Part 18

"It is not French delicatessen, but the royal family of Sweden. And the Hapsburgs? The Emperor of Austria belongs to them. And Romanoff? The Czar of Russia would answer to that if he voted. And there are also the Hohenzollerns and the Bourbons and the Braganzas. And then," he finished, simply, "there is _Rutgers_!"

"It seems to me," put in Grace, coldly, "that I have something to say--"

"Empress, you don't. Just look," interrupted H. R. "Of course, the date is subject to your approval. I didn't have any luncheon. Will you tell Frederick to bring some tea and a few sandwiches--"

"Damnation!" shrieked Mr. George G. Goodchild. "Is a man to be insulted in his own home? Get to hell out of here with your sandwiches!"

"George!" rebuked Mrs. Goodchild, placidly. She never frowned. Wrinkles.

"Yes, George!" maniacally mimicked her husband. "It's sandwiches! Sandwiches! Sandwiches! Everywhere! Yesterday I discharged my secretary. I told him to send out for a chicken sandwich for me and I heard him give the boy the order: 'Son-in-law for Mr. Goodchild. Cock-a-doodle-do!' At this week's meeting of our directors Mr. Garrettson asked me: 'How is the King of the Sandwiches? Living at your house yet?' And the other jackasses all laughed. _Sandwiches!_"

He turned to his daughter, and fearing that she was in the conspiracy, asked her, vehemently: "Do you wish to be known all your life as the Queen of the Sandwiches? Do you? Do you wish your humorous friends to say to you, Grace, will you have a caviare husband?"

"No!" replied Grace. Fame was fame, but ridicule was Hades.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" said Mrs. Goodchild.

"Tell Frederick," said H. R., fiercely, "to bring in fifteen Rutgerses, if you prefer to call them that."

"That isn't funny," rebuked Grace, coldly. "I don't think you are accustomed to surroundings--"

"No; it's hospitality. I'm starving."

"You'll have sandwiches for breakfast, luncheon, and dinner, my child," Mr. Goodchild told Grace, angrily but intelligently. "In the newspapers!"

"Of course I won't marry him!" said Grace, decisively. "It's preposterous."

H. R. went up to her. She shook her head. He spoke very seriously:

"Grace, when people tell you that I have given free sandwiches to New York they mean that I have taken the poorest of the poor, the pariahs of commerce, the despised of the rabble, poor human derelicts, souls without a future, without a hope, worse than dirt, poorer than poverty, and I have made them _men_!"

"Yes, but s-s-sandwiches," blubbered Grace.

"I took these victims of society and capitalism and organized them, and then I emptied them into the golden Cloaca Maxima that you call Fifth Avenue, and lo! they emerged free men, self-supporting, well-fed, useful, artistic. They have been the efficient instruments of fame. It is they who have made you known from one end of the city to the other."

"Yes; but sandwiches!" doggedly repeated Grace.

"I have worked," said H. R., sternly, "with human souls--"

"Sandwiches!" corrected Mr. Goodchild.

H. R. flushed angrily.

"The sandwich," he told them all with an angry finality, "is here to stay. Our net receipts, after paying big wages, are over one thousand dollars a day. What do you think I am, an ass? Or a quick lunch? Or a bank president? _Pshaw!_ We've only begun! A capitalization of over five millions at the very start and the business growing like cheap automobiles, and me owning forty per cent. of the stock and controlling sixty per cent. in perpetuity! These men have made me their leader. I will not forsake them!"

"Can you give me," said Mr. Goodchild, seriously, "evidence to prove your statements?" If the love affair was not to end in an elopement it would be wise to have a business talk with this young man, who, after all was said and done, had a valuable asset in his newspaper publicity.

"You may be a wonderful man," said Grace to H. R., "but all my friends would ask me if I am going to have a mammoth sandwich instead of a wedding-cake! I ask you not to persist--"

H. R. smiled sympathetically and said: "You poor darling! Is _that_ all you are afraid of?"

She thought of Philadelphia and a quiet life, and she shook her head sadly. Why couldn't he have made her famous by unobjectionable methods.

But H. R. said, "I'll guarantee that my name will never again be associated with sandwiches--"

"You can't do it!" declared Grace, with conviction, thinking of humorous American girls. "When they are friends all you have to do is to take out the 'r' to turn them into fiends."

Mrs. Goodchild said nothing, but frowned. It had just occurred to her that here they all were, amicably talking with the man who had made their lives grievous burdens. Mr. Goodchild also was silent, but shrewdly eyed H. R.

"I'll do it!" repeated H. R., confidently.

"How can you without killing everybody?" challenged Grace, skeptically. "Everybody knows you as the leader of the sandwich men, and if you form companies--"

"My child," H. R. told her, gently, "I don't know anything about finance. That is why I want to get father's advice about my business. Every man to his trade. But I do know New York. I ought to, hang it! My grandfather owned what is now the Hotel Regina, and-- Well, look here! If by the first of June nobody even remembers that I had anything to do with sandwiches will you marry me?"

"Yes," said Mr. Goodchild.

If H. R. could do that he was fit to be anybody's son-in-law. If he couldn't, the annoyance would end.

"Grace?" asked H. R.

"I'm willing to take a chance for two weeks," said Mr. Goodchild, feeling certain he was displaying Machiavellian wisdom. But Grace shook her head.

"Everything you've done," she told H. R., "is child's play--"

"What!" interrupted H. R., indignantly. "Make New-Yorkers give money for charity that they might have spent for their own pleasure?"

