CHAPTER XVIIIWHILE OTHERS SLEPT.
After his discovery of the syndicate bills, Merriwell turned back and bestowed a brief, but comprehensive glance at the man before him. He was a young fellow of medium height, with a rather pleasant face and fiery-red hair. He was roughly dressed and his faded overalls were smeared with paste. Dick decided that he was one of the laborers who did the actual work of billposting. He seemed like a pretty good sort, and the Yale man seldom went wrong in sizing up a man. Still he hesitated, wondering whether he had better put into execution the plan which was in his mind.
At last he determined to risk it. He could think of no other way, and the bills must be on the boards before daylight.
“Do you want to earn ten dollars?” he asked presently.
The fellow grinned all over his freckled face.
“That’s me, guv’ner,” he replied promptly. “I sure do.”
“Would you be willing to stay up all night to do it?” Merriwell went on.
“Sure, Mike!”
The Yale man’s eyes wandered to the big buckets of paste which ranged along the wall.
“How long would it take you to mix up a lot of paste like that?” he inquired.
The billposter looked puzzled.
“About an hour or so,” he returned. “What yer after?”
Dick smiled.
“I want about that much ready at twelve o’clock sharp,” he returned. “I also want three or four big brushes that you put it on with. Where do you suppose I could get those?”
The fellow waved his hand to where a lot of them hung in rows against the wall.
“What’s the matter with them?” he inquired. “The old man’ll never miss ’em if you get ’em back by six o’clock. He’s got a big job on for to-morrer, an’ he’s going to start at six.”
“I don’t want to use his brushes,” Dick said quickly. “Isn’t there some place around town where I could buy some?”
The billposter shook his head.
“Not as I knows of,” he answered. “Them brushes is made special.”
Merriwell hesitated for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
“All right,” he said, “we’ll use those, then. I can pay Lawford well for the use of them after the business is over. Got that straight, now? Have the paste and brushes ready for me at midnight. We’d better take a couple of those small ladders, too. And you are to stay here till we bring the things back. See?”
The fellow nodded.
“Yep. But, say, guv’ner, this here ain’t goin’ to do me no harm with the boss, is it?”
“Not unless you tell him yourself about it,” the Yale man answered. “I promise you no one will ever get it from me, but I’ll be frank with you——”
He paused, and looked inquiringly at the fellow.
“Brown’s me name,” the latter informed him. “Bill Brown.”
“Well, Bill,” Dick continued, “I may as well tell you that if Lawford ever found out that you had made paste for me, and loaned me his brushes, he would probably fire you on the spot. But, as I say, I don’t see how he’s going to find it out. I’ll leave the money for the brushes, and all the rest, in his desk, and he’ll have no way of knowing where it came from.”
Brown hesitated, apparently turning the matter over in his mind. Presently he looked up.
“Make it fifteen, and I’m your man,” he said.
Dick smiled.
“I’ll go you one better. It’s worth twenty to me, and here’s half of it now.”
He handed the fellow a ten-dollar bill.
“T’anks, guv’ner,” Brown said fervently. “You’re a sure-enough gent. I’ll have the stuff ready fur you at eleven. Might a bloke ask what you’re going to do with it?”
“I reckon I’d better not tell you, Bill,” Merriwell smiled. “Then you won’t be forced to hide anything more than necessary.”
As soon as they were out of the building, Demarest gave vent to his enthusiasm.
“By Jove, Merriwell!” he exclaimed admiringly. “You certainly have got a great head. You remind me of a general laying out the details of a campaign. What’s the next step?”
Dick chuckled.
“Get enough of the fellows to put up the bills,” he explained.
Demarest roared with laughter.
“Great,” he gasped; “simply great! That’s a master stroke, getting Yale students to turn billposters! But, say, will they do it, do you think?”
“Do it!” Dick echoed. “They’ll fairly fall over themselves to get the chance. Perhaps you Cambridge boys were too staid for this sort of diversion, but I don’t think I shall have any difficulty persuading some of my friends, especially when it’s in such a righteous cause.”
It took but a short time to reach the campus, and Dick led the way up the stairs of Durfee, taking the steps three at a time, while Demarest followed him more slowly. Bursting into his room, he found quite a crowd of fellows there, who at once set up a shout at the sight of him.
