CHAPTER VIJOE HAS AN IDEA

CHAPTER VIJOE HAS AN IDEA

Joe’s circle of friends and acquaintances widened. He met many fellows through Jack, and Jack seemed to know most of the better sort of boys in the town. What sometimes puzzled Joe was how it had happened that Jack, with so many friends to choose from, had remained without a special chum and had finally chosen him. Joe got on very friendly terms with Tom Pollock and became a great admirer of that youth. Anyone with such a reputation as a pitcher and all-around ball-player as Tom had would have won Joe’s respect and regard in any case, but Tom was a very likable chap besides. Sam Craig he saw less of, although Sam was nice when they met, and more than once reminded him of the approaching fifteenth of February, on which day baseball practice was to start indoors.

By the beginning of February Joe was quite at home in Amesville and had grown to like the place thoroughly. He and Aunt Sarah were getting onfinely. Aunt Sarah was outwardly still the same stern-visaged, sharp-voiced person, but Joe had discovered that under that rather forbidding exterior lay a very kind heart. Nowadays Aunt Sarah’s principal mission in life appeared to be the finding of new ways to please Joe, without, if possible, allowing him to suspect it!

Joe’s only cause for dissatisfaction was his after-school work. In less than a fortnight indoor practice would begin for the baseball squad, and that meant that either he would have to give up his newspaper route or abandon his hope of making the nine. Consequently, he began to look around harder than ever for some labour that he might perform in the evenings. He consulted Jack, of course, and Jack, while eager to aid, had nothing to offer in the way of practical suggestions. In the end, Joe solved the problem without assistance.

He and Jack happened to be in Pryor’s stationery store one afternoon. Jack was buying some fountain-pen ink and Joe strayed over to the counter that held a not very large assortment of magazines, together with the local newspapers and a few papers from other cities of the State. While he was turning the pages of a magazine a well-dressed, middle-aged man came in and askedfor a ChicagoTribune. He was a travelling salesman, Joe concluded. Whether he was or not, he was contemptuously impatient when the clerk informed him that they didn’t keep Chicago papers.

“Don’t, eh?” he demanded. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t! I ought to have known it. You folks in this town don’t seem to know there’s any other place in the country. Still, you might have heard of Chicago. It’s a little village in Illinois, down near the lower end of Lake Michigan. There’s a tree in front of it. They were talking of building a horse-car line when I left. Got a Cleveland paper, then?”

The sarcasm was quite lost on the youthful clerk. He only gazed in a puzzled fashion at the annoyed customer and shook his head.

“There ain’t any left,” he said indifferently. “We had one this morning.”

“You did? Think of that! One whole paper! Say, you folks take a lot of risks, don’t you? Just suppose you hadn’t sold it!” The irate gentleman left the store abruptly and Joe followed his departing figure with thoughtful eyes. A moment later Jack completed his purchase and they left the shop. It was well after five and, although it was the custom for Joe to walk homewith Jack, this afternoon he pleaded duties and, promising to go around after supper, watched his friend lose himself in the throng. What Joe did next would have occasioned Jack some curiosity had he been there to see. Joe crossed the street—the other side of the thoroughfare was less congested at this time—and went slowly northward for six blocks, his eyes busy all the way. Then he crossed again and returned on the first side. His travels took him over the busiest portion of the street and left him finally four blocks below the Adams Building. But what he was looking for he hadn’t seen, and he shook his head as he turned his steps northward again. In front of the Adams Building a small newsboy was selling the evening paper and Joe stopped.

“Got a Cleveland paper?” he asked.

The boy shook his head. “I don’t carry ’em,” he said.

“Columbus?”

“Ain’t got nothin’ but theRecorder.”

“That all you ever carry?”

“Yep.”

“Do you know where I can buy a Cleveland or a Columbus paper?”

“You might get ’em at Pryor’s, three blocks up.”

Joe retreated to the front of the building and again looked about him. From the entrance beside him quite a stream of folks were emerging to hurry homewards. At least every other one stopped to purchase a paper before going to the car or walking away.

“Hm,” said Joe thoughtfully. “I wonder, now!”

He entered the lobby of the office building and studied it. On one side were the elevators. Behind them a broad marble stairway started upward, turning behind the cages, to the floor above. The lobby was not large, but it was large enough for the purpose Joe had in mind, and presently, when the occupants of one elevator had pushed out through the revolving doors, he stepped off the little space between the first elevator and the front wall of the building. A little less than three yards he made it. The depth was five feet. Joe half closed his eyes and studied it. Then, jostled by another carful of departing occupants, he made his way across to the directory beside the elevators. It was evident that many of the offices, and Joe decided that there must be some two hundred of them, were still unoccupied, although the building was now complete as to its interior. A placard near at hand notified thepublic that offices were to be rented of Joseph Adams, Room 129. At that moment an elevator descended and emptied itself, and the operator, observing Joe at the directory, asked who he was looking for.

“Strobe,” replied Joe, giving the first name that came to his mind.

“Not here. Maybe he’s coming later. If you mean John P. Strobe, his place is across the street there, on the opposite corner. Jeweler, is he?”

Joe said he was and thanked the youth for the direction. Then, looking about him at the unsurfaced walls: “This is a pretty good building,” he observed. The other nodded.

“Best in this town, anyway. It wouldn’t cut much ice in Cincinnati, I guess, but it’s pretty good for Amesville.”

“Are there many in it?”

“Sure, and it’s filling up fast. The old man’s renting two or three offices a day, I hear.”

“I suppose there’ll be a news-stand here, won’t there?”

“News-stand? Search me! I haven’t heard of any.”

“I should think you’d need one. You must have two or three hundred people in here.”