"Nothing alongside of making 'em forget that you invented sandwiches. If it had been anything else, you might--I might--you--" She floundered helplessly. Her life for weeks had been so full of excitement that she could not co-ordinate her ideas quickly.

"You don't know me, dear," said H. R. "I hate to say it myself, but, really, I'm a wonder!"

He looked so confident, so masterfully sure of himself, so little like a dreamer, and so much like a doer, that Grace was impressed.

"Can you?" she asked, more eagerly than Mr. Goodchild liked to see. But then H. R. had never kissed him.

"With your hand for the prize and your love for my reward? Can you ask me if I can?"

"Yes, I can. Can you?"

"Yes!" he said. "But of course I'll need your help."

"My help?" Doubt came back into her eyes.

"Yes. This way." He took her in his arms and kissed her.

Mrs. Goodchild stared, open-eyed. Mr. Goodchild grew purple, and shouted:

"Here! This is--"

H. R. turned to him and said, "This is all right." And again he pressed his lips to hers and kept them pressed this time.

"I won't have it!" shrieked Mr. Goodchild, going toward the young people, one fist upraised.

H. R. ceased kissing, and spoke rebukingly:

"What do you want me to do? Kiss her in the vestibule before ringing the door-bell, as if we were plebeian sweethearts? Or in a taxi in the Park? Listen: _Fear not to intrust your daughter to a man who never kisses her save in the sight of those who brought her into this world!_" H. R. spoke so aphoristically that Mr. Goodchild thought it was a quotation from Ecclesiastes.

H. R. took the ring out of his waistcoat pocket and gave it to Grace.

"Here, my love!"

It was a magnificent green diamond, the rarest of all. Mrs. Goodchild rose quickly and said, "Let me see it!" Mother-like, being concerned with her only daughter's happiness, she took the ring to the window.

Grace followed. It was her ring.

"Say, Big Chief," H. R. asked his prospective father-in-law, "do I get the sand--do I get some slices of bread with some slices of viands, two breads to one viand, and a cup of tea?"

"Tea be hanged! Have a man's drink," hospitably and diplomatically said Mr. Goodchild. There was still a chance of escaping. He knew what violent opposition had done to sentimental daughters.

"Yes, but you'll have to allow us a decent rate of interest on our balances."

"How much do you carry?" asked Mr. Goodchild, carelessly.

"Enough for Dawson to offer three per cent. But let us not talk business here. I'll call on you to-morrow.

"All right. But Dawson can't do it, not even on time deposits, and--"

"Scotch for mine," said H. R. "Is Frederick coming?"

Mr. Goodchild was, after all, a gentleman. He rang for Frederick. He also was thirsty.

"Hendrik, it's beautiful," said Grace, enthusiastically. "But are you perfectly sure you can--"

"Empress, don't you wish it done?"

"Of course."

"Then, of course, it is done. You'll be able to yell '_sandwich_'! anywhere in New York and nobody will think of anything except that you are the most beautiful girl in the world. Give me another before Frederick brings 'em."

"Brings what?"

"Lamb chops!" answered H. R., who was a humorist of the New York school. "Quick!" And he kissed her twice.

"We'll have tea up-stairs if you're really going to be one of the family," said Mrs. Goodchild, with the dubious smile so familiar on the faces of mothers of New York girls.

"Come, Grace!" said H. R., taking her by the unringed hand. He knew better--by instinct.

It was a very satisfactory day. Such was the compelling force of his self-confidence that before he left the house Mr. and Mrs. Goodchild sincerely hoped he could accomplish the impossible and wipe out the sandwich stain from the old Knickerbocker name of Rutgers.

XXIX

The next morning H. R. called Andrew Barrett into the inner office.

"Shut the door," said he.

Andrew Barrett did so and looked alarmed--alarmed rather than guilty.

"To-morrow, and until further notice," said H. R., sternly, "you will tell the department-store sandwiches to parade in front of the various newspaper offices from morning until night."

"But not in Park Row, surely?"

"Exactly! And find out whether the business managers of the various newspapers have been holding conferences with the managing editors. They probably will--this afternoon or to-morrow."

"How can I--"

"By paid spies--office-boy scouts. Of course, lady stenographers being more in your line-- No! Look me in the eye!"

Andrew Barrett blushed and said, feebly:

"I am taking the count, Chief."

"Very well. I shall now go out and do your work. See that you do mine!" And H. R. went out, leaving Andrew Barrett full of devastating curiosity.

"I wonder what he has up his sleeve now?" mused young Mr. Barrett. "I'll bet it's a corker!"

H. R. himself called on the head of one of the most progressive of New York's great department stores--a man to whom full pages on week-days were nothing. He, therefore, had heard of H. R., and also had used sandwiches. He greeted the founder of the S. A. S. A. with respectful interest. H. R. said, calmly:

"I am here now to make you a present of from ten thousand to fifty thousand dollars a year--in cash!"

Mr. Liebmann, of course, knew that H. R., though an aristocrat, was neither a fool nor a lunatic. He diplomatically asked, "And my gratitude for your kindness may be expressed just how, Mr. Rutgers?"

"By accepting the cash and putting it in your pocket, to have and to hold until death do you part."

"Mr. Rutgers, I am an old man and suspense is trying." And Mr. Liebmann smiled deprecatingly.

"I have come to show you how you may save the amount I have mentioned in your newspaper-advertising appropriation. You big advertisers are now helpless to help yourself. There are no rebates and you can't play one paper against the others. Those days are over. Will you hear me to the end and not go on at half-cock while I am talking?"

"Yes," promised Mr. Liebmann, impetuously.

"Mr. Liebmann, you must write a letter to all the advertising managers of all the newspapