The Nine-Tenths Part 11

"I'll tell you later, Marty."

"Not--lost your nerve? The fire?"

Joe laughed softly.

"Other reasons--Marty."

"Retire?" Marty's appet.i.te was spoiled. He pushed the veal cutlet from him. He was greatly agitated. "Retire--_you_? I can see you doing nothing, blamed if I can't. Gettin' sporty, Joe, in your old age, aren't you? You'll be wearing one of these dress-suits next and a flasher in yer chest. Huh!" he snorted, "you'd make a good one on the shelf!"

Joe laughed with joy.

"With my flunkies and my handmaids. No, Marty, I'm going into another business."

"What business?"

"Editing a magazine."

"And what do you know about editing a magazine?"

"What do most of the editors know?" queried Joe. "You don't have to know anything. Everybody's editing magazines nowadays."

"A magazine!" Marty was disgusted. "You're falling pretty low, Joe. Why don't you stick to an honest business? Gos.h.!.+ you'd make a queer fist editing a magazine!"

Joe was delighted.

"Well, there are reasons, Marty."

"What reasons?"

So Joe in a shaking voice unfolded his philosophy, and as he did so Marty became dazed and aghast, gazing at his boss as if Joe had turned into some unthinkable zoological oddity. Into Marty's prim-set life, with its definite boundaries and unmysterious exactness, was poured a vapor of lunacy. Finally Joe wound up with:

"So you see I've got to do what little I can to help straighten things.

You see, Marty? Now, what do you think of it? Give me your honest opinion."

Marty spoke sharply:

"You want to know what I really think?"

"Every word of it!"

"Now see here, Joe," Marty burst out, "you and I grew up in the business together, and we know each other well enough to speak out, even if you are my boss, don't we?"

"We do, Marty!"

Marty leaned over.

"Joe, I think you're a blamed idiot!"

Joe laughed.

"Well, Marty, if it weren't for the blamed idiots--like Columbus and Tom Watts and the prophets and Abe Lincoln--this world would be in a pretty mess."

But Marty refused to be convinced, even averring that the world _is_ in a pretty mess, and that probably the aforementioned "idiots" had caused it to be so. Then finally he spoke caressingly:

"Ah, Joe, tell me it's a joke."

"No," said Joe, earnestly, "it's what I've got to face, Marty, and I need your backing."

Marty mused miserably.

"So the game's up, and you've changed, and we men can go to the dogs.

Why, we can't run that printery without you. We'd go plumb to h.e.l.l!"

Joe changed his voice--it became more commanding.

"Never mind now, Marty. I want your help to figure things out."

So Marty got out his little pad and the two drew close together.

"I want to figure on a weekly newspaper--I'm figuring big on the future--just want to see what it will come to. Say an edition of twenty thousand copies, an eight-page paper, eight by twelve, no ill.u.s.trations."

Marty spoke humbly:

"As you say, Joe. Cheap paper?"

"Yes."

"Do your own printing?"

"Yes."

"Well, you'll need a good cylinder press for a starter."

"How much help?"

"Make-up man--pressman--feeder--that's on the press. Will you set up the paper yourself?"

"No, I'll have it set up outside."

"Who'll bind it, fold, and address?"

"The bindery--give that out, too."

"And who'll distribute?"

"Outside, too."

"The news company?"