IN WHICH JOHNNY EXECUTES SOME EXCEEDINGLY RAPID BUSINESS DEALS Sitting tight and watching the hands of his watch go round, with a deficit of five thousand dollars an hour piling up against him, was as hard work as Johnny Gamble had ever done; and yet he knew that, if he succumbed to impatience and went to the De Luxe Apartments Company before they came to him, he would relinquish a fifty per cent, advantage.

He saw another day slipping past him, with a total deficit of sixteen hours behind his schedule--or an appalling shortage of eighty thousand dollars--when, at one o'clock on Thursday, the expected happened--and a brisk little man, with a mustache which would have been highly luxuriant if he had not kept it bitten off as closely as he could reach it, dropped in, inquired for Loring, jerked a chair as close to him as he could get it and said, in one breath: "Want to sell your river-view property ?" "Certainly," replied Loring, in whose name the property stood.

"Mr.
Gamble is handling that for me.

Mr.Chase, Mr.Gamble." Mr.Chase, holding to his chair, jumped up, hurried over to Johnny and once more jerked the chair close up.
"How much do you want for it ?" he asked.
"Two hundred and seventy-five thousand." "Too much.

I understand it's restricted to apartment-house purposes alone ?" "Yes." "Not less than ten stories, and a minimum rental of three thousand dollars a suite ?" "Yes." "You can't sell it for that price with those restrictions." "We can build on it," replied Johnny calmly.
"You won't," asserted Mr.Chase with equal conviction.