Pepper/Father Also Ran
XI
FATHER ALSO RAN
IT was generally understood in Cambridge that Roger Ward suffered from an extraordinarily aggravated case of Dad. It was specifically known that he had to make daily reports showing how much he worked and how little he played; that his allowance was figured out on a cost-accounting basis, with a five-per-cent surplus for dissipation in the form of one theater a month, and commutation tickets for the best libraries; and that when he went home on a vacation he never dared to take with him any ties which apparently outdistanced the purchasing power of a quarter. It was common information that Roger's father was a wealthy man, but those of Roger's friends who had seen his cash account were inclined to be cynical about it. They alleged that no father who had such overwhelming respect for a nickel could possibly be on familiar terms with real money. The whole story, however, didn't come out until after the collapse of Monk Spinden's Prohibition Club, which was organized for the sole purpose of humiliating Pepper McHenry, and reducing him to subjection for the remainder of his college course.
The Prohibition Club was a dismal failure from its very inception. It left McHenry with an additional cash stipend from his father, a little runabout from his mother, an improved physique due to his enforced repudiation of alcohol and tobacco, and the undying regard of six or seven young women in Wellesley, Smith, and Briarcliff, each of whom believed, curiously enough, that Pepper had sworn off on her account alone. It also got into the newspapers, and when Roger Ward's father out in St. Louis read about it, he positively declined to consider it as a practical joke.
The idea of a brewer's son allying himself with a Prohibition Club didn't coincide in the least with the old gentleman's brand of humor; and since there had been in the past a number of incidents which his limited experience in college affairs led him to believe were signs of unworthiness on the part of his son, he let his temper run away with him, and asked the faculty for waivers. He then wired Roger to the effect that the last straw was cast, and the camel had struck.
With customary attention to detail, he told Roger where to sell his furniture, and how much to get for it. He specified the train he should take. He estimated within sixty cents the amount which should remain intact from the last instalment of allowance—it would buy the train ticket and berth, and allow for all meals en route, with no tips to anybody, for tipping is a useless habit, uneconomic, and conducive to sycophancy.
Next Monday morning, he said, the brewery whistle would blow as usual at seven o'clock, and, when it did, Roger ought to be standing just where he could put out his right hand to punch the time recorder. The following Saturday afternoon he would receive a little yellow envelope containing six dollars—and they'd all try to forget that Roger was handicapped by nearly two years' association with a pack of young reprobates. They'd try not to be prejudiced against him on that account.
If it had been a sincere prohibition club, he said, that would have been different; but when Roger allowed his name to be connected with a sodality which made a laughingstock of Ward's malted products, brought himself to ridicule, and proved only too clearly that Roger was frittering away his time with athletes—which, all the world knows are the mere chaff of the colleges—that meant the end. Signed, not affectionately, nor sincerely, nor yet very truly—simply "Your Father," with a terribly angry scrawl terminating in a pen thrust which tore a hole in the stationery.
Now, a year and a half in Cambridge had unquestionably made Roger careless in at least one respect His cash accounts balanced to a penny; his daily reports left not one swing of the pendulum unrecorded; his habits, in spite of what his father thought, were remarkably regular if you remember that he was a perfectly normal young man—but he never opened his father's letters when they first arrived, because they generally came on the morning mail, and there was no sense in spoiling a whole day. He read them just before he went to bed, so that he could forget the unpleasant parts by the simple expedient of going to sleep.
On the present occasion, however, he was misled by the obvious presence of an inclosure—a thin slip of paper which rustled pleasantly. He went for it, wondering if the millennium had come and the brewer had sent along an extra check; and twenty minutes later he was still staring at the summons home and at the newspaper clipping, when Pepper McHenry wandered into his room and hailed him cheerfully.
"Well, old gazabo," said the McHenry, "you look worse than you feel, I'll bet my hat! What's the matter—going to be shot at sunrise?"
