JIMMY MAKES A PROPOSITION
“We were wondering, Jimmy,” said Tom, “if you knew of a fellow we could
get to run the car for us this winter. You see, it’s getting pretty
near time for school to open, and when I’m at school the only train
I’ll be able to meet is the 6:05; except, of course, on Saturdays. And
Willard’s going away to college pretty soon, you know. So we’ve either
got to find someone to drive the car or give up the business.”
“It would be a shame to do that,” replied Jimmy Brennan reflectively.
“I suppose you’re doing pretty well, aren’t you?”
Tom nodded. “We took in about a couple of hundred last month. And we’re
doing better this month, so far. So, of course, neither Willard nor I
want to give it up.”
“I should think not!” Jimmy tilted back against the window ledge in his
chair and looked thoughtful. It was a Sunday afternoon and the boys
had sought him at his lodgings on the lower end of Pine Street. From
the one window in the room they looked down across a number of spur
tracks toward the long, many-windowed buildings of the paper mills.
The house held the mingled odors of the Sunday dinner and factory
smoke. One never got very far from the smoke in Audelsville, anyway.
Jimmy’s room was small and rather bare, but everything about it looked
clean and neat, while Jimmy himself, dressed in his Sunday clothes
and without the usual smudges across his face, was quite a different
looking Jimmy from the one they were used to seeing. Tom viewed him
somewhat anxiously in the pause, while Willard’s gaze roved among the
many photographs that were tucked into the edge of the mirror above the
chest of drawers. At last,
“I don’t suppose I know anyone just now,” said Jimmy hesitatingly. “I
should think maybe you’d find someone by advertising in the Providence
papers.”
Willard’s gaze came away from the photographs. “Don’t suppose you’d
want to do it, Jimmy?” he asked.
Jimmy didn’t seem surprised. Probably he had suspected that the boys
had him in mind from the first. He shook his head. “I’d like the work,
I guess, but I don’t suppose you could pay me enough to make it worth
my while, fellows. You see, I get three-eighty a day at the shop.”
Tom sighed. “We were afraid that would be it,” he said. “You see, the
best we could pay would be――――” he looked questioningly at Willard.
“Twenty a week,” supplied the latter. Tom stared. They had agreed the
day before that they couldn’t afford to pay more than fifteen! Jimmy
shot a look of surprise at Willard.
“That would be over eighty a month,” he said. “There wouldn’t be much
in it for you fellows at that, would there?”
“No, not very much unless the business grew. But it would be better
than losing it altogether, I guess. What we want to do some day, Jimmy,
is get one of those motor trucks, you see, and handle baggage and
freight. There’s a lot of money to be made that way.”
Jimmy grinned. “Say, Connors will be after you fellows with an axe the
first thing you know,” he said.
“We’re not troubling about Connors. At first I sort of disliked the
idea of interfering with his business, Jimmy, but he’s worked all sorts
of games on us, like getting the police to refuse us a stand on Main
Street and having Johnny Green try to smash our car――――”
“Oh, maybe Connors didn’t get him to try that,” said Jimmy. “I guess
Green thought of that himself, he and Pat Herron. Pat’s a pretty tough
old rascal.”
“Anyhow, Connors must look after himself. Besides, my father says he’s
worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars right now; owns lots and
lots of houses――――”
“He certainly does. He owns this one we’re in now. Still――I don’t know;
a couple of hundred thousand is a lot of money, Will.”
“Well, he’s rich, all right. It isn’t as though we were getting
business away from a poor man, is it?”
“No, I don’t think you need to let that worry you,” Jimmy laughed.
“You won’t send Connors to the poor house if you get twenty motor
trucks.” He was silent a moment. “It’s a good scheme, too,” he went on
presently. “You could keep a truck busy just hauling freight to the
stores, I guess. And then there’s baggage besides.”
“How much would one cost?” asked Tom practically.
“Well, a new one would cost you about twelve hundred, I suppose. That
would be rather a light one, too; say a one-ton truck. Big enough for
you, though. You see, you haven’t any grades to consider, except now
and then you might have to run up The Hill with a trunk. That’s a big
thing in your favor. If you had a lot of steep grades between the
station and the town you’d have to have a more powerful truck. You
might be able to pick up a second-hand one in good condition. Maybe
you could get one for――well, say, six or seven hundred. I don’t know
much about trucks. They weren’t using so many of them when I was in the
business.”
“Well, I guess we can’t have one yet,” said Tom. “Maybe next Spring――――”
“If we’re going to have one at all we ought to get it soon,” said
Willard decisively. “First thing we know someone else will step in and
grab the business. Connors himself might do it. It’s a wonder now he
doesn’t put in a motor bus to the station.”
“Stablemen are the last folks on earth to monkey with motors,” said
Jimmy. “But that isn’t saying some other fellow might not start in. I
guess there won’t be much but motor trucks in a few years. Look what
they can do compared with horses!”
“We ought to have one and have it quick,” said Willard.
“But how the dickens can we?” Tom demanded. “Gee, we haven’t paid our
debts yet!”
“We’ll be pretty nearly square with everyone by the middle of this
month,” returned Willard. “I’ll wait for the rest of my money. If we
could get a couple of hundred dollars ahead I’d be in favor of paying
it down on a motor truck and giving a note for the balance. I suppose
we could do that, couldn’t we, Jimmy?”
