IN THE WAY OF TRADE
Dr. Surtaine sat in Little George's best chair, beaming upon the world.
By habit, the big man was out of his seat with his dime and nickel in
the bootblack's ready hand, almost coincidently with the final clip-clap
of the rhythmic process. But this morning he lingered, contemplating
with an unobtrusive scrutiny the occupant of the adjoining chair, a
small, angular, hard man, whose brick-red face was cut off in the
segment of an abrupt circle, formed by a low-jammed green hat. This
individual had just briskly bidden his bootblack "hurry it up" in a tone
which meant precisely what it said. The youth was doing so.
"George," said Dr. Surtaine, to the proprietor of the stand.
"Yas, suh."
"Were you ever in St. Jo, Missouri?"
"Yas, suh, Doctah Suhtaine; oncet."
"For long?"
"No, suh."
"Didn't live there, did you?"
"No, suh."
"George," said his interlocutor impressively, "you're lucky."
"Yas, suh," agreed the negro with a noncommittal grin.
"While you can buy accommodations in a graveyard or break into a
penitentiary, don't you ever live in St. Jo Missouri, George."
The man in the adjacent seat half turned toward Dr. Surtaine and looked
him up and down, with a freezing regard.
"It's the sink-hole and sewer-pipe of creation, George. They once
elected a chicken-thief mayor, and he resigned because the town was too
mean to live in. Ever know any folks there, George?"
"Don't have no mem'ry for 'em, Doctah."
"You're lucky again. They're the orneriest, lowest-down, minchin',
pinchin', pizen trash that ever tainted the sweet air of Heaven by
breathing it, George."
"You don' sesso, Doctah Suhtaine, suh."
"I do sess precisely so, George. Does the name McQuiggan mean anything
to you?"
"Don' mean nothin' at-tall to me, Doctah."
"You got away from St. Jo in time, then. Otherwise you might have met
the McQuiggan family, and never been the same afterward."
"Ef you don' stop youah feet a-fidgittin', Boss," interpolated the
neighboring bootblack, addressing the green-hatted man in aggrieved
tones, "I cain't do no good wif this job."
"McQuiggan was the name," continued the volunteer biographer. "The best
you could say of the McQuiggans, George, was that one wasn't much
cusseder than the others, because he couldn't be. Human nature has its
limitations, George."
"It suttinly have, suh."
"But if you had to allow a shade to any of 'em, it would probably have
gone to the oldest brother, L.P. McQuiggan. Barring a scorpion I once
sat down on while in swimming, he was the worst outrage upon the scheme
of creation ever perpetrated by a short-sighted Providence."
"Get out of that chair!"
The little man had shot from his own and was dancing upon the pavement.
"What for?" Dr. Surtaine's tone was that of inquiring innocence.
"To have your fat head knocked off."
With impressive agility for one of his size and years, the challenged
one descended. He advanced, "squared," and suddenly held out a muscular
and plump hand.
"Hullo, Elpy."
"Huh?"
The other glared at him, baleful and baffled.
"Hullo, I said. Don't you know me?"
"No, I don't. Neither will your own family after I get through with
you."
"Come off, Elpy; come off. I licked you once in the old days, and I
guess I could do it now, but I don't want to. Come and have a drink with
old Andy."
"Andy? Andy the Spieler? Andy Certain?"
"Dr. L. André Surtaine, at your service. _Now_, will you shake?"
Still surly, Mr. McQuiggan hung back. "What about that roast?" he
demanded.
"Wasn't sure of you. Twenty years is a long time. But I knew if it was
you you'd want to fight, and I knew if you didn't want to fight it
wasn't you. I'll buy you one in honor of the best little city west of
the Mississip, and the best bunch of sports that ever came out of it,
the McQuiggans of St. Jo, Missouri. Does that go?"
"It goes," replied the representative of the family concisely.
Across the café table Dr. Surtaine contemplated his old acquaintance
with friendly interest.
"The same old scrappy Elpy," he observed. "What's happened to you, since
you used to itinerate with the Iroquois Extract of Life?"
"Plenty."
"You're looking pretty prosperous."
"Have to, in my line."
"What is it?"
Mr. McQuiggan produced a card, with the legend:--
+-----------------------------------------+
| |
| McQuiggan & Straight |
| STREAKY MOUNTAIN COPPER COMPANY |
| Orsten, Palas County, Nev. |
| |
| |
| L.P. MCQUIGGAN ARTHUR STRAIGHT |
| _President_ _Vice-Pres. & Treas._ |
| |
+-----------------------------------------+
"Any good?" queried the Doctor.
