CHAPTER XVIII
A SUSPICIOUS VISITOR
Frank looked up from his work with an eager flush on his face. Markham, who had gone to the post office, was returning. His light, springy step coming up the walk, and cheery, ringing whistle told Frank that he was the bearer of good news.
"Afternoon mail," sang out Markham, putting the satchel down on Frank's desk. "And she's a cracker-jack!"
"Good," said Frank.
"Over thirty letters, continued Markham gaily. "Stamps in some, coin in others. My finger tips just itched to feel those letters, Frank. I just had to do it. Oh, if this suspense keeps up I'll be rifling the mails next."
Frank slitted all the letters in turn. Four postal cards asking for catalogues were promptly disposed of. The first of the letters was from a country newspaper offering reduced terms for advertising.
There was an application for an agency. No. 3 wanted to be hired in the office—could count money and put on postage stamps fast.
Frank was not given to being very demonstrative on any occasion. As, however, he now began to stare at the next letter he opened and almost uttered a shout, Markham knew that something very much out of the ordinary had come up.
"What is it, Frank?" he questioned eagerly.
"Markham," said Frank, quite unnerved with excitement, "It's a big, big order."
"How big?" demanded Markham. "Quick, I'm on the edge of nervous prostration."
"Fifty to one hundred dollars," announced Frank, in quite a husky voice. "A few more of such orders and we'll know where we stand. It's from the owner of a general store at Decatur. He writes that he has purchased from an advertising agency fifty-two picture rebuses—easy ones—one for each week in the year. Accompanying them are fifty-two separate advertisements. These he intends to insert in his weekly paper. He wants to offer each week ten prizes for the ten persons who first appear at his store with correct solutions of the rebuses."
"I see," nodded Markham—"good Idea."
"He wants us to designate fifty-two novelties that we can supply, about half and half ten-and-twenty-cent articles. He will take ten of each article, or five hundred and twenty in all. Think of it, Markham!"
"It's grand, yes, just grand!" declared Markham, in a tone of suppressed excitement.
"He says he will trust to our judgment to select the most catchy novelties, only he expects us to give him special figures on the lot."
"Of course you'll do it, Frank?"
"Yes, and make a neat profit, too. Well, this is encouraging."
"Yes, Frank, that one order will cover the cost of all the circularizing we have done to date. Hello! hello! hello!"
In three different crescendo tones Markham tallied off three letters which Frank opened next in turn, and in each instance with cash results—two silver dimes and thirty cents in postage stamps. When the entire mail was opened, Frank had a little heap at his elbow representing six dollars and eighty cents, three dollars of which was to pay for two rings.
"Seven orders for your puzzle, Markham," announced Frank, "besides what goes in the big order. Only one apple corer ordered. I'm afraid my prized invention is a frost."
"Not at all," dissented Markham. "Look here, it's plain from the letter you got this morning that the Riverton hardware man had already used at least some of the names in the mail order lists. If I were you, Frank, in any new printed matter you get out I would refer to your apple corer as a decided improvement on the old one. I think, even, I would illustrate these improvements."
"An excellent Idea, Markham," declared Frank. "Further, I don't know but it would be a good thing to offer one of the new corers, free on return of an old one, charging only the postage."
"Oh, we're learning," declared Markham, buoyantly. "This thing is a decided go."
Frank was immersed in business during the rest of that week. Markham proved an energetic and reliable assistant. There were circulars to send out, orders to fill, letters to write.
Saturday night they had to work till eleven o'clock to clean up their desks. Frank was rushing the catalogue copy. Mrs. Haven was busy making new drawings, which had to be sent to the city to be photo-engraved. Orders, too, were sent daily to the city supply houses.
Up at the novelty factory they were filling Frank's first big order for a thousand of the wire puzzles and a thousand of the new apple corers.
This latter device was really a very meritorious article. Retaining the form and dimensions of the original sheath, Frank had set inside two moving pieces of tin that acted as knives. These ran into a spiral tube which penetrated the apple without injuring it, and a twist on a knob cut the core out clean as a whistle.
Monday morning's mail was the largest yet received, due, Frank believed, to some little advertising Haven Bros, had caused to be inserted in a few neighboring country newspapers.
His little capital was now again nearly at the two hundred dollar mark. About noon Frank made up a package of about two hundred dollars. He had arranged to pay this amount to Haven Bros., draw against it if he ran short of funds, otherwise leave it in their hands to pay for the catalogue, which would be quite an expensive job.
Markham had gone to the post-office with some mail. Frank looked up as a footstep sounded on the walk outside of the office door.
It was not Markham, as Frank at first expected. Instead, a person he regarded in a decidedly unfavorable light came into view.
The visitor was Dale Wacker, the boy Bob Haven had designated to Frank the day that Markham made his sensational dive into the cistern.
He was not dressed as jauntily as on that occasion. His appearance was shabby and unkempt now. He slouched up to the door with a sneak-thief air, yet withal the brass and eiffrontery of a person possessed of few fine sensibilities.
"Say," spoke Wacker to Frank, "you run this shop?"
"I'm interested in this business, yes," answered Frank distantly.
"Pretty good graft? Looking for some such fake myself. What I wanted to know, though, was about one of your samples in the show case out there."
"Well?" demanded Frank.
"That wire puzzle."
"What about it?"
"Where did you run across it?"
Frank did not like the speech nor manner of his visitor.
"Is that particularly any of your business?" he asked.
"Why, you see, just curious about it, that's all," stammered Wacker, somewhat taken aback at Frank's sharp challenge. "Do you own it?"
Frank's eye flashed with manifest resentment at Wacker's cool effrontery.
"See here," he said pretty firmly, "I have no time to waste answering idle and impertinent questions," and turned away from the door.
"Well, I'd seen it before, that's all," muttered Wacker.
"Oh, I fancy not," said Frank.
"Oh, yes, I did. Huh! guess I did—I was with the fellow who first made it when he got it up."
Frank was surprised. He must have shown it to the keen-eyed fellow quizzing him, for Wacker exclaimed:
"Aha—interested now, hain't you? Tell you something more: the owner made me a duplicate of his original puzzle, and—there it is."
And to Frank's amazement Mr. Dale Wacker pulled from his pocket a crude copy of the wire puzzle.
It was the exact counterpart of the one Markham had furnished as a model for those now being sold broadcast by Frank's Mail Order House.