"Have you felt out the shirt people on it?" asks Alex next.
"That's what I wanted to see you about," says Simmons. "I can't get them to look at it! I get shifted from one subordinate to another and they seem to think I'm some sort of a crank. If I could only get it before Philip Calder, the president of the Brown-Calder Shirt Company, I'd be made!"
"Hmm!" grunts Alex. "Well, what d'ye want me to do?"
Simmons coughs and fidgets with the button.
"It struck me when you was talkin' to me the other night," he says, "that if there was one man in New York who could see Calder and make him realize the merits of my invention, you were that man! Will you try it?"
"I'll do it!" answers Alex. "Gimme the model and you'll hear from me in a few days. Do you wish to sell the neckbands themselves, or just the patent on your idea?"
"I don't care who makes the neckbands," says Simmons, "as long as I get paid for my invention! Of course, I don't expect you to help me for nothing, either."
"Ha! ha!" I butts in. "That bird wouldn't tell you the time for nothing You'll be lucky if you ever even see that invention any more!"
"Don't mind my cousin," Alex tells him. "Outside of a tendency to the measles, he's the worst thing we got in our family! We'll take up the financial end of this later."
Bright and early the next mornin', or eleven o'clock to be exact, Alex invites me to go with him so's I can watch how he would go about seein' the president of the Brown-Calder Company and sellin' him the Simmons patent collar button. As they is always a chance that Alex will fall down, I went along. We had no trouble at all landin' outside the president's office, but once we got there it was different.