JOE HAS AN IDEA
Joe’s circle of friends and acquaintances widened. He met many fellows
through Jack, and Jack seemed to know most of the better sort of boys
in the town. What sometimes puzzled Joe was how it had happened that
Jack, with so many friends to choose from, had remained without a
special chum and had finally chosen him. Joe got on very friendly terms
with Tom Pollock and became a great admirer of that youth. Anyone with
such a reputation as a pitcher and all-around ball-player as Tom had
would have won Joe’s respect and regard in any case, but Tom was a
very likable chap besides. Sam Craig he saw less of, although Sam was
nice when they met, and more than once reminded him of the approaching
fifteenth of February, on which day baseball practice was to start
indoors.
By the beginning of February Joe was quite at home in Amesville and
had grown to like the place thoroughly. He and Aunt Sarah were getting
on finely. Aunt Sarah was outwardly still the same stern-visaged,
sharp-voiced person, but Joe had discovered that under that rather
forbidding exterior lay a very kind heart. Nowadays Aunt Sarah’s
principal mission in life appeared to be the finding of new ways to
please Joe, without, if possible, allowing him to suspect it!
Joe’s only cause for dissatisfaction was his after-school work. In less
than a fortnight indoor practice would begin for the baseball squad,
and that meant that either he would have to give up his newspaper route
or abandon his hope of making the nine. Consequently, he began to look
around harder than ever for some labour that he might perform in the
evenings. He consulted Jack, of course, and Jack, while eager to aid,
had nothing to offer in the way of practical suggestions. In the end,
Joe solved the problem without assistance.
He and Jack happened to be in Pryor’s stationery store one afternoon.
Jack was buying some fountain-pen ink and Joe strayed over to the
counter that held a not very large assortment of magazines, together
with the local newspapers and a few papers from other cities of the
State. While he was turning the pages of a magazine a well-dressed,
middle-aged man came in and asked for a Chicago _Tribune_. He was
a travelling salesman, Joe concluded. Whether he was or not, he was
contemptuously impatient when the clerk informed him that they didn’t
keep Chicago papers.
“Don’t, eh?” he demanded. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t! I ought to
have known it. You folks in this town don’t seem to know there’s any
other place in the country. Still, you might have heard of Chicago.
It’s a little village in Illinois, down near the lower end of Lake
Michigan. There’s a tree in front of it. They were talking of building
a horse-car line when I left. Got a Cleveland paper, then?”
The sarcasm was quite lost on the youthful clerk. He only gazed in a
puzzled fashion at the annoyed customer and shook his head.
“There ain’t any left,” he said indifferently. “We had one this
morning.”
“You did? Think of that! One whole paper! Say, you folks take a lot of
risks, don’t you? Just suppose you hadn’t sold it!” The irate gentleman
left the store abruptly and Joe followed his departing figure with
thoughtful eyes. A moment later Jack completed his purchase and they
left the shop. It was well after five and, although it was the custom
for Joe to walk home with Jack, this afternoon he pleaded duties and,
promising to go around after supper, watched his friend lose himself in
the throng. What Joe did next would have occasioned Jack some curiosity
had he been there to see. Joe crossed the street――the other side of the
thoroughfare was less congested at this time――and went slowly northward
for six blocks, his eyes busy all the way. Then he crossed again and
returned on the first side. His travels took him over the busiest
portion of the street and left him finally four blocks below the Adams
Building. But what he was looking for he hadn’t seen, and he shook his
head as he turned his steps northward again. In front of the Adams
Building a small newsboy was selling the evening paper and Joe stopped.
“Got a Cleveland paper?” he asked.
The boy shook his head. “I don’t carry ’em,” he said.
“Columbus?”
“Ain’t got nothin’ but the _Recorder_.”
“That all you ever carry?”
“Yep.”
“Do you know where I can buy a Cleveland or a Columbus paper?”
“You might get ’em at Pryor’s, three blocks up.”
