PARTNERS CONFER
Alton Academy commenced its Fall Term on September 24th that year, and
on the afternoon of the nineteenth Russell Emerson dropped from the
train at Alton Station, a battered valise in hand, and, disregarding
the cordial invitations of carriage and taxi drivers, set forth on
foot. It appears to be a New England custom to locate the railroad
station as far as possible from the center of the town, and Alton had
made no departure from custom. A good half-mile intervened between
station and business center, and a second half-mile between the heart
of the town and Alton Academy. There had been a time when Alton and
Alton Station had been two quite distinct settlements, but now the
town had followed the route of the trolley and the two were slenderly
connected by a line of small dwellings, small shops and, occasionally,
a small factory. Russell followed the trolley tracks and, although
presently a car came rattling and whisking toward him from the
direction of the station, continued on foot, the valise growing heavier
as the stores became more important and more prosperous in appearance.
But the boy rested frequently, always before one of the little stores,
and at such times the valise was set down beside him on the pavement
while his gaze roved from door to window and when possible penetrated
past the usually unattractive display of goods into the further dim
recesses of the building. Oddly, as it would seem, his pauses were
longer and his interest greater when the window was empty of goods and
a placard announced the premises for rent. Indeed, on three occasions
he crossed the street to peer up at and into tenantless stores, and on
two occasions he jotted down memoranda on the back of an envelope ere
he took up his burden and went on.
Reaching the busier and more populous part of Alton, he turned to the
left, past the town’s single department store, and halted under a sign
which read: “Hartford House--Gentlemen Only--One Flight.” Russell
pushed open the door and climbed the stairs. The office was at the
left of the landing, a clean, sun-filled room through whose broad
windows one might look down on the traffic of the street or watch, if
one cared to, the casements across the way, beyond which a tailor, a
Painless Dentist and a manufacturing jeweler plied their trades. At
the desk, presided over by an elderly man with abundant gray whiskers,
Russell set his name down in an ink-smeared register, paid the sum of
seventy-five cents and was presented with a key.
“Eighteen,” said the clerk wheezily. “One flight, turn to the left.
Thank you.”
Acting as his own bell-boy, Russell took himself and his luggage to
the second floor, found the door numbered 18 and took possession of a
very small, barely furnished room which had, nevertheless, the merit of
cleanliness. He ran the shade up, opened the window and found himself
looking down on the roof of the Imperial Steam Laundry, as a bold
inscription painted on the corrugated iron roof informed him. Beyond
the laundry were the brick backs of several office buildings.
“Not much of a view,” murmured Russell tolerantly, “but plenty of air.
Now let’s see.” He stripped off his coat and placed it, with a somewhat
yellowed straw hat, on the narrow bed. Then, rolling up his sleeves,
he poured water into the chipped basin and washed face and hands. That
done, he dried on a wispy towel and opened his valise. From it he
extracted a thin bundle of papers held together by an elastic band,
placed a chair before the window and seated himself, lodging his feet
comfortably on the ledge. For the next ten minutes he was busy looking
through the contents of the bundle. That completed, he brought forth a
fountain pen from a pocket and began to figure thoughtfully on the back
of one of the papers.
“Eighty-eight, sixty in bank,” he muttered as he set down that
sum. “Check for one hundred and twenty-five. Fifteen and--” He
paused and counted the contents of a small leather purse. “Fifteen
and seventy-four. It’ll cost me three dollars for my room here for
four days and, say, four dollars for meals. That’s seven dollars.
Then there’ll be incidentals. Guess I’ll say ten altogether. Ten,
seventy-four rather. That leaves five. Now then. Naught, six, eight and
one to carry, one--two hundred and eighteen dollars and sixty cents.”
He gazed for a long minute at the result of his figuring and finally
shook his head. “That isn’t nearly enough,” he sighed. “Maybe, though,
Stick can do better than he thought he could. If he can put in two
hundred more I guess we can manage.” He looked at his watch. “Ought to
be here in an hour. Guess I’ll go out and have a look around before he
gets here.”
