TEMPTATION ASSAILS PAUL
While Mr. Carter sat in his editorial office and thus reflected on his
many business ventures Paul Cameron was also sitting in his editorial
domain thinking intently.
The hundred-dollar deficit in the school treasury bothered him more than
he was willing to admit. It was, of course, quite possible for him to
repair the error--for he was convinced an error in the _March Hare's_
bookkeeping had caused the shortage. A bill of a hundred dollars must
have been paid and not recorded. Melville Carter had never had actual
experience in keeping accounts, therefore was it so surprising that he
had inadvertently made a mistake? Perhaps he was not so capable of
handling money and keeping it straight as the class had thought when
they had elected him to his post of business manager. Paying bills and
rigorously noting down every expenditure was no easy task. It was a
thankless job, anyway--the least interesting of any of the positions on
the paper, and one that entailed more work than most. To kick at Mel
would be rank ingratitude. It was not likely he had made a mess of
things wittingly. Therefore the only alternative, since neither Mel's
pride nor his own would permit them to confess to the muddle, was to pay
the outstanding bill and slip the rest of the cash as quietly as
possible into the bank.
How strange it was that the sum lacking was just an even hundred
dollars! Yet after all, was it so strange? It was so easy to make a
mistake of one figure in adding and subtracting columns. There did not,
it was true, seem to be any mistake on the books; but of course there
was a mistake somewhere. It was not at all likely that the bank had made
the error. Banks never made mistakes. Well, there was no use crying over
spilled milk. The success of the _March Hare_ had been so phenomenal
hitherto that one must put up with a strata of ill luck.
He hated to give up buying his typewriter, after all the hard work he
had done to earn it. He supposed he could sell his Liberty Bond as
Melville was planning to do and use that money instead of the sum he had
laid by. But he did not just know how to go to work to convert a Liberty
Bond into cash. It was an easy enough matter to buy a bond; but where
did you go to sell one? How many business questions there were that a
boy of seventeen was unable to answer! If he were to ask his father how
to sell the bond, it might arouse suspicion, to ask anybody else might
do so too. People would wonder why he, Paul Cameron, was selling a
Liberty Bond he had bought only a short time before. Burmingham was a
gossipy little town. Its good news traveled fast but so also did its bad
news. Any item of interest, no matter how small, was rapidly spread from
one end of the village to the other. Therefore Paul could not risk even
making inquiries, let alone selling his property to any one in the
place.
Yet he could not but laugh at the irony of the signs that confronted him
wherever he went: _Buy Bonds!_ _Invest!_ There were selling booths at
the bank, the library, the town hall. At every street corner you came
upon them. But none of these agencies were purchasing bonds themselves.
Nowhere did it say: _Sell Bonds!_ These patriots were not at their posts
to add to their troubles--not they!
Once it occurred to Paul to ask the cashier at the bank what people did
with Liberty Bonds which they wanted to dispose of; but on second
thought he realized that Mr. Stacy was an intimate friend of his
father's and might mention the incident. Therefore he at length
dismissed the possibility of selling his bond and thereby meeting his
share of the _March Hare_ deficit.
No, he must use his typewriter money. There was no escape. He chanced to
be at the _Echo_ offices that day with copy for the next issue of his
paper and was still rebelliously wavering over the loss of his
typewriter when the door of Mr. Carter's private room opened and the
great man himself appeared, ushering out a visitor. Glancing about on
his return from the elevator his eye fell on Paul.
"Ah, Paul, good afternoon," he nodded. "Come into my office a moment. I
want to speak to you."
Paul followed timidly. It was seldom that his business brought him into
personal touch with Mr. Carter, toward whom he still maintained no small
degree of awe; usually the affairs relative to the school paper were
transacted either through the business manager of the _Echo_ or with one
of his assistants.
But to-day Mr. Carter was suddenly all amiability. He escorted Paul into
his sanctum, and after closing the door, tipped back in the leather
chair before his desk and in leisurely fashion drew out a cigar.
"How is your paper coming on, Paul?" he asked, as he blew a cloud of
smoke into the room and surveyed the boy through its blueness.
"Very well, Mr. Carter."
"Austin, our manager, tells me your circulation is increasing."
"Yes, sir. It's gone up steadily from the first."
"Humph!" mused Mr. Carter. "Funny thing, isn't it? It was quite a
clever move of yours to set the parents to writing. Everybody likes to
see himself in print; we're a vain lot of creatures. Of course, the
minute you published their articles they bought them. Could not resist
it!"
