It was a time for confidences, and she wanted to know about him and Vee—was he going to marry her? He said he didn’t know if she would have him. Bertie laughed—she would have him all right, she was playing her cards cleverly. But Bunny told how many times she got irritated at him, and why, and that gave Bertie occasion for a discourse. She was the same old Bertie; she might weaken for a few minutes, and ask him to be kind, but she still believed in money, and the things money bought. She discussed Vee from that point of view; it would be more dignified, and safer in the long run, for him to marry a lady, rather than an actress; but all the same, Vee had a lot of sense, and he might do worse. To go and wreck their happiness for the sake of his fool Bolshevik notions—that was just sickening!
Then she wanted to know about Dad’s affairs, and how that deal in Washington was going; would they really get the leases? And was it true that Dad had any real pull with the administration in Washington? Bunny was sure he had; and Bertie revealed what she had in mind. “I’ve been thinking it over—I’ve had a lot of time to think, lying here. I believe that what I’ll do is to go back to Eldon Burdick. He’s a good deal of a dub, but you always know where to find him, and that seems to me a virtue right now.”
“Would you tell him about this?” asked Bunny, wonderingly.
“No, why should I? He’s made his mistakes, I guess, and he doesn’t advertise them. He knows I’ve been living with Charlie, but I think he’s still in love with me. What I have in mind is that I could make a career for him; I’d get Dad or Verne to pull some wires and get him a good diplomatic post. I believe I’d like to live in Paris, you meet all the important people there, and it’s very good form. We’re going to have to take charge of Europe, Eldon says, and I think he’s the sort of man they’ll need. How does that strike you?”
“Well, if it’s what you want, I’ve no doubt you can get it. But it’ll be rather tough on Eldon to have me for a brother-in-law.”
“Oh, you’re going to behave yourself,” said Bertie, easily. “This is just a sort of children’s complaint that you’ll get over.”
VIII
The navy department ousted the little company which had started drilling on the Sunnyside naval reserve. It sent in a bunch of marines to do it, and this unprecedented move attracted a lot of attention, which worried Dad and Verne. The latter had a man up there, to fix matters with the newspaper correspondents; and “Young Pete” was in Washington, seeing to things there. You began to notice in the newspapers items to the effect that the navy department was greatly worried because companies occupying lands adjoining the naval reserves were drilling, and draining the navy’s oil; this would be a calamity, and the authorities were of the opinion that in order to avoid it the reserves should be turned over to the department of the interior, which would lease them upon terms advantageous to the government.
Bunny didn’t need to ask his father about that propaganda; he knew what it meant, and he waited, wondering—was it possible to get away with anything so crude? Could anybody fail to see that the government could have taken the adjoining lands, under the same powers which had set aside the present reserves? Or that the navy could have put down offset wells on its own property, exactly as any oil man would have done? But no, this administration was not thinking about the navy—it was thinking about Dad and Verne! When the oil men had bought the Republican convention, they had also got the machinery of the party, and that included the press, which now accepted meekly the “dope” sent out from Washington, and commended the prompt measures of the administration to protect the navy’s precious oil.
Then a peculiar thing happened. Dan Irving called Bunny on the phone, and made a date for lunch. The first thing he said, “Well, the labor college is flooey—naa poo!” He went on to declare, it was a waste of time to try to keep such an enterprise alive, so long as the present labor leaders were in power; they didn’t want the young workers to be educated—it wouldn’t be so easy for the machine to control them. Last week somebody had raided the college at night, and taken most of its belongings, except the debts; Dan had decided to pay these out of his savings and quit.
“What are you going to do?” asked Bunny. And Dan explained he had been sending in news to a little press service which a bunch of radicals were maintaining in Chicago, and he had got a lot of information from Washington that had attracted attention. He had some friends there on the inside, and the upshot of it was that Dan had been offered fifteen dollars a week to go to the national capital as correspondent of this press service. “I can exist on that, and it’s the best job I can do.”
Bunny was enthusiastic. “Dan, that’s fine! There’s plenty of rascals that need to be smoked out!”
“I know it; and that’s what I want to see you about. One of the things I’ve got my eye on is these naval reserve oil leases. They look mighty fishy to me. Unless I’m missing my guess, the people behind it are Vernon Roscoe and Pete O’Reilly, and there’s bound to be black wherever their hands have touched.”
“I suppose so,” replied Bunny, trying to keep his voice from going weak.
“There’s talk
