That was a glorious honeymoon! They traveled from one gay summer resort to another, and when Fannie expressed the first hint of fatigue, Wallingford, who had grown to worship her, promptly provided her with complete and unique rest, by taking her to some one of the smaller inland cities of the type which he loved, installing her in a comfortable hotel, and living, for a week or so, a quiet, lazy existence consisting largely of mere eating and sleeping, and just enough exercise to keep in good health. In all this time there was not one jarring thought, one troubled moment, nor one hint of a shadow. J. Rufus took his wife into all sorts of unique experiences, full of life and color and novelty, having a huge pride in her constant wonder and surprise.
It happened, while upon one of these resting sojourns,that they one night paused on the edge of a crowd which stood gaping at a patent medicine faker. Suddenly recognizing an old acquaintance in the picturesque orator with the sombrero and the shoulder-length gray hair, Wallingford drew closer.
Standing behind the “doctor,” upon the seat of his carriage where the yellow light of a gasolene torch flared full upon it, was a gaudy, life-size anatomical chart, and with this as bait for his moths he was extolling the virtues of Quagg’s Peerless Sciatacata.
“Here, my friends,” he declared, unfolding one of the many hinged flaps of the gory chart, “youbee-hold the intimate relation of the stomach with all theinn-ternal organs, and above all with the blood, which, pumped by the heart through theseabb-sorbing membranes, takes up that priceless tonic, Doctor Quagg’s Peerless Sciatacata. This, actingdii-rectly upon the red corpuscles of the vital fluid,stimm-ulates the circulation and carries its germ-destroying properties to every atom of the human frame, casting offimm-purities,clean-sing the syst-em, bringingee-lasticity to the footsteps, hope to the heart, the ruddy glow of bounding health to pale cheeks, and the sparkle of new life to tired and jaded eyes!”
Wallingford turned to his wife with a chuckle,
“Just stand here a minute, Fannie,” said he. “I must wade in and speak to the old scout. We stopped a week at the same hotel over in New Jersey and got as chummy as two cell-mates.”
Fannie smiled doubtfully in response, and watched her husband with a slight trace of concern as he forced his way through the crowd and up to the wheel of the carriage.
“How are you, Doctor?” said he, holding up his plump palm. “Where are you stopping?”
The doctor’s wink at J. Rufus was scarcely perceptible to that large young gentleman himself, much less to the bystanders, as with professional gravity he reached down for a hearty handshake.
“Benson House. Come around and see me to-morrow morning.” Then, with added gravity and in a louder voice: “I scarcely knew you, friend, you are so changed. How many bottles of the Sciatacata was it you took?”
“Four,” replied J. Rufus clearly, with not even a twinkle in his eye.
“Only four bottles,” declaimed Doctor Quagg. “My friends, this is one of my most marvelous cures. When I met this gentleman in Columbus, Ohio, he was a living skeleton, having suffered foryears from sciatic rheumatism. He bought from me one night at my carriage, just as he is standing now, six bottles of the Peerless Sciatacata. He took but four bottles, and look at him to-day!”
With one accord they looked. There was some slight tittering among them at first, but the dignity and gravity with which the towering J. Rufus, hale and hearty and in the pink of condition, withstood that inspection, checked all inclination to levity. Moreover, he was entirely too prosperous-looking to be a “capper.”
“I owe you my life, Doctor,” said Wallingford gratefully. “I never travel without those other two bottles of the Sciatacata,” and with the air of a debt of honor paid, he pressed back through the crowd to the sidewalk.
His wife was laughing, yet confused.
“I don’t see how you can make yourself so conspicuous,” she protested in a low voice.
“Why not?” he laughed. “We public characters must boost one another.”
“And the price,” they heard the doctor declaiming, “is only one dollarperbottle, or six for five dollars, guar-an-teed not only to drive sciatic rheumatism from the sys-tem, but to cure the mostob-stin-ate cases of ague, Bright’s disease, cat-a-lepsy, coughs, colds, cholera,dys-pepsia, ery-sip-e-las, feverandchills,gas-tritis”—
“And so on down to X Y Z, etc.,” commented Wallingford as they walked away.
His wife looked up at him curiously.
“Jim, did you honestly take four bottles of that medicine?” she wanted to know.
“Take it?” he repeated in amazement. “Certainly not! It isn’t meant for wise people to take. It wouldn’t do them any good.”
“It wouldn’t do anybody any good,” she decided with a trace of contempt.
“Guess again,” he advised her. “That dope has cured a million people that had nothing the matter with ’em.”
At the Hotel Deriche in the adjoining block they turned into the huge, garishly decorated dining-room for their after-theater supper. They had been in the town only two days, but the head waiter already knew to come eagerly to meet them, to show them to the best table in the room, and to assign them the best waiter; also the head waiter himself remained to take the order, to suggest a delicate, new dish and to name over, at Wallingford’ssolicitation, the choice wines in the cellar that were not upon the wine-list.