Roger handed him the letter and the clipping, and tried to fill a pipe, although his hands trembled so that he spilled most of the tobacco on his knees.
"I suppose it was only a question of time, anyway," he opined dully. "It's always been more or less of a row; but I never thought he'd get this far!"
McHenry glanced through the epistle, scrutinized the wildly imaginative newspaper story, sat down, and whistled.
"Christmas! Well, that is a hot one! Now you want to write back a perfect whale of an answer. I've seen these things before; got one myself freshman year. You want to explain the whole thing. Point out the joke, you know—"
"Don't waste your breath," said Roger bitterly. "You don't know my dad. I guess I don't, either. Only, all the letters in the world wouldn't make any difference after he's made up his mind. It was only a question of time, anyway."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well," hesitated Roger, "it was a bad start, Pep. You see, my dad's been disappointed in me right from the beginning. He didn't like my name; he had a row with mother about that. Then there was another fight when she wanted me to go to an academy, and he wanted me to go to high school. Then we had a scrap about my playing football. Then he'd decided I'd go to the State university, and I wanted to come here. Then he was absolutely set on my being a lawyer; he's never forgiven me for what I said about it. So the only thing he could do was to let me come here, and take darned good care I worked all the time. If I wrote home that I'd been in town for dinner with you fellows I'd get back seven or eight pages about it. Midyears freshman year I had four A's and one B; and he roared like a hyena about the B, and said the A's were probably all cinch courses at that. Then at that show last year, when the lines were full of insults about this joint, and some of the crowd hissed the actors off the stage and fired lemons at 'em, I was pinched, of course; and the fact that the judge discharged me because I proved I didn't fire a single lemon didn't make the slightest difference with dad. He said that if I ever got my name in print again except in a scholarship list he'd pull me back home and start me to work. He's been looking for a chance for over a year, and now he's found it. That's all!"
"When are you—going?"
"Going!" flashed Roger. "I'm not going!"
"You're not?"
"You bet your neck I'm not! What do you take me for, McHenry? Of course I'm not going!"
"But—naturally he wouldn't send you any more money—"
"Well, do you think I'd take it if he did? But don't fool yourself for one single minute, Pep. I'm going to stay right here and take my degree whether he likes it or not! Plenty of poor men's sons work their way through Harvard. I don't see why a rich man's son can't do it once in a while!"
"Bully!" said McHenry appreciatively. "What are you going to do?"
Roger grinned, and made a wry face.
"Hanged if I know," he admitted. "But I'm going to make good, Pep. I've got some junk I can sell; there's that phonograph I got last Christmas, and a fur coat; and I suppose I can tutor a bit."
"The woods are full of tutors," deprecated McHenry. "That is, unless you're a wizard."
"Well, I might scare up some new idea—" McHenry's upraised hand stopped him.
"Wait a second, just a second," said McHenry softly. "You can't mow lawns for a living, Roger; you aren't that kind. You've got to cash in on your scholarship standing; you've got to use your noddle. Let's see—on this tutoring question—" He was silent for so long a time that Roger felt constrained to prompt him. "Just a second, boy! I've got it! By gosh! It's a corker! You'll make a fortune! It's tutoring, but it's a new one!" He rushed over and began to pump Roger's hand excitedly. "Congratulations, old top!" he yelled. "You're a wonder!"
"Wha—what is it?"
"What is it? Why, you poor simp, it's the phonograph! Only, I'm afraid you will have to hock your fur coat to get working capital!"
"Spring it!" commanded Roger eagerly. "And—who wants a fur overcoat in March, anyway?"
II
Of course it was all over college in about two days. It wasn't particularly pleasant for Roger to walk down Mount Auburn Street and know that every man he passed was regarding him as the paradox of the decade, and it was still less pleasant for him to be interrogated by some of his less tactful friends.
Obeying McHenry's sage advice, he told no more than was absolutely necessary; that he expected to work his way for the next two years, and that he didn't want people to think he didn't need the money simply because somebody else had paid his bills up to this point He didn't say that his father had written him to the effect that he could go where the fire-department is ineffectual.
His room rent was paid to the end of the year, so that whether he left college or not there would be no rebate accruing to his male parent on his father's side, whereby he felt no qualms of conscience in keeping the room.
He sold his furniture, sent the brewer a money order for the correct amount, and picked up enough pieces from a secondhand shop to insure him a place to sleep and a desk at which to work. He sold the fur coat to Monk Spinden, and Monk insisted on his taking it back and raffling it, which was far more satisfactory to all concerned; for Roger netted a hundred and seventy dollars, and Monk won the coat, anyway, on a dollar ticket.
Then Roger and McHenry got leave of absence for a few days, and returned to Cambridge, uncommunicative but elated. They were, said McHenry, about to put upon the market a proposition beside which wireless telegraphy, the steam railway, and the science of aviation would seem like the childish conceptions of the entering class at a Froebel kindergarten: It would be completed when it was finished, and it would be announced when it was advertised, and if anybody had any more questions of the same variety to ask, it might be better to eliminate them from the system as soon as possible.
One evening some four weeks in advance of the final examination period, Billy Murchison was roaming around Mount Auburn Street looking for company when he discerned a light in Pepper McHenry's room and decided to run up for a moment.
It happened to be the particular night on which McHenry had decided to present the wonderful invention to a waiting world; and because it had seemed expedient to him to let the project insinuate itself into Harvard life rather than to force it, he had merely set the stage properly in his own room, provided smoking materials, and sat down to wait the first arrival.
He was fully conscious that the best possible publicity would arise from the conversation of the first visitor, so that he didn't care much who it was, although afterward he had to admit that Billy Murchison was an especially good visiting committee because he talked so much.
The door was closed and locked. As Murchison beat upon the panels he was suddenly aware of the phonograph which McHenry must be playing to amuse himself, so he beat more insistently. The door opened; McHenry glared out at him, and then grinned.
"Oh—come on in, Bill! Wait a second until I choke off this machine."
"Oh, don't stop on my account," said Billy hastily. "Got any Bert Williams?"
"Lord, no! I haven't time for that sort of rot!" He stopped the motor, but not before Murchison heard something which caused him to ruffle his forehead perplexedly. He walked over to the phonograph and examined it with great interest.
"What sort of hocus-pocus is this?" he demanded. "If that wasn't something about producers' goods and consumers' goods, I'm a liar!"
"Far be it from me to say you're a liar, Bill," said Pepper complacently. "If you ask me as man to man, I'd say that's Ec 1."
"Ec 1—on a phonograph!"
"Sounds all right to me," stated McHenry. "Besides, look what she saves in seminar fees."
"For the love of Mike!" breathed Murchison, inspecting the machine professionally. "Where did you get that thing?"
"Roger Ward got it up. Rather clever, I call it. You see, it's like this. Lots of fellows get along fairly well through the year, but when it gets around exam time, they all trail over to the Widow's and pay big prices for a seminar. Now what is a seminar? Absolutely nothing but the Widow giving a complete resume of a course in three or four hours; and if you want to brace up on all your courses, you've got to spend the best part of a week up in the Widow's joint, and hand him about thirty dollars. And if you get sleepy about ten o'clock and miss any of his dope, it's hopelessly gone, just as if you'd cut a couple of lectures."
"You're darned whistling, old top!" exclaimed Murchison. "The last time I went to the Widow's I slept clear through a Comp. Lit. 2 seminar—"
"Exactly. Well, of course you know that Roger's working his way now, and about all he can do is to tutor—"
"The deuce it is! Somebody I know went over to see him a couple of days ago about tutoring, and Roger said he was too busy!"
"I shouldn't wonder," agreed Pepper. "His scheme is this: Instead of paying the Widow a five-spot, you pay him two and half and get the use of a phonographic seminar—"
"A what?"