"Best undeveloped property in the State."
"Why don't you develop it?"
"Capital."
"Get the capital."
"Will you help me?"
"Sure."
"How?"
"Advertise."
"Advertising costs money."
"And brings two dollars for every one you spend."
"Maybe," retorted the other, with a skeptical air. "But my game is still
talk."
"Talk gets dimes; print gets dollars," said his friend sententiously.
"You have to show me."
"Show you!" cried the Doctor. "I'll write your copy myself."
"_You_ will? What do you know about mining?"
"Not a thing. But there isn't much I don't know about advertising. I've
built up a little twelve millions, plus, on it. And I can sell your
stock like hot cakes through the 'Clarion.'"
"What's the 'Clarion'?"
"My son's newspaper."
"Thereby keeping the graft in the family, eh?"
"Don't be a fool, Elpy. I'm showing you profits. Besides doing you a
good turn, I'd like to bring in some new business to the boy. Now you
take half-pages every other day for a week and a full page Sunday--"
"Pages!" almost squalled the little man. "D'you think I'm made of
money?"
"Elpy," said Dr. Surtaine, abruptly, "do you remember my platform
patter?"
"Like the multiplication table."
"Was it good?"
"Best ever!"
"Well, I'm a slicker proposition with a pen than I ever was with a
spiel. And you're securing my services for nothing. Come around to the
office, man, and let me show you."
Still suspicious, Mr. McQuiggan permitted himself to be led away,
expatiating as he went, upon the unrivaled location and glorious future
of his mining property. From time to time, Dr. Surtaine jotted down an
unostentatious note.
The first view of the Certina building dashed Mr. McQuiggan's
suspicions; his inspection of his old friend's superb office slew them
painlessly.
"Is this all yours, Andy? On the level? Did you do it all on your own?"
"Every bit of it! With my little pen-and-ink. Take a look around the
walls and you'll see how."
He seated himself at his desk and proceeded to jot down, with apparent
carelessness, but in broad, sweeping lines, a type lay-out, while his
guest passed from advertisement to advertisement, in increasing
admiration. Before Old Lame-Boy he paused, absolutely fascinated.
"I thought that'd get you," exulted the host, who, between strokes of
the creative pen had been watching him.
"I've seen it in the newspaper, but never connected it with you. Being
out of the medical line I lost interest. Say, it's a wonder! Did it
fetch 'em?"
"Fetch 'em? It knocked 'em flat. That picture's the foundation of this
business. Talk about suggestion in advertising! He's a regular
hypnotist, Old Lame-Boy is. Plants the suggestion right in the small of
your back, where we want it. Why, Elpy, I've seen a man walk up to that
picture on a bill-board as straight as you or me, take one good, long
look, and go away hanging onto his kidneys, and squirming like a lizard.
Fact! What do you think of that? Genius, I call it: just flat genius, to
produce an effect like that with a few lines and a daub or two of
color."
"Some pull!" agreed Mr. McQuiggan, with professional approval. "And
then--'Try Certina,' eh?"
"For a starter and, for a finisher 'Certina _Cures_.' Shoves the bottle
right into their hands. The first bottle braces 'em. They take another.
By the time they've had half a dozen, they love it."
"Booze?"
"Sure! Flavored and spiced up, nice and tasty. Great for the temperance
trade. _And_ the best little repeater on the market. Now take a look,
Elpy."
He tapped the end of his pen upon the rough sketch of the mining
advertisement, which he had drafted. Mr. McQuiggan bent over it in
study, and fell a swift victim to the magic of the art.
"Why, that would make a wad of bills squirm out of the toe of a
stockin'! It's new game to me. I've always worked the personal touch.
But I'll sure give it a try-out, Andy."
"I guess it's bad!" exulted the other. "I guess I've lost the trick of
tolling the good old dollars in! Take this home and try it on your cash
register! Now, come around and meet the boy."
Thus it was that Editor-in-Chief Harrington Surtaine, in the third week
of his incumbency received a professional call from his father, and a
companion from whose pockets bulged several sheets of paper.
"Shake hands with Mr. McQuiggan, Hal," said the Doctor. "Make a bow when
you meet him, too. He's your first new business for the reformed
'Clarion.'"
