"Excellent. But not the answer. And you, young man?"
The accusation of youth is never successfully repulsed. Young Mr.
Barrett, ingeniously admitting his youth to remove the sting from his
humor, replied triumphantly, "Smallpox!"
"The tendency of American youth is toward the clown. It keeps us in an
attitude of perennial apology toward the perennial juvenility of our
nation. What none of you can sell me is--"
He paused. They were looking at him with the intentness with which all
men look at an armed lunatic--or at their master.
After the second minute of suspense they exclaimed in chorus:
"What?"
They couldn't help it!
"Cold feet!" said H. R. calmly.
They looked relieved. Then they looked anxious. The reason the ruled
masses never win is because they inflict upon themselves their own
doubts.
"How many times your own salary do you wish to earn for me?" asked H. R.
in the tone of voice in which a philanthropist asks strangers for
subscriptions to his pet charity. This always makes people feel that
extravagance is a sin.
"I'd expect to earn for you--" began one of the victims.
"Not what you would _expect_, but what you would _like_," corrected
H. R. He spoke so kindly that they at once knew it was a trap. A look of
brotherhood always is, to all clever men of an editorial type of mind.
"Four or five times," answered No. 1.
"And you?"
"I don't want to work for you at all," answered No. 2, feeling that his
answer was sure not to be right.
"Good morning," said H. R. in such a voice and with such a look that No.
2 instantly ceased to exist. When he walked out he didn't hear his own
footsteps.
"And you?"
"It depends," answered No. 3 in the earnest voice of a man trying to be
fair at all costs, "upon what the work will be."
"I sha'n't need you. Please don't ask me questions. Good day, sir."
"I have a right--"
"None whatever. It would be cruelty if I told you."
Mr. Barrett laughed. No. 3 said, angrily, "You can't come that on me and
get away with it, you damned--"
"Go while the going is good, friend." H. R. spoke with the cold kindness
of a man warning an objectionable inebriate. Then, when the loss of
patience of a prize-fighter who, however, has not quite lost sight of
the electric chair: "Get out! D'ye _hear_?"
The man left. H. R. stared out of the window. They could see it was to
cool off. It gave the remaining pair a great respect for him and also a
resolve not to stimulate the heat verbally. At length H. R. turned to
No. 1 and said, "Wolverton is your name?"
"Yes," answered Wolverton. Then he added, "Sir."
"Do you always get what you want?"
"I get my share."
"Barrett, do you get what you want?"
"Always!" promptly answered Barrett. "But I've got to be sure I want
it."
"The more money you two wish to make the better you please me. It will
give you something to brag of. In working for me you will receive your
share of prosperity and the pleasure of becoming somebody."
He looked as if the three of them stood in the plain sight of two and
one-half millions of spectators. He went on, even more impressively,
"You will now go on Fifth Avenue and graciously permit the swellest
shops to employ our union sandwich-men to advertise their wares."
Wolverton rose to his feet. His color also rose.
"You didn't want me to waste your time, did you?"
"No, but you have. Good day. Now, Barrett, listen to me. I never
repeat."
Mr. Wolverton opened his mouth, perceived that H. R. was not looking at
him, closed his mouth and went out. He was a well-dressed man with a
determined chin. If it had not been for that chin he would have been a
bookkeeper. Determination minus imagination equals stubbornness.
Mr. Wolverton therefore walked out unbleeding.
"Barrett, do you see the possibilities?"
"Do I? Didn't I see the parade? Say, I can only think when I talk. Trust
_me_! Speaking of terms--" He looked at H. R., nodded amiably, and said,
"After you, kind friend."
"You will ask our clients five dollars per day per man, they to pay for
the boards, which must be artistic and approved by me. The union label
will be on them. Forty per cent. goes to the artist, forty per cent. to
you, and ten per cent. to the society. Don't try Valiquet's. Tackle
everybody else first. I'll be here all the afternoon. Barrett, I expect
you to do your damnedest!"
He rose, shook hands with young Mr. Andrew Barrett, escorted him to the
door, and returned to his desk.
He sat there, thinking. He intended Barrett should fail in order that
when H. R. made him succeed, later, Barrett should know to whom the
credit should go, though the commissions would fall into Barrett's
pocket. That would make the young man really useful.
