Bob Bowen Comes to Town by H. Bedford-Jones - HTML preview

IX—FEMININE INSTINCT.

Bob Bowen sat in the private office of Gus Saunders at three fifteen. On the way down-town he had stopped at a doctor’s office and had had his head bound up. As he himself put it, a couple of days would see him able to butt into another wall.

“And I’ve sure butted it this time,” he said with assumed cheerfulness, as he concluded his story. In the eyes of Alice Ferguson he read quick sympathy—sympathy, and something else that set his pulses to leaping. But he refused to meet her eyes.

“I sure have,” he went on. “Where I made my mistake was in thinking that Henderson was—was—well, that he was something less than Henderson! My one consolation is that I knocked him out so effectually that he never got word to the unknown Charley to sell out. When the news of the real condition of the Apex Crown got abroad, and the market busted all to nothing, Henderson was still rocked in the cradle of the deep. It makes me feel better to think that that skunk went down with us!

“But I’m only sorry for—for your sake, Miss Ferguson. I’m not worrying about my own money; but yours—”

“Mine is safe,” said the girl, gazing at him with shining eyes.

Bowen sat up a trifle straighter. “What?”

“I have a confession to make, Mr. Bowen—a happy confession,” said the girl, earnestly, leaning forward. “Mr. Saunders had been trying to get in touch with you all morning and had failed. No one knew where you were. At noon I came down here and got reports. Then the stock began to go up and up. It reached ninety, and was still climbing!

“To tell you the truth, I was afraid. Why? I can’t say, except that it was just a feeling inside of me. There was no word from you; all sorts of rumors were flying around about Apex Crown, and—and Mr. Saunders said that the stock was being so rottenly manipulated that there might be an investigation! That frightened me more than anything. So I told Mr. Saunders to sell the whole thing—”

Saunders came to his feet with a whoop of delight.

“Feminine instinct, by George!” he shouted, his repressed mirth breaking out in a roar of laughter. “Bob, old man, she made me sell out the whole blamed bunch around ninety! So help me, she did, and we did!”

Bowen stared from one to the other, staggered. He could not at first grasp the reality of what had taken place.

“You’re not trying just to brace me up—”

“Rats!” Saunders clapped him on the shoulders happily. “Not a bit of it. I’m a cold-blooded business man, and I don’t give a whoop about bracing you up! As a matter of fact, I did not get control of the stock after all. Henderson’s holdings never did come on the market, you know, except in part. So when I saw how things were going, I let Miss Ferguson boss the job. And it’s blamed lucky I did!”

“Great Jehu!” said Bowen slowly. “Then—then we’re not broke after all—”

“Not by two hundred thousand or so! Which, I judge, our friend Dickover pays—”

Bowen came to his feet, a trifle unsteadily.

“Gus,” he said, his voice solemn, but a twinkle in his gray eyes, “this can only happen once in a lifetime. Thank Heaven it happened in my lifetime! Now, see here. It was Miss Ferguson who saved the bacon to-day, and I want to tell you that she’s too good a partner to lose. Would you mind making this a real private office for a few minutes?”

With a blank look that swiftly changed to a grin of comprehension, Mr. Saunders left.

Bowen turned to Alice Ferguson, and at sight of her rapidly crimsoning countenance the old boyish smile came to his lips.

“Hold on!” he exclaimed. “Don’t say anything for about two minutes, please! I’m all done with business. I don’t want to hear the word again—between us. When I’m talking about partnership like I want to talk, I mean something else than business! Maybe you’ll think that I’m pretty sudden, but I tell you that I never met any one like you before, and I never will again. And I want you to listen, because—”

And Alice Ferguson listened.

(The end.)