Chapter XXV

IN WHICH WALLINGFORD ORGANIZES THE DOCTOR QUAGG PEERLESS SCIATACATA COMPANY

At the Benson House J. Rufus found Doctor Quagg with a leg propped up on a chair, and himself in a state of profound profanity.

"What's the matter, Doc?" asked Wallingford.

"Sciatic rheumatism!" howled the martyr. "It's gettin' worse every year. Every time I go on the street for a night I know I'm goin' to suffer. That's why I keep it up so late and spiel myself hoarse in the neck. I jumped into town just yesterday and got a reader from these city hall pirates. They charged me twenty-five iron men for my license for the week. I go out and make one pitch, and that's all I get for my twenty-five."

"Sciatic rheumatism's a tough dose," commiserated Wallingford. "Why don't you take five or six bottles of the Peerless Sciatacata?"

The answer to this was a storm of fervid expletives which needed no diagram. Wallingford, chuckling, sat down and gloated over the doctor's misery, lighting a big, fat cigar to gloat at better ease. He offered a cigar to Quagg.

"I daresn't smoke," swore that invalid.

"And I suppose you daresn't drink, either," observed Wallingford. "Well, that doesn't stop me, you know."

Wearily the doctor indicated a push-button.

"You'll have to ring for a boy yourself," said he.

When the boy came Wallingford ordered a highball.

"And what's yours, sir?" asked the boy, turning to the doctor.

"Lithia, you bullet-headed nigger!" roared the doctor with a twinge of pain in his leg. "That's twice to-day I've had to tell you I can't drink anything but lithia. Get out!"

The boy "got," grinning.

"Seriously, though, old man," said Wallingford, judging that the doctor had been aggravated long enough, "your condition must be very bad for business, and I've come to make you a proposition to go into the manufacture of the Peerless on a large scale."

The doctor sat in silence for a moment, shaking his head despondently.

"You can't get spielers," he declared. "I've tried it. Once I made up a lot of the Sciatacata and sent out three men; picked the best I could find that had made good with street-corner pitches in other lines, and their sales weren't half what mine would be; moreover, they got drunk on the job, didn't pay for their goods, and were a nuisance any way you took 'em."

Wallingford laughed.

"I didn't mean that we should manufacture the priceless remedy for street fakers to handle," he explained. "I propose to start a big factory to supply drug-stores through the jobbing trade, to spend a hundred thousand dollars in advertising right off the bat, give you stock in the company for the use of your formula, and a big salary to superintend the manufacture. That will do away with your exposure to the night air, stop the increase of your sciatica, and make you more money. Why, Doc, just to begin with we'll give you ten thousand dollars' worth of stock."

It took Doctor Quagg some time to recover from the shock of that much money.

"I've heard of such things," said he gratefully, "but I never supposed it could happen to me."

"You don't need to put up a cent," went on Wallingford. "And I don't need to put up a cent. We'll use other people's money."

"Where are you going to get your share?" asked the doctor suspiciously. "Are you going to have a salary, too?"

"No," said Wallingford. "We'll pay you thirty-five dollars to start with as superintendent of the manufacturing department, but I won't ask for a salary; I'll take a royalty of one cent a bottle as manager of the company. I'll take five thousand dollars' worth of stock for my services in promotion, and then for selling the stock I'll take twenty-five per cent. of the par value for all I place, but will take it out in stock at the market rate. We'll organize for half a million and begin selling stock at fifty cents on the dollar, and I'll guarantee to raise for us one hundred and twenty-five thousand net cash--twenty-five thousand for manufacturing and one hundred thousand for advertising."

The doctor drew a long breath.

"If you can do that you're a wonder," he declared; "but it don't seem to me you're taking enough for yourself. You're giving me ten thousand dollars and you're only taking five; you're giving me thirty-five dollars a week and you're only taking a cent a bottle. It seems to me the job of organizing and building up such a company is worth as much as the Sciatacata."

