OUR “SILENT” PARTNER
“Our business career was kind of short and snappy,” I told Poppy, when
we had turned a corner out of sight of the Canners Exchange Bank where
our enemy, Forrest Pennykorn, had just given us the horselaugh.
“How do you get that ‘was’ stuff?” says he. “We really haven’t got
started yet.”
I had known, of course, that he would say something like that. For when
he starts out to do a thing he usually sticks to it until he finishes
it. That’s the kind of a kid _he_ is. But I pretended that I was
surprised.
“What?” I squeaked, as we ran into a jam of people in front of the
Parker grocery where a sale was going on. “Haven’t you given up that
scheme?”
There was a crash of glass on the concrete sidewalk.
“My pickles!” cried one of the shoppers, glaring at poor Poppy as
though she was mad enough to snatch him bald-headed. “Stupid! Why don’t
you watch where you’re going?”
The offender, of course, had an apology a mile long. Then, in his
quick-minded way, he got down on his knees and began fingering the
pickled cucumbers as they lay in a puddle of juice on the sidewalk,
acting for all the world as though he were conducting a pickle
post-mortem, or whatever you call it.
“Mrs. Clayton,” he finally looked up with a long face, “you may not
realize it, but this accident is nothing short of an act of Providence.
And while it may seem to you that you have suffered a loss, you really
are going to be benefited. The very fact that you made this purchase
proves that you are a lover of good pickles. I say _good_ pickles, for,
as a pickle specialist, I can see that you bought the best pickles that
the store had. Probably they are fairly good pickles, as pickles go.
Because I am in the pickle business myself is no reason why I should
run down anybody else’s pickles. Yet, on the other hand, I feel that I
have a right to uphold the superior quality of my own pickles. And it
is of such pickles that I am going to make good your loss. Not _store_
pickles, Mrs. Clayton, as we usually accept the term, but _home-made_
pickles, of which the more you eat the more you want; pickles that you
never tire of; pickles with the lasting, lingering taste; pickles with
a skin you love to touch; pickles,” the orator soared, like a rooster
flopping over a fence, “that please but never pucker. A wonderful
treat is in store for you. And once you have been initiated into the
dinner-time joys of perfect pickles, I hope you’ll remember me, not as
a blundering boy who bumped into you by accident, to the loss of your
bottle of store pickles, but as the hand of Providence that led you
into the light. Poppy’s Pickle Parlor! Easy to remember, isn’t it? If
you’ll say it over two or three times you’ll never forget it. Poppy’s
Pickle Parlor! Which is all to the point, Mrs. Clayton, that whenever
you are in need of pickles, the place to buy them, if you want the
best, is at Poppy’s Pickle Parlor, the home of perfect pickles.”
Well, say! I never felt so foolish in all my life. Poppy is all right.
He is a smart kid, in fact. And no doubt this new scheme of his was
water tight. But it struck me that he was spreading the gab too
promiscuously. Enough people would laugh at us, I figured, without him
making a monkey of himself (and me, too!) in public.
“The first thing you know,” I hinted, when we had escaped from the
laughing crowd that had gathered around us as a result of the free
show, “they’ll be locking you up in a padded cell.”
“What’s the matter, Jerry?” he grinned, in perfect contentment with
himself. “Don’t you like my lingo?”
“You can’t keep it up,” I told him, “and get away with it.”
“It’s good advertising,” he modestly bragged on himself.
“But what’s the use,” says I, “of letting on that we have a Pickle
Parlor when we haven’t?”
“A business is a business,” says he, “from the time it’s organized. And
we’ve been organized for more than an hour.”
“But we haven’t any store. And you say yourself that you don’t know
where we’re going to get our pickles.”
“I know where we’re going to get the first quart,” he grinned.
I saw then that he was holding something back. Which was like him,
of course! And so I was prepared for something of a surprise as I
followed him down the street to his home, where he reappeared from the
cellar with a jar of cucumber pickles, which, on sampling, I had to
acknowledge were the swellest home-made cucumber pickles that I ever
had set my teeth into.
“Who made ’em?” I smacked.