This little formality over, Wallingford looked about him complacently. A pale gentleman with a jet-black beard bowed to him from across the room.
“Doctor Lazzier,” observed Wallingford to his wife. “Most agreeable chap and has plenty of money.”
He bent aside a little to see past his wife’s hat, and exchanged a suave salutation with a bald-headed young man who was with two ladies and who wore a dove-gray silk bow with his evening clothes.
“Young Corbin,” explained Wallingford, “of the Corbin and Paley department store. He had about two dollars a week spending money till his father died, and now he and young Paley are turning social flip-flaps at the rate of twenty a minute. He belongs to the Mark family and he’s great pals with me. Looks good for him, don’t it?”
“Jim,” she said in earnest reproval, “you mustn’t talk that way.”
“Of course I’m only joking,” he returned. “You know I promised you I’d stick to the straight andnarrow. I’ll keep my word. Nothing but straight business for me hereafter.”
He, too, was quite serious about it, and yet he smiled as he thought of young Corbin. Another man, of a party just being shown to a table, nodded to him, and Mrs. Wallingford looked up at her husband with admiration.
“Honestly, how do you do it?” she inquired. “We have only been here a little over forty-eight hours, and yet you have already picked up a host of nice friends.”
“I patronize only the best saloons,” he replied with a grin; then, more seriously: “This is a mighty rich little city, Fannie. I could organize a stock company here, within a week, for anything from a burglar’s trust to a church consolidation.”
“It’s a pretty place,” she admitted. “I like it very much from what I have seen of it.”
He chuckled.
“Looks like a spending town,” he returned; “and where they spend a wad they’re crazy to make one. Give me one of these inland society towns for the loose, long green. New York’s no place to start an honest business,” and again he chuckled. “By the way, Fannie,” he added after a pause, “whatdo you think of my going into the patent medicine line?”
“How do you mean?” she inquired, frowning.
“Oh, on a big scale,” he replied. “Advertise it big, manufacture it big.”
She studied it over in musing silence.
“I don’t mind what you do so long as it is honest,” she finally said.
“Good. I’ll hunt up Quagg to-morrow and spring it on him.”
“You don’t mean that dreadful quack medicine he’s selling on the street, do you?” she protested.
“Why not? I don’t know that it’s worthless, and I do know that Quagg has sold it on street corners for twenty years from coast to coast. He goes back to the same towns over and over, and people buy who always bought before. Looks like a good thing to me. Quagg was a regular doctor when he was a kid; had a real diploma and all that, but no practice and no patience. Joke. Giggle.”
The oysters came on now, and they talked of other things, but while they were upon the meat Doctor Lazzier, having finished, came across to shake hands with his friend of a day, and was graciously charmed to meet Mrs. Wallingford.
“Sit down,” invited J. Rufus. “Won’t you try a glass of this? It’s very fair,” and he raised a practised eyebrow to the waiter.
The doctor delicately pushed down the edge of the ice-wet napkin until he could see the label, and he gave an involuntary smile of satisfaction as he recognized the vintage. The head waiter had timed the exact second to take that bottle out of the ice-pail, had wrapped the wet napkin about it and almost reverently filled glasses. Occasionally he came over and felt up inside the hollow on the bottom of the bottle.
“Delighted,” confessed the doctor, and sat down quite comfortably.
“You may smoke if you like, Doctor,” offered Mrs. Wallingford, smiling. “I don’t seem to feel that a man is comfortable unless he is smoking.”
“To tell the truth, he isn’t,” agreed the doctor with a laugh, and accepting a choice cigar from Wallingford he lit it.
The waiter came with an extra glass and filled for all three of them.
“By the way, Doctor,” said Wallingford, watching the pouring of the wine with a host’s anxiety, “I think of going into the patent medicine businesson a large scale, and I believe I shall have to have you on the board of directors.”
“Couldn’t think of it!” objected the doctor hastily. “You know, professional ethics—” and he shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s so,” admitted Wallingford. “We can’t have you on the board, but we can have you for a silent stock-holder.”
“Open to the same objection,” declared the doctor, with another dubious shrug, as he took up his glass.
He tasted the wine; he took another sip, then another—slow, careful sips, so that no drop of it should hasten by his palate unappreciated. Wallingford did not disturb him in that operation. He had a large appreciation himself of the good things of this world, and the proper way to do them homage.
The doctor took a larger sip, and allowed the delicate liquid to flow gently over his tongue. Wallingford was really a splendid fellow!
“What sort of patent medicine are you going to manufacture?” asked the doctor by way of courtesy, but still “listening” to the taste of the wine.
Wallingford laughed.
“I haven’t just decided as yet,” he announced.“The medicine is only an incident. What we’re going to invest in is advertising.”
“I see,” replied the doctor, laughing in turn.
