Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 128: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

IV sexed MATT placed his advertisement for vee salesmen in all the papers. He spent =i! money on this ad, for he wanted it seen. It was a four-inch double-column dis- _ play, and it was framed to scare off idlers, drunks, and used-to-be’s. The men who answered that ad would assuredly have to qualify. They were asked to call at noon the next day at the Central House. Then Matt took a car out to the pottery, on the edge of the city. Possibly he should have reversed his order of action; but fail- ure did not enter into his scheme of things. Wilson, the manager of the pottery, was a keen-eyed, wrinkle-worried man of forty odd. He wheeled around in his chair when “Matt walked in, with a quick, searching glance at his face. What he saw there— what Matt took care to show there—did not seem to enliven him. Matt sat down with a dispirited air. “Well,” he announced, “‘you are stuck with those jars, Mr. Wilson. ‘The boss laughed at me. Here’s a wire from him.” He handed the manager Ezra Pilkins’s first telegram. Wilson read it and passed it back. “The old man has sand in his gear-box,”’ he observed caustically. ‘“Nothing like this will come his way again in a hundred years. What did you want that sample jar in such - a hurry for?” “To show a chap from New York. Thought I might interest him; but spot cash? He fainted. If you’d make terms now——” “At forty-five hundred?” “‘Thirty-seven.”’ “Nothing doing,” snapped Wilson. Matt reached for his hat. “Oh, all right,” he said nonchalantly. “T’ve a plan for selling those pots that ought to work out, but I’m not sure. I’d have to handle the deal with my own money, and it isn’t much. I’d have to—oh, what’s the use! I vacate the option. Good luck to you!” He rose, but Wilson held up a meditative hand. “What’s the plan?” he desired to a Matt grinned. “Tt came tomeinadream. It’s iad Yack to tell. But here! Ill make you a propo- sition. Take it or leave it. Seven hundred cash down, and six notes, ten days apart, Adventure for five hundred each.” “What security?” “The jars; stock to be drawn on only as — the notes are met; seventeen hundred to- day to satisfy the first payment. Delivery free in Statesburg.”’ Wilson gave a cynical laugh. “You are too modest,” he deplored. “It’s my one failing,” confessed Matt. “Good morning. I see you’d rather nurse those jars till they’re nice and crazed.” His hand was on the knob when Wilson, with an ireful exclamation, as if an unex- pected pin had prodded him, called out: “You infernal, depraved, cold-blooded, sand-bagging yeggman! They’ll land you in the chair yet. Come back here and write your check, I’m in a hole, and you know its “GIVE the office to Old Pilkins,” said Matt to Luke Mitchell that - evening as he saw him off. ‘Tell him T’ll have a few jars in stock if he hap- pens to get a call for some. Six months ago there was a Spanish chap down in Rio who queried us on thirty gross of fourteen-inch, but he went to sleep, and I reckon O. P. has forgotten him. He may wake up and do something. Anyway, we'll have jars to sell if Shifter takes the count when I expect him to.” — “Leave it to me,” responded Mitchell. “What worries me is the shoe-string you are working with. If there’s a slip-up any- woes —— 7 “There won’t be. All I want is the right selling crew, and the rest is pie. We'll start in Thursday. I'll wire you that night the first day’s results. If it reads merrily you might by accident drop the telegram where Pilkins will find it. I want to rub it in on him, the old clam!” Matt, after Mitchell was gone, had him- self taken up to his room, and here he stud- ied out a line of selling talk for his men, to be typed in manifold. Then he touched a match to an old jimmy pipe and wreathed himself in smoke; and in it, as in a double exposure moving-picture scene, he saw a trim, gray-eyed, black-haired young woman frowning at him scornfully. There was not a doubt of it—she was a decidedly pretty irl! “T’ll give her a chance,” he said, when after a time he got up and made ready for bed. (E(0) IOOKS