Alex the Great Part 18

away on somethin' like everything depended on speed. He's a great, big fat bird, with one of them trick Chaplin mustaches and he's smokin' a cigar as big as he is. His head is playin' it's hairless day. All in all, he looked like big business, and my knees is knockin' together till I'm afraid he'll hear 'em and turn around. Alex gumshoes up to the desk and without sayin' a word, he lays the neckband right down beside Calder, who immediately swings around with a snort.

"What's all this--how did you get in here?" he bellers.

"We took the subway down from Ninety-sixth Street," says Alex. "That thing you got in your hand is the neckband of a s.h.i.+rt."

"Well?" growls Calder, tappin' the desk with a lead pencil.

"It contains two collar b.u.t.tons--one front and one back," says Alex.

"As you may have noticed, they are built right into the cloth and are meant to come _attached to the s.h.i.+rt_. This does away forever with the necessity of buying a collar b.u.t.ton. It cannot be broken, lost or mislaid. Any s.h.i.+rt manufacturer making s.h.i.+rts with this neckband attached will naturally have the bulge on his rivals. I can turn out the neckband for practically nothing. I hold the patent."

Calder sneers.

"Ha!" he says. "There's a million cranks come in my office every day.

I suppose you want to sell me this, eh?"

"No, sir!" says Alex, with a pleasant grin.

I liked to fell through the floor at that!

"_No_, sir?" repeats Calder, droppin' the pencil.

"No, sir!" answers Alex.

"Well, what the--what _do_ you want then?" roars Calder. "Come now, speak up. I'll give you five minutes, that's all!"

"That's three minutes more than I got to spare!" chirps Alex, pullin'

over a chair. "I don't want you to _buy_ this neckband, Mister Calder.

What I want is this--I know that _you_ are the greatest authority on s.h.i.+rts and everything connected with the business, in the United States if not in the world! I think I have a big thing here, a thing that will revolutionize one end of that business. I say I _think_ so, because I don't know. Now--the concern I represent wants your opinion of it. We're willing to pay to have you, the world's greatest authority, go on record as to the merits of this invention. If you say it's no good, I'll throw it away and forget about it; if you say it's good, I'll have no trouble placing it anywhere in the world!"

Well, say! That old guy brightens all up when Alex calls him the champion s.h.i.+rtmaker of the world, and pickin' up the band, he turns it over in his hands a few times. You could see that the old salve Alex handed him had gone big!

"Hmph!" he says, finally. "How much would these things cost me?"

"Roughly speakin', about three cents each," says Alex.

"How long will they stand up under laundering?" is the next question Calder fires at him.

"They're the only thing that won't come out in the was.h.!.+" answers Alex, without battin' an eye.

The old guy smiles and presses a b.u.t.ton. In comes a clerk.

"Send in Mister Lacy, no matter what he's doing, at once!" barks Calder. He turns to Alex as the clerk flees from the room. "Have you been anywhere else with this?" he asks.

Alex looks pained.

"Why, Mister Calder!" he says, "certainly not! Before I went any further I wanted the opinion of the greatest--"

This Lacy guy comes in.

"Mister Lacy is superintendent of our manufacturing department," says Calder. "I'm going to talk with him for three minutes about the effect of the war on the onion crop in Beloochistan. I'll send for you at the expiration of that time. Ah--you can leave the--ah--neckband here!"

"Pardon me!" says Alex, "I have got to be up at the office of the Evers-Raine s.h.i.+rt Company at three and I can just about make it."

"What the devil are you going to another s.h.i.+rt company for?" roars Calder.

"I have an old friend in the--ah--manufacturing department," says Alex, lookin' straight at him, "who I'm very anxious to see."

Well, they stare at each other for a minute without sayin' a word.

They're both playin' poker, and it's Calder who lays his down first!

"Look here!" he grunts. "I'm going to take an option on this infernal thing for a week. How much is that worth to you?"

"Ten thousand dollars," answers Alex, pleasantly.

"I'll pay seven and give you a check right now!" says Calder, slammin'

the desk with his fist. "Here, Lacy!" he says to the other guy. "This is what we'll put on our s.h.i.+rts hereafter, unless I'm very much mistaken! What do you think of it?"

Lacy picks up the neckband and looks at it.

"And to think," he mutters in an awed voice. "And to think n.o.body ever thought of this before!"

"Hmm!" says Calder, takin' the band back. "That's all settled then!

Young man," he says to Alex, "the cas.h.i.+er will give you a check. Come back at the end of the week and I'll either give you back your neckband, or a contract for five hundred thousand of them a year for twenty years!"

"Thanks!" says Alex. "Will you have that check certified?"

Well, Simmons like to went insane with joy when we sprung the news on him and Alex insists on him takin' that seven thousand dollar check whole. He didn't ask for a nickel, which had me puzzled. Mrs. Simmons goes out shoppin' for furs, diamonds and automobiles, and the wife asks me why I don't invent somethin', but outside of that they was nothin'

more doin' till the end of the week. Then, Alex comes up and breaks the news to Simmons that the Brown-Calder s.h.i.+rt Company will take all the neckbands that Simmons can supply, as long as people wear s.h.i.+rts.

"We have got to deliver 50,000 in a month," says Alex, "at the rate of two and a half cents apiece. Can you do it?"

Simmons falls back on the sofa in a dead faint!

Well, they was great excitement and the wife finally brings him to life with smellin' salts.

"It was prob'ly the sudden mention of so much money, eh?" I says.

"I'm ruined!" hollers Simmons, leapin' up and dancin' around. "Why, it took me two weeks to make that one miserable model I gave you!" he yells at Alex. "I couldn't make fifty thousand of them things in a lifetime!"

Alexis eyes glitters.

"Here!" he says, slappin' Simmons on the back. "Pull yourself together, man! You've got to think of somethin'. How did you make that one?"

"By hand!" wails Simmons.

"Well, they must be some way of makin' a machine that can turn out so many thousand an hour!" says Alex, walkin' back and forth. "Why--"

"I don't care who makes 'em!" says Simmons. "All I want is to get paid for my idea. I--"