“By thunder!” Brad Buckhart, his roommate, exclaimed. “It’s about time you showed up, you old maverick. Had us worrying our heads clean off wondering whether Harvard had roped you.”
“Yes,” put in Eric Fitzgerald. “We were just about to organize a posse to hunt you up. Where’ve you——”
He broke off abruptly, his eyes fastened with a look of horror on the entering Demarest, while he threw out both hands as if to ward off something unspeakably awful.
“Take him away!” he gasped, rolling his eyes ceilingward. “This is dreadful! I haven’t had a drink in weeks, and yet I see two Merriwells. It’s worse than snakes! For heaven sakes, somebody take one of ’em away!”
Exclamations of astonishment arose from the other fellows at the sight of the amazing resemblance between the two men.
“Stop your nonsense, Fitz!” Dick admonished. “Fellows, this is my friend, Austin Demarest, who is going to bring out a corking Yale play here next Thursday.”
“What’s the relation, pard?” Buckhart grinned, as he shook hands with the actor. “You sure had me guessing for a minute.”
“Me, too,” put in Rudolph Rose. “It’s the greatest thing I ever saw.”
“None whatever,” Dick explained. “I met Mr. Demarest for the first time this morning, but I can assure you he’s the goods, all right.”
Fitzgerald withdrew his gaze from the ceiling, with a profound sigh of relief.
“Delighted to meet you,” he said fervently, as he clasped Demarest’s hand. “For a moment I had a horrid thought—— However, we won’t dwell on that. Jove! I can’t get used to the two of you yet.”
After everybody had met the stranger, and the crowd settled down to comparative quiet, Dick took the floor.
“We’ve got a ticklish job on hand to-night, boys,” he said earnestly, “and I want your help. Demarest has a dandy play, which he has got to bring out in New Haven. He’s up against the trust, and they won’t let him have a decent theatre, so he’s taken the old Concert Hall. We thought everything was settled all right this afternoon, but now it appears that the trust has a play as nearly like Demarest’s as possible, even to the name, which they are going to shove into the Arcadian on Friday. It’s a put-up job, you see, to give him a frost. They’ve hired Lawford to cover the boards with their bills to-morrow morning, though Demarest had a previous understanding with the fellow that his paper would go up as soon as it was printed. We’ve persuaded the printers to work overtime, and the bills will be ready at midnight. Now, what I want to do is to get them on the boards before daylight. Also every dead wall we can get the privilege on. Catch on?”
“You bet!” exclaimed Fitz joyfully. “You want us to turn billposters.”
“Exactly,” Dick nodded. “How about it?”
“Of course we will!”
“Great!”
“Gee! What a circus that will be!”
“Bring on your bills, pard, and we’ll get ’em up or perish in the attempt.”
The assent was perfectly unanimous. Every one seemed to think it a great lark, and was eager for the fun to commence. But there was still two hours before the bills would be ready, so Dick took the opportunity of giving the boys a more comprehensive sketch of what Demarest was up against, and the troubles he had had to get a hearing for the play.
The fellows were all much interested, and then and there they resolved themselves into an informal committee of six to spread the news throughout the university, and collect as large an audience as possible for Thursday night.
About eleven o’clock they all sallied forth in high spirits, and made at once for the printing establishment. Here they found that the presses were all running full blast, and the bills close to completion. The foreman assured Dick that the last one would be run off in about half an hour, so the latter dispatched Buckhart to see if he couldn’t find some sort of a vehicle in which they could transport the paper. That was the one point on which he had slipped up. He had expected that they would be able to carry the bills, but a sight of the volume already printed showed him at once that this was impossible.
While Buckhart was gone, Merriwell and Demarest paid all the men off, and thanked them heartily for the help they had given, besides presenting each of them with two tickets for the show.
Precisely at half-past eleven the last bill was run off, the great presses stopped, and the printers grabbed up coats and hats, and hurried out of the place. The foreman remained a few minutes to show Dick which were the large bills to be posted up, and which the smaller posters to attach to the colored lithographs for the store windows, which they proposed distributing the moment the shops opened in the morning. They were really counting more on these than the announcements on the boards, for they felt pretty certain that the latter would not remain uncovered long, once Lawford got started with his work for the trust in the morning. They would be up long enough, however, to attract considerable attention, and Dick had a little scheme by which he hoped to circumvent Lawford if the latter did cover them.