“Advertising is a great speculation,” went on Wallingford, with a reminiscent smile. “Take Hawkins’ Bitters, for instance; nine per cent. cheap whisky flavored with coffee and licorice, and the balance pure water. Hawkins had closed a fifty-thousand-dollar advertising contract before he was quite sure whether he was going to sell patent medicine or shoe polish. The first thing he decided on was the name, and he had to do that in a hurry to get his advertising placed. Hawkins’ Bitters was familiar to ten million people before a bottle of it had been made. It was only last summer that Hawkins sold out his business for a cool two million and went to Europe.”
“His decoction is terrible stuff,” commented the doctor, more in sorrow than in anger; “but it certainly has a remarkable sale.”
“I should say it has!” agreed Wallingford. “The drug-stores sell it to temperance people by the case, and in the dry states you’ll find every back yard littered with empty Hawkins’ Bitters bottles.”
A half-dozen entertaining stories of the kindWallingford told his guest, and by the time he was through Doctor Lazzier began himself to have large visions of enormous profits to be made in the patent medicine business. Somehow, the very waistcoat of young J. Rufus seemed, in its breadth and gorgeousness, a guarantee of enormous profits, no matter what business he discussed. But the doctor’s very last remark was upon the sacredness of medical ethics! When he was gone there was a conspicuous silence between Wallingford and his wife for a few minutes, and then she asked:
“Jim, are you actually going to start a patent medicine company?”
“Certainly I am,” he replied.
“And will Doctor Lazzier take stock in it?”
“He certainly will,” he assured her. “I figure him for from ten to twenty-five thousand.”
At the Benson House J. Rufus found Doctor Quagg with a leg propped up on a chair, and himself in a state of profound profanity.
“What’s the matter, Doc?” asked Wallingford.
“Sciatic rheumatism!” howled the martyr. “It’s gettin’ worse every year. Every time I go on the street for a night I know I’m goin’ to suffer. That’s why I keep it up so late and spiel myself hoarse in the neck. I jumped into town just yesterday and got a reader from these city hall pirates. They charged me twenty-five iron men for my license for the week. I go out and make one pitch, and that’s all I get for my twenty-five.”
“Sciatic rheumatism’s a tough dose,” commiserated Wallingford. “Why don’t you take five or six bottles of the Peerless Sciatacata?”
The answer to this was a storm of fervid expletives which needed no diagram. Wallingford,chuckling, sat down and gloated over the doctor’s misery, lighting a big, fat cigar to gloat at better ease. He offered a cigar to Quagg.
“I daresn’t smoke,” swore that invalid.
“And I suppose you daresn’t drink, either,” observed Wallingford. “Well, that doesn’t stop me, you know.”
Wearily the doctor indicated a push-button.
“You’ll have to ring for a boy yourself,” said he.
When the boy came Wallingford ordered a highball.
“And what’s yours, sir?” asked the boy, turning to the doctor.
“Lithia, you bullet-headed nigger!” roared the doctor with a twinge of pain in his leg. “That’s twice to-day I’ve had to tell you I can’t drink anything but lithia. Get out!”
The boy “got,” grinning.
“Seriously, though, old man,” said Wallingford, judging that the doctor had been aggravated long enough, “your condition must be very bad for business, and I’ve come to make you a proposition to go into the manufacture of the Peerless on a large scale.”
The doctor sat in silence for a moment, shaking his head despondently.
“You can’t get spielers,” he declared. “I’ve tried it. Once I made up a lot of the Sciatacata and sent out three men; picked the best I could find that had made good with street-corner pitches in other lines, and their sales weren’t half what mine would be; moreover, they got drunk on the job, didn’t pay for their goods, and were a nuisance any way you took ’em.”
Wallingford laughed.
“I didn’t mean that we should manufacture the priceless remedy for street fakers to handle,” he explained. “I propose to start a big factory to supply drug-stores through the jobbing trade, to spend a hundred thousand dollars in advertising right off the bat, give you stock in the company for the use of your formula, and a big salary to superintend the manufacture. That will do away with your exposure to the night air, stop the increase of your sciatica, and make you more money. Why, Doc, just to begin with we’ll give you ten thousand dollars’ worth of stock.”
It took Doctor Quagg some time to recover from the shock of that much money.
“I’ve heard of such things,” said he gratefully, “but I never supposed it could happen to me.”
“You don’t need to put up a cent,” went on Wallingford. “And I don’t need to put up a cent. We’ll use other people’s money.”
“Where are you going to get your share?” asked the doctor suspiciously. “Are you going to have a salary, too?”
“No,” said Wallingford. “We’ll pay you thirty-five dollars to start with as superintendent of the manufacturing department, but I won’t ask for a salary; I’ll take a royalty of one cent a bottle as manager of the company. I’ll take five thousand dollars’ worth of stock for my services in promotion, and then for selling the stock I’ll take twenty-five per cent. of the par value for all I place, but will take it out in stock at the market rate. We’ll organize for half a million and begin selling stock at fifty cents on the dollar, and I’ll guarantee to raise for us one hundred and twenty-five thousand net cash—twenty-five thousand for manufacturing and one hundred thousand for advertising.”