McHenry pointed to the small box full of wax records which reposed on his window seat.
"There you are," he said. "Here's Ec 1—complete brief, résumé, seminar, synopsis—call it anything you want to—of the whole blamed course. I paid Roger two and a half for a set of this stuff for a week. I soak in so much Ec that I couldn't flunk that exam if I tried. And if I get drowsy, I simply stop the record, go out and take a walk, come back, and turn her on again. It's a cinch. Same ground the Widow would cover at half the price—and you can keep it a week."
"Murder and sudden death!" ejaculated Murchison in amazement. "Holy Moses! What a scheme!"
"The point is, I hope you notice, that it saves money for us, and makes more for Roger, because he's got I don't know how many courses on his list, and a whale of a lot of sets of records. All the big lecture courses in Ec and Gov and Phil, and the freshman courses in English A and German A—everything Roger ever took, and, of course, he got A's in everything. Why, these Ec records of his have given me more real dope in half an hour than I got out of section meetings all year!"
"But I haven't got a phonograph," wailed Murchison. "That sounds fine—I'd like to take a look at Fine Arts 1 myself, but I haven't got a phonograph."
"Hist!" said McHenry, affecting tremendous secrecy. "It isn't out yet, but it might be to-morrow or next day—I don't think Roger'd mind if I told you—but Roger's got the Cambridge agency for these machines, and you can buy one if you want to—and, of course, you could put in a stock of regular records just for fun, all the grand-opera stuff, and Bert Williams, if you're so keen for him—or he'll rent you one for a week or two while you're taking a seminar. It's—it's like a correspondence school, in a way."
"My gosh!" chattered Murchison. "That's a brand new one! That's a pippin! But—but where does Roger get off if a couple of dozen fellows all use the same machine and the same records? Why couldn't you simply turn one loose in a room and let a whole crowd come in?"
McHenry shrugged his shoulders.
"Of course," he alleged, "that's up to the honesty of the fellows. The price is two-fifty a person, and if, say, six men listened to the stuff at the same time, each one of them ought to cough up to Roger, so he'd take eighteen dollars out of the crowd."
"It seems to me that some fellows might take advantage of him," said Murchison slowly.
"I doubt it. And here's another scheme. If a crowd wants to get together on a course, and they'll each pay a dollar extra, Roger'll come around, too, and then if anybody wants to ask any questions, he'll stop the machine and explain until the cows come home. Even then the fellows would be getting the Widow's service at a dollar and a half under his price."
"But—how will people know Roger's capable of handing out stuff like this? I mean, what's the guarantee that it's the right dope?"
"Look here, boy," reproached McHenry, "if people would be willing to fork out five dollars an hour to Roger Ward to sit down at the same desk with him and get tutored by word of mouth, they ought to see that there isn't such a whale of a lot of difference between that and listening to Roger Ward through a phonograph! And Roger's price for straight man-to-man tutoring is five an hour. It's high, but he's worth it. Why, in two years he's had all A's but one! He'll be a summa cum as sure as fate! What's the matter with it?"
"Turn on the juice and let's listen to it," commanded Murchison, helping himself to one of the carefully planted cigarettes.
The motor stirred, and began to hum steadily. McHenry allowed the reproducing needle to touch the waxen surface, and immediately the voice of Roger Ward intoned a cardinal principle of political economy.
"Now we're going to talk about wages," said Ward's calm voice. "Adam Smith said that wages ought to be just enough to let the workman live. John Stuart Mill thought that as long as labor produces the goods, laborers ought to be paid enough so they don't need to work at all. In other words—and this ought to tickle the examiner if you get it down—Smith said the wage earner ought to get just enough to live on, and Mill thought he ought to have enough to loaf on—"
"Stop the ship!" said Billy Murchison. "Say, that's an idea and a half! This Ward guy is clever! I wonder if that's his own line of drip? It's better than Taussig's!"