The lad laughed. Although he did not wholly agree with the editor it did
not seem necessary to tell him so.
"I guess you've found your enterprise a good deal of work," went on
Carter.
"Well, yes. It has taken more time than I expected," Paul admitted.
"You'll be glad to get rid of it when you graduate in June."
The man studied the boy furtively.
"Yes, I shall. It has been great fun; but it has been a good deal of
care."
"You're going to Harvard, I hear."
"Yes, sir. Harvard was Dad's college, and it's going to be mine."
"I haven't much use for colleges," growled Mr. Carter. "They turn out
nothing but a grist of extravagant snobs. I never went to college myself
and I have contrived to pull along and make my pile, thanks to nobody.
I've a big half mind to have Melville do the same. But his mother wants
him to go, and I suppose I shall have to give in and let him. It will be
interesting to see what he gets out of it."
Paul did not answer. He did not just know what reply to make.
"So you're set on college."
"Yes, sir, I am."
"What's your idea?"
"To know something."
The man's thin lips curled into a smile.
"And you expect to acquire that result at Harvard?"
"I hope so."
"Well, you may," remarked Mr. Carter, with a sceptical shrug of his
shoulders, "but I doubt it. You will probably fritter away your time and
your father's money in boat-racing, football, and fraternity dramatics;
that is what it usually amounts to."
"It has got to amount to more than that with me," Paul declared soberly.
"Why?"
"Because Dad is not rich, and hasn't the money to throw away."
A silence fell upon the room.
"I should think that under those circumstances you would do much better
to cut out a frilly education and go to work after you finish your high
school course," observed the magnate deliberately. "Suppose I were to
make you a good business offer? Suppose I were to take over that school
paper of yours at the end of June--"
"What!"
"Wait a moment. Then suppose I took you in here at a good salary and let
you keep on with this _March Hare_ job? Not, of course, in precisely its
present form but along the same general lines. We could make a paying
proposition out of that paper, I am sure of it. It would need a good
deal of improving," continued the great man in a pompous, patronizing
tone, "but there is an idea there that could be developed into something
worth while, unless I am very much mistaken."
"B--u--t--" stammered Paul and then stopped helplessly.
"The thing is not worth much as it now stands," went on Mr. Carter,
puffing rings of smoke airily toward the ceiling, "but in time we could
remodel it into a publication of real merit--make a winner of it."
Paul did not speak.
"How do you like newspaper work?" inquired Mr. Carter, shifting the
subject adroitly.
"Very much--the little I've seen of it."
"If you were to come in here you might work up to a place on the
_Echo_."
The boy started.
"You're a bright chap and I like you. I'd see you had a chance if you
made good."
"You're very kind, sir, but--"
"Well, out with it! What's the matter?"
"It would knock my college career all--"
"Faugh! College career! Why, here is a career worth ten of it--the
chance of a lifetime. I wouldn't offer it to every boy. In fact, I
wouldn't offer it to any other boy I know of--not to my own son."
"It's very good of you, Mr. Carter."
"See here, youngster," said Mr. Carter, leaning toward Paul
impressively, "when you are as old as I am you will learn that you've
got to take opportunities when they come to you. The same one never
comes twice. You don't want to turn down a thing of this sort until
you've considered it from all sides. Think what it would mean to remodel
that paper of yours with plenty of money behind you and put it on a
footing with other professional magazines. That would be a feather in
your cap! I could buy the _March Hare_ in--"
"I'm not sure you could, Mr. Carter," replied Paul slowly. "The staff
might not want to sell it."
"What!"
The tone was incredulous with surprise.
"I don't know that we fellows would feel that we had the moral right to
sell out," explained Paul quietly. "You see, although we have built up
the paper it belongs to a certain extent to the school."
"Nonsense!" cut in Mr. Carter impatiently. "That's absurd! The
publication was your idea, wasn't it?"
"Yes, at the beginning it was; but--"
"They wouldn't have had it but for you, would they?"
"I don't know; perhaps not," confessed the boy reluctantly.
"It was your project," insisted Carter.
"Yes."
"Then nobody has any right to claim it."
"Maybe not the right to really claim it. But all of us boys have slaved
together to make it a success. It is as much their work as mine."
"What do they intend to do with it?"
"Pass it on to the school, I suppose. We haven't talked it over, though.
We haven't got that far yet."
"Well, all I can say is that if you handed it over to the school free of
charge you would be darn stupid. Why not make some money out of it?
