DOCTOR QUAGG PROVES THAT STRAIGHT BUSINESS IS A
DELUSION AND A SNARE
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 busy putting 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 oriental _salon_; 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 young man 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 relationship with 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.
It was the last straw, and the stock-holders' meeting which
Wallingford hastily called wore the greenish 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 with vast 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 most severe 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.