"In what way?" asked Hal, meeting a grip like iron from the stranger.
"News?"
"News! I guess not. Business, I said. Real money. Advertising."
"It's like this, Mr. Surtaine," said L.P. McQuiggan, turning his spare,
hard visage toward Hal. "I've got some copper stock to sell--an A1
under-developed proposition; and your father, who's an old pal, tells me
the 'Clarion' can do the business for me. Now, if I can get a good rate
from you, it's a go."
"Mr. Shearson, the advertising manager, is your man. I don't know
anything about advertising rates."
"Then you'd best get busy and learn," cried Dr. Surtaine.
"I'm learning other things."
"For instance?"
"What news is and isn't."
"Look here, Boyee." Dr. Surtaine's voice was surcharged with a
disappointed earnestness. "Put yourself right on this. News is news; any
paper can get it. But advertising is _Money_. Let your editors run the
news part, till you can work into it. _You get next to the door where
the cash comes in._"
In the fervor of his advice he thumped Hal's desk. The thump woke
McGuire Ellis, who had been devoting a spare five minutes to his
favorite pastime. For his behoof, the exponent of policy repeated his
peroration. "Isn't that right, Ellis?" he cried. "You're a practical
newspaper man."
"It's true to type, anyway," grunted Ellis.
"Sure it is!" cried the other, too bent on his own notions to interpret
this comment correctly. "And now, what about a little reading notice for
McQuiggan's proposition?"
"Yes: an interview with me on the copper situation and prospects might
help," put in McQuiggan.
Hal hesitated, looking to Ellis for counsel.
"You've got to do something for an advertiser on a big order like this,
Boyee," urged his father.
"Let's see the copy," put in Ellis. The trained journalistic eye ran
over the sheets. "Lot of gaudy slush about copper mines in general," he
observed, "and not much information on Streaky Mountain."
"It's an undeveloped property," said McQuiggan.
"Strong on geography," continued Ellis. "'In the immediate vicinity,'"
he read from one sheet, "'lie the Copper Monarch Mine paying 40 per cent
dividends, the Deep Gulch Mine, paying 35 per cent, the Three Sisters,
Last Chance, Alkali Spring Mines, all returning upwards of 25 per cent
per annum: and immediately adjacent is the famous Strike-for-the-West
property which enriches its fortunate stockholders to the tune of 75 per
cent a year!' Are you on the same range as the Strike-for-the-West, Mr.
McQuiggan?"
"It's an adjacent property," growled the mining man. "What d'you know
about copper?"
"Oh, I've seen a little mining, myself. And a bit of mining advertising.
That's quite an ad. of yours, McQuiggan."
"I wrote that ad.," said Dr. Surtaine blandly: "and I challenge anybody
to find a single misstatement in it."
"You're safe. There isn't any. And scarcely a single statement. But if
you wrote it, I suppose it goes."
"And the interview, too," rasped McQuiggan.
"It's usual," said Ellis to Hal. "The tail with the hide: the soul with
the body, when you're selling."
"But we're not selling interviews," said Hal uneasily.
"You're getting nearly a thousand dollars' worth of copy, and giving a
bonus that don't cost you anything," said his father. "The papers have
done it for me ever since I've been in business."
"I guess that's right, too," agreed Ellis.
"Why don't you take McQuiggan down to meet your Mr. Shearson, Hal?"
suggested the Doctor. "I'll stay here and round out a couple of other
ideas for his campaign."
Hal had risen from his desk when there was a light knock at the door and
Milly Neal's bright head appeared.
"Hullo!" said Dr. Surtaine. "What's up? Anything wrong at the shop,
Milly?"
The girl walked into the room and stood trimly at ease before the four
men.
"No, Chief," said she. "I understood Mr. Surtaine wanted to see me."
"I?" said Hal blankly, pushing a chair toward her.
"Yes. Didn't you? They told me you left word for me in the city room, to
see you when I came in again. Sometimes I send my copy, so I only just
got the message."
"Miss Neal is 'Kitty the Cutie,'" explained McGuire Ellis.
"Looks it, too," observed L.P. McQuiggan jauntily, addressing the upper
far corner of the room.
Miss Neal looked at him, met a knowing and conscious smile, looked right
through the smile, and looked away again, all with the air of one who
gazes out into nothingness.