The doctor drew a long breath.
“If you can do that you’re a wonder,” he declared; “but it don’t seem to me you’re takingenough for yourself. You’re giving me ten thousand dollars and you’re only taking five; you’re giving me thirty-five dollars a week and you’re only taking a cent a bottle. It seems to me the job of organizing and building up such a company is worth as much as the Sciatacata.”
“Don’t you worry about me,” protested J. Rufus modestly. “I’ll get along all right. I’m satisfied. We’ll organize the company to-day.”
“You can’t get all that money together in a day!” exclaimed the doctor in amazement.
“Oh, no; I don’t expect to try it. I’ll put up all the money necessary. We want five directors, and we have three of them now, you and my wife and I. Do you know anybody around the hotel that would serve?”
The doctor snorted contemptuously.
“Nobody that’s got any money or responsibility,” he asserted.
“They don’t need to have any money, and we don’t want them to have any responsibility,” protested Wallingford. “Anybody of voting age will do for us just now.”
“Well,” said the doctor reflectively, “the night clerk’s a pretty good fellow, and the head dining-roomgirl here has always been mighty nice to me. She’s some relation to the proprietor and she’s been here for five years.”
“Good,” said Wallingford. “I’ll telephone out for a lawyer.”
There was no telephone in the room, but down-stairs Wallingford found a pay ’phone and selected a lawyer at random from the telephone directory. Within two hours Wallingford and his wife, Doctor Quagg, Albert Blesser and Carrie Schwam had gravely applied for a charter of incorporation under the laws of the state, for The Doctor Quagg Peerless Sciatacata Company, with a capital stock of one thousand dollars, fully paid in. As he signed his name the doctor laughed like a school-boy.
“Now,” said he, “I’m going to get my hair cut.”
Wallingford stopped him in positive fright.
“Don’t you dare do it!” he protested.
“Is that hair necessary to the business?” asked the doctor, crestfallen.
“Absolutely,” declared Wallingford. “Why, man, that back curtain of yours is ten per cent. dividends.”
“Then I’ll wear it,” agreed the doctor resignedly; “but I hate to. You know I’ve honed for yearsto quit this batting around the country, and just ached to wear short hair and a derby hat like a white man.”
Wallingford looked at the weather-bronzed face and shook his head.
“What a pity that would be!” he declared. “However, Doc, your wanderings cease from this minute, and your salary begins from to-day.”
“Fine,” breathed the doctor. “I say, Wallingford, then suppose you order me about three gross of bottles and some fresh labels. I’ll get the drugs myself and start in making a supply of the Sciatacata.”
“You just nurse your leg,” advised Wallingford. “Why, man, when we start manufacturing the Peerless it will be in vats holding a hundred gallons, and will be bottled by machinery that will fill, cork and label a hundred bottles a minute. You’re to superintend mixing; that’s your job.”
It took many days, days of irksome loafing for the doctor, before they had their final incorporation papers. Immediately they elected themselves as directors, made Quagg president, Wallingford secretary and Albert Blesser treasurer, and voted for an increase of capitalization to one-half milliondollars. They gave Quagg his hundred shares and Wallingford his fifty; they voted Quagg his salary and Wallingford his royalty; also they voted Wallingford an honorarium of twenty-five per cent., payable in stock, for disposing of such of the treasury shares as they needed issued, and immediately Wallingford, who had spent the interim in cultivating acquaintances, began to secure investors.
He sold more than mere stock, however. He sold Doctor Quagg’s hair and sombrero; he sold glowing word pictures of immense profits, and he sold the success of all other patent medicine companies; he sold his own imposing height and broad chest, his own jovial smile and twinkling eye, his own prosperous grooming and good feeding—and those who bought felt themselves blessed.
First of all, he sold fifty thousand dollars’ worth for twenty-five thousand to young Corbin, whereupon Mr. Blesser, as per instructions, resigned from the treasurership and directorate in favor of Mr. Corbin. Wallingford got fifteen thousand dollars from Doctor Lazzier, and ten from young Paley, and with fifty thousand dollars in the treasury sent for an advertising man and gave out a hundred-thousand-dollar contract.
“For the first half of this campaign,” he explained to the advertising man, “I want this one ad spread everywhere: ‘Laugh at That Woozy Feeling.’ This is to cover the top half of the space in good, plain, bold letters. In place of leaving the bottom blank for kids to scribble reasons of their own why you should laugh at that woozy feeling, we’ll put gray shadow-figures there—grandpa and grandma and pa and ma and Albert and Henry and Susan and Grace and little Willie, all laughing fit to kill. And say, have it a real laugh. Have it the sort of a laugh that’ll make anybody that looks at it want to be happy. Of course, later, I want you to cover up the bottom half of that advertisement with: ‘Use Doctor Quagg’s Peerless Sciatacata,’ or something like that, but I’ll furnish you the copy for that when the time comes. It will be printed right over the laughing faces.”
