Bound to Succeed: or, Mail Order Frank's Chances

Frank resumed his task of working on the catalogue. He whistled a cheery bar or two, felt too serious to keep it up, and went on with his work in a half-hearted way.

“This Frank’s Mail Order House?” demanded a brisk voice, half an hour later.

“Don’t you know it is?” challenged Frank, arising to welcome Ned Davis, a bright young fellow, who was the messenger of the local bank.

“All right,” chirped Ned. “Got a letter this morning from a correspondent at Bayview. Enclosure. Man running a small store there asks us if Frank’s Mail Order House is a reliable concern. If so, instructs us to place this order with you.”

Ned importantly spread out quite a voluminous order list before Frank.

“Accompanied with the cash,” added Ned, and set down a crisp, encouraging-looking five-dollar bill beside the document.

“Oh!” ejaculated Markham, almost falling off his chair with surprise.

“Ned,” said Frank, with a touch of genuine feeling, “thank you.”

“That’s all right,” responded Ned. “We’re simply working to get your bank account when it runs up into the thousands, see?”

“Will it ever, I wonder?” murmured Frank.

“Isn’t that a nest egg?” challenged the practical young financier.

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 effrontery 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.

CHAPTER IX

MISSING

Frank was a good deal upset. In the light of the cistern episode and the knowledge that Markham seemed afraid to meet certain people, he believed that the advent of his present visitor boded no good for his friend and helper.

As Dale Wacker showed the wire puzzle, stating that he knew its inventor, Frank felt that he was in the presence of a mystery.

“Let me look at that, will you?” he said.

“Sure,” grinned Wacker. “Why not? Take a good look, too. Seems familiar? Quite the right thing, eh?”

“What do you mean?” demanded Frank.

“Why, just this,” retorted Wacker: “How do you come to be selling an article that no one has a right to sell except my friend who made it? I happen to know he invented that puzzle. I was with him when he did.”

“When was that?” asked Frank.

“Oh, about six months ago.”

“And where?”

“Now you’re asking questions, hey?” said Wacker, with a cunning air. “You tell me first: do you know the fellow who made that puzzle?”

“What’s his name?” asked Frank.

“Dick Welmore.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Aha!” cried Dale Wacker triumphantly, “then I’ve got you. I say, young fellow, you’re violating the law, you are. See here, I’m hard up. I know where Dick Welmore is snug and tight. If you don’t make it worth my while, I’ll go to him and have you prosecuted for stealing his invention.”

“Get out of here,” cried Frank, with flashing eyes.

“Hold on, now. Say, give me a job, and I’ll keep mum. Say, I can write a good hand. Once I took stock, see – ”

“Yes, I reckon you’ve taken stock to your cost, if what I hear is true. March out, and it won’t be healthy for you to come around here again.”

“I can make you trouble.”

“Try it.”

Frank gave Wacker a decided push through the open doorway. Wacker was muttering under his breath all kinds of dire threats.

At exactly that moment Frank looked along the walk to the street at the echo of a cherry whistle. It was instantly checked. Markham, tripping towards the office, halted with a shock. Like a flash he turned at a sight of Wacker. He disappeared so quickly that Frank wondered if Wacker got a clear look at him.

The latter, with a malignant growl at Frank, went away without another word. In some perplexity Frank sat down at his desk, thinking hard and fast.

“I just couldn’t truckle with that fellow,” he said. “Dick Welmore, eh? Can that be Markham’s real name? Evidently, though, this Wacker doesn’t know Markham is here. He thinks he is somewhere else, ‘snug and tight.’ Oh, bother! there’s only one right course to take in such a case, and I’ll follow it.”

Frank decided that at quitting time he would lock himself and Markham into the office, and ask for an explanation of his fear and dread of meeting Dale Wacker.

“It won’t be to Markham’s discredit, I’ll guarantee,” reflected Frank. “He’s square, if there ever was a square boy. Here he is now.”

Markham appeared, breathing hard and looking excited. He tried, however, to appear calm. His face was quite pale. Frank saw that he was under an intense nervous strain.

“Oh, Markham,” said Frank, not indicating that he noticed his friend’s perturbation, “I want you to take that money to Darry Haven.”

“All right,” answered Markham, glancing over his shoulder towards the street.

“Be careful of it, won’t you now?” directed Frank, with a little laugh. “Remember, it’s our entire capital, and here’s the mailing lists. Tell Darry to get them set up and printed just as quick as he can. We need them at once.”

Frank had decided to have the mailing list names printed, each on a separate line with a broad margin. This he did so they could keep a permanent record of the result of using each name. Besides that, in the fire at Riverton the lists had got charred, and some of them were brittle and broken away, and some pages hard to decipher.

Markham clasped the wallet containing the money tightly in one hand, thrust it into his outside coat pocket, and tucked the rolled-up lists under his arm.

“Be back soon,” he said.

“All right, do so. Want to have a little talk with you.”

Markham looked up quickly, hesitated, gave a sigh, and started rapidly down the walk.

