Young Wallingford Part 35

His wife was laughing, yet confused.

"I don't see how you can make yourself so conspicuous," she protested in a low voice.

"Why not?" he laughed. "We public characters must boost one another."

"And the price," they heard the doctor declaiming, "is only one dollar _per_ bottle, or six for five dollars, guar-_an_-teed not only to drive sciatic rheumatism from the sys-_tem_, but to cure the most ob-_stin_-ate cases of ague, Bright's disease, cat-a-lepsy, coughs, colds, cholera, _dys_-pepsia, ery-_sip_-_e_-las, fever _and_ chills, _gas_-tritis"--

"And so on down to X Y Z, etc.," commented Wallingford as they walked away.

His wife looked up at him curiously.

"Jim, did you honestly take four bottles of that medicine?" she wanted to know.

"Take it?" he repeated in amazement. "Certainly not! It isn't meant for wise people to take. It wouldn't do them any good."

"It wouldn't do anybody any good," she decided with a trace of contempt.

"Guess again," he advised her. "That dope has cured a million people that had nothing the matter with 'em."

At the Hotel Deriche in the adjoining block they turned into the huge, garishly decorated dining-room for their after-theater supper. They had been in the town only two days, but the head waiter already knew to come eagerly to meet them, to show them to the best table in the room, and to a.s.sign them the best waiter; also the head waiter himself remained to take the order, to suggest a delicate, new dish and to name over, at Wallingford's solicitation, the choice wines in the cellar that were not upon the wine-list.

This little formality over, Wallingford looked about him complacently.

A pale gentleman with a jet-black beard bowed to him from across the room.

"Doctor Lazzier," observed Wallingford to his wife. "Most agreeable chap and has plenty of money."

He bent aside a little to see past his wife's hat, and exchanged a suave salutation with a bald-headed young man who was with two ladies and who wore a dove-gray silk bow with his evening clothes.

"Young Corbin," explained Wallingford, "of the Corbin and Paley department store. He had about two dollars a week spending money till his father died, and now he and young Paley are turning social flip-flaps at the rate of twenty a minute. He belongs to the Mark family and he's great pals with me. Looks good for him, don't it?"

"Jim," she said in earnest reproval, "you mustn't talk that way."

"Of course I'm only joking," he returned. "You know I promised you I'd stick to the straight and narrow. I'll keep my word. Nothing but straight business for me hereafter."

He, too, was quite serious about it, and yet he smiled as he thought of young Corbin. Another man, of a party just being shown to a table, nodded to him, and Mrs. Wallingford looked up at her husband with admiration.

"Honestly, how do you do it?" she inquired. "We have only been here a little over forty-eight hours, and yet you have already picked up a host of nice friends."

"I patronize only the best saloons," he replied with a grin; then, more seriously: "This is a mighty rich little city, Fannie. I could organize a stock company here, within a week, for anything from a burglar's trust to a church consolidation."

"It's a pretty place," she admitted. "I like it very much from what I have seen of it."

He chuckled.

"Looks like a spending town," he returned; "and where they spend a wad they're crazy to make one. Give me one of these inland society towns for the loose, long green. New York's no place to start an honest business," and again he chuckled. "By the way, Fannie," he added after a pause, "what do you think of my going into the patent medicine line?"

"How do you mean?" she inquired, frowning.

"Oh, on a big scale," he replied. "Advertise it big, manufacture it big."

She studied it over in musing silence.

"I don't mind what you do so long as it is honest," she finally said.

"Good. I'll hunt up Quagg to-morrow and spring it on him."

"You don't mean that dreadful quack medicine he's selling on the street, do you?" she protested.

"Why not? I don't know that it's worthless, and I do know that Quagg has sold it on street corners for twenty years from coast to coast. He goes back to the same towns over and over, and people buy who always bought before. Looks like a good thing to me. Quagg was a regular doctor when he was a kid; had a real diploma and all that, but no practice and no patience. Joke. Giggle."

The oysters came on now, and they talked of other things, but while they were upon the meat Doctor Lazzier, having finished, came across to shake hands with his friend of a day, and was graciously charmed to meet Mrs. Wallingford.

"Sit down," invited J. Rufus. "Won't you try a gla.s.s of this? It's very fair," and he raised a practised eyebrow to the waiter.

The doctor delicately pushed down the edge of the ice-wet napkin until he could see the label, and he gave an involuntary smile of satisfaction as he recognized the vintage. The head waiter had timed the exact second to take that bottle out of the ice-pail, had wrapped the wet napkin about it and almost reverently filled gla.s.ses.

Occasionally he came over and felt up inside the hollow on the bottom of the bottle.

"Delighted," confessed the doctor, and sat down quite comfortably.

"You may smoke if you like, Doctor," offered Mrs. Wallingford, smiling. "I don't seem to feel that a man is comfortable unless he is smoking."

"To tell the truth, he isn't," agreed the doctor with a laugh, and accepting a choice cigar from Wallingford he lit it.

The waiter came with an extra gla.s.s and filled for all three of them.

"By the way, Doctor," said Wallingford, watching the pouring of the wine with a host's anxiety, "I think of going into the patent medicine business on a large scale, and I believe I shall have to have you on the board of directors."

"Couldn't think of it!" objected the doctor hastily. "You know, professional ethics--" and he shrugged his shoulders.

"That's so," admitted Wallingford. "We can't have you on the board, but we can have you for a silent stock-holder."

"Open to the same objection," declared the doctor, with another dubious shrug, as he took up his gla.s.s.

He tasted the wine; he took another sip, then another--slow, careful sips, so that no drop of it should hasten by his palate unappreciated.

Wallingford did not disturb him in that operation. He had a large appreciation himself of the good things of this world, and the proper way to do them homage.

The doctor took a larger sip, and allowed the delicate liquid to flow gently over his tongue. Wallingford was really a splendid fellow!

"What sort of patent medicine are you going to manufacture?" asked the doctor by way of courtesy, but still "listening" to the taste of the wine.

Wallingford laughed.

"I haven't just decided as yet," he announced. "The medicine is only an incident. What we're going to invest in is advertising."

"I see," replied the doctor, laughing in turn.

"Advertising is a great speculation," went on Wallingford, with a reminiscent smile. "Take Hawkins' Bitters, for instance; nine per cent. cheap whisky flavored with coffee and licorice, and the balance pure water. Hawkins had closed a fifty-thousand-dollar advertising contract before he was quite sure whether he was going to sell patent medicine or shoe polish. The first thing he decided on was the name, and he had to do that in a hurry to get his advertising placed.

Hawkins' Bitters was familiar to ten million people before a bottle of it had been made. It was only last summer that Hawkins sold out his business for a cool two million and went to Europe."