Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 175: what you’re looking at

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

«3 BING, BANG, BOOM! go to dad for money under any circum- stances. When he hears from me I’ll have twenty thousand dollars that I can show him. Rather than ask him, I’d do just what we decided not to do: form a stock company.” ‘“‘ And we're not going to do that,” Fred declared decisively. ‘‘ We'll manage this thing somehow, so that you get everything for yourself.”’ “For ourselves,” Bert corrected. didn’t say so, but I’ve accepted your offer to buy stock. Five thousand dollars will buy you a one-third interest.”’ “ One-fifth,” said Fred. ‘“ One-third!” Bert repeated. “ That’s settled, so shut up! We’ ve got enough things to attend to without arguing about that. There are a lot of thmgs that must be done, as you say; but many of them can wait until later, when the money begins - to come in. I think we can get by with our seventy-five hundred. Now, about the - advertising. ‘What ’ll we do about that?” Fred thought a moment. “ Let’s see. Of course we want to get out a nice book- let, something like the last ones. It won’t - be quite as expensive this time, because we can usé the same illustrations, and won’t have to add but a few more—a picture of the spring, for one. The question is, how to get them to the proper people. We can’t get lists, as we did before, because no com- pany keeps a list of all the fat people in a city.” “ Hardly,” Bert laughed. “ But how about. selecting one advertising agency in each city and giving each one a bunch of booklets to dispose of. Then it would be up to them to earn their fees, and we weuldn’t have to bother about it. Why, they could send men out on the street with the booklets and give one to every fat per- son who passes!” “ That’s just what we'll do,” agreed Fred. “I'll get in touch with some agen- cies right away, and find out! how much it ‘ll cost us. We can let them attend to other kinds of advertising, too. But there can’t be much of it, because we haven’t the money to pay for it. In a country-wide advertising campaign, five thousand dol- lars is like ten cents.” ~~ : “]T _ing agencies and all of that! 741 ‘This wan’t need so much advertising,” said Bert. have to do is to send one fat person in each city a booklet, and he’d do our advertising for us! You won't have to urge them to come, Fyed. Once they hear of it, you'll have to fight to keep ’em away.” ‘You say that as a joke, but there’s a | lot ‘of truth in it,” Fred replied. “If a man thought he could get back his spry- “ness, or a@ woman thought she could get back her waist-line, they’d swim the At- lantic Ocean to do it. I have an aunt liv- ing in St. Louis who tries everything she hears about in order to lose weight. Why, she wrote me not long ago that she’d been starving herself.#¢r a month, and she was all excited becaus:: she lost eight pounds.”’ He laughed. “ Wait till Aunt Bertha hears of this! Will she be down here?” ‘And wait till dad hears of it,” echoed Bert. ‘‘ He was as big as ‘a house when I left last September, and getting bigger every day. We'll have to send him a book- let and let him come down here, not know- ing that his own little Bertram is running the works! I suppose he thinks I’ve gone to perdition by this time!” He paused. ‘“ You know what you ought to do, Fred? this all up into an article and send it to the Sunday supplement. It ‘ll make great reading, and it ‘ll give us a million dollars’ worth of advertising, free.”’ ‘“ That’s the stuff!’ Fred shouted, jump- ing to his feet and giving Bert a resound- ing slap upon the back. ‘ That’s how to reach ’°em! The deuce with the advertis- All we'll need to do with the booklets is to send ’em to the people who'll write us for information. I'll write an article that ’ll be the news sen- sation of the day. Bert, you’re a wiz!” “Don’t forget to feature David Hodge in it, Fred. You want to get a picture of him—and one of him when he was fat, if you can. If you want to make it a sure- fire article, you want to include a ‘ living example.’ You know—‘ before and .after.’ ” ‘All right. Beat it Rome, now, Bert. I want to write that article to-night. Boy, it’s going to be a lulu!” “It couldn’t nelp it,” said Bert, rising. ‘To tell you thé truth, all we'd . You ought to write. i A sis ar vain aaa as e (C(O) nn) (C/O 6)(0)©) S (C(O)