Wallingford heard about him quickly, for the picturesque Quagg had become a public joy and all the down-town crowd knew well about him. Wallingford went down to the corner with the intention of putting a stop to the exhibition, but, as he looked at the doctor, whose hair now dropped beneath his sombrero to nearly its old-time length, a new thought struck him and he went quietly away. The next day Corbin withdrew from the treasurership and Paley from the directorate, and every one of the directors who had taken the places of the original incorporators did likewise. Intimate relationship with the doctor was productive of too much publicity for peaceful enjoyment.
It was just at this time that the agent of the advertising concern began to bother Wallingford for “copy” on the last half of his contract. Wallingford, to placate him, finished paying for the contract and took the cash discount, but held the agent off two or three days in the matter of the “copy.” He was not quite satisfied about the wording of the advertisement. He sat up late one night devising the most concise and striking form in which to present the merits of Doctor Quagg’s Peerless Sciatacata, and in the morning he went down to the office prepared to mail the result of his labor. He found upon his desk this note from the restless Doctor Quagg:
Spring’s here. I never stayed in one place so long in my life. You can have my salary and you can have my ten thousand dollars’ worth of stock. I don’t want it. My hair’s out good and long again and I’ve gone back on the road to sell the Sciatacata.
Yours truly,
Quagg.
It was the last straw, and the stock-holders’ meeting which Wallingford hastily called wore the greenish pallor peculiar to landlubbers in their first sea storm.
“We don’t need Quagg,” Wallingford protested. “Our contract with him covers any rights he has in the title of the medicine, and the mere fact that he is not with us does not need to prevent our going ahead.”
“Have you the formula for his preparation?” asked Doctor Lazzier quietly.
“Oh, no,” replied Wallingford carelessly. “I don’t see that that need stop us.”
“Why not?” protested young Corbin. “Our whole business is built upon that formula.”