"Not a damned cent more," said H. Rutgers, pugnaciously, in order to forestall requests for part payment in advance.
"I wasn't going to ask you for more money, but for a few—"
"Then why waste my time? Don't fail me!"
Then Hendrik Rutgers put the finishing touches on the work of organization. He rented offices in the Allied Arts Building, sent a sign-painter to decorate the ground-glass doors, and ordered some official stationery in a rush. He promised the agent to return with the president and sign the lease.
Where everybody distrusts everybody else there is nothing like promising to sign documents!
He bought some office furniture on exactly the same plan.
On Friday night the unionized sandwich-men took their signs and boards to the trysting-place, Twenty-ninth Street and Ninth Avenue, to have new advertisements of Hendrik's composition painted thereon. The boards did not belong to the members, but in a good cause all property is the cause's. Each of the original fourteen brought recruits. The street was almost blocked. The two sign-painters worked like nine beavers, and Hendrik and the young man in steel-rimmed spectacles helped. When the clamor became threatening Hendrik counted his men twice, aloud. There were eighty-four of them. They knew it was eighty-four, having heard him say it, as he intended they should. He then took them to the corner boozery.
He had only two dollars. There were eighty-four thirsty. Therefore, "Eighty beers!" he yelled, majestically.
"Eighty-four!" shouted eighty-four voices.
"That's twenty cents more," said Hendrik to himself in the plain hearing of the hitherto distrustful bartender. He had a small green roll in his left hand consisting of two dollars and two clippings. With his right he loudly planked down two large dimes on the counter and shoved them toward the bartender, who took them while Hendrik began to count his greenbacks.