“Easy! There’s two hundred and eight offices, and some has two or three people in ’em. Course, they ain’t all rented yet, but——”

The signal buzzed and the operator slammed the door and shot out of sight just as another car arrived. Joe made his way out with the throng and hurried homeward, his mind very busy all the way. At supper he was so preoccupied and silent that Aunt Sarah tried to get him to describe his symptoms and watched him depart for Jack’s house with misgivings. Up in the big room on the third floor Joe laid the scheme before his chum. Jack was instantly enthusiastic.

“It’s simply great!” he declared. “How’d you ever think of it? But you’d sell other things besides newspapers, wouldn’t you, Joey?”

“Yes. Cigars, candy, magazines—anything I could. You see, Jack, if folks who work in the building know they can get such things right there they’re pretty sure to deal with me. I ought to sell a lot of cigars——”

“And chewing-gum,” laughed Jack.

“And newspapers, too. And I’d make a specialty of carrying the Cincinnati and Cleveland and Columbus papers, and the Chicago, too; and maybe one of the New York papers. Thetrouble is, though, that I’d have to have money to start with, and I haven’t got it.”

“That’s so.” Jack’s face fell. “How much would you need?” he asked after a minute.

“It’s hard to tell. Of course, I don’t know what rent Mr. Adams would charge me, in the first place. In fact, I don’t know yet that he will rent the space at all. I wondered if your father knew him well enough to speak a good word for me, Jack.”

“Of course he does! They’re thick as thieves. I’ll get dad to go and see him with you if you like. Want to go down and ask him now?”

“No; wait a while. I was wondering——” Joe was silent a minute. Then: “Have you any money, Jack?”

“Me? About a dollar. Want it?”

“I wondered whether you had any in the bank or——”

“I have! I’d forgotten it. I’ve got about sixty dollars, I think. But I don’t know whether dad would want me to take it out, Joe. I’d lend it to you in a minute if he’d let me, though.”

“I wasn’t thinking of borrowing it,” said Joe. “I was going to suggest that we go in together. I think we could start with about fifty dollars. We needn’t put in much of a stock at first, youknow. There’d be a month’s rent, say twenty dollars, and we’d have to buy a few boxes of cigars and we’d have to have a counter built. Maybe we’d better say sixty dollars, to be on the safe side. I haven’t figured on it yet, but I believe we could do it for sixty. I thought that if you’d put in half and take half the profits until you were square——”

“I get you, Joey! Half would be only thirty dollars, wouldn’t it? I don’t believe dad would mind my taking out that much. But could you get the other thirty, Joey?”

“I think so. I—I’ve got an idea that may work. Anyway——”

“Why couldn’t I put in the whole sixty if dad will let me? In that way you wouldn’t have——”

“It wouldn’t be wise,” said Joe. “I’m pretty sure I can make the thing go and pay a good profit, Jack, but if I happened to be wrong you’d stand to lose your money. And sixty dollars would be too much to drop. Besides, your father wouldn’t let you put in that much when I wasn’t putting in any.”

“Maybe not. Let’s go down and talk to him about it.”

“No, let’s go over it first. There may be something I’ve missed. Now, say Mr. Adams lets ushave the space for twenty a month; that’s enough, although he may not think so; then we’ve got to have a counter built and that will cost, say, ten dollars. It’ll have to be made to look pretty neat, you know; maybe it had better be imitation mahogany. Then we’d arrange with the news company for a small list of magazines. We’d have to pay cash for those at first, but they don’t cost much. Same way with the papers. There’s good money in theGazetteand theRecorderat two cents if you sell enough of them. Then we’d want to put in some confectionery, like gum and chocolate and package things. We can buy that in Cincinnati and get as little as we want to start on. At the end of the month we ought to have enough for the next month’s rent and enough to put in new stock. My idea would be to make the stock bigger all the time, as we could afford it. There wouldn’t be any other expenses, would there? Can you think of any?”

Jack couldn’t. “It looks perfectly safe to me,” he said, “because the rent is the only thing we’d have to worry about, isn’t it? I mean, we needn’t have more cigars and other things at a time than we could sell right away.”

“That’s the idea. We’ve got to begin in a small way and expand. We won’t lay out a centmore than we have to. Then, if it shouldn’t prove a go we wouldn’t be stung very much. The papers, you know, are returnable, so we wouldn’t get stuck on those. Some of the magazines are, too, I think.”

“Hold on!” exclaimed Jack suddenly. “Who’s going to tend shop? We’ll be in school all day up to three o’clock. Bet you hadn’t thought of that!”

“You must think I’m a good deal of an idiot,” laughed Joe. “I’ll tell you my scheme. I thought I could go down there in the morning and get things fixed. We’d have a box on the corner with a slot in it and when anyone bought anything they could drop the money in the box. Then, after school——”

“Suppose they didn’t!” interrupted his chum. “Seems to me that’s pretty risky!”

“I don’t believe so. You put folks on their honour like that and they’ll appreciate it and act square. I’ll bet we won’t lose half a dollar a month, Jack.”

“Well, you’ve got a lot of faith, Joey. Still, you may be right at that. Come to think of it, I guess you are. All right. And then after school we could go down there and tend shop, eh?”

“When we didn’t have to practise.”

“That’s so. I’d forgotten practice. Well, on Saturdays we could be there all day, eh? That would be a lot of fun. I’ve always wanted to be a merchant and sell things. ‘Cigars? Yes, sir. I think you’ll like these. We make them ourselves and know just what goes into them, sir. Two for five, please. Thank you, sir. Come again if you live!’ That’s the stuff, isn’t it?”

“Fine!” laughed Joe. “Now let’s go down and hear what your father says.”

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