Joe retreated to the front of the building and again looked about him.
From the entrance beside him quite a stream of folks were emerging to
hurry homewards. At least every other one stopped to purchase a paper
before going to the car or walking away.
“Hm,” said Joe thoughtfully. “I wonder, now!”
He entered the lobby of the office building and studied it. On one side
were the elevators. Behind them a broad marble stairway started upward,
turning behind the cages, to the floor above. The lobby was not large,
but it was large enough for the purpose Joe had in mind, and presently,
when the occupants of one elevator had pushed out through the revolving
doors, he stepped off the little space between the first elevator and
the front wall of the building. A little less than three yards he made
it. The depth was five feet. Joe half closed his eyes and studied it.
Then, jostled by another carful of departing occupants, he made his way
across to the directory beside the elevators. It was evident that many
of the offices, and Joe decided that there must be some two hundred of
them, were still unoccupied, although the building was now complete
as to its interior. A placard near at hand notified the public that
offices were to be rented of Joseph Adams, Room 129. At that moment an
elevator descended and emptied itself, and the operator, observing Joe
at the directory, asked who he was looking for.
“Strobe,” replied Joe, giving the first name that came to his mind.
“Not here. Maybe he’s coming later. If you mean John P. Strobe, his
place is across the street there, on the opposite corner. Jeweler, is
he?”
Joe said he was and thanked the youth for the direction. Then, looking
about him at the unsurfaced walls: “This is a pretty good building,” he
observed. The other nodded.
“Best in this town, anyway. It wouldn’t cut much ice in Cincinnati, I
guess, but it’s pretty good for Amesville.”
“Are there many in it?”
“Sure, and it’s filling up fast. The old man’s renting two or three
offices a day, I hear.”
“I suppose there’ll be a news-stand here, won’t there?”
“News-stand? Search me! I haven’t heard of any.”
“I should think you’d need one. You must have two or three hundred
people in here.”
“Easy! There’s two hundred and eight offices, and some has two or three
people in ’em. Course, they ain’t all rented yet, but――――”
The signal buzzed and the operator slammed the door and shot out of
sight just as another car arrived. Joe made his way out with the throng
and hurried homeward, his mind very busy all the way. At supper he was
so preoccupied and silent that Aunt Sarah tried to get him to describe
his symptoms and watched him depart for Jack’s house with misgivings.
Up in the big room on the third floor Joe laid the scheme before his
chum. Jack was instantly enthusiastic.
“It’s simply great!” he declared. “How’d you ever think of it? But
you’d sell other things besides newspapers, wouldn’t you, Joey?”
“Yes. Cigars, candy, magazines――anything I could. You see, Jack, if
folks who work in the building know they can get such things right
there they’re pretty sure to deal with me. I ought to sell a lot of
cigars――――”
“And chewing-gum,” laughed Jack.
“And newspapers, too. And I’d make a specialty of carrying the
Cincinnati and Cleveland and Columbus papers, and the Chicago, too; and
maybe one of the New York papers. The trouble is, though, that I’d
have to have money to start with, and I haven’t got it.”
“That’s so.” Jack’s face fell. “How much would you need?” he asked
after a minute.
“It’s hard to tell. Of course, I don’t know what rent Mr. Adams would
charge me, in the first place. In fact, I don’t know yet that he will
rent the space at all. I wondered if your father knew him well enough
to speak a good word for me, Jack.”
“Of course he does! They’re thick as thieves. I’ll get dad to go and
see him with you if you like. Want to go down and ask him now?”
“No; wait a while. I was wondering――――” Joe was silent a minute. Then:
“Have you any money, Jack?”
“Me? About a dollar. Want it?”
“I wondered whether you had any in the bank or――――”
“I have! I’d forgotten it. I’ve got about sixty dollars, I think. But I
don’t know whether dad would want me to take it out, Joe. I’d lend it
to you in a minute if he’d let me, though.”