“That,” says he, “is something I have yet to find out.”
“Don’t you know?” I stared.
He slowly shook his head.
“It may seem to you, Jerry, that I just jumped into this Pickle Parlor
scheme on a moment’s notice. But it’s a fact I’ve been twisting the
scheme around in my head for the past two days. And what put it into my
head in the first place was this jar of pickles. Pickles like these, I
told myself, would make a storekeeper rich in no time, providing he had
enough of them to sell. And what fun it would be, I thought, to run a
store of that kind. A Pickle Parlor! The name popped into my head just
like that,” and he snapped his fingers in illustration. “But I ran up
against a snag when I tried to find out who had made the pickles. I
have them here, as you can see. But I don’t know where they came from.”
“But surely,” says I, puzzled over his words, “they didn’t drop out of
the sky.”
“Last Saturday,” he explained, “the ladies of the Presbyterian
missionary society held a food sale in Drake’s store. And there is
where I bought the jar of pickles. I didn’t ask who made them, for I
wasn’t interested ... then. And when I tried to find out later on no
one seemed to know. First, I was sent to Mrs. Bowman on Elm Street.
No, she told me, after tasting the pickles, they weren’t out of her
kitchen. Nor could she help me. But she’d like to buy some of the
pickles, she said, if it turned out that there were more of the same
kind for sale. I went to three women in turn. No success at all. But
here’s an important point, Jerry: Every woman who sampled the pickles
wanted to buy some. So you can see the big money that’s waiting for us
if we can find out who this unknown pickle genius is and win her over
to our scheme.”
There’s nothing I like better than mystery stuff.
“What’ll you give me,” I laughed, “if I find out who the pickle maker
is?”
“I’ll make you president of the company.”
“No,” I shook my head, “that’s your job. For it’s your idea.”
“Well, vice-president then.”
“All we’ve got to do,” I showed my stuff, “is to get a list of the
women who contributed pickles to the church sale and then check off the
names until we come to the right one.”
“That would be fine if there was such a list. But there isn’t, for I
inquired. As I understand it, the newspaper invited people in general
to bring cookies and other stuff to the sale, which explains how the
pickles happened to be brought in. Evidently some one just walked in
with them, and after setting them down quietly walked out again.”
“Then,” says I, as a second lead, “we’ll advertise in the newspaper. Or
if that doesn’t do the trick, we’ll make a house to house canvass.”
It was close to eleven o’clock now. And thinking that maybe Mrs.
Clayton would want her pickles for dinner, we filled a bottle of the
same size as the one that had been broken and hurried down the street
to the factory district, where we saw young Pennykorn’s classy car,
together with several others, parked in a vacant lot across the street
from the canning company’s office. Just beyond was an old-fashioned
house well shut in by untrimmed trees and ragged bushes, a familiar
place to Poppy, for he had worked here painting porches when he first
came to town. At sight of the sleepy-looking house it suddenly popped
into my head who the old man was whom I had noticed in the bank. It was
old Mr. Weckler, the widower who had so generously and unexpectedly
put up the money for the big assembly cabin in our Boy Scout camp. I
had seen him once or twice in camp. So in a way it was strange that I
hadn’t recognized him right off. Still, a fellow can’t remember every
face that he sees. I’ll never forget the joy of the Scouts when the
newspaper announced Mr. Simon Weckler’s donation. And were the Tutter
people ever surprised! For it was the general public opinion that on
top of being something of a miser the old man hated boys, which goes to
show how easily one can be misjudged.
The housekeeper’s face broke into a smile when she saw us at the back
door.
“I hardly knew whether to believe your silly talk or not,” she told
Poppy, taking the pickles that we had brought her.
“Try one,” beamed the pickle specialist, as he caught her looking
curiously into the jar, “and if they aren’t what I represented them to
be I’ll run down town and buy you a tubful of the other kind.”
“Oh ...” she cried, biting into one of the pickles. “Aren’t they
perfectly delicious! Did your mother make them?”
Poppy shook his head.
“No,” he explained quietly, “my mother is dead.”
