"For why you wish to know?" he said.
"Don't ask _me_ questions. Isn't he your friend?"
"Sure."
"Is he smart?"
"Smart?" C. Weinpusslacher laughed now, fatly. "He's too smart for
_you_, all right. He's Max Ondemacher, 397 Bowery. I guess if you--"
"All right. I'm going to bring him to lunch here."
"He wouldn't lunch here. He's got money," said C. Weinpusslacher,
proudly.
"He will come." Rutgers looked, in a frozen way, at Caspar
Weinpusslacher, and continued, icily: "I am the secretary and treasurer
of the _National_ Street Advertising Men's Association. If I told you I
wanted _you_ to give _me_ money you'd believe me. But if I told you _I_
wanted to give _you_ money, you wouldn't. So I am going to let your own
lawyer tell you to do as I say. I'll make you rich--for nothing!"
And Hendrik Rutgers walked calmly out of the Colossal Restaurant,
leaving in the eyes of C. Weinpusslacher astonishment, in the mind
respect, and in the heart vague hope.
This is the now historic document which Hendrik Rutgers dictated in Max
Onthemaker's office:
Hendrik Rutgers, secretary and treasurer of the National
Street Advertising Men's Association, agrees to make Caspar
Weinpusslacher's Colossal Restaurant famous by means of
articles in the leading newspapers in New York City. For
these services Hendrik Rutgers shall receive from said
Caspar Weinpusslacher, proprietor of said Colossal
Restaurant, one-tenth (1/10) of the advertising value of
such newspaper notices--said value to be left to a jury
composed of the advertising managers of the _Ladies Home
Journal_, the Jewish _Daily Forward_, and the New York
_Evening Post_, and of Max Onthemaker and Hendrik Rutgers.
It is further stipulated that such compensation is to be
paid to Hendrik Rutgers, not in cash, but in tickets for
meals in said Colossal Restaurant, at thirty cents per
meal, said meal-tickets to be used by said Hendrik Rutgers
to secure still more desirable publicity by feeding
law-abiding, respectable poor people.
_Panem et circenses!_ He had made sure of the first! The public could
always be depended upon to furnish the second by being perfectly
natural.
M. Onthemaker accompanied H. Rutgers to the Colossal. He had some
difficulty in persuading C. Weinpusslacher to sign. But as soon as it
was done Hendrik said:
"First gun: The National Street Advertising Men will hold their annual
dinner here next Saturday, about one hundred of us, thirty cents each;
regular dinner. _That_ is legitimate news and will be printed as such.
It will advertise the Colossal and the Colossal thirty-cent dinner. You
won't be out a cent. We pay cash for our dinner. I'll supply a few
decorations; all you'll have to do is to hang them from that corner to
this. You might also arrange to have a little extra illumination in
front of the place. Have a couple of men in evening clothes and high
hats on the corner, pointing to the Colossal, and saying:
'_Weinpusslacher's Colossal Restaurant! Three doors down. Just follow
the crowd!_' Arrange for all these things so that when you see that I am
delivering the goods you won't be paralyzed. Another thing: There will
be reporters from every daily paper in the city here Saturday night.
Provide a table for them and pay especial attention to both dinner and
drinks. _They_ will make you famous and rich, because you will tell them
that they are getting the regular thirty-cent dinner. It will be up to
you to be intelligently generous now so that you may with impunity be
intelligently stingy later, when you are rich. I advise you to have Max
here, because you seem to be of the distrustful nature of most damned
fools and therefore must make your money in spite of yourself. Next
Saturday at six P.M.! You'll make at least two hundred thousand dollars
in the next five years. Now I am going to eat. Come on, Onthemaker."
H. Rutgers sat down, summoned the Herculean waiter, and ordered two
thirty-cent dinners.
C. Weinpusslacher, a dazed look in his eyes, approached Max and
whispered, "Hey, dot's a smart feller. What?"
"Well," answered M. Onthemaker, lawyer-like, "you haven't anything to
lose."
"You said I should sign the paper," Caspar reminded him, accusingly.
"You're all right so long as you don't give him a cent unless I say so."
"I won't; not even if you say so."
With thirty cents of food and thirty millions of confidence under his
waistcoat, Hendrik Rutgers walked from the Colossal Restaurant down the
Bowery and Center Street to the City Hall. At the door of the Mayor's
room he fixed the doorkeeper with his stern eye and requested his Honor
to be informed that the secretary of the National Street Advertising
Men's Association would like to see his Honor about the annual dinner of
the association, of which his Honor had been duly informed.
One of the Mayor's secretaries came out, a tall young man who, as a
reporter on a sensational newspaper, had acquired a habit of dodging
curses and kicks. Now, as Mayor's secretary, he didn't quite know how to
dodge soft soap and glad hands.
"Good afternoon," said Hendrik, with what might be called a
business-like amiability. "Will the Mayor accept?"