"Don't you worry about me," protested J. Rufus modestly. "I'll get along all right. I'm satisfied. We'll organize the company to-day."

"You can't get all that money together in a day!" exclaimed the doctor in amazement.

"Oh, no; I don't expect to try it. I'll put up all the money necessary. We want five directors, and we have three of them now, you and my wife and I. Do you know anybody around the hotel that would serve?"

The doctor snorted contemptuously.

"Nobody that's got any money or responsibility," he asserted.

"They don't need to have any money, and we don't want them to have any responsibility," protested Wallingford. "Anybody of voting age will do for us just now."

"Well," said the doctor reflectively, "the night clerk's a pretty good fellow, and the head dining-room girl here has always been mighty nice to me. She's some relation to the proprietor and she's been here for five years."

"Good," said Wallingford. "I'll telephone out for a lawyer."

There was no telephone in the room, but down-stairs Wallingford found a pay 'phone and selected a lawyer at random from the telephone directory. Within two hours Wallingford and his wife, Doctor Quagg, Albert Blesser and Carrie Schwam had gravely applied for a charter of incorporation under the laws of the state, for The Doctor Quagg Peerless Sciatacata Company, with a capital stock of one thousand dollars, fully paid in. As he signed his name the doctor laughed like a school-boy.

"Now," said he, "I'm going to get my hair cut."

Wallingford stopped him in positive fright.

"Don't you dare do it!" he protested.

"Is that hair necessary to the business?" asked the doctor, crestfallen.

"Absolutely," declared Wallingford. "Why, man, that back curtain of yours is ten per cent. dividends."

"Then I'll wear it," agreed the doctor resignedly; "but I hate to. You know I've honed for years to quit this batting around the country, and just ached to wear short hair and a derby hat like a white man."

Wallingford looked at the weather-bronzed face and shook his head.

"What a pity that would be!" he declared. "However, Doc, your wanderings cease from this minute, and your salary begins from to-day."

"Fine," breathed the doctor. "I say, Wallingford, then suppose you order me about three gross of bottles and some fresh labels. I'll get the drugs myself and start in making a supply of the Sciatacata."

"You just nurse your leg," advised Wallingford. "Why, man, when we start manufacturing the Peerless it will be in vats holding a hundred gallons, and will be bottled by machinery that will fill, cork and label a hundred bottles a minute. You're to superintend mixing; that's your job."

It took many days, days of irksome loafing for the doctor, before they had their final incorporation papers. Immediately they elected themselves as directors, made Quagg president, Wallingford secretary and Albert Blesser treasurer, and voted for an increase of capitalization to one-half million dollars. They gave Quagg his hundred shares and Wallingford his fifty; they voted Quagg his salary and Wallingford his royalty; also they voted Wallingford an honorarium of twenty-five per cent., payable in stock, for disposing of such of the treasury shares as they needed issued, and immediately Wallingford, who had spent the interim in cultivating acquaintances, began to secure investors.

He sold more than mere stock, however. He sold Doctor Quagg's hair and sombrero; he sold glowing word pictures of immense profits, and he sold the success of all other patent medicine companies; he sold his own imposing height and broad chest, his own jovial smile and twinkling eye, his own prosperous grooming and good feeding--and those who bought felt themselves blessed.

First of all, he sold fifty thousand dollars' worth for twenty-five thousand to young Corbin, whereupon Mr. Blesser, as per instructions, resigned from the treasurership and directorate in favor of Mr. Corbin. Wallingford got fifteen thousand dollars from Doctor Lazzier, and ten from young Paley, and with fifty thousand dollars in the treasury sent for an advertising man and gave out a hundred-thousand-dollar contract.