“Sure you could. Wait a minute, fellows. I want to think.” Jimmy turned
around and looked for a while out the window. A switch engine backed
leisurely along a spur and coupled up to a row of boxcars and then
trundled them off out of sight. At last Jimmy faced the boys again.
“How do you fellows feel about taking in a partner?” he asked quietly.
[Illustration: “‘How do you fellows feel about taking in a partner?’ he
asked quietly”]
After a moment Willard asked: “Who would he be?”
“Me. I’ll tell you. I’ve got a little money saved up. Been putting
it away for two years. I used to think that when I had enough I’d go
somewhere and start a repair shop; perhaps in Providence. Lately,
though, I’ve sort of changed my mind about that. There’s been so many
of them started up this last year that I guess the business is kind of
overdone. I’ve got about seven hundred dollars put away. Now, suppose I
put that into your business, fellows, and we buy a good truck and start
in right? We’d have to have another driver, I suppose; anyway, we would
while you fellows were at school; but I guess we could afford him. Of
course I wouldn’t be getting as much as I get now; not for a while;
but I’d be working for myself, don’t you see? Besides, after a while
we ought to have a mighty good business. I tell you, fellows, the
motor has come to stay, and there’s no end to what we might do. There
are more cars coming into town every month; two new ones came the other
day; and we might sell gasoline and do repairs and deal in tires. We’d
ought to have a place for our own cars, anyway, and why couldn’t we
take others, too? There’s big money in the garage business! And as for
selling supplies, why, say, you can make a hundred per cent. on some
things!”
Willard’s surprise had turned to enthusiasm. Tom, more cautious, was
thinking hard. It was Tom who answered.
“Say we make two hundred a month, though, Jimmy. That isn’t much when
you divide it in three parts; I mean after you’ve paid expenses!”
“Two hundred!” jeered Jimmy. “We can make four hundred! We can make
five hundred when we get the garage going! Now, look here. Say we hire
a shed or an old stable somewhere near the center of town. We keep our
own cars in there and we have tools for making our own repairs and we
have a good big storage tank filled with gasoline for our own use and
we have barrels of oil and grease. We wouldn’t have to pay much rent
for a building like that. Say twenty a month. Now suppose we look after
some more cars. We’ve got the space and what we get for storage is
clear profit, don’t you see? Then if the cars have to be washed and
polished we get seventy-five cents or a dollar for it. When we sell the
owners a gallon of gasoline we make, say, three cents. When we sell ’em
cylinder oil or grease we make anywhere from twenty to fifty per cent.
Then why couldn’t we keep tires? And all the other things you need?
Say, there’s big money in it, fellows!”
“We’d have to have men to do the work, though,” objected Tom, trying to
keep his enthusiasm down.
“Sure we would! We’d have to have a washer and a man to run one of
the cars, and maybe we’d have to have a repair man to help me. But we
wouldn’t get them unless we had the business, Tom.”
“N-no.”
“I wish I wasn’t going to college――almost!” sighed Willard.
“Well, you fellows think it over,” said Jimmy. “It looks to me like a
good thing for all of us, but you’d better consult your folks and talk
it over. I don’t want to butt in on you unless you want me, but I’ve
had some experience in the business, fellows, and I think you need a
chap around that has had experience. But you fellows take your time and
do as you like.”
“I think it would be fine all around,” declared Willard. “With that
money of yours, Jimmy, we could get a motor truck right away and――――”
“Jimmy said a truck would cost twelve hundred,” Tom objected. “If you
put in seven hundred we’d still be five hundred short.”
“We’d get a second-hand one if we could find it,” said Jimmy. “And I
guess we could. I’d run down to New York and snoop around there. We
might have to pay six hundred and then put in fifty or so in repairs,
but we’d have something worth while if we did.”
“Well, it’s mighty nice of you, Jimmy, to――to want to come in with
us,” said Tom, “and I don’t know anyone I’d rather have for a partner.
We――we’ll talk it over and let you know in――in a day or two. I’m sort
of scared, to tell the truth. I didn’t think when I first wanted to
buy that car from Saunders that I’d be thinking about motor-trucks and
garages a couple of months later! It――it sounds sort of big, don’t it,
Will?”
“It sounds mighty good!” replied Willard heartily. “Of course we’ll
have to consider it, Jimmy, but as far as I’m concerned I’m for it!”
“Well, I guess I am, too,” said Tom, “but I suppose we’d better think
it over a little. If we let you know Tuesday, Jimmy, would it be all
right?”
“Sure! There’s no hurry as far as I’m concerned. Take all the time you
want, fellows.”
The boys were rather silent as they emerged from the boarding-house
and took their way up Pine Street. There was plenty to talk about but
they were far too excited. When they reached the corner of Cross Street
Willard asked:
“Have you got to go home right away, Tom?”
Tom shook his head.
“Then say we walk through Linden Court. There――there’s an old stable
there that might be just what we’d want in case we――in case we decided
to do it!”
“Oh, shucks!” said Tom disparagingly. “That thing’s all falling to
pieces. If we _should_ decide to do it I know the very place!”
“You do?” asked the other eagerly. “Where?”
“The old car-barn on Oak Street.”
“By Jiminy! Let’s go and see it!”