He would improve it--that would go without saying--touch it up and polish it; doubtless he would think best to revise some of its departments; and--well, he would probably change its name and its cover design. He could not continue to perpetuate such an absurdity as that t.i.tle. Perhaps he would christen it the _Burmingham Monthly_.
The notion of purchasing the amateur product appealed to his sense of humor. The more he thought of it, the stronger became his desire to own the paper. Strange he had never before considered publishing a monthly magazine. Yes, he would get out the few remaining issues of the _March Hare_ under its present name and then he would buy out the whole thing for a small sum and take it over. The boys would undoubtedly be glad enough to sell it, flattered to have the chance, no doubt. A check that would provide the editorial staff with some hockey sticks or tennis shoes would without question satisfy them. What use would they have for a paper after they graduated?
Thus reasoned Mr. Arthur Presby Carter to himself in the solitude and silence of his editorial sanctum. And after he had disposed of the matter to his entire satisfaction, he took up a letter from his desk and decided with the same deliberation to purchase also certain oil properties in Pennsylvania. For Mr. Arthur Presby Carter was a man of broad financial interests and a large bank account. The Echo was only one of his many business enterprises, and buying _March Hares_ or oil wells was all one to him, a means of adding more dollars to his acc.u.mulating h.o.a.rd.
CHAPTER XI
TEMPTATION a.s.sAILS PAUL
While Mr. Carter sat in his editorial office and thus reflected on his many business ventures Paul Cameron was also sitting in his editorial domain thinking intently.
The hundred-dollar deficit in the school treasury bothered him more than he was willing to admit. It was, of course, quite possible for him to repair the error--for he was convinced an error in the _March Hare"s_ bookkeeping had caused the shortage. A bill of a hundred dollars must have been paid and not recorded. Melville Carter had never had actual experience in keeping accounts, therefore was it so surprising that he had inadvertently made a mistake? Perhaps he was not so capable of handling money and keeping it straight as the cla.s.s had thought when they had elected him to his post of business manager. Paying bills and rigorously noting down every expenditure was no easy task. It was a thankless job, anyway--the least interesting of any of the positions on the paper, and one that entailed more work than most. To kick at Mel would be rank ingrat.i.tude. It was not likely he had made a mess of things wittingly. Therefore the only alternative, since neither Mel"s pride nor his own would permit them to confess to the muddle, was to pay the outstanding bill and slip the rest of the cash as quietly as possible into the bank.
How strange it was that the sum lacking was just an even hundred dollars! Yet after all, was it so strange? It was so easy to make a mistake of one figure in adding and subtracting columns. There did not, it was true, seem to be any mistake on the books; but of course there was a mistake somewhere. It was not at all likely that the bank had made the error. Banks never made mistakes. Well, there was no use crying over spilled milk. The success of the _March Hare_ had been so phenomenal hitherto that one must put up with a strata of ill luck.
He hated to give up buying his typewriter, after all the hard work he had done to earn it. He supposed he could sell his Liberty Bond as Melville was planning to do and use that money instead of the sum he had laid by. But he did not just know how to go to work to convert a Liberty Bond into cash. It was an easy enough matter to buy a bond; but where did you go to sell one? How many business questions there were that a boy of seventeen was unable to answer! If he were to ask his father how to sell the bond, it might arouse suspicion, to ask anybody else might do so too. People would wonder why he, Paul Cameron, was selling a Liberty Bond he had bought only a short time before. Burmingham was a gossipy little town. Its good news traveled fast but so also did its bad news. Any item of interest, no matter how small, was rapidly spread from one end of the village to the other. Therefore Paul could not risk even making inquiries, let alone selling his property to any one in the place.
Yet he could not but laugh at the irony of the signs that confronted him wherever he went: _Buy Bonds!_ _Invest!_ There were selling booths at the bank, the library, the town hall. At every street corner you came upon them. But none of these agencies were purchasing bonds themselves.
Nowhere did it say: _Sell Bonds!_ These patriots were not at their posts to add to their troubles--not they!
