Chapter XXIV

CASTING ABOUT FOR A STRAIGHT BUSINESS, PATENT MEDICINE PROVIDES THE ANSWER

That was a glorious honeymoon! They traveled from one gay summer resort to another, and when Fannie expressed the first hint of fatigue, Wallingford, who had grown to worship her, promptly provided her with complete and unique rest, by taking her to some one of the smaller inland cities of the type which he loved, installing her in a comfortable hotel, and living, for a week or so, a quiet, lazy existence consisting largely of mere eating and sleeping, and just enough exercise to keep in good health. In all this time there was not one jarring thought, one troubled moment, nor one hint of a shadow. J. Rufus took his wife into all sorts of unique experiences, full of life and color and novelty, having a huge pride in her constant wonder and surprise.

It happened, while upon one of these resting sojourns, that they one night paused on the edge of a crowd which stood gaping at a patent medicine faker. Suddenly recognizing an old acquaintance in the picturesque orator with the sombrero and the shoulder-length gray hair, Wallingford drew closer.

Standing behind the "doctor," upon the seat of his carriage where the yellow light of a gasolene torch flared full upon it, was a gaudy, life-size anatomical chart, and with this as bait for his moths he was extolling the virtues of Quagg's Peerless Sciatacata.

"Here, my friends," he declared, unfolding one of the many hinged flaps of the gory chart, "you _bee_-hold the intimate relation of the stomach with all the _inn_-ternal organs, and above all with the blood, which, pumped by the heart through these _abb_-sorbing membranes, takes up that priceless tonic, Doctor Quagg's Peerless Sciatacata. This, acting _dii_-rectly upon the red corpuscles of the vital fluid, _stimm_-ulates the circulation and carries its germ-destroying properties to every atom of the human frame, casting off _imm_-purities, _clean_-sing the syst-_em_, bringing _ee_-lasticity to the footsteps, hope to the heart, the ruddy glow of bounding health to pale cheeks, and the sparkle of new life to tired and jaded eyes!"

Wallingford turned to his wife with a chuckle,

"Just stand here a minute, Fannie," said he. "I must wade in and speak to the old scout. We stopped a week at the same hotel over in New Jersey and got as chummy as two cell-mates."

Fannie smiled doubtfully in response, and watched her husband with a slight trace of concern as he forced his way through the crowd and up to the wheel of the carriage.

"How are you, Doctor?" said he, holding up his plump palm. "Where are you stopping?"

The doctor's wink at J. Rufus was scarcely perceptible to that large young gentleman himself, much less to the bystanders, as with professional gravity he reached down for a hearty handshake.

"Benson House. Come around and see me to-morrow morning." Then, with added gravity and in a louder voice: "I scarcely knew you, friend, you are so changed. How many bottles of the Sciatacata was it you took?"

"Four," replied J. Rufus clearly, with not even a twinkle in his eye.

"Only four bottles," declaimed Doctor Quagg. "My friends, this is one of my most marvelous cures. When I met this gentleman in Columbus, Ohio, he was a living skeleton, having suffered for years from sciatic rheumatism. He bought from me one night at my carriage, just as he is standing now, six bottles of the Peerless Sciatacata. He took but four bottles, and look at him to-day!"

With one accord they looked. There was some slight tittering among them at first, but the dignity and gravity with which the towering J. Rufus, hale and hearty and in the pink of condition, withstood that inspection, checked all inclination to levity. Moreover, he was entirely too prosperous-looking to be a "capper."

"I owe you my life, Doctor," said Wallingford gratefully. "I never travel without those other two bottles of the Sciatacata," and with the air of a debt of honor paid, he pressed back through the crowd to the sidewalk.

His wife was laughing, yet confused.

"I don't see how you can make yourself so conspicuous," she protested in a low voice.

"Why not?" he laughed. "We public characters must boost one another."

"And the price," they heard the doctor declaiming, "is only one dollar _per_ bottle, or six for five dollars, guar-_an_-teed not only to drive sciatic rheumatism from the sys-_tem_, but to cure the most ob-_stin_-ate cases of ague, Bright's disease, cat-a-lepsy, coughs, colds, cholera, _dys_-pepsia, ery-_sip_-_e_-las, fever _and_ chills, _gas_-tritis"--

"And so on down to X Y Z, etc.," commented Wallingford as they walked away.

His wife looked up at him curiously.

"Jim, did you honestly take four bottles of that medicine?" she wanted to know.

"Take it?" he repeated in amazement. "Certainly not! It isn't meant for wise people to take. It wouldn't do them any good."

"It wouldn't do anybody any good," she decided with a trace of contempt.

"Guess again," he advised her. "That dope has cured a million people that had nothing the matter with 'em."

At the Hotel Deriche in the adjoining block they turned into the huge, garishly decorated dining-room for their after-theater supper. They had been in the town only two days, but the head waiter already knew to come eagerly to meet them, to show them to the best table in the room, and to assign them the best waiter; also the head waiter himself remained to take the order, to suggest a delicate, new dish and to name over, at Wallingford's solicitation, the choice wines in the cellar that were not upon the wine-list.

This little formality over, Wallingford looked about him complacently. A pale gentleman with a jet-black beard bowed to him from across the room.

"Doctor Lazzier," observed Wallingford to his wife. "Most agreeable chap and has plenty of money."

He bent aside a little to see past his wife's hat, and exchanged a suave salutation with a bald-headed young man who was with two ladies and who wore a dove-gray silk bow with his evening clothes.

"Young Corbin," explained Wallingford, "of the Corbin and Paley department store. He had about two dollars a week spending money till his father died, and now he and young Paley are turning social flip-flaps at the rate of twenty a minute. He belongs to the Mark family and he's great pals with me. Looks good for him, don't it?"

