"Exactly."
"You don't think it's selling goods under false pretenses?"
"Naw," said Macnooder. "Same principle as the patent medicine—the only wheel that goes round there is a nice, fat temperance measure of alcohol, isn't it? We'll have the first public demonstration to-morrow afternoon. I'll distribute a few more pearls to-night. Ta, ta."
The three sat quietly, listening to the fall of his departing steps.
"If we'd asked him in the first place," said the Tennessee Shad, gazing out the window, "we'd only given up twenty-five per cent.—great business head, Doc; great mind for detail."
XIV
Macnooder, that night, formed the Eureka Purchasing Company, incorporated himself, and secured, at jigger rates, every second-hand alarm clock on which he could lay his hands—but more of that hereafter.
At five o'clock the next afternoon the combined Kennedy House packed itself into the Tennessee Shad's room, where Doc Macnooder rose and addressed them:
"Gentlemen of the Kennedy: I will only detain you an hour or so; I have only a few thousand words to offer. We are gathered here on an auspicious occasion, a moment of history—the moment is historical. Your esteemed Housemate, Mr. Dink Stover, has completed, after years of endeavor, an invention that is destined to be a household word from the northernmost wilds of the Davis House to the sun-kissed fragrance of the Green, from the Ethiopian banks of the fur-bearing canal to the Western Tins of Hot-dog Land! Gentlemen, I will be frank——"
"Cheese it!" said a voice.