Argosy, Vol. 1 (1882) — page 307: what you’re looking at

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

298 ers to the wharf in time for loading upon the next day’s boat. Joe and the caterers, therefore, returned together. On the way they had another talk about the proposed arrangement. One ot them, who had become spokesman for the party, cautiously suggested that they might accept his terms provided he carried out strictly his part of the contract, and paid them the actual cash for their freezers. “Gentlemen,” said Joe, suavely, “ there is to be here either a monopoly of the ice cream business absolutely in my hands as manufacturer and dealer, or there will be the more sensible di- vision that I have suggested. If it is to be a monopoly, I shall require the delivery of your freezers and pay you for them. Then I shall establish cafés of my own. . One is already in course of preparation. In a week I can have a dozen. You may operate the freezers now in your respective places on com- mission from me, subject only to this —that if you do not do business enough to satisfy.me, I shall then pay you the contract price for the freezers and take them away.” This view of the case staggered the caterers, They felt that Joe had them, and that it was useless for them to squirm. They thus reported the situa- tion to their colleagues at home with the result that during the day after the return to Ponce, Joe was largely occu- pied in drawing up new contracts, the effect of which was to make every ca- terer in Ponce subject to him, so far as the ice cream business went. Meantime the preparation of his own café, which was to be in charge of his secretary's mother, went on, and there also went voluminous letters to New ' York relative to the prospects of or- ganizing a street railway company in Ponce. Joe gave his friend Wolcott, a chance to make a dollar in this matter. With all his audacity, with all his un- scrupulousness, if you will, in playing upon the greed of Ponce capitalists to THE ARGOSY. provide for his immediate necessities, there'never had been an iota of insin- cerity in Joe's advocacy of a railroad. He believed in it thoroughly. It ap- pealed to him as the most promising held for immediate investment that he had seen in the island, and that his game was not all bluff could have been seen plainly enough if the local inves- tors had been privileged to read his letters. Ii they had read them, to be sure, they would have demanded their for- feit money, and would have cut Joe’s acquaintance, even if they did not go so far as to tar and feather him, or banish him from the island. But there was as yet no danger to Joe of suffer- ing such outrageous consequences. As young Marto was busy every hour now in completing the arrange- ments for the ice cream monopoly, and as moreover the letters had to be writ- ten in English, all the correspondence was conducted by Joe alone. It was no sooner off his hands and in the mails than he began speedily to bethink him- self as to whether there might not be some other opportunity in or near Ponce awaiting his magic touch to be developed. Nothing occurred to him in that line at once, but another thought of a very different nature did. He had not been through all this exacting pressure of critical negotiations without being troubled from time to time by a vision of lustrous eyes and the memory of a melodious voice. Now and again he got so far as to be conscious of a faint desire awaken- ing within him to go again to the don’s house, and more than once his com- mercial thoughts were distracted while he was upon the street by the sight of a bright colored dress in a carriage. Once he went actually out of his way a few paces in order to get a glimpse of her who wore the dress, only to find himself staring at the face of a stranger. At last, one day it struck him that social etiquette demanded a por syorallk CO