“It should make a very good ad,” commented the agent with enthusiasm, writing out the instructions Wallingford gave him, and willing to approve of anything for that size contract.
Wallingford went home to his wife, filled with a virtuous glow.
“You know, there’s something I like about thisstraight business, Fannie,” said he. “It gives a fellow a sort of clean feeling. I’m going to build up a million-dollar business and make everybody concerned in it rich, including myself. Already I’ve placed one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stock, have fifty thousand dollars cash in the treasury, and fifty-five thousand dollars’ worth of stock for myself.”
She looked puzzled.
“I thought you were to get only twenty-five per cent. for selling the stock.”
He chuckled; shoulders, chest and throat, eyes and lips and chin, he chuckled.
“Twenty-five per cent. of the par value,” said he, “payable in stock at the market price.”
“I don’t see the difference,” she protested. “I’m sure I thought it was to be straight twenty-five per cent., and I’m sure all the members of the company thought so.”
He patiently explained it to her.
“Don’t you see, if I sell one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stock, I get the same as twenty-five thousand dollars for it, and with that buy fifty thousand dollars’ worth of stock? Of course I get it at the same price as others—fifty per cent.”
“Did they understand you’d get fifty thousand instead of twenty-five thousand?” she asked.
He chuckled again.
“If they didn’t they will,” he admitted.
She pondered over that thoughtfully for a while.
“Is that straight business?” she inquired.
“Of course it’s straight business or I wouldn’t be doing it. It is perfectly legitimate. You just don’t understand.”
“No,” she confessed, “I guess I don’t; only I thought it was just twenty-five per cent.”
“It is twenty-five per cent.,” he insisted, and then he gave it up. “You’d better quit thinking,” he advised. “It’ll put wrinkles in your brow, and I’m the one that has the wrinkles scheduled. I’ve just contracted for one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of advertising, and I’ve got to go out to sell enough stock to bring in the cash. Also, I’ve rented a factory, and to-morrow I’m going to let out contracts for bottling machinery, vats and fixtures. I’ve already ordered the office furniture. You ought to see it. It’s swell. I’m having some lithographed stationery made, too, embossed in four colors, with a picture of Doctor Quagg in the corner.”
“How much stock has the doctor?” she asked.
“Ten thousand.”
“Is that all he’s going to have?” she wanted to know.
“Why, certainly, that’s all he’s going to have. I made the bargain with him and he’s satisfied.”
“Ten thousand dollars’ worth out of a half-million-dollar corporation? Why, Jim, for his medicine, upon which the whole business is built, he only gets—how much is that of all of it?”
“One fiftieth, or two per cent.,” he told her.
“Two per cent.!” she gasped. “Is that straight business, Jim?”
“Of course it’s straight business,” he assured her. “Of course,” and he smiled, “Doc didn’t stop to figure that he only gets two per cent. of the profits of the concern. He figures that he’s to draw dividends on the large hunk of ten thousand dollars’ worth of stock, and he’s satisfied. Why aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” she replied slowly, still with the vague feeling that something was wrong. “Really, Jim, it don’t seem to me that straight business is any more fair than crooked business.”
Wallingford was hugely disappointed.
“And that’s all the appreciation I get for confiningmyself to the straight and narrow!” he exclaimed.
“Oh, I didn’t mean that, Jim,” she said, with instant contrition. “You don’t know how glad I am that now, since we’re married, you have settled down to honorable things; and you’ll make a fortune, I know you will.”
“You bet I will,” he agreed. “In the meantime I have to go out and dig up seventy-five thousand dollars more of other people’s money to put into this concern;which will give me another seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth of stock! Straight business pays, Fannie!”
Within a short time Wallingford had the satisfaction of seeing bill-boards covered with his big sign ordering the public to “Laugh at That Woozy Feeling,” but not yet telling them how to do it, and he heard people idly wondering what the answer to that advertisement was going to be. Some of them resented having puzzles of the sort thrust in front of their eyes, others welcomed it as a cheerful diversion. Wallingford smiled at both sorts. He knew they would remember, and firmly link together the mystery and the solution. Cards bearing the same mandate stared down at every street-car rider, and newspaper readers found it impossible to evade the same command. All this advertising, for the appearance of which Wallingford had waited, helped him to sell the stock to pay for itself, and, in the meantime, he was busyputting into his new factory a bottling plant, second in its facility if not its capacity, to none in the country. He installed magnificent offices and for the doctor prepared an impressive private apartment, this latter being a cross between an alchemist’s laboratory and a fortune-teller’s orientalsalon; but alas and alack! the first day the doctor walked into his new office he had his hair close-cropped and wore a derby, with such monstrous effect that even Wallingford, inured as he was to most surprises, recoiled in horror!