The telephone people had not yet installed the apparatus in his office,
so he went downstairs and called up Mr. Maximilian Onthemaker.
"Onthemaker?... This is H. R. speaking.... Of course I saw the
papers.... Yes, all of them. Come up to my office. At once!... I can't
help it; I need you--this means the front page again. If you don't want
the job.... I thought you would! Remember, I'm waiting. Do you hear me?
_Waiting!_"
The greatest stroke of political genius on the part of Louis XIV. was
his rebuke: "I almost have been made to wait!"
What, wait?--H. R.?
If it had not been that taxicabs cost actual money, M. Onthemaker would
have taken one. But he knew he soon would have one of his own--if the
newspapers did their share.
Before Max could decide whether he ought to say good morning to H. R. in
a sulky tone of voice at being called from an important conference, or
smile pleasantly, H. R. said:
"Onthemaker, I am going to advertise a shop without permission and
without pay."
"Another restaurant, like--"
"Like nothing. Don't interrupt again, not even to approve. I am going to
have Valiquet's, the jewelers, brought to the notice of Fifth Avenue
through the medium of our sandwich-men. I anticipate objections. The
statute clearly says we must not use a person's name for purposes of
trade without his consent. But I'm not going to use the name of a
person, but of a corporation, _for its own trade and profit_. There is
no law that can prevent me from putting money into a corporation's
treasury--"
"A commission of lunacy--"
"Be quiet. They can't stop me legally, if you are our counsel." Max
bowed, opened his mouth, and promptly closed it when he saw H. R.'s
face. "They might try to get out an injunction, but you must beat them
to it. They will probably try to get the police to stop us by alleging
breach of the peace, disorderly conduct, or some violation of a city
ordinance. I want you to prepare in advance restraining orders or
applications for injunctions or whatever is needed to prevent
interference with us. You are the counsel of the Society of American
Sandwich Artists. Prepare papers also in the names of individual
members. The poor sandwich artist, working for a mere pittance, without
money to pay his able but charitable and indignant counsel, will fight
the richest jewelry-shop in the world. The pearl showcase alone would
feed one hundred and eighty-six thousand, four hundred and fifty-one men
one week. Do you get that?"
"Do I?" Max Onthemaker, able and indignant, was rushing to embrace
H. R., on whose face he saw ten thousand front-page head-lines, when
H. R. said, coldly:
"Sit down. This is only the beginning."
Max sat down. He felt very much more like kneeling in adoration before
this god of success.
"Yes, sir," he murmured, prayerfully, and looked with his very soul.
"Be ready with the papers for the papers."
Perceiving a puzzled look on the lawyer's face, H. R. explained: "Draw
the legal papers up so they will be news. And remember that _I_ am the
society. You are merely a lawyer lucky enough to be _its_ lawyer. If you
don't know what the reporters like to print, bring the injunctions and
typewritten argument to me this afternoon. Go away now. I'm going to
Valiquet's."
"Not to--"
"Not to anything you may think."
Max Onthemaker walked away, and even as he walked he began to fear that
the newspapers would not let him have more than twenty-eight columns. It
behooved him to be brief. What with the immemorial wrongs of the poor,
and the inalienable rights of American citizens, and the abuse of
wealth, and the arrogance of unconvicted millionaires, and the supine
subservience of the police and the politicians to Big Business, how
could he use less than three pages? How?
But he must do it. He asked himself what steps he would take to prevent
the sandwich-men, or anybody, from advertising him, and he could find no
objection. But he had imagination. He indignantly put himself in the
place of Valiquet's and hired M. Onthemaker, Esq., to stop the beasts.
And then he proceeded to make the able counsel of the S. A. S. A. punch
the great jewelers' case full of holes--such holes as would let out the
law in the way the reporters would like. This would make said holes the
kind that no judge, thinking of re-election and the recall, would dare
to plug up. When your client is poor and doesn't use dynamite, sympathy
is the best law with juries. And when it came to picking out jurors, Max
had inherited a vision for dollars which enabled him to tell the
contents of a juror's inside pocket to the penny, and therefore the
exact hatred of riches of each of the twelve peers.