Offer to sell it to the school if you think you must; but don't give it
away."
Paul shook his head dubiously.
"The school couldn't buy it. They've nothing to buy it with."
"Then you have a perfect right to sell it to somebody else," put in Mr.
Carter quickly. "In the world of business, people cannot expect to get
something for nothing. What you can't pay for you can't have. If the
school has no money--" he broke off with a significant gesture. "Now if
I offered you fellows a lump sum in June--a sum you could divide amongst
you as you saw fit--wouldn't that be a perfectly fair and legitimate
business deal?"
"I--I--" faltered Paul.
"Wouldn't it?" Mr. Carter persisted.
"I suppose so," murmured Paul unwillingly. "Only, you see, I still feel
that the paper should go to the school. I think the other fellows would
feel so too."
Nettled Mr. Carter rose and strode irritably across the room and back.
Then he came to a standstill before Paul's chair and looked down with
steely eyes into the lad's troubled face.
"But you admitted just now that you and the staff had made the paper
what it is, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"Then it belongs to you, doesn't it?"
"In a certain sense; yes."
"Now see here, Paul," began Mr. Carter. "You are the editor-in-chief of
that magazine, and the head of the bunch. What you say would go with
them--or it ought to. You could make them think about what you pleased.
Why don't you put it up to your staff to sell the paper to me and pocket
the proceeds?"
"Because I don't think--"
"I guess you could manage to think as I wanted you to if it were worth
your while, couldn't you?" smiled the great man insinuatingly.
"I don't quite--"
"Turn it over in your mind. It is a straight business proposition. You
land your _March Hare_ here in my office as my property at the end of
June, and I will make it worth your while. Understand?" The great man
eyed the lad keenly.
"Not fully, I'm afraid."
"But you would before I got through with you," chuckled Mr. Carter,
rising.
Paul rose too. He was very glad to have the interview finished.
"We'll talk no more about this matter to-day," declared the editor
lightly. "You think over carefully what I've said and come and see me
again sometime."
"All right, sir."
Paul moved awkwardly toward the door. He wanted to add some word to
conceal how worried, angry, and upset he really was, but he could think
of nothing to say. It was ignominious to pass out of the room as if he
were a whipped puppy. Men always terminated their business talks
pleasantly, no matter how vexed they were with one another underneath.
He must show Mr. Carter that he also could close an interview in true
man's fashion. His hand was on the knob of the door now; but he turned.
"Oh, by the way, Mr. Carter," he said with an off-hand air, "do you know
where a person goes to sell a Liberty Bond?"
It was the only topic of conversation he could think of.
"Sell one?"
"Yes, sir." The boy blushed.
"In need of cash?"
"I--yes; I'm thinking of getting rid of a fifty-dollar bond I have."
"That's foolish. You'd much better keep it."
Paul shook his head with sudden resolve.
"I think if I can get rid of it without too much red tape, I'll let it
go."
"Want the money badly, eh?"
"Y--e--s."
"Your father know you are selling out?"
"No, sir."
The boy began to regret that he had spoken.
"Oh--ho! So you're in a scrape, eh?"
"No, it's not a scrape," protested Paul. "At least, not what you'd
commonly call a scrape. It is just that--"
"That you do not want to tell your father."
"Not now."
Mr. Carter winked.
"I see," he said.
He went to a drawer in his desk and innocently Paul watched his
movements, wondering what he was going to do. Give him an address where
he could sell his bond, no doubt.
Instead Mr. Carter slipped a crisp bill from a roll in the drawer and
held it toward him.
[Illustration: "But I can't take your money, Mr. Carter," gasped Paul.
_Page 137._]
"I'll advance you fifty dollars on your bond," he said, "and no
questions asked. I was a boy once myself."
"But I can't take your money, Mr. Carter," gasped Paul, trying to hand
the crackling bit of paper back again.
"Pooh, pooh! Nonsense!" the man ejaculated, waving him off. "Call it a
loan if you prefer. A loan with a bond for security is quite an ordinary
business matter. It is only a trifle, anyway."
"But--"
"Run along! I have no more time to give to you. I have a directors'
meeting at four. Ah, here's Mr. Dalton now. How are you, Dalton. Run
along, youngster. Take the cash with you and welcome." Then he added in
an undertone: "Just use your influence with your chums up at school, and
we will say no more about this little loan. If you land the _March Hare_
in my hands the deal will be worth the fifty to me. Good night."