He put his coat on again and took his hat and sallied forth, stopping
at the office long enough to leave his key and to inform the clerk
that he would be back at five o’clock, in case any one should inquire
for him. Then for the better part of an hour he roamed the streets in
that portion of Alton which lay between the Hartford House and the
Academy, specializing on the side streets but not neglecting such
important arteries of traffic and avenues of trade as Meadow and West
and State streets. He was back at a minute or two before five and had
made himself comfortable in one of the six wooden armchairs that stood
empty in a row before the windows when feet echoed on the stairway,
the office door was pushed open and a very tall, very thin youth
appeared. He carried a suit-case, an overcoat and an umbrella, all of
which, perceiving Russell across the room, he dumped on the desk before
stepping to meet him.
“Hello, Rus,” he greeted. “How long have you been here? Have you got a
room? Do I bunk in with you, or--”
“You’ll have to get one of your own,” replied Russell as they shook
hands. “Mine’s just a single one. Guess they all are. How are you,
Stick? Haven’t fattened up much this summer.”
“I’m very well, thanks. Wait till I register and we’ll go up and have a
talk. Got your letter about ten minutes before I left. Thought you were
dead or something.”
In a room very similar to that assigned to Russell, the two seated
themselves, George Patterson on the bed and Russell on the single
chair. Stick, as he was called, was a boy of Russell’s own age, which
was seventeen, but looked fully a year older. He came from St. Albans,
Vermont, according to the school catalogue, and the catalogue was quite
infallible on such subjects, but before that Stick had lived--in fact
had been born--in Toronto, and there was much more of the Canadian
than the Yankee in him. He was extremely tall and extremely thin,
with high cheek bones, a good deal of color, very dark brown hair
that curled, gray eyes, a generous nose and a rather large mouth. You
couldn’t call him handsome, but he looked particularly healthy and
clean and wholesome. One of the things that Russell liked most about
him was his appearance of having just stepped out of a bath, and even
now, after a long train journey, that appearance persisted. The two
were room-mates in Upton Hall. They had been thrown together quite by
accident the preceding fall and had not yet regretted the fact; which,
I think, speaks well for each of them.
Stick wasn’t an awfully brilliant chap. In fact, there were some who
declared that he was rather a bore. But Russell was used to him, and he
had long since decided that an even temper and similar attributes were
preferable in a room-mate to mere conversational scintillations. Stick
had rather a peculiar sense of humor, or, perhaps, lack of humor. He
adored a practical joke when it was on some one else, but saw no fun
in such a joke played on himself. As a fair sample of his ideal in the
way of a funny story it may be stated that his favorite was a rather
long and ponderous tale about a London window-washer who fell from the
sixth story of a building and landed on a “bobby.” To Stick there was
something irresistibly appealing to his sense of humor in the fact
that the policeman was killed and the window-washer wasn’t! But Stick
was a fellow who wore remarkably well, and, after all, that’s a fine
quality in a room-mate.
“Well, I brought the money,” he announced after a few exchanges of
remarks anent the past vacation.
“How much?” asked Russell anxiously.
“A hundred and twenty-five.”
“A hundred and twent-- But, Stick, you said it would be a hundred and
fifty at least!”
“I didn’t say it positively,” disclaimed the other. “I did think I
could put in that much, Rus, but--well, I just can’t do it.” Then,
after a short pause, he added in a desire to be strictly truthful: “I
mean, I don’t think I ought to, Rus. Of course, it’s my money, and all
that, but father doesn’t think very well of the idea, and if he needed
money some time he’d expect me to let him have a little, and if I put
it all into this I won’t have any left. You see, we don’t know for
certain that this thing’s going to be a go. I hope it will be, for I’d
hate to lose that money, but there’s nothing sure about it, is there?”
Russell shook his head. “No, nothing’s sure until it’s happened, Stick,
but this thing is bound to go all right. Gee, it’s just got to!”
“Yes, I know,” Stick agreed without much enthusiasm, “but things don’t
always succeed because some one says they’ve got to.”
Russell sighed. “I wish your grandmother hadn’t married a Scotsman,
Stick!”