"Jim," she said in earnest reproval, "you mustn't talk that way."

"Of course I'm only joking," he returned. "You know I promised you I'd stick to the straight and narrow. I'll keep my word. Nothing but straight business for me hereafter."

He, too, was quite serious about it, and yet he smiled as he thought of young Corbin. Another man, of a party just being shown to a table, nodded to him, and Mrs. Wallingford looked up at her husband with admiration.

"Honestly, how do you do it?" she inquired. "We have only been here a little over forty-eight hours, and yet you have already picked up a host of nice friends."

"I patronize only the best saloons," he replied with a grin; then, more seriously: "This is a mighty rich little city, Fannie. I could organize a stock company here, within a week, for anything from a burglar's trust to a church consolidation."

"It's a pretty place," she admitted. "I like it very much from what I have seen of it."

He chuckled.

"Looks like a spending town," he returned; "and where they spend a wad they're crazy to make one. Give me one of these inland society towns for the loose, long green. New York's no place to start an honest business," and again he chuckled. "By the way, Fannie," he added after a pause, "what do you think of my going into the patent medicine line?"

"How do you mean?" she inquired, frowning.

"Oh, on a big scale," he replied. "Advertise it big, manufacture it big."

She studied it over in musing silence.

"I don't mind what you do so long as it is honest," she finally said.

"Good. I'll hunt up Quagg to-morrow and spring it on him."

"You don't mean that dreadful quack medicine he's selling on the street, do you?" she protested.

"Why not? I don't know that it's worthless, and I do know that Quagg has sold it on street corners for twenty years from coast to coast. He goes back to the same towns over and over, and people buy who always bought before. Looks like a good thing to me. Quagg was a regular doctor when he was a kid; had a real diploma and all that, but no practice and no patience. Joke. Giggle."

The oysters came on now, and they talked of other things, but while they were upon the meat Doctor Lazzier, having finished, came across to shake hands with his friend of a day, and was graciously charmed to meet Mrs. Wallingford.

"Sit down," invited J. Rufus. "Won't you try a glass of this? It's very fair," and he raised a practised eyebrow to the waiter.

The doctor delicately pushed down the edge of the ice-wet napkin until he could see the label, and he gave an involuntary smile of satisfaction as he recognized the vintage. The head waiter had timed the exact second to take that bottle out of the ice-pail, had wrapped the wet napkin about it and almost reverently filled glasses. Occasionally he came over and felt up inside the hollow on the bottom of the bottle.

"Delighted," confessed the doctor, and sat down quite comfortably.

"You may smoke if you like, Doctor," offered Mrs. Wallingford, smiling. "I don't seem to feel that a man is comfortable unless he is smoking."

"To tell the truth, he isn't," agreed the doctor with a laugh, and accepting a choice cigar from Wallingford he lit it.

The waiter came with an extra glass and filled for all three of them.

"By the way, Doctor," said Wallingford, watching the pouring of the wine with a host's anxiety, "I think of going into the patent medicine business on a large scale, and I believe I shall have to have you on the board of directors."

"Couldn't think of it!" objected the doctor hastily. "You know, professional ethics--" and he shrugged his shoulders.

"That's so," admitted Wallingford. "We can't have you on the board, but we can have you for a silent stock-holder."

"Open to the same objection," declared the doctor, with another dubious shrug, as he took up his glass.

He tasted the wine; he took another sip, then another--slow, careful sips, so that no drop of it should hasten by his palate unappreciated. Wallingford did not disturb him in that operation. He had a large appreciation himself of the good things of this world, and the proper way to do them homage.

The doctor took a larger sip, and allowed the delicate liquid to flow gently over his tongue. Wallingford was really a splendid fellow!

"What sort of patent medicine are you going to manufacture?" asked the doctor by way of courtesy, but still "listening" to the taste of the wine.

Wallingford laughed.

"I haven't just decided as yet," he announced. "The medicine is only an incident. What we're going to invest in is advertising."

"I see," replied the doctor, laughing in turn.

"Advertising is a great speculation," went on Wallingford, with a reminiscent smile. "Take Hawkins' Bitters, for instance; nine per cent. cheap whisky flavored with coffee and licorice, and the balance pure water. Hawkins had closed a fifty-thousand-dollar advertising contract before he was quite sure whether he was going to sell patent medicine or shoe polish. The first thing he decided on was the name, and he had to do that in a hurry to get his advertising placed. Hawkins' Bitters was familiar to ten million people before a bottle of it had been made. It was only last summer that Hawkins sold out his business for a cool two million and went to Europe."

"His decoction is terrible stuff," commented the doctor, more in sorrow than in anger; "but it certainly has a remarkable sale."

"I should say it has!" agreed Wallingford. "The drug-stores sell it to temperance people by the case, and in the dry states you'll find every back yard littered with empty Hawkins' Bitters bottles."

A half-dozen entertaining stories of the kind Wallingford told his guest, and by the time he was through Doctor Lazzier began himself to have large visions of enormous profits to be made in the patent medicine business. Somehow, the very waistcoat of young J. Rufus seemed, in its breadth and gorgeousness, a guarantee of enormous profits, no matter what business he discussed. But the doctor's very last remark was upon the sacredness of medical ethics! When he was gone there was a conspicuous silence between Wallingford and his wife for a few minutes, and then she asked:

"Jim, are you actually going to start a patent medicine company?"

"Certainly I am," he replied.

"And will Doctor Lazzier take stock in it?"

"He certainly will," he assured her. "I figure him for from ten to twenty-five thousand."