Here old Mr. Weckler, himself, pottered into the kitchen, thumping
along with his heavy cane, a huge yellow cat tagging at his heels. At
sight of us he gave a dry smile, which showed clearly enough that he
hadn’t forgotten about the pickle oration that our walking dictionary
had so nobly squeezed out of his system in front of the cashier’s
window.
“Found a store yet?” the old man inquired.
“No, sir,” was Poppy’s polite reply.
“I was in the bank when you were there and overheard you inquiring
about Pennykorn’s empty building. Humph! If you would accept my advice
don’t rent from that man if you can possibly help it. Too grasping; too
grasping,” and the shaggy gray head waggled sharply in conclusion.
“I guess,” laughed Poppy, “there’s no danger of us renting _any_
building for one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month.” Liking
cats he got down on his knees. “Hello, Peter,” he held out his hand.
“Remember me, old boy?”
As though it did remember him, the cat came over and rubbed against him.
“Up, Peter,” commanded the old man, pleased at the interest shown in
his pet. “Show the boys what you can do. Up, I say,” and the cat sat up
as pretty as you please.
“You old tyke,” says Poppy, affectionately petting the yellow head.
“He hasn’t forgotten,” says Mr. Weckler, “how you fished him out of
that dry cistern and bandaged his foot.”
“I see it’s all well again.”
“A trifle stiff in the joint, but otherwise as good as ever.... How big
a place do you figure you need for this Pickle Parlor of yours?”
“I imagine we ought to start up in a small way,” says Poppy
thoughtfully. “For the chances are we won’t have much of a stock at
first. In fact,” came the laughing admission, “after supplying you
people we have only seven pickles left. Nor do we know yet where more
of the same kind are coming from.”
Mrs. Clayton laughed when she heard about the unknown pickle genius.
Then, at the old man’s invitation, we followed him into the back yard,
where, almost hidden in a thicket of neglected apple trees, we were
shown a small house on the order of a child’s playhouse, but made full
height, which we were told we could use for a store if it were big
enough for us.
“Originally a summerhouse, I built it over to please my daughter,”
the old man told us quietly. And there was something in the tone of
his voice that made us think that the memory of his daughter wasn’t a
happy one. “It’s of no use to me now. As a matter of fact, this is the
first time that I have been inside of it for years. For your purpose,
of course, it would be better to move it to my vacant lot across the
street from the canning factory.”
Poppy fairly danced with joy.
“Why, there couldn’t _anything_ be better, Mr. Weckler. It fits our
scheme to a ‘T.’ For like the scheme, itself, it’s different. Everybody
will notice it. And it’s plenty big enough, too. We can build our
shelves on the sides,” he began to plan, “and put the counter back
here. Of course,” he ran off into a merry laugh, “it won’t be a very
_big_ counter.” Then he stopped. “But maybe,” he looked up at the old
man with his big solemn eyes, “we can’t afford to pay you what it’s
worth.”
“You paid for it,” came shortly, “when you went down into the cistern
to rescue my cat.”
“But that wasn’t anything. I’d do that for _any_ cat.”
I could see that the old man liked Poppy. For his eyes showed it.
“I dare say you would,” he nodded. “Which is all the more reason why
you’re deserving of any help that I can give you. No, you needn’t say
any more about it. The playhouse is yours to take or leave, as you see
fit. As for moving it onto my lot, if you decide to do that you can pay
me five dollars a month.”
“Only five dollars a month for the whole business?” cried Poppy. “That
isn’t enough. We expect to make a lot of money when we get organized.
And I don’t think it’s right for us to fill our own pockets and not pay
you what we should.”
“Possibly,” came the dry suggestion, “you would like to take me into
partnership with you.”
“Hot dog!” cried Poppy.
“Very well,” the old man gravely accepted the honor. “You may call me
your ‘silent’ partner, if you wish. Which means that you’re to run
the business as you see fit and I’m to look on. As for sharing in the
profits, I’ll take my pay in pickles.”
“So many pickles as _that_?” Poppy looked his surprise.
“Oh,” came dryly, “it may not be so terribly many. Probably not more
than two or three quarts a month at the most.”