Presently Brad appeared, with the announcement that he had a cab below, and all hands turned to to carry the bills downstairs. In the street outside they found a rather dilapidated specimen of four-wheeler, which the Texan had picked up at the station, into which they piled the paper until there was room for nothing else.
The driver seemed to take it as some college prank, and, assured of his money, which he had obtained in advance, looked upon them with a tolerant eye.
At the billposter’s, they found Brown on the alert, and the paste and brushes ready for them. His eyes bulged a little when he saw the cab full of paper, but he asked no questions. He rather hoped that the night’s work would hit his boss hard, for Lawford was a hard man to work for, and was cordially hated by the fellows under him.
Several buckets of the paste, the brushes, and two ladders were wedged into the cab somehow, and then the fun commenced.
Merriwell’s plan of campaign was masterly. He avoided carefully the central part of the town, in which the cops were apt to be more or less wide awake, and proceeded at once to the outskirts, where they could work undisturbed.
Quietly and swiftly, board after board was covered with the flaring announcements. Many of them were slapped on crooked, and several times they got the different sections misplaced, so that the bottom part came first, but Demarest was rather pleased at that than otherwise. He thought it would attract more attention than if they had been put on with the customary skill and regularity.
The fellows were having the time of their lives. Before long they were smeared with paste from head to foot, but that did not matter. They slathered the bills on as if their lives depended on their speed, and the little spice of risk—for the cops were pretty sure to question such proceedings if they got onto the game—only added to the enjoyment.
Working with the utmost method, they slowly circled the town, approaching nearer and nearer to the central zone of danger. Several times they had narrow escapes, but they always managed to pull out before the cops actually caught them, though more than once they were obliged to run, leaving only the top section of the bill affixed to the board. It is safe to say, however, that those incomplete sections, breaking off abruptly in the middle of the announcement, attracted more attention from the passers-by in the morning, and stimulated their curiosity to a much greater extent than anything else.
At last they reached Chapel Street, just opposite the campus, and here Fitz conceived the audacious scheme of putting one of their bills on the board in front of the Arcadian Theatre. This was carrying the war into the enemy’s camp with a vengeance, but Dick at once perceived the advertising value of such a thing, and they proceeded to plan it with care.
An officer’s beat took in Chapel Street between York and Orange, a matter of five blocks. Merriwell stationed the cab well around the corner on High Street, and then carried the paste and one of the bills into a doorway nearer the corner. There they thoroughly pasted the first part of the bill, while Buckhart, keeping watch at the corner, gave the word when the cop was well away from the front of the theatre.
As soon as the coast was clear, Dick and Fitz dashed out, carrying the pasted sheet between them, while Rudolph Rose came along with the brush. A few deft dabs with the latter served to fix the paper to the board, and then they darted into concealment again, to await another round on the part of the officer.
He passed the billboard the first time without noticing the change, but on his return trip, he seemed to be attracted by the unfinished look of the thing.
“Begorrah!” the listening fellows heard him mutter. “It’s careless Johnny Lawford’s min is gettin’ to be. Runnin’ off an’ l’avin’ the board half done. ‘Jarvis of Yale.’ A foine show’, I doubt not.”
The moment his back was turned, the next sheet was added to the board, and the announcement completed. The fellows did not stay to hear the officer’s comments on his return trip. But they laughed gleefully as they pictured his astonishment when he saw, the bill of a Concert Hall production before the Arcadian Theatre.
It was nearly five o’clock when the empty pails and brushes were returned to the billposter’s establishment. Bill Brown promptly hung the latter in their place, washed out the pails, and put them away. Then, locking the door, he departed with a hearty good night, one hand clutching two crisp ten-dollar notes, thrust deep in his trousers pocket.
The Yale men accompanied Demarest to the hotel, and helped him carry in what remained of the bills. Then they left him, and made their way to their various quarters in high glee at the success of the night’s work.