From that moment the doctor became a hard one to manage. His first protest was against the Benson House, the old-fashioned, moderate-rate hotel which he had always patronized and had always recommended wherever he went. Thereafter he changed boarding-houses and family hotels about every two weeks; but he never had his hair cut after the once. The big mixing vats that Wallingford installed he grew to hate. He was used to mixing his Sciatacata in a hotel water-pitcher and filling it into bottles with a tin funnel; and to mix up a hundred gallons at a time of that precious compound seemed a cold, commercial proposition which was so much a sacrilege that he went out and“painted the town,” winding up in a fight with a cigar-store Indian. He left such a train of fireworks in his wake that Wallingford heard of it for weeks afterward.
To J. Rufus the affair was a good joke, but to the other gentlemen of the company, Corbin, Paley and Doctor Lazzier and the others who had social reputations to maintain as well as business interests to guard, the affair was tragic, not merely because one of their number had become intoxicated, but that it should be this particular one, and that he should make himself so conspicuous! The doctor repeated his escapade within a week. This time he took a notion to “circulate” in a cab, and as he got more mellow, insisted upon sitting up with the driver, where he whooped sonorously every time they turned a corner. This time he finished in the hands of the police, and Wallingford was called upon at three o’clock in the morning to bail him out. Friends of Corbin and Paley and the other exclusives whom Wallingford had selected as his stock-holders began to drop in on them with pleasant little remarks about their business associate. The doctor had been bragging widely about his connection with them!
His crowning effort came when he continued his celebration of one night through the next day, and drove around to make a few party calls. He appeared like a specter of disgrace in Corbin’s private office with:
“Hello, old pal, come out and have a drink!” and gave Corbin a hearty slap on the back.
Corbin gave a helpless glance across at the three prim young ladies on the other side of his open screen. Back of him a solemn-visaged old bookkeeper, who was both a deacon and Sunday-school superintendent, looked on in shocked amazement.
“Couldn’t begin to think of it, Doctor,” protested Corbin nervously, pulling at his lavender cravat, while the perspiration broke out upon his bald spot. “I must attend to business, you know.”
“Never mind the business!” insisted the doctor. “Wait till our Sciatacata factory is shipping in car-loads, partner, and you can afford to give this junk-shop away.”
Paley, happening in to speak to Corbin, created a diversion welcome to Corbin but unwelcome to himself, for the doctor immediately pounced upon Paley and insisted upon taking him out to get a drink, and the only way that narrow-framed youngman could get rid of him was to go along. He rode around in the cab with him for a while, and tried to dissuade him from calling upon Doctor Lazzier and the other stock-holders, but Quagg was obdurate. To wind up the evening’s performance he appeared on a prominent street corner about nine o’clock, in a carriage with the gasolene torch and the life-size anatomical chart, and began selling the Peerless Sciatacata, calling upon the names of Wallingford, Lazzier, Corbin and Paley—his “partners”—as guarantees of his sincerity and standing, and as sureties of the excellence of the priceless compound.
Wallingford heard about him quickly, for the picturesque Quagg had become a public joy and all the down-town crowd knew well about him. Wallingford went down to the corner with the intention of putting a stop to the exhibition, but, as he looked at the doctor, whose hair now dropped beneath his sombrero to nearly its old-time length, a new thought struck him and he went quietly away. The next day Corbin withdrew from the treasurership and Paley from the directorate, and every one of the directors who had taken the places of the original incorporators did likewise. Intimate relationshipwith the doctor was productive of too much publicity for peaceful enjoyment.
It was just at this time that the agent of the advertising concern began to bother Wallingford for “copy” on the last half of his contract. Wallingford, to placate him, finished paying for the contract and took the cash discount, but held the agent off two or three days in the matter of the “copy.” He was not quite satisfied about the wording of the advertisement. He sat up late one night devising the most concise and striking form in which to present the merits of Doctor Quagg’s Peerless Sciatacata, and in the morning he went down to the office prepared to mail the result of his labor. He found upon his desk this note from the restless Doctor Quagg:
Spring’s here. I never stayed in one place so long in my life. You can have my salary and you can have my ten thousand dollars’ worth of stock. I don’t want it. My hair’s out good and long again and I’ve gone back on the road to sell the Sciatacata.Yours truly,Quagg.
Spring’s here. I never stayed in one place so long in my life. You can have my salary and you can have my ten thousand dollars’ worth of stock. I don’t want it. My hair’s out good and long again and I’ve gone back on the road to sell the Sciatacata.
Yours truly,
Quagg.
It was the last straw, and the stock-holders’ meeting which Wallingford hastily called wore thegreenish pallor peculiar to landlubbers in their first sea storm.
“We don’t need Quagg,” Wallingford protested. “Our contract with him covers any rights he has in the title of the medicine, and the mere fact that he is not with us does not need to prevent our going ahead.”