Once it occurred to Paul to ask the cashier at the bank what people did with Liberty Bonds which they wanted to dispose of; but on second thought he realized that Mr. Stacy was an intimate friend of his father"s and might mention the incident. Therefore he at length dismissed the possibility of selling his bond and thereby meeting his share of the _March Hare_ deficit.
No, he must use his typewriter money. There was no escape. He chanced to be at the _Echo_ offices that day with copy for the next issue of his paper and was still rebelliously wavering over the loss of his typewriter when the door of Mr. Carter"s private room opened and the great man himself appeared, ushering out a visitor. Glancing about on his return from the elevator his eye fell on Paul.
"Ah, Paul, good afternoon," he nodded. "Come into my office a moment. I want to speak to you."
Paul followed timidly. It was seldom that his business brought him into personal touch with Mr. Carter, toward whom he still maintained no small degree of awe; usually the affairs relative to the school paper were transacted either through the business manager of the _Echo_ or with one of his a.s.sistants.
But to-day Mr. Carter was suddenly all amiability. He escorted Paul into his sanctum, and after closing the door, tipped back in the leather chair before his desk and in leisurely fashion drew out a cigar.
"How is your paper coming on, Paul?" he asked, as he blew a cloud of smoke into the room and surveyed the boy through its blueness.
"Very well, Mr. Carter."
"Austin, our manager, tells me your circulation is increasing."
"Yes, sir. It"s gone up steadily from the first."
"Humph!" mused Mr. Carter. "Funny thing, isn"t it? It was quite a clever move of yours to set the parents to writing. Everybody likes to see himself in print; we"re a vain lot of creatures. Of course, the minute you published their articles they bought them. Could not resist it!"
The lad laughed. Although he did not wholly agree with the editor it did not seem necessary to tell him so.
"I guess you"ve found your enterprise a good deal of work," went on Carter.
"Well, yes. It has taken more time than I expected," Paul admitted.
"You"ll be glad to get rid of it when you graduate in June."
The man studied the boy furtively.
"Yes, I shall. It has been great fun; but it has been a good deal of care."
"You"re going to Harvard, I hear."
"Yes, sir. Harvard was Dad"s college, and it"s going to be mine."
"I haven"t much use for colleges," growled Mr. Carter. "They turn out nothing but a grist of extravagant sn.o.bs. I never went to college myself and I have contrived to pull along and make my pile, thanks to n.o.body.
I"ve a big half mind to have Melville do the same. But his mother wants him to go, and I suppose I shall have to give in and let him. It will be interesting to see what he gets out of it."
Paul did not answer. He did not just know what reply to make.
"So you"re set on college."
"Yes, sir, I am."
"What"s your idea?"
"To know something."
The man"s thin lips curled into a smile.
"And you expect to acquire that result at Harvard?"
"I hope so."
"Well, you may," remarked Mr. Carter, with a sceptical shrug of his shoulders, "but I doubt it. You will probably fritter away your time and your father"s money in boat-racing, football, and fraternity dramatics; that is what it usually amounts to."
"It has got to amount to more than that with me," Paul declared soberly.
"Why?"
"Because Dad is not rich, and hasn"t the money to throw away."
A silence fell upon the room.
"I should think that under those circ.u.mstances you would do much better to cut out a frilly education and go to work after you finish your high school course," observed the magnate deliberately. "Suppose I were to make you a good business offer? Suppose I were to take over that school paper of yours at the end of June--"
"What!"
"Wait a moment. Then suppose I took you in here at a good salary and let you keep on with this _March Hare_ job? Not, of course, in precisely its present form but along the same general lines. We could make a paying proposition out of that paper, I am sure of it. It would need a good deal of improving," continued the great man in a pompous, patronizing tone, "but there is an idea there that could be developed into something worth while, unless I am very much mistaken."
"B--u--t--" stammered Paul and then stopped helplessly.
"The thing is not worth much as it now stands," went on Mr. Carter, puffing rings of smoke airily toward the ceiling, "but in time we could remodel it into a publication of real merit--make a winner of it."