. Until that moment the sinister corruption of money had been foreign to his nature, but all at once a change came to his outlook. "Gee, even a third would have been a _whale_ of a sum!"

He rose and flunked horribly in an attempt to cla.s.sify an ablative absolute and answered "unprepared" when the Roman, maliciously pressing his advantage, insisted on his translating. Then with sulky dignity he strode to the blackboards with the B's and C's and the D's and flunked once more on the conjugation of an irregular verb. What time was this for trivial annoyances when his whole soul was rent with the thought of the millions which he had squandered for a moment's sentimental impulse!

He was not ashamed of that impulse, no--but, all the same, Snorky, if he had had finer feelings, would never have abused his generosity!

"What's the matter?" said the chum of chums, when, recitations over, they had gained the secrecy of their bedroom. "You look positively bilious."

"I didn't sleep much," said Skippy, eyeing him with intuitive disfavor.

"Well, for Heaven's sake brace up; you look as though you'd swallowed a porcupine!"

"All very well for you to cheer up," Skippy thought to himself. It hurt, there was no turning from it. It did hurt. What a blunder he had made!

"I could have hired him on a salary," he thought gloomily. But of course now there could be no backing out.

"Well, now what have _you_ worked out?" said Snorky triumphantly.

"I? My mind has been concentrating on the business organization."

"Gaze on this!" Snorky proudly brought forth a diagram which to Skippy's bewildered gaze looked like the cross section of a switch yard. "Do you get it?"

"What's this?"

"That? Why that's the bathtub, you chump."

"It doesn't look like any bathtub."

"You're in it, looking down--see, this is the line of the water. Here's the hot and cold--"

"But this and that--"

"That's your legs, of course. You're in the tub looking south. Your legs stick out, don't they, and these are the foot regulators--"

"They look like feet."

"They are feet--that is, your feet stick in 'em."