“Have you the formula for his preparation?” asked Doctor Lazzier quietly.
“Oh, no,” replied Wallingford carelessly. “I don’t see that that need stop us.”
“Why not?” protested young Corbin. “Our whole business is built upon that formula.”
Wallingford smiled.
“We simply must stick to the Sciatacata,” resumed Wallingford. “We have all this fine stationery printed, with the full name of the Peerless dope; we have elaborate booklets and circulars about it, and the first delivery of ten thousand labels is here. There will be no trouble in getting up another Peerless Sciatacata which will at least be harmless, but I think that we can do even better than that. I think that Doctor Lazzier can furnish us a good, handy, cheap prescription for sciatic rheumatism.”
“Certainly not,” protested Doctor Lazzier withvast professional indignation; but he nevertheless winked at Wallingford.
“Never mind,” said Wallingford to Corbin; “I’ll get the formula all right.”
“For my part I’m willing to sell my stock at ten per cent.,” said Corbin with infinite disgust. He was thinking at that very moment of a gaudy “function” he was to attend that night, one marking quite an advance in his social climb, and he almost dreaded to go. “I don’t like to lose money, but, in this case, I’d really rather. This is a dreadful experience.”
The rest of them agreed with young Corbin in attitude, if not in words, and it was with considerable sadness that they dispersed, after having decided, somewhat reluctantly, that Wallingford should go ahead with the Sciatacata. Pursuing this plan Wallingford sent away the copy for the bottom half of the great woozy-feeling advertisement.
The following afternoon, however, came the death-blow, in the shape of a most hilarious article in the local papers. In a neighboring city Doctor Quagg had gone out to sell the Peerless Sciatacata, had been caught in a drizzle of spring rain and had been sent, raving angry, to the hospital with a mostsevere case of sciatic rheumatism. The joke of it was too good. The local papers, as a mere kindly matter of news information, published a list of the stock-holders of the Doctor Quagg Peerless Sciatacata Company.
Wallingford, with that item before him, sat and chuckled till the tears quivered on his eyelashes; but, even in the midst of his appreciation of the fun in the case, he wired to the agent of the advertising company to cancel his previous letter of instructions, and to secure him at least a week’s grace before forfeiture of the contract; then he proceeded quietly to telephone the stock-holders. He found great difficulty in getting the use of his line, however, for the stock-holders were already calling him up, frantically, tearfully, broken-heartedly. They were all ruined through their connection with the Sciatacata!
“I’ll tell you, Fannie,” said he at dinner, after pondering over a new thought which would keep obtruding itself into his mind, “this thing of training a straight business down to weight is no merry quip. It’s more trouble and risk than my favorite game of promoting for revenue only.”
“You keep right on at it, Jim,” she insisted.“You’ll find there is ever so much more satisfaction in it in the end.”
He was moody all through dinner. They had tickets for the theater that night and they went, but here, too, Wallingford was distrait, and he could not have remembered one incident of the play until during the last act, when his brow suddenly cleared. When they went back to the hotel he led his wife into the dining-room, and, excusing himself for a moment, went to the telegraph desk and sent a telegram to Horace G. Daw, of Boston.
Two days later Wallingford called a conclave of the stock-holders to meet one Hamilton G. Dorcas, of Boston, who had come to consider taking over the property of the Doctor Quagg Peerless Sciatacata Company. Quite hopefully Doctor Lazzier, young Corbin, young Paley and the others attended that meeting for the disposal of the concern which had already eaten up one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in good cash; but when they began talking with Mr. Dorcas they were not quite so extravagantly hopeful. Mr. H. G. Dorcas was a tall, thin, black-haired, black-eyed and black-mustached young man in ministerial clothing, who looked astonishingly like Horace G. Daw, if any one of them had previously known that young gentleman.
“I have been through your factory,” said Mr. Dorcasin a businesslike manner, “and all I find here of any value to me is your second-hand bottling machinery and vats and your second-hand office furniture. For those I am prepared to pay you a reasonable second-hand price; say, about fifteen thousand dollars.”
It was young Corbin who put up the loudest protest.
“Why, man, such an offer is preposterous! Besides the twenty-five thousand invested in the machinery, fixtures and other expenses, we have spent exactly a hundred thousand dollars in advertising.”
Mr. Dorcas shrugged his shoulders.
“What good will that do me?” he retorted. “It’s wasted.”
Deep silence followed. The stock-holders knew that a hundred thousand had actually been paid out for advertising which, of course, was now of no value whatever. Only Wallingford knew that, the contract not being completed, part of it could be rebated, though only a small part, but he was not saying anything. Temptation had caught up with Wallingford, had wrestled with him and overthrown him!
“Yes,” admitted young Paley with a long, long sigh, “all that advertising money is wasted.”
Young Corbin was figuring.
“Mr. Dorcas,” said he, “if you will increase your offer by two thousand dollars I am inclined to accept it and get out of this muddle once and for all.”