“I’ll have it over and done with, soon as he comes back,” reflected Frank. “Poor fellow. Something’s on his mind. I’m going to help him get rid of it.”

Frank resumed his task. He was soon engrossed in finishing up a page of writing.

“Good,” he said finally, with satisfaction, “the last copy for the catalogue. It will make twenty-four printed pages. The cuts I have had made and the cuts the supply houses have loaned me make a very fine showing. Well, the first two weeks show up pretty good. Business started, and paying expenses. Why, that’s queer,” exclaimed Frank with a start, as he chanced to glance at the clock – “Markham has been gone a full half-hour.”

It was queer. Markham had less than three squares to go on his errand. Usually he made the trip to Haven Bros. in five minutes.

Frank walked to the door and looked out. He stood there, growing restless and anxious, as ten minutes went by. Then he grew restless, put on his cap, waited five minutes longer, and, closing the office door, went out to the street.

“Pshaw,” he said, looking up and down the street, “what am I worrying about? Got that Dale Wacker on my mind, and it has upset me. Markham is probably chatting with Bob Haven. Well, I’ve gone so far, I’ll step over to the printing office and see.”

Frank walked rapidly to the principal street, and up the flight of stairs in a business block to Haven Bros.’s office.

As he entered he noticed all hands busy at cases and presses. Bob, shirt sleeves rolled up, was working on some chases on an imposing stone. Darry was reading proof at his desk.

But there was no Markham. Frank experienced a sensation of dread for which he could not account. He tried to keep cool, but the first word he spoke as he approached Darry made the latter look up quickly.

“Got the money I sent you, Darry?” asked Frank.

“Why, no – did you send it?”

“Yes – over half-an-hour ago.”

“Who by?”

“Markham.”

“Oh, then, he’s doing some other errand first,” said Darry. “Sit down, if you’re going to wait for him.”

“No, I’ll watch them doing things,” answered Frank, with an assumed lightness of tone.

He strolled about the neat little office, pretending to be interested. It was a dead failure. A lump of lead seemed bearing him down. Frank glanced at his watch. An hour had passed since he had sent Markham on his errand.

“Be back soon, Darry,” he said, and went out of the printing office with a dull, sick feeling at heart.

Frank returned to his office. Markham was not there. He went back to the print shop.

“Markham been here yet?” he inquired in a failing voice to Darry.

“Not yet, Frank.”

“Then something’s wrong,” suddenly burst out Frank, unable longer to endure the strain of suspense and dread.

“Why, how pale you are,” began Darry, rising from his chair.

“Yes, Darry,” said Frank in a quivering tone – “Markham is missing, and with him my mailing lists and over two hundred dollars in cash.”

CHAPTER XX

A BAD BUSINESS

Frank came down to the office the next morning looking haggard and troubled. Stet was hanging around the door.

“Darry Haven told me to wait till you came down, and then let him know,” said the little fellow.

“All right,” nodded Frank in a dull way.

Stet darted off with his usual elfish nimbleness. Frank unlocked the door and sat down before his desk rather gloomily. He mechanically arranged some papers. Darry was with him before he had accomplished much. Stet accompanied him.

“Well, Frank,” questioned Darry, “any word of Markham?”

“Not a trace, Darry.”

“Strange, isn’t it?” observed Darry in a musing way. “I declare I can’t understand it.”

“Nor I,” said Frank. “It’s him I’m thinking of, not of myself. I haven’t slept a wink all night. Honest, Darry, if he was an own brother I couldn’t feel more anxious. Mother is quite as worried. I went everywhere about town last evening till the stores shut up. I telephoned several neighboring towns. I saw trainmen around the depot.”

“And found no one who had seen Markham after you sent him on that errand with the money and the mailing lists?”

“Not a soul, Darry.”

“How do you explain it?”

“I can’t. I suppose some people who don’t know Markham as I do, would say I was a fool to take up a stranger and put so much trust in him, that it served me right to have him run away with all I have in the world first chance he got. Well, let me tell you, Darry, that boy wouldn’t do me a wrong turn wilfully for a million dollars, and I know it.”

Darry sighed and was silent. He had liked Markham, but his young business career had brought him in contact with so many weak and absolutely bad people, that secretly he feared that Markham had yielded to temptation, and they would not hear of him again.

“Have you no theory as to the reason why Markham should be missing so mysteriously?” he asked.

“Why, yes, I have, in a way, Darry,” responded Frank, “but it is all guess-work. I told you last night about some secret in his life.”

“Yes, I know,” nodded Darry.

“I also told you that I was convinced that Dale Wacker knew Markham, and that Markham for some reason dreaded meeting him.”

“It certainly looked that way, judging from Markham’s actions.”

“Very well, I think they ran into each other after Markham went on the errand to you. Wacker is a blackmailer, as his talk to me about the puzzle plainly shows. Does he know something about Markham that might make him trouble? It certainly looks that way. He may have terrorized Markham into running away.”

“All right, if that is true, then Markham, if he is an honest boy, will send back your money and the mailing lists.”

“Of course he will,” declared Frank. “I’ve been expecting to receive them every hour.”

