CHAPTER XXV CONCLUSION

It was a moment of great suspense for Ben Jolly and the ventriloquist as, without a moment’s hesitation, the three motion picture chums dived from their frail raft. The surface of the flood was so strewn with pieces of floating wreckage—the bottom and sides of the newly formed water way so treacherous—that it was a tremendous risk to get into that swirling vortex.

Frank and his companions were no novices in the water. They saw that Jack Beavers had been struck down from the window sill by the falling bricks, and had probably been knocked senseless. Almost immediately after diving the heads of the boys appeared on the surface.

“Got him!” puffed Randy.

“Lift him up,” directed Frank, swinging out one hand and catching at a protruding window sill of the building. This purchase gained, all exerted themselves to drag up the limp and sodden form of Peter Carrington’s partner. Frank and Randy kept the upper part of the man’s body out of the water. Pep swam after the floating platform they had used as a raft. Jack Beavers, apparently more dead than alive, was placed upon it. His rescuers pushed this over to where the water was shallow and then carried the man into a drug store fronting the boardwalk.

“I suppose I had better stay with him,” observed Vincent, as Beavers, after some attention from a physician who happened to be in the drug store, showed signs of recovery. “I know him the best, although I can’t say truthfully that I like him the best.”

“Yes, he’s struck hard lines, and it’s a sort of duty to look after him,” said Ben Jolly.

He and the boys put in nearly two hours helping this and that group in distress among the storekeepers of the slump. They got back to the Wonderland to find that its superior location had saved it from damage of any consequence.

A wild morning was ushered in with a chill northeaster. Daylight showed the beach covered with wrecked boats and habitations. The tents over on the Midway were nearly all down. The National was still flooded and the street in front of it impassable. Very few of the frame buildings, however, had been undermined.

The worst of the storm was over by afternoon, but no entertainment was given until the next evening. A big transparency announced a flood benefit, and five thousand dodgers telling about it were circulated over the town.

It was a gala night for the Wonderland. There were few of the minor beach shows as yet in condition to resume operations, and after twenty-four hours of storm everybody seemed out.

“At least seventy-five dollars for the benefit of the poor families down on the beach,” observed Pep. “Say, let me run down and tell them. It will warm their hearts, just as it does mine.”

“All right,” acceded Frank. “I guess you can promise them that much, Pep.”

Frank and Jolly stood in front of the playhouse talking over affairs in general as Pep darted away on his mission of charity. A well-dressed man whom Jolly had noticed in the audience, and one of the last to leave the place, had loitered around the entrance. Now he advanced towards them.

“Is there a young man named Smith connected with your show?” he inquired.

“Yes, sir,” replied Frank. “He has gone on a brief errand, but will soon return.”

“I’ll wait for him,” said the stranger, and he sat down on the side railing.

Frank went inside as Randy appeared with his cash box. Jolly remained where he was. Finally Pep came into view briskly, happy faced and excited.

“Someone to see you—that man over there,” advised Jolly.

“Is that so? Stranger to me. Want to see me?” he went on, approaching the stranger.

“If you are Pepperill Smith.”

“That’s my name,” vouchsafed Pep.

“The same young man who was the guest of Mr. Tyson at Brenton?”

“Guest!” retorted Pep, in high scorn. “Oh, yes, I was a guest! Fired me the first time he got mad.”

“Oh, well, we all have spells of temper we are sorry for afterwards,” declared the man smoothly.

“Is Mr. Tyson sorry?” challenged Pep.

“He is, for a fact. You see—well, he gave you some papers, cheap stocks or bonds; didn’t he, instead of cash for your services? He thought maybe you’d rather have the money. I’ve got a one hundred dollar bill for you. If those papers are lying around loose you might hand them over to me.”

“I haven’t got them,” said Pep, and the man looked disappointed. “Maybe my friend preserved them. Oh, Mr. Jolly,” and Pep called the pianist over to them and explained the situation.

“H’m!” commented Jolly thoughtfully, when Pep had concluded his story, and glancing keenly at the stranger, “you seem to have discovered some value to the stock you refer to.”

“Oh, I suppose these stock brokers know how to juggle them along,” responded the stranger, with assumed lightness.

“Well, as I understand it, they were given to my friend Smith.”

“Undoubtedly—why, yes, that is true.”

“As their custodian,” continued Jolly, “I want to look into this matter.”

“I wouldn’t. Waste of time. All a tangle,” insisted the stranger. “Look here, let me give the boy two hundred dollars.”

“You can give Pep all you want to,” observed Jolly, “but I shall advise him to see how the market stands on that stock before he delivers those securities.”

“Hum! ha! quite so,” mumbled the stranger in a crestfallen way.

“And we will let Mr. Tyson know our decision in a day or two.”

“I see—well, I will report the result of my negotiation to my client.”

“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.”

“Durham,” spoke the ventriloquist with considerable feeling, “you’re pure gold!”

The bustling pianist appeared on the scene all smiles and serenity at that moment.

“Where’s Pep Smith?” he inquired.

“Up at the playhouse.”

“That so? All right. Come along, and see me give him the surprise of his life. You know I went down to Brenton to see Mr. Tyson about that stock? Well, I’m back—minus the stock. I’ve got something better. Look there.”

Ben Jolly held a certified check before the dazzled eyes of his friends. It read: “Pay to the order of Peperill Smith Two Thousand Dollars.”

“This good fortune will about turn Pep’s head,” declared Frank Durham.

“Why, those shrewd fellows will get double that out of it,” said Jolly. “It seems that the company is on the rocks, but a reorganization is being attempted and it can’t be put through without a majority of the stock. Pep’s holdings fit in snugly, so they had to pay me my price.”

Pep Smith gasped as Jolly recounted all this over again to him in the living room back of the photo playhouse.

“What are you going to do with all that money, Pep?” inquired Randy.

Pep waved the precious bit of paper gaily and jumped to his feet with glowing eyes.

“What am I going to do with it?” he cried. “And what could I do but put it into the Wonderland business fund! Why, just think of it! When the season is over at Seaside Park we have got to look for a new location; haven’t we?”

“That’s sure,” agreed Ben Jolly. “You boys have made a success of the motion picture business so far and I want to see you keep it up.”

And so, with both playhouses in the full tide of prosperity, we bid good-by to our ambitious young friends, to meet again in another story to be called: “The Movie Boys on Broadway”; or “The Mystery of the Missing Cash Box.”

“My, but we have been lucky!” declared Randy.

“That’s what,” added Pep.

“Well, we’ve had to work for our success,” came from Frank.

THE END