“What’s that got to do with--”
“You’ll die a poor man, Stick, just on that account,” returned his chum
gloomily. “Left to itself, the Irish in you would risk a dollar now and
then, but that Scotch blood sets up a howl every time.”
“It’s all right to take a chance,” said Stick seriously, “but there’s
no sense in being risky. I say, with what you have, won’t a hundred and
twenty-five do?”
“It will have to,” answered Russell grimly, “if that’s all you’ll come
in with. I’ve gone too far now to back down. I spent a whole day in New
York, and every one was mighty decent, and I arranged for a whole raft
of stuff to come down the twenty-second. The Proctor-Farnham people
even offered me ninety days’ credit. You see, their goods are new in
the East, Stick, and they’re making a big try to get them going. They
make mighty good stuff, too, and I’m pretty certain we can sell a lot
of it once we’re started. Of course we’ll have to carry the other
makes, too. Some fellows won’t look at a thing unless they grew up with
it! Well, anyway, they were quite enthusiastic about the scheme and
would have pretty near stocked us up for nothing if I’d agreed to sell
only their stuff. But that wouldn’t do. Not yet, anyhow. They offered
to send a man down to arrange a window display, but I had to decline
that, for I didn’t want them to know that we hadn’t even found a store
yet. They might have thought I was crazy. As it was I did a good deal
of bluffing, I guess, and talked as if I had about a million dollars.
The other folks were a heap more haughty, although they were willing
enough to let us have a fair line of samples. They don’t have to offer
inducements to sell their goods, you see. Well, now about the money,
Stick. I’ve got a little more than two hundred. That’s three hundred
and twenty-five, about three hundred and forty, really. I’d hoped for
four hundred at least. It means that we’ll have to be satisfied with a
more modest store, for it’s store rent that’s going to be the principal
expense for a while. I’ve been pretty well over the town, Stick. There
are two places I’d love to have, but they’re both on West street and
the rent would be something awful. Then there are a couple of places
out on the way to the station. They’d be cheap enough, but I guess we
might just as well throw our money away as locate out there. Fellows
never get that far from school.”
“No, we’ve got to be somewhere around Bagdad,” replied Stick. Bagdad
was the Academy name for the two blocks on West street lying nearest
to the school. Here was established a small shopping district quite
distinct from that further in the town, one depending largely, though
by no means wholly, on the students for trade. The stores that lined
both sides of the street were usually small, but, in the parlance of
trade, “select.” One found neckties of a rather more “zippy” coloring
here, hats with a more rakish air, shoes with more character, clothing
that bordered yet did not infringe on the sporty. And, of course, the
stationery store carried the sort of books and blanks and binders
and pens that Alton Academy affected, while The Mirror specialized
in such highly colored and ultra sweet concoctions of ice cream and
syrups, fruits and nuts as are beloved of all preparatory school youths
everywhere. Bagdad, in short, provided for so many of the wants of
Alton students that only once in a blue moon was it necessary for them
to seek further afield.
“Yes,” Russell agreed, “but I don’t believe we can find anything very
close that we can afford to take. There’s one place--”
He broke off to look thoughtfully across at Stick.
“Well?” prompted the latter.
“It’s upstairs, over The Parisian Tailors, on West street. But I don’t
like the idea, Stick. You know yourself that a chap won’t climb a
flight of stairs if he can find the same thing by walking a block or
two further. And there’s Crocker’s store only five doors beyond. I
guess that wouldn’t do.”
“Let’s go and have another look,” suggested Stick. “There must be some
place we can have. We’ve got an hour before we need to eat, Rus. What
do you say?”
“All right, but there’s no use going to Bagdad. We might try River
street below West.”
“Huh, no fellow ever sets foot over there! I say, I’ve got it!”
“Shoot, then, Stick.”
“We’ll hire half a store from some one who doesn’t need it!”
“Why, yes, that might do,” replied Russell slowly, “but where are we
going to find it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we can’t, but it’s an idea, isn’t it? Something to
work on, eh? Let’s go and have a look.”