"It's his own stuff," declared McHenry mendaciously, for some of it was McHenry's own. "And the rest of his courses are as good as Ec 1. And here's something else: Next year Roger's going to run a sort of lecture service right through the year. Suppose you're taking Phil A, for example. Well, you pay Roger twenty-five dollars the first of the year, and every two weeks you get a couple of records containing a general summary of what's gone before. It'll be a lot better than your section meetings, because it won't contain anything that isn't important enough to be on one of the exam papers. Rather a neat stunt, I call it."
"Do you suppose Roger's in his room to-night?" queried Murchison. "I was going to blow in a wad on the Widow's seminars for the finals, but if Roger can hand me out the particular kind of Fine Arts bunk I need—at half the Widow's price—I'm hanged if I don't give him a try!"
"Go on over and see," suggested McHenry.
As soon as Murchison was out of the room he hastily substituted a Government 1 record for that of Economics, and held the trap ready for the next victim. The next victim wasn't long in arriving, for Murchison had stopped three times on the way to Roger Ward's to tell people about it; and when he banged on McHenry's door, he found it locked, and heard the metallic intonation of the phonograph explaining the constructive difference between the German Reichstag and the United States Senate. It was a great night for McHenry.
III
At opposite sides of Roger Ward's study table sat Ward and McHenry, and in the battered morris chair before the fireplace reclined a cadaverous young man who held the reputation of being one of the crack tutors of Cambridge. He was a graduate of six or seven years' standing, and he maintained a small establishment, a sort of cramming school, which stood second in importance to the Widow's, and was supposed to be making nearly as much money. He had stated his case, and he was waiting for the verdict.
"If you want to know, what I think," said McHenry decisively, "I think the price is a blamed sight too low, Roger. Why, look here! The total running expenses of that one room in the post-office block don't amount to more than fifty dollars a month! We've sold outright nearly thirty machines—and two of 'em were big fellows that netted a hundred per cent.! We haven't carried a stock of records of regular music and stuff, but we've ordered 'em in from the Boston distributing station as fellows wanted 'em. They've paid a net profit from the first day! And Roger made all the seminar records, and there's pretty close to two hundred of 'em in use now—at two and a half apiece! And besides, Mr. French, you've got to remember that we've got the only license there is for making records! It took a fearful nerve on our part and a million dollars' worth of talk, and three solid days of cuts, before we put it over! This thing stands us in darned close to two thousand dollars profit—and you talk about offering a thousand! It's—it's ridiculous!"
"You fellows have knocked the bottom out of the tutoring business," conceded the cadaverous young man. "I had four freshmen for my last English A seminar, and I used to have forty. There was a gentleman's agreement among the tutors to maintain prices until you came along."
"You'd better listen to our third record in the Ec 1 series," retorted Pepper. "Roger—I mean we absolutely prove that price maintenance isn't logical! I never saw it myself until—well, anyway, we don't believe in restraint of trade!"
Mr. French snorted.
"You seem to forget that next year your scheme won't be worth thirty cents," he assured them. "We'll cook up something that'll make your records a drug in the market! Records take up too much room; and men can get together and use one set—"
"Listen to our fourth cylinder on supply and demand," counseled McHenry.
"Twelve hundred for your stock and the transfer of your licence, and your agency," offered Mr. French, wincing as though it hurt him.
"You can laugh if you want to, Roger," said McHenry to his friend.
"But Mr. McHenry—"
"I'll tell you what we'll do," interrupted Roger, struck with a sudden brilliant idea. "You see, Mr. French, so many men have subscribed for these seminars of mine that they're rather well known. Now I wouldn't want you to make capital out of my individual work. What'll you give for the agency and the rights to make records, and everything but the stock on hand?"
"Why, the stock on hand is vital—"
"And yet," McHenry reminded him, "you said a couple of minutes ago that next year it would be a drug in the market!"
The cadaverous young man wriggled in the morris chair.
"Well, what's your price?"
