“Gilt. tops,” he announced. “One million copies the first impression!”
And then he was gone.
II.
A week later Chicago and the greater part of the United States was placarded with “The Crimson Cord.” Perkins did his work thoroughly and well, and great was the interest in the mysterious title. It was an old dodge, but a good one. Nothing appeared on the advertisements but the mere title. No word as to what “The Crimson Cord” was. Perkins merely announced the words, and left them to rankle in the reader's mind; and as a natural consequence each new advertisement served to excite new interest.
When we made our contracts for magazine advertising,—and we took a full page in every worthy magazine,—the publishers were at a loss to classify the advertisement; and it sometimes appeared among the breakfast foods, and sometimes sandwiched in between the automobiles and the hot-water heaters. Only one publication placed it among the books.
But it was all good advertising, and Perkins was a busy man. He racked his inventive brain for new methods of placing the title before the public. In fact, so busy was he at his labor of introducing the title, that he quite forgot the book itself.
One day he came to the office with a small rectangular package. He unwrapped it in his customary enthusiastic manner, and set on my desk a cigar-box bound in the style he had selected for the binding of “The Crimson Cord.” It was then I spoke of the advisability of having something to the book besides the cover and a boom.
“Perkins,” I said, “don't you think it is about time we got hold of the novel—the reading, the words?”
For a moment he seemed stunned. It was clear that he had quite forgotten that book-buyers like to have a little reading-matter in their books. But he was only dismayed for a moment.
“Tut!” he cried presently. “All in good time! The novel is easy. Anything will do. I'm no literary man. I don't read a book in a year. You get the novel.”