I
I HAD not seen Perkins for six months or so, and things were dull. I was beginning to tire of sitting indolently in my office, with nothing to do but clip coupons from my bonds. Money is good enough in its way, but it is not interesting unless it is doing something lively—doubling itself or getting lost. What I wanted was excitement,—an adventure,—and I knew that if I could find Perkins, I could have both. A scheme is a business adventure, and Perkins was the greatest schemer in or out of Chicago.
Just then Perkins walked into my office.
“Perkins,” I said, as soon as he had arranged his feet comfortably on my desk, “I'm tired. I'm restless. I have been wishing for you for a month. I want to go into a big scheme, and make a lot of new, up-to-date cash. I'm sick of this tame, old cash that I have. It isn't interesting. No cash is interesting except the coming cash.”
“I'm with you,” said Perkins; “what is your scheme?”
“I have none,” I said sadly. “That is just my trouble. I have sat here for days trying to think of a good, practical scheme, but I can't. I don't believe there is an unworked scheme in the whole wide, wide world.” Perkins waved his hand.
“My boy,” he exclaimed, “there are millions! You've thousands of 'em right here in your office! You're falling over them, sitting on them, walking on them! Schemes? Everything is a scheme. Everything has money in it!”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Yes,” I said, “for you. But you are a genius.”
“Genius, yes,” Perkins said, smiling cheerfully, “else why Perkins the Great? Why Perkins the Originator? Why the Great and Only Perkins of Portland?”
“All right,” I said, “what I want is for your genius to get busy. I'll give you a week to work up a good scheme.”
Perkins pushed back his hat, and brought his feet to the floor with a smack.
“Why the delay?” he queried. “Time is money. Hand me something from your desk.”
I looked in my pigeonholes, and pulled from one a small ball of string. Perkins took it in his hand, and looked at it with great admiration.
“What is it?” he asked seriously.
“That,” I said, humoring him, for I knew something great would be evolved from his wonderful brain, “is a ball of red twine I bought at the ten-cent store. I bought it last Saturday. It was sold to me by a freckled young lady in a white shirt-waist. I paid—”
“Stop!” Perkins cried, “what is it?”
I looked at the ball of twine curiously. I tried to see something remarkable in it. I couldn't. It remained a simple ball of red twine, and I told Perkins so.
“The difference,” declared Perkins, “between mediocrity and genius! Mediocrity always sees red twine; genius sees a ball of Crimson Cord!”
He leaned back in his chair, and looked at me triumphantly. He folded his arms as if he had settled the matter. His attitude seemed to say that he had made a fortune for us. Suddenly he reached forward, and, grasping my scissors, began snipping off small lengths of the twine.
“The Crimson Cord!” he ejaculated. “What does it suggest?”
I told him that it suggested a parcel from the druggist's. I had often seen just such twine about a druggist's parcel.
Perkins sniffed disdainfully.
“Druggists?” he exclaimed with disgust. “Mystery! Blood! 'The Crimson Cord.' Daggers! Murder! Strangling! Clues! 'The Crimson Cord'—”
He motioned wildly with his hands, as if the possibilities of the phrase were quite beyond his power of expression.
“It sounds like a book,” I suggested.
“Great!” cried Perkins. “A novel! The novel! Think of the words 'A Crimson Cord' in blood-red letters six feet high on a white ground!” He pulled his hat over his eyes, and spread out his hands; and I think he shuddered.
“Think of 'A Crimson Cord,'” he muttered, “in blood-red letters on a ground of dead, sepulchral black, with a crimson cord writhing through them like a serpent.”
He sat up suddenly, and threw one hand in the air.
“Think,” he cried, “of the words in black on white, with a crimson cord drawn taut across the whole ad.!”
He beamed upon me.
“The cover of the book,” he said quite calmly, “will be white,—virgin, spotless white,—with black lettering, and the cord in crimson. With each copy we will give a crimson silk cord for a book-mark. Each copy will be done up in a white box and tied with crimson cord.”
He closed his eyes and tilted his head upward.
“A thick book,” he said, “with deckel edges and pictures by Christy. No, pictures by Pyle. Deep, mysterious pictures! Shadows and gloom! And wide, wide margins. And a gloomy foreword. One-fifty per copy, at all booksellers.”
Perkins opened his eyes and set his hat straight with a quick motion of his hand. He arose and polled on his gloves.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Contracts!” he said. “Contracts for advertising! We most boom 'The Crimson Cord!' We must boom her big!”
He went out and closed the door. Presently, when I supposed him well on the way down-town, he opened the door and inserted his head.
“Gilt. tops,” he announced. “One million copies the first impression!”
And then he was gone.