"Two thousand," said Pepper promptly, "plus a royalty."
"A royalty!"
"Sure, a royalty! A royalty of—well, let's say ten cents on every record you turn out!"
"But, my dear fellow, at only two dollars and a half for a set of at least twelve records—and a ten-cent royalty would cut that in half—"
"But, my dear fellow," retorted McHenry, "it seems to me you've been howling a lot about cutting the price! Don't try to kid us into believing that you aren't going to raise it!"
"My idea," explained the young man stiffly, "was based on sound economic principles—to sell the product for more than it costs us to make it."
"Same on this end," said Roger. "Hence our price."
"I'll make it fifteen hundred!"
"You'll make me giggle," said McHenry pointedly. "Two thousand plus a royalty. Why, man, nothing like this has ever been pulled off anywhere before! It's an innovation! Think of it! Do what you like during the year, and then have an automatic instructor come and sit in your own room for two weeks before the finals, and give you the gist of any course you want—and if you want to pay a little extra for it, the gist of all the prescribed reading, too! And if you took hold of it, you could do all sorts of stunts! You could give every course in college, because you've got assistants in your shop who naturally know a pile more than Roger—than we do! It's a mint!"
"Eighteen hundred for the whole thing is the limit," insisted Mr. French, and McHenry, gazing at him thoughtfully, saw that he showed no signs of intention to depart. McHenry winked at Roger and yawned ostentatiously.
"Mr. French," he said, "we're not business men, you know. We're just in college. I'm helping Roger work out a plan to make a little wad. We don't know how to bicker over prices; and besides, I've got a date. If Roger can get enough out of this scheme to let him stay in college two more years without working, we'll sell—otherwise not. Is it eight o'clock yet, Roger?"
Mr. French was pondering very diligently; and as he pondered he consulted the tablets of his memory, which advised him that the final examination period had so far been a dead loss to him, and that phonographic seminars were likely to ruin his business completely in another year. Furthermore, there was the undeveloped field of foreign languages, the possibility of profit on the agency, and a golden opportunity to make a national mail-order enterprise out of the conception of a university education on phonograph records! Was the privilege worth two thousand dollars, when Roger Ward's organization had already cut into his seminar receipts by seven or eight hundred in one month?
"Two thousand without royalty would be a different matter," he hesitated.
"Ten cents royalty, or nothing doing," was Pepper's ultimatum. The cadaverous young man sighed.
"All right," he said. "I'll take you!"
A very few moments later McHenry and Ward sat alone, and between them on the table lay a check, as guarantee of good faith, and a written agreement which covered all the conditions which Pepper's fertile imagination could suggest or Roger's native caution could infer. One of the young men was smiling beatifically—but Pepper was glum and downcast.
"What in thunder is the matter with you, McHenry?" demanded his friend. "I thought you thought it was a good sale?"
Pepper shook his head soberly.
"Dog-gone it!" he murmured. "It was so easy there wasn't any fun in it!" He brightened suddenly. "Well," he added, with more vivacity, "two thousand isn't much, Roger. Perhaps it isn't as hopeless as I'd thought! No, come to think of it, I guess it isn't! I've got an idea to take that two thousand and make four out of it—"
"Pepper!"
"And if that guy wants to take over the shop to-morrow, I suppose we ought to clean up a bit first. Have you got the key? I must have lost mine. No, don't come with me, if you don't mind, old scout I want to make one last record all by myself before we quit!"
IV
A very fierce-looking old gentleman in a silk hat and costume to match paused irresolutely before the door of a certain room in Matthews, and finally, after examining with great care the visiting card tacked upon it with a tenpenny nail, whacked vigorously on the doorknob with his malacca cane.
"Let her run!" said a lazy voice from the interior, and the old gentleman, construing this as an invitation to enter, proceeded to accept it. The sight which met his eyes was to him typical of the life of any university. Seated in a decrepit morris chair, with his feet on the table, was a young man, utterly throwing away precious minutes in the perusal of a more or less worthless and frivolous publication called the Lampoon.
