hnny briskly as he gathered up
the bonds. "I may have to dismiss you as my lawyer, but as my friend
you can hand these bonds to somebody who will lose them."

"As your lawyer I'd have to call you a blooming idiot," declared
Loring, "but as your friend I don't think Gresham will raise any
question about the bonds. They're yours, Johnny; but, nevertheless,
I'll forget where they are by the time the police come."

Gresham had been struggling with an intolerable lump in his throat.

"Gamble!" he abjectly pleaded, "I've signed the bonds. I admit that
they're yours. You're not going to have me arrested?"

Johnny turned on him with the sort of implacable enmity which expresses
itself in almost breathless quietness.

"I'm going to send you to the penitentiary for a thousand years," he
promised.

CHAPTER XXIV

IN WHICH JOHNNY DEMANDS SPOT CASH AT ONCE

Seven-thirty the next morning found Johnny Gamble listening, in awed
curiosity, to an insistent telephone bell. Gradually it dawned on him
that he must have left a call, and plodding into the bath-room he
mechanically turned on the cold water, reflecting dully that this was
a cruel world. Suddenly it came to him with a rush that this
thirty-first of May was to be the busiest of his life! He had to have
a million dollars before four o'clock!

At seven-forty-five he was out of his bath-tub. At eight he was gulping
hot coffee. At eight-fifteen he was stepping out of the elevator with
an apple core in his hand.

At the curb in front of his door he found a long gray torpedo touring
car throbbing with impatience, and at the wheel sat a plump young lady
in a vivid green bonnet and driving coat. In the tonneau sat a more
slender young lady all in gray, except for the brown of her eyes and
the pink of her cheeks and the red of her lips.

Johnny's Baltimore straw hat came off with a jerk.

"Out after the breakfast rolls?" he demanded as he shook hands with
them quite gladly.

"No, indeed; hunting a job," responded Polly. "This machine and the
services of its chauffeur and messenger girl are for rent to you only,
for the day, at the price of a nice party when you get that million. We
have to be in on the excitement."

"Hotel Midas," Johnny crisply directed, and jumped into the tonneau,
whereupon the chauffeur touched one finger to her bonnet, and the
machine leaped forward.

"You're lazy," chided Constance. "We've been waiting twenty minutes. We
were afraid you m