“And if he doesn’t,” suggested Darry, somewhat skeptically.

“If he doesn’t,” repeated Frank, slowly but steadily, “then make up your mind to one thing.”

“And what is that?”

“That Markham is in the power of some one who holds him a prisoner, and can’t get word to me.”

“H’m,” said Darry simply. Frank’s eyes flashed.

“Furthermore,” he went on, “assuming that, I shall make it my business to investigate along that line, I shall never lose faith in Markham’s honesty and fidelity to me till I have used every endeavor to find out when, where and why he dropped out of sight so mysteriously.”

“You’re a staunch friend, you are,” commented Darry. “In the meantime, though, Frank, your capital is gone. Worse than that, the whole basis of your business has gone with it.”

“Yes, the mailing lists,” said Frank. “I’ve thought that all out, Darry. You will have to stop work on the catalogue and the rest of the printing. I can’t pay for the work.”

“We’ll trust you.”

“No,” said Frank steadily, “I can’t run into debt.”

“We might spare a little cash till – till you hear from the other.”

“I won’t involve my friends. I have planned it all out. My mother is coming down to the office to take care of the little business that will come in from the advertising.”

“And what will you do?” asked Darry curiously.

“I have arranged to hire a horse and wagon. I shall go out and visit small towns and sell from door to door, or even from the wagon, till I hear from that missing money, or get on my feet again.”

“You’re a good one,” pronounced Darry with an admiring sparkle in his eye, slapping Frank heartily on the shoulder. “You’re a stubborn one, too, so I won’t intrude offers of assistance only to be turned down.”

“All the time,” resumed Frank, “I shall be looking out for a trace of Markham. See here, Darry, I can’t get that Dale Wacker off my mind. Who are his companions? Where does he hang out? How am I going to set a watch on him?”

“He may not even be in town,” suggested Darry. “You know Bob and I went all over Pleasantville last evening, like yourself seeking a trace of Markham. It looked as if Wacker had flashed into town and out again. We didn’t run across him, and we didn’t find anybody who had seen him since late in the afternoon.”

“Say, can I speak a word?” piped in an anxious voice.

It was little Stet who had spoken. Frank and Darry had forgotten all about him. Now Stet got up timorously from the door step.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Darry. “Heard all we’ve said, too, I suppose, Stet?”

“Yes, I have,” replied Stet. “Had to – ought to – I’m interested, I am. I like you. I like Mr. Newton. You’re both my friends. I like Markham, too. He gave Hemp Carson, the Eagle manager, a setting down for pitching onto me. I don’t like Dale Wacker. Huh! hadn’t ought to. He robbed me of two dollars once. Well, Dale Wacker is in Pleasantville. I saw him this morning. He came in on a farmer’s wagon from somewhere out of town.”

“That’s news, anyway,” said Darry.

“You were going to give me my regular ten days’ vacation next week, you know,” continued Stet to Darry. “Make it begin to-day, and I’ll soon find out for you all there is to find out about Dale Wacker’s doings.”

“But that is hardly a vacation, Stet?” suggested Frank.

“It will be,” chuckled the little fellow, “if I can get my two dollars’ worth of satisfaction out of him by showing him up.”

“All right,” said Darry, “try it, Stet, if you want to.”

Stet went away forthwith. Frank went into details with Darry as to the mail order business. It must remain partially inactive until something encouraging developed.

The morning mail was a pretty good one. About ten o’clock Mrs. Ismond came down to the office, and Frank initiated his mother into the business routine.

“Just get the mail each day, and fill what orders you can,” said Frank. “When you can’t fill an order, return the money. You see, mother, I want to take the bulk of stock on hand with me for quick sales, and I can’t order any more until I get some money ahead.”

Frank put in two hours about town trying to look up Markham. The result was quite as discouraging as upon the day previous. He closed an arrangement for the hire of a horse and a light wagon, and packed up some goods at the office, ready for his trip into the country.

Mrs. Ismond, with a woman’s instinctive capacity for neatness, had the office in attractive order by late afternoon, and all the work attended to.

“Don’t get discouraged, Frank,” she said, as they were on their way home. “It won’t take a great deal of money to keep up the business in a small way. I sent out a hundred circulars this afternoon, and I will keep on at that average while you are away.”

“Why,” spoke Frank, “how can you do that, with no mailing list addresses?”

“Oh, I set my wits at work and made quite a discovery,” responded Mrs. Ismond with a bright smile. “The Pleasantville Herald has quite a list of exchanges. I asked Darry to send me some. They come from all over the State. I selected a number of promising names from little news items in the papers. For instance: I took girls’ names from church and society items, and boys’ names from baseball club items and the like. Good, fresh names, Frank – don’t you see?”

“I do see,” said Frank, “and it’s a grand idea, mother.”

After supper Mrs. Ismond went upstairs to make up a little parcel of collars, handkerchiefs and the like for her son’s journey.

Frank looked up from the county map from which he was formulating a route, as his mother reappeared. At a glance he saw that she was very much agitated.

“Oh, Frank!” she panted, sinking into a chair pale and distressed-looking.