"Guess I'll go look up this Shearson person," said Mr. McQuiggan, a
trifle less jauntily. "See you all later."
"I'd no notion you were the writer of the Cutie paragraphs, Milly," said
Dr. Surtaine. "They're lively stuff."
"Nobody has. I'm keeping it dark. It's only a try-out. You _did_ send
for me, didn't you?" she added, turning to Hal.
"Yes. What I had in mind to say to you--that is, to the author--the
writer of the paragraphs," stumbled Hal, "is that they're a little
too--too--"
"Too flip?" queried his father. "That's what makes 'em go."
"If they could be done in a manner not quite so undignified," suggested
the editor-in-chief.
Color rose in the girl's smooth cheek. "You think they're vulgar," she
charged.
"That's rather too harsh a word," he protested.
"You do! I can see it." She flushed an angry red. "I'd rather stop
altogether than have you think that."
"Don't be young," put in McGuire Ellis, with vigor. "Kitty has caught
on. It's a good feature. The paper can't afford to drop it."
"That's right," supplemented Dr. Surtaine. "People are beginning to talk
about those items. They read 'em. I read 'em myself. They've got the go,
the pep. They're different. But, Milly, I didn't even know you could
write."
"Neither did I," said the girl staidly, "till I got to putting down some
of the things I heard the girls say, and stringing them together with
nonsense of my own. One evening I showed some of it to Mr. Veltman, and
he took it here and had it printed."
"I was going to suggest, Mr. Surtaine," said McGuire Ellis formally,
"that we put Miss Kitty on the five-dollar-a-column basis and make her
an every-other-day editorial page feature. I think the stuff's worth
it."
"We can give it a trial," said his principal, a little dubiously, "since
you think so well of it."
"Then, Milly, I suppose you'll be quitting the shop to become a
full-fledged writer," remarked Dr. Surtaine.
"No, indeed, Chief." The girl smiled at him with that frank
friendliness which Hal had noted as informing every relationship between
Dr. Surtaine and the employees of the Certina plant. "I'll stick. The
regular pay envelope looks good to me. And I can do this work after
hours."
"How would it be if I was to put you on half-time, Milly?" suggested her
employer. "You can keep your department going by being there in the
mornings and have your afternoons for the writing."
The girl thanked him demurely but with genuine gratitude.
"Then we'll look for your copy here on alternate days," said Hal. "And I
think I'll give you a desk. As this develops into an editorial feature I
shall want to keep an eye on it and to be in touch with you. Perhaps I
could make suggestions sometimes."
She rose, thanking him, and Hal held open the door for her. Once again
he felt, with a strange sensation, her eyes take hold on his as she
passed him.
"Pretty kid," observed Ellis. "Veltman is crazy about her, they say."
"_Good_ kid, too," added Dr. Surtaine, emphasizing the adjective. "You
might tell Veltman that, whoever he is."
"Tell him, yourself," retorted Ellis with entire good nature. "He isn't
the sort to offer gratuitous information to."
Upon this advice, L.P. McQuiggan reëntered. "All fixed," said he, with
evident satisfaction. "We went to the mat on rates, but Shearson agreed
to give me some good reading notices. Now, I'll beat it. See you
to-night, Andy?"
Dr. Surtaine nodded. "You owe me a commission, Boyee," said he, smiling
at Hal as McQuiggan made his exit. "But I'll let you off this time. I
guess it won't be the last business I bring in to you. Only, don't you
and Ellis go looking every gift horse too hard in the teeth. You might
get bit."
"Shut your eyes and swallow it and ask no questions, if it's good, eh,
Doctor?" said McGuire Ellis. "That's the motto for your practice."
"Right you are, my boy. And it's the motto of sound business. What is
business?" he continued, soaring aloft upon the wings of a Pæan of
Policy. "Why, business is a deal between you and me in which I give you
my goods and a pleasant word, and you give me your dollar and a polite
reply. Some folks always want to know where the dollar came from. Not
me! I'm satisfied to know that its coming to me. Money has wings, and if
you throw stones at it, it'll fly away fast. And you want to remember,"
he concluded with the fervor of honest conviction, "that a newspaper
can't be quite right, any more than a man can, unless it makes its own
living. Well. I'm not going to preach any more. So long, boys."
"What do you think of it, Mr. Surtaine?" inquired McGuire Ellis, after
the lecturer had gone his way. "Pretty sound sense, eh?"
