Skippy Bedelle. Owen Johnson

invariable terms. The responsibility and the control must be mine. I don't ask fifty-two per cent, or fifty-three per cent. I ask only protection. Take it or leave it."

      Skippy gazed at Snorky, who pondered a long while, but Macnooder's professional manner sunk deep into their imaginations.

      "You don't trust us!" said Skippy sorrowfully.

      "Business is business!" said Doc, pointing to the documents he had signed. "Did you trust me?"

      "I sort of expected we'd all go cahoots," said Skippy reluctantly.

      "Fifty-one per cent, gentlemen, or good day," said Macnooder pompously.

      "Take it," said Snorky.

      Skippy drew a long breath. It had been a day of disillusions. What millions had slipped away! Truly the lot of the inventor was hard!

      "Well?" said Macnooder, rising and shooting his cuffs. "Is it or is it not?"

      "It is," said Skippy heavily.

      "And now, gentlemen," said Macnooder briskly, "I make no promises. I shall examine the scheme ruthlessly, without sentiment or prejudice—but perhaps, likewise who knows!—Gentlemen, your hands, this moment may be historic!"

      Caught by the sudden inspiration of how history might some day look back to these humble beginnings, with a common gesture they rose and clasped hands.

CHAPTER VII

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Tragedy

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      BEDELLE, Incorporated! John C. Bedelle, The Bathtub King! For a delicious week Skippy sailed into the future on the magic carpet of his imagination. He dreamed through the long dull hours of recitations; he dreamed when huddled in sweater he watched the scurrying of the baseball candidates; he dreamed over the prunes at breakfast and the prune whip at night, and in his soft and delicious bed he lay awake for hours planning out the disposal of his future wealth.

      The week ended, as all weeks must. At precisely five o'clock in the afternoon, with that fine sense of ceremony that was his, Doc Macnooder knocked at the door and entered.

      "Well!" said Snorky Green and Skippy in joyful chorus.

      "Your hats and follow me!" said Macnooder in his best Dramatic Club manner.

      The tone sent a chill down their backs. Silently, already prepared for the great catastrophe, they filed across the campus, to the Upper House. Not a word had been spoken.

      "We will now proceed to examine the Fourth Form baths," said Macnooder, in the same lugubrious voice.

      Utterly and instinctively without hope Skippy clutched his roommate's arm and stumbled down the stairs. Something was coming, something that meant the end of all! Macnooder, entering the first bathhouse, flung back the door and pointed to the bathtub.

      "Mr. Bedelle, there is your answer!"

      "Jerusalem, the faucets are in the middle!" said Snorky, recoiling with a gasp.

      "The Bathtub Combine has us beat!" said Macnooder. "If we patented the Foot Regulator every bathtub in the country will have the spigot fastened in the middle."

      "Why in Sam Hill didn't you think of that?" said Snorky, turning indignantly on the inventor. He kicked at the offending tub, scowled at Skippy and deserted on the spot.

      "And this is the friend I'd have made a millionaire!" said Skippy to himself in the bitterness of his trial.

      "You see, Bo?" said Macnooder, descending from his pedestal, as he perceived how the revelation had crushed the younger imagination.

      "I see, Doc."

      "It's no use, is it?"

      "No—damn 'em, they've got us beat!"

      "Now, old sport," said Macnooder kindly, "don't mope about it. Your ideas are all right and I'm here to keep you practical. Better luck next time, but be sure and come to me."

      "Thank you, Doc," said Skippy, through whose dimmed eyes the fatal bathtub seemed to advance like a juggernaut. He escaped and went dizzily across the Campus and sat on the steps of Memorial Hall, gazing out gloomily at the dotted recreation fields. The great Bedelle gymnasium, which but yesterday was outlined in splendor against the sky, was now cinders and dust, Fifth Avenue further off than Africa, and as for Lillian Russell—

      "Looking all over for you, Skippy," said a familiar voice.

      Before him stood Toots Cortrelle.

      "Oh, it's you," he said heavily.

      "Are you flush? I thought if you were—that quarter you know—you said—"

      "I said I should remember," said Skippy, with a hollow laugh. There was just twenty cents in his pockets that an hour ago had been heavy with millions. He drew out two dimes and tendered them.

      "Here's the best I can do, Toots. I'll try to get that other nickel to you to-morrow."

CHAPTER VIII

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When Friends Prove False

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      COMMONPLACE minds are crushed by defeat; great imaginations rise to profit. Ten days after Skippy Bedelle had seen the gilded fabric of his future greatness collapse with the failure of the Foot Regulator to revolutionize the bathtub industry the spirit of invention had risen triumphantly from the ashes of first disillusionment. After all, there were other services to render to humanity, and the mind that at the age of fifteen could have reasoned so brilliantly in theory must inevitably express itself with profit to the race and to his own individual bank account.

      At first Skippy's depression had been profound, and as the sensation was new he enjoyed its sensual charm to the fullest. He discarded the jaunty cap for a slouch hat which he pulled down over his eyes; he selected the soberest of neckwear, turned up his collar, sank his fists in his pockets, and spent solitary afternoons among the ruins of the Carthage of his imagination, seated on the site of what would never be the John C. Bedelle Gymnasium. Even the spectacle of Cap Keafer knocking out a home run in the ninth inning brought him no rapturous exultation. He was akin to Ivanhoe, the disinherited knight, and Athos of the brooding sorrows. The world had receded from him, and nobody cared or noticed. He was alone, misunderstood, without a friend in the world. For after what had happened he could never again feel the same towards that basest of ingrates, Snorky Green.

      The evening after the collapse of the Bedelle Foot Regulator, Incorporated, there had been a short and exceedingly painful interview.

      "Well, Skippy, old top," said Snorky, who was genuinely contrite and ready to make the advance, "that certainly was hard luck. I feel just as bad as—" Here he stopped before the sudden majestic indignation which confronted him.

      "Green!" said Skippy, frowning.

      "Oh, I say—"

      "Green, when you thought I was going to be a rich man," continued Skippy icily, "there was nothing you wouldn't do for me. You fawned on me. But when I had to face defeat—at the first test—you deserted me with sneers and gibes. That is not friendship. Green, you are not capable of true friendship, and you have proved it. I shall never forget and I shall never forgive!"

      "Oh,