"The card said Roger Ward," growled the old gentleman, in threat rather than apology.
"Right-o," agreed the occupant of the room, removing his feet from the table. "Only he's out just at present. Anything I can do for you?"
"When'll he be back?"
"I really don't know. He's so busy these days—"
"Busy!"
"That's it exactly. Busiest man I know."
"Busy sitting on a fence singing fool college songs, I suppose—"
"This isn't New Haven," the young man corrected him. "We haven't any fences to sit on. And he's too busy to sit on 'em if we did. No, he's out looking after his business interests."
"B-business interests!" spluttered the fierce old gentleman. "P-poppycock, sir! What business interests can a boy like him have!"
"Well, he has—his printing company, and—"
"His what?"
"Printing company. You don't know him, then? Why, none of the college papers but the Crime—the Crimson, I mean—has a plant of its own, and the other four were all printed by different job printers around town; and Roger saw a chance to get together and make some money, so he's incorporating a little company to do the whole business, and save the papers ten to fifteen per cent. over what they were paying—"
"Impossible, sir, impossible! Why, he doesn't know the first thing about the printing business!"
"Oh, no, but he's putting up the money. It's a sure thing. And then he's got hold of the Register."
"The what?"
"The Register. It's a book with the directory of the university, all the students, and their clubs, and that sort of thing, and all the athletic records from the year one. It's been frightfully manhandled, so he didn't have to pay much for the copyright, and it ought to net a couple of thousand."
"Oh, impossible!" whispered the old gentleman.
"Yes, sir! And then of course there's the novelty business."
"The what?"
"Great idea," said the young man proudly. "Dance orders and badges for the games, and class buttons, and that sort of thing. No work and a good commission. Around this time of year it keeps him busy simply writing out the orders."
"But—but—"
"I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, Mr. Ward," said McHenry hastily. "Unless I'm very much mistaken I hear Roger beating it upstairs now—I 'm glad to meet you—"
"Hold on!" bawled the old gentleman. "Hey! Hold on!"
But just here the door burst open, and Roger, halting as though spellbound on the threshold, emitted a whoop of delight and then leaped for his male parent on his father's side. It was all McHenry could do to make his escape without overhearing any of the resultant conversation. He would have given half his month's allowance to stay, but he didn't think it was right. Besides, it was nearly dinner time.
For two days McHenry avoided Matthews Hall as though it harbored the plague, and during this time he also sedulously avoided those places which Roger Ward ever honored with his presence. He was very fond of Roger Ward, but he had taken an immediate dislike to his father, and was afraid that if he met him again, he might be tempted to utter a few sincere thoughts which wouldn't make for close friendship between them. It wasn't until the third day that Roger located him, cornered him, and forced him to stand and hear the narrative.
"By gosh!" said Roger dazedly, "I'm still trying to make it out, Pep! You could have knocked me over with a feather. A couple of months ago he told me never to darken his doors again and that I was a disgrace to the family, and he never cared if I wrote to him or not, and this afternoon dad simply breezed up to me, and pretty nearly took my hand off and began shooting questions at me so fast that I couldn't half understand 'em, let alone answer 'em. He wanted to know where I got the money to start with, and all about the phonograph business and the printing scheme and the Register—how much I'd made, and how much I expected to make—and then all about you. You must have made a fearful hit with dad, Pepper—"
"He didn't even know who I was," scoffed McHenry.
"No, but he seemed to know a lot about you somehow. At least, when I told him you thought up the phonograph stunt, and the combination of print shops, he said he thought you'd probably be that sort of young man—"
"Funny how news travels," said Pepper modestly.