"I wonder just what you mean by that, Ellis. Not what you say,
certainly."
But Ellis only laughed and turned to his "flimsy."
Meantime the editor of the "Clarion" was being quietly but persistently
beset by another sermonizer, less cocksure of text than the Sweet Singer
of Policy, but more subtle in influence. This was Miss Esmé Elliot.
Already, the half-jocular partnership undertaken at the outset of their
acquaintance had developed into a real, if somewhat indeterminate
connection. Esmé found her new acquaintance interesting both for himself
and for his career. Her set in general considered the ripening
friendship merely "another of Esmé's flirtations," and variously
prophesied the dénouement. To the girl's own mind it was not a
flirtation at all. She was (she assured herself) genuinely absorbed in
the development of a new mission in which she aspired to be influential.
That she already exercised a strong sway of personality over Hal
Surtaine, she realized. Indeed, in the superb confidence of her charm,
she would have been astonished had it been otherwise. Just where her
interest in the newly adventured professional field ended, and in
Harrington Surtaine, the man, began, she would have been puzzled to say.
Kathleen Pierce had bluntly questioned her on the subject.
"Yes, of course I like him," said Esmé frankly. "He's interesting and
he's a gentleman, and he has a certain force about him, and he's"--she
paused, groping for a characterization--"he's unexpected."
"What gets me," said Kathleen, in her easy slang, "is that he never
pulls any knighthood-in-flower stuff, yet you somehow feel it's there.
Know what I mean? There's a scrapper behind that nice-boy smile."
"He hasn't scrapped with me, yet, Kathie," smiled the beauty.
"Don't let him," advised the other. "It mightn't be safe. Still, I
suppose you understand him by now, down to the ground."
"Indeed I do not. Didn't I tell you he was unexpected? He has an
uncomfortable trick," complained Miss Elliot, "just when everything is
smooth and lovely, of suddenly leveling those gray-blue eyes of his at
you, like two pistols. 'Throw up your hands and tell me what you really
mean!' One doesn't always want to tell what one really means."
"Bet you have to with him, sooner or later," returned her friend.
This conversation took place at the Vanes' _al fresco_ tea, to which Hal
came for a few minutes, late in the afternoon of his father's visit with
McQuiggan, mainly in the hope of seeing Esmé Elliot. Within five minutes
after his arrival, Worthington society was frowning, or smiling,
according as it was masculine or feminine, at their backs, as they
strolled away toward the garden. Miss Esmé was feeling a bit petulant,
perhaps because of Kathie Pierce's final taunt.
"I think you aren't living up to our partnership," she accused.
"Is it a partnership, where one party is absolute slave to the other's
slightest wish?" he smiled.
"There! That is exactly it. You treat me like a child."
"I don't think of you as a child, I assure you."
"You listen to all I say with pretended deference, and smile and--and go
your own way with inevitable motion."
"Wherein have I failed in my allegiance?" asked Hal, courteously
concerned. "Haven't we published everything about all the charities that
you're interested in?"
"Oh, yes. So far as that goes. But the paper itself doesn't seem to
change any. It's got the same tone it always had."
"What's wrong with its tone?" The eyes were leveled at her now.
"Speaking frankly, it's tawdry. It's lurid. It's--well, yellow."
"A matter of method. You're really more interested, then, in the way we
present news than in the news we present."
"I don't know anything about news, itself. But I don't see why a
newspaper run by a gentleman shouldn't be in good taste."
"Nor do I. Except that those things take time. I suppose I've got to get
in touch with my staff before I can reform their way of writing the
paper."
"Haven't you done that yet?"
"I simply haven't had time."
"Then I'll make you a nice present of a very valuable suggestion. Give a
luncheon to your employees, and invite all the editors and reporters.
Make a little speech to them and tell them what you intend to do, and
get them to talk it over and express opinions. That's the way to get
things done. I do it with my mission class. And, by the way, don't make
it a grand banquet at one of the big hotels. Have it in some place where
the men are used to eating. They'll feel more at home and you'll get
more out of them."
"Will you come?"
"No. But you shall come up to the house and report fully on it."
Had Miss Esmé Elliot, experimentalist in human motives, foreseen to what
purpose her ingenious suggestion was to work out, she might well have
retracted her complaint of lack of real influence; for this casual
conversation was the genesis of the Talk-it-Over Breakfast, an
institution which potently affected the future of the "Clarion" and its
young owner.