Mr. Dorcas himself figured very carefully.
“It is stretching a point with you,” said he, “but I’ll give it to you. Understand, though, that is the last cent.”
“I am not in favor of it,” declared Wallingford, thereby putting himself upon the proper side for future reference. “It leaves us with a net cash loss of one hundred and eight thousand dollars. I’m in favor of rigging up some other patent medicine and going right ahead with the business. A slight assessment on our stock, or an agreement to purchasepro rata, among ourselves, a small amount of the treasury stock in order to raise about twenty-five thousand dollars more, will put us in shape to go ahead.”
If he intended to encourage them he had gone the wrong way about it. They recoiled as one man from that thought. Young Corbin jumped to his feet.
“You may count me out,” he declared.
“Doctor Lazzier,” pleaded Wallingford, “you are in favor of this course?”
“By no means,” said he. “A lot of my friends are ‘on,’ and some of my patients are laughing at me. I can’t afford it. Take this man’s offer. Wait just a minute.” He rose to his feet. “I’ll make that a formal motion,” and he did so.
With no dissenting voice, except Wallingford’s, that motion was carried through, and Wallingford spread it upon the minute-books at once. Also a committee was appointed formally to close the business with Mr. Dorcas, and to transfer to that gentleman, at once, all the properties, rights and good-will of the company.
“Gentlemen, I am very sorry,” said Wallingford, much crestfallen in appearance. “I still protest against giving up, but I blame myself for coaxing you into this unfortunate affair.”
“Don’t mention it,” protested Doctor Lazzier, shaking hands. “You meant to do us a favor.”
They all agreed with the doctor, and young Corbin felt especially sorry for Wallingford’s contrition.
Immediately after the dispersal of the meeting Mr. Wallingford and “Mr. Dorcas” shook hands ecstatically.
“Blackie, you’re handier than a hollow cane in Drytown,” exulted Wallingford. “Here’s where I clean up. I own over one third of this stock. I have invested only one cheap thousand dollars over and above my expenses since I got here, and I’ll get a third of this seventeen thousand right back again, so the company, up to date—and I own it all—stands me just a little less than what’s left of my winnings on that noble little horse, Whipsaw. Just wait a minute till I send this off to the advertising company,” and he wrote rapidly a lengthy telegram.
After he sent away the telegram he remained at his desk a few moments, sketching on one of the proofs of a newspaper “ad” and filling in the lower part.
“Here,” said he to Blackie, “is the complete advertisement.”
Blackie picked up the proof sheet and glanced over it in evident approval. Taken altogether, it read:
“Within a week,” exulted Wallingford, “everybody in the middle states will know all about Gingeree. Before that time I’ll have Gingeree invented, and the Gingeree Company organized for half a million dollars. I’ll put in the plant and the advertising at one hundred and fifty thousand, sell about twenty-five thousand dollars of treasury stock to start the business, then sell my hundred and fifty thousand and get out.”
“You’ll have to go out of town to sell your stock,” observed Blackie.
“Out of town!” repeated Wallingford. “I should say not! With the good introduction I have here? Not any. I’ll sell stock to Doctor Lazzier and young Corbin and young Paley and the rest of the bunch.”
Blackie looked at his friend in gasping awe.
“Great guns!” he exploded. “J. Rufus, if you have nerve enough even to figure on that stunt, I believe you can pull it off!”
The door of the office opened and Mrs. Wallingford came in.
“Blackie Daw!” she exclaimed. “And so you are in town and mixed up in Jim’s affairs! Jim Wallingford, now I know you are not conducting a straight business!”
Blackie only grinned, but Mr. Wallingford was hurt.
“You’re mistaken, Fannie,” said he. “You sit right down there, and I’ll explain.”
He did so. When Wallingford rejoined her in their rooms that evening she had had time to think it all over. She had found no arguments to combat Wallingford’s statement of the case. She could not find words to overturn his words, and yet there was a flaw some place that she could not put her finger upon. Knowing this, then, and condoning it, was she not a part sharer in his guilt? Yes, and no. For a solid hour she searched her heart and she could find but one satisfactory answer. No matter what he had done in the past or might do in the future, she knew that she loved him, and whatever path his feet might tread, she knew that she would walk along with him. She had thought at first that she might guide his footsteps into better ways, butnow she feared! She knew, too, that in remaining with him she must take him as he was.
And so, when he came to her, she was ready with her customary kiss, in which there was no lack of warmth; nor was there in her eyes any troubled look. He was delighted to find her in this mood.
“I guess you’ve thought it all over, Fannie,” said he, “and can see that at least this one business deal is a dead straight game, just as any good business man would play it.”
“Yes,” she reluctantly admitted. “I am afraid that business, even straight business, is sometimes conducted along such lines.”
But down in her heart of hearts she knew better.
Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters’ errors; otherwise every effort has been made to remain true to the author’s words and intent.