“Twenty thousand dollars, isn’t it?” asked Karl.
“Hush! No need to tell everybody,” warned Stanley. “But that’s what there is. A little more than twenty thousand.”
“Hello, Stan!” broke in a cheery voice, as a brawny brown hand seized Stanley’s. “What have you been doing to yourself? You’re soaking wet. By George! So is Karl! What in thunder is it all about?”
“Fell into the lake,” replied Stanley briefly. “Where did you come from. Clay?”
“Adirondacks. Cold as the deuce up there! Too early in the year; so I just turned my gas wagon in this direction, and I’m bound for New York. It is the only place for civilized beings in May.”
Clay Varron was a member of the Thracian Club—the athletic organization in New York to which Stanley Downs also belonged—and the two young men were good friends. Their mutual liking was based on respect, for both were clean-living, bright young fellows, who enjoyed athletic sports as earned recreation, without making them the principal business in life.
Among other reasons for Clay Varron and Stanley Downs being good comrades was that both were ardent motorists. Clay had done seventy miles an hour on the road, and Stanley Downs would have beaten that record, in the opinion of the Thracian Club, if he had not been dissuaded on the ground that more than seventy miles an hour away from a regular track would be idiocy, rather than good sportsmanship.
“Got any clothes with you?” asked Stanley.
“Plenty! I’ve engaged a room here at the hotel. Come up to it until you get one for yourself. Where’s my man? Where the deuce——Oh, here you are!” he added, as a trim-looking fellow, with “body servant” written all over him, stood at his employer’s elbow. “What’s the number of my room here at the Ridgeview, Moran?”
“Forty-three, sir. Suite—bedroom, sitting room, and bath. Baggage is there already. Clothes laid out, too.”