“I wasn’t thinking of borrowing it,” said Joe. “I was going to suggest
that we go in together. I think we could start with about fifty
dollars. We needn’t put in much of a stock at first, you know. There’d
be a month’s rent, say twenty dollars, and we’d have to buy a few boxes
of cigars and we’d have to have a counter built. Maybe we’d better say
sixty dollars, to be on the safe side. I haven’t figured on it yet, but
I believe we could do it for sixty. I thought that if you’d put in half
and take half the profits until you were square――――”
“I get you, Joey! Half would be only thirty dollars, wouldn’t it? I
don’t believe dad would mind my taking out that much. But could you get
the other thirty, Joey?”
“I think so. I――I’ve got an idea that may work. Anyway――――”
“Why couldn’t I put in the whole sixty if dad will let me? In that way
you wouldn’t have――――”
“It wouldn’t be wise,” said Joe. “I’m pretty sure I can make the thing
go and pay a good profit, Jack, but if I happened to be wrong you’d
stand to lose your money. And sixty dollars would be too much to drop.
Besides, your father wouldn’t let you put in that much when I wasn’t
putting in any.”
“Maybe not. Let’s go down and talk to him about it.”
“No, let’s go over it first. There may be something I’ve missed. Now,
say Mr. Adams lets us have the space for twenty a month; that’s
enough, although he may not think so; then we’ve got to have a counter
built and that will cost, say, ten dollars. It’ll have to be made to
look pretty neat, you know; maybe it had better be imitation mahogany.
Then we’d arrange with the news company for a small list of magazines.
We’d have to pay cash for those at first, but they don’t cost much.
Same way with the papers. There’s good money in the _Gazette_ and the
_Recorder_ at two cents if you sell enough of them. Then we’d want to
put in some confectionery, like gum and chocolate and package things.
We can buy that in Cincinnati and get as little as we want to start on.
At the end of the month we ought to have enough for the next month’s
rent and enough to put in new stock. My idea would be to make the stock
bigger all the time, as we could afford it. There wouldn’t be any other
expenses, would there? Can you think of any?”
Jack couldn’t. “It looks perfectly safe to me,” he said, “because the
rent is the only thing we’d have to worry about, isn’t it? I mean, we
needn’t have more cigars and other things at a time than we could sell
right away.”
“That’s the idea. We’ve got to begin in a small way and expand. We
won’t lay out a cent more than we have to. Then, if it shouldn’t
prove a go we wouldn’t be stung very much. The papers, you know, are
returnable, so we wouldn’t get stuck on those. Some of the magazines
are, too, I think.”
“Hold on!” exclaimed Jack suddenly. “Who’s going to tend shop? We’ll be
in school all day up to three o’clock. Bet you hadn’t thought of that!”
“You must think I’m a good deal of an idiot,” laughed Joe. “I’ll tell
you my scheme. I thought I could go down there in the morning and get
things fixed. We’d have a box on the corner with a slot in it and when
anyone bought anything they could drop the money in the box. Then,
after school――――”
“Suppose they didn’t!” interrupted his chum. “Seems to me that’s pretty
risky!”
“I don’t believe so. You put folks on their honour like that and
they’ll appreciate it and act square. I’ll bet we won’t lose half a
dollar a month, Jack.”
“Well, you’ve got a lot of faith, Joey. Still, you may be right at
that. Come to think of it, I guess you are. All right. And then after
school we could go down there and tend shop, eh?”
“When we didn’t have to practise.”
“That’s so. I’d forgotten practice. Well, on Saturdays we could be
there all day, eh? That would be a lot of fun. I’ve always wanted to
be a merchant and sell things. ‘Cigars? Yes, sir. I think you’ll like
these. We make them ourselves and know just what goes into them, sir.
Two for five, please. Thank you, sir. Come again if you live!’ That’s
the stuff, isn’t it?”
“Fine!” laughed Joe. “Now let’s go down and hear what your father
says.”