"For the first half of this campaign," he explained to the advertising man, "I want this one ad spread everywhere: 'Laugh at That Woozy Feeling.' This is to cover the top half of the space in good, plain, bold letters. In place of leaving the bottom blank for kids to scribble reasons of their own why you should laugh at that woozy feeling, we'll put gray shadow-figures there--grandpa and grandma and pa and ma and Albert and Henry and Susan and Grace and little Willie, all laughing fit to kill. And say, have it a real laugh. Have it the sort of a laugh that'll make anybody that looks at it want to be happy. Of course, later, I want you to cover up the bottom half of that advertisement with: 'Use Doctor Quagg's Peerless Sciatacata,' or something like that, but I'll furnish you the copy for that when the time comes. It will be printed right over the laughing faces."

"It should make a very good ad," commented the agent with enthusiasm, writing out the instructions Wallingford gave him, and willing to approve of anything for that size contract.

Wallingford went home to his wife, filled with a virtuous glow.

"You know, there's something I like about this straight business, Fannie," said he. "It gives a fellow a sort of clean feeling. I'm going to build up a million-dollar business and make everybody concerned in it rich, including myself. Already I've placed one hundred thousand dollars' worth of stock, have fifty thousand dollars cash in the treasury, and fifty-five thousand dollars' worth of stock for myself."

She looked puzzled.

"I thought you were to get only twenty-five per cent. for selling the stock."

He chuckled; shoulders, chest and throat, eyes and lips and chin, he chuckled.

"Twenty-five per cent. of the par value," said he, "payable in stock at the market price."

"I don't see the difference," she protested. "I'm sure I thought it was to be straight twenty-five per cent., and I'm sure all the members of the company thought so."

He patiently explained it to her.

"Don't you see, if I sell one hundred thousand dollars' worth of stock, I get the same as twenty-five thousand dollars for it, and with that buy fifty thousand dollars' worth of stock? Of course I get it at the same price as others--fifty per cent."

"Did they understand you'd get fifty thousand instead of twenty-five thousand?" she asked.

He chuckled again.

"If they didn't they will," he admitted.

She pondered over that thoughtfully for a while.

"Is that straight business?" she inquired.

"Of course it's straight business or I wouldn't be doing it. It is perfectly legitimate. You just don't understand."

"No," she confessed, "I guess I don't; only I thought it was just twenty-five per cent."

"It is twenty-five per cent.," he insisted, and then he gave it up. "You'd better quit thinking," he advised. "It'll put wrinkles in your brow, and I'm the one that has the wrinkles scheduled. I've just contracted for one hundred thousand dollars' worth of advertising, and I've got to go out to sell enough stock to bring in the cash. Also, I've rented a factory, and to-morrow I'm going to let out contracts for bottling machinery, vats and fixtures. I've already ordered the office furniture. You ought to see it. It's swell. I'm having some lithographed stationery made, too, embossed in four colors, with a picture of Doctor Quagg in the corner."

"How much stock has the doctor?" she asked.

"Ten thousand."

"Is that all he's going to have?" she wanted to know.

"Why, certainly, that's all he's going to have. I made the bargain with him and he's satisfied."

"Ten thousand dollars' worth out of a half-million-dollar corporation? Why, Jim, for his medicine, upon which the whole business is built, he only gets--how much is that of all of it?"

"One fiftieth, or two per cent.," he told her.

"Two per cent.!" she gasped. "Is that straight business, Jim?"

"Of course it's straight business," he assured her. "Of course," and he smiled, "Doc didn't stop to figure that he only gets two per cent. of the profits of the concern. He figures that he's to draw dividends on the large hunk of ten thousand dollars' worth of stock, and he's satisfied. Why aren't you?"

"I don't know," she replied slowly, still with the vague feeling that something was wrong. "Really, Jim, it don't seem to me that straight business is any more fair than crooked business."

Wallingford was hugely disappointed.

"And that's all the appreciation I get for confining myself to the straight and narrow!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, I didn't mean that, Jim," she said, with instant contrition. "You don't know how glad I am that now, since we're married, you have settled down to honorable things; and you'll make a fortune, I know you will."

"You bet I will," he agreed. "In the meantime I have to go out and dig up seventy-five thousand dollars more of other people's money to put into this concern; _which will give me another seventy-five thousand dollars' worth of stock_! Straight business pays, Fannie!"