Biff gravely sought within himself for words of consolation, one of his fleeting ideas being to engage Mr. Platt on the spot to survey the site of Bates’ Athletic Hall, although there was not the slightest possible need for such a survey. In the midst of his sympathetic gloom came in Mr. Ferris and Bobby.
“Jimmy, how would you like to be chief construction engineer of the new waterworks?” asked Bobby, with scant waste of time, after he had introduced Ferris.
Mr. Platt gasped and paled.
“I think I could be urged, from a sense of public duty, to give up my highly lucrative private practice,” he said with a pitiful attempt at levity, though his voice was husky, and his tightly clenched hand, where the white knuckles rested upon his drawing-table, trembled.
“Don’t build up too much hope on it, Jimmy; but if what we surmise is correct you will have a chance at it,” and he briefly explained. “We’re going right out there,” concluded Bobby, “and I want you to go along to help investigate. We have to find some incriminating evidence, and you’d be more likely to know how and where to look for it than any of us.”
It is needless to say that Jimmy Platt took his hat with alacrity. Before he went out, with new hope in his heart, he turned and shook hands ecstatically with his sister. Still holding Jimmy’s hand she turned to Bobby impulsively:
“I do hope, Mr. Burnit, that this turns out right for Jimmy.”
Bobby turned to her abruptly and with a trace of a frown. It was a rather poorly trained office employee, he thought, who would intrude herself into conversation that it was her duty to forget, but Biff Bates caught that look and stepped into the breach.
“This is Nellie, Bobby—that is, it used to be Nellie,” he stated with a quick correction, and blushed violently.
“It is Nellie still,” laughed that young lady to Bobby, and the puzzled look upon his face was swiftly driven away by a smile, as he suddenly recognized in her traces of the long-legged girl who had been always present at the Applerod Addition, who had ridden in his automobile, and had confided to him most volubly, upon innumerable occasions, that her brother Jimmy was about the smartest man who ever sighted through a transit.