“Negotiation? Aha! Client? A lawyer, then,” observed Jolly, as the man reluctantly moved away. “Pep Smith, I’ll investigate that stock of yours with the first break of dawn. There’s something more to this than appears on the surface.”
“Wasn’t that Jack Beavers I just saw you talking to?” inquired Hal Vincent of Frank, as the latter approached him on the boardwalk.
“Yes, poor fellow,” replied Frank. “I have been having quite a conversation with him.”
“Making a poor mouth about his misfortunes, I suppose?” intimated the ventriloquist.
“Not at all, Mr. Vincent,” explained Frank soberly. “He is all broken up, but more with gratitude towards us for saving his life the night of the storm than anything else. He acts and talks like a new man. Peter Carrington and Greg Grayson left him in the lurch with a lot of debts, and he is trying to get on his feet again.”
“In what way?”
“Some friend has happened along and is willing to fix things up at the National. He came to me to say that he felt he had no right to come into competition with us, after owing his very existence to our efforts the other night.”
“What did you tell him, Durham?”
“I told him to go ahead and make a man of himself and a success of the show, and that he need expect nothing but honest business rivalry from us.”