"The Mayor," said the secretary with an amazing mixture of condescension
and uneasiness, as of a man calling on a poor friend in whose parlor
there is shabby furniture but in whose cellar there is a ton of
dynamite--"the Mayor knows nothing about your asso--of the _dinner_ of
your association." The secretary looked pleased at having caught himself
in time.
"Why, I wrote," began H. Rutgers, with annoyance, "over a week--" He
silenced himself while he opened his frock-coat, tilted back his high
hat from a corrugated brow, and felt in his pocket. It is the delivery,
not the speech, that distinguishes the great artist. Otherwise writers
would be considered intelligent people.
"Hell!" exclaimed Hendrik, looking at the secretary so fixedly and
angrily that the ex-reporter flinched. "It's in the other coat. I mean
the copy of the letter I sent the Mayor exactly a week ago to-day. I
wondered why he hadn't answered."
"He never got it," the secretary hastened to say.
Hendrik laughed. "You must excuse my language; but you know what it is
to arrange all the details of an annual meeting and banquet--menu,
decorations, music, _and_ speeches. Well, here is the situation: the
annual dinner of the National Street Advertising Men's Association will
be held at Weinpusslacher's. Reception at six; dinner at eight; speeches
begin about ten.
"What day?" asked the secretary.
"My head is in a whirl, and I don't-- Let me see-- Oh yes. Next
Saturday, April twenty-ninth. I'll send you tickets. Do you think the
Mayor will come?"
"I don't know. Saturdays he goes to his farm in Hartsdale."
"Yes, I know; but couldn't _you_ induce him to come? By George! there is
nothing our association wouldn't do for you in return."
"I'll see," promised the secretary, with a far-away look in his eyes as
if he were devising ways and means. Oh, he earned his salary, even if he
was a Celt.
"Thank you. And-- Oh yes, by the way, some of our members will arrive at
the Grand Central Station Saturday afternoon. Any objections to our
marching with a band of music down the avenue to the Colossal? We'll
wear our association badges; they are hummers." He felt in his
coat-tails. "I wish I had some with me. Is it necessary to have a permit
to parade?"
"Yes; but there will be no trouble about that."
"Oh, thanks. Will you fix that for us? I've got to go to Wall Street
after one of the bankers on the list of speakers, and I'll be back in
about an hour. Could I have the Mayor's acceptance and the permit to
parade then? You see, it's only a couple of days and I hate to trust the
mail. Thank you. It's very kind of you, and we appreciate it."
The secretary pulled out a letter and a pencil from his pocket as if to
make a note on the back of the envelope, and so Hendrik Rutgers
dictated:
"_The National Street Advertising Men's Association._ Altogether about
one hundred and fifty members and one band of music. So long, and thank
you very much, Mr.--er--"
"McDevitt.
"Mr. McDevitt. I'll return in about an hour from now, if I may. Thank
you." And he bowed himself out.
Hendrik Rutgers had spoken as a man speaks who has a train to catch
that he mustn't miss. That will command respect where an appeal in the
name of the Deity will insure a swift kick. Republics!
In an hour he was back, knowing that the Mayor had gone. He sent in for
Mr. McDevitt. The secretary appeared.
"Did he say he'd come?" asked H. Rutgers, impetuously.
"I am sorry to say the Mayor has a previous engagement that makes it
absolutely impossible for him to be present at your dinner. I've got a
letter of regret."
"They'll be awfully disappointed, too. I'll get the blame, of course.
_Of_ course!" Mr. Rutgers spoke with a sort of bitter gloom, spiced with
vindictiveness.
"Here it is. I had him sign it. I wrote it. It's one of those letters,"
went on the secretary, inflated with the pride of authorship, "that can
be read at any meeting. It contains a dissertation on the beneficent
influence of advertising, strengthened by citations from Epictetus,
Buddha, George Francis Train, and other great moral teachers of this
administration."
"Thank you very much. I appreciate it. But, say, what's the matter with
you coming in his place? I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I have a
hunch that when it comes to slinging after-dinner oratory you'd do a
great deal better."
"Oh," said McDevitt, with a loyal shake of negation and a smile of
assent. "No, I couldn't."
"I'm sure--"
"And then I'm going to Philadelphia on Saturday morning to stay over
Sunday. I wish you'd asked me earlier."
"So do I," murmured H. Rutgers, with conviction and despair judiciously
admixed.
The secretary had meant to quiz H. Rutgers about the association, but H.
Rutgers's manner and words disarmed suspicion. It was not that H.
Rutgers always bluffed, but that he always bluffed as he did, that makes
his subsequent career one of the most interesting chapters of our
political history.
"And here's the permit," said the secretary.
H. Rutgers, without looking at it, put it in his pocket as if it were
all a matter of course. It strengthened the secretary's belief that
non-suspiciousness was justified.
"Thanks, very much," said H. Rutgers. "I am, I still repeat, very sorry
that neither you nor the Mayor can come." He paid to the Mayor's
eloquent secretary the tribute of a military salute and left the room.