"Well, the funniest thing is that he crawled completely on that Prohibition Club affair. I can't get it at all! Said he might have been mistaken—maybe it was a joke, after all. Then he sprung this one: He said it was a lot worse for a son of his to be working his way through college than it would have been if I'd intended to knock his business through the Prohibition Club. He said he simply wouldn't stand for it. It seems he's changed his mind about a lot of things. Admitted he hadn't understood me very well—hadn't thought I was capable of handling money, and all that, and now he seems to think I'm something of a business man. Well, the whole story is that he wants me to quit all the things I've worked up, Pep, and go back on an allowance."
"The deuce you say!" exclaimed McHenry. "You're not going to, are you?" Roger grinned feebly.
"Well," he admitted, "I thought perhaps it does look queer for the son of a fairly wealthy man to work when he doesn't have to. It's what we'd have called uneconomic in our records, Pep. It certainly does take money away from fellows who need it. I was only working so as to stay in college, Pep. And if he honestly wants me to take an allowance—it's to be just three times as big as it was before—I—don't—know—"
McHenry exhaled disgustedly.
"Darn it!" he exploded. "Every time I get a man to working out any of my pet stunts, something happens to queer it! You're not honestly going back to sponging, are you? After the way we're walking through Cambridge like Coxes army!"
"He says it'll hurt his reputation," defended Roger. "And after all, Pep, I've got to think of his feelings. He's my father, you know."
"So you're going to quit?"
"Yes, Pepper," apologized his friend. "I'm rather sorry. I was having a whale of a good time, and I'd have made a bunch of money next year, but I'm going to sell out everything—it ought to bring me about three thousand—and quit."
"Just because your dad wants you to!"
"Yes, Pepper, just because my dad wants me to."
"You're a coward!" said McHenry.
"Well—in a way he's right. You've got to admit it. If he's willing to pay my expenses again, I ought not to take business away from the poor boys who need the money. I thought I'd see if I couldn't help out a lot of 'em on that three thousand—not try to profit out of it, you know, but just finance other lads who have good schemes. Think it's worth while?"
"Great!" said McHenry. "That's a great idea! I've got a lot of ideas! I'm with you, Roger!"
"Still," continued his friend, "there's two things I can't make out even yet. One of 'em is why he came on here at all, and the other is how he seems to know so much about you. He certainly didn't recognize you there in my room, and yet every time I mentioned you he seemed to think a lot of you. Where did you ever meet him?"
Pepper grinned, and prepared to dodge.
"I'll tell you the truth," he promised. "Remember that night when French bought out the phonograph business? And I said I wanted to go over to our little shop alone to make one set of records all by myself? Well, you'd told me you have a machine at home. So I just naturally went over there and filled up three records with what I thought about him and what a corker you are, and sent 'em to him. I told him how much money you were making and all that—and I knew blamed well he'd listen to a phonograph record when he might not have read a letter. It's the novelty—you know. It was pretty strong stuff, Roger, but I had a hunch he might be wavering a bit, so I took a chance. And now," he finished rather bitterly, "after I've spent all that time heaping coals of fire on his head, you go back and take his tainted old allowance! Roger, you make me sick!" He turned and hesitated. "But as long as you're going to do it," he said, "I wonder if you could let me have, say, twenty-five of 'em until, say, Saturday afternoon."
"Twenty-five? Is that enough?"
"Plenty," McHenry told him firmly. "Twenty-five is exactly what I need. I'm sort of shy in Gov. 8, old top, so I thought I'd subscribe to one of French's courses on the phonograph! Didn't you ever hear of poetic justice?"
"And you—you filled up three records about me, and sent 'em out to my dad!" gasped Roger, who hadn't until now fully comprehended McHenry's meaning. The imperturbable Pepper nodded, and suddenly raised a significant forefinger.
"Oh—make it twenty-seven if you don't mind, old gazabo. I forgot—I sent the blamed things prepaid, but I didn't have the two iron men, so I told the expressman I'd come in and pay some time when I thought of it. Gee!" he murmured. "Isn't it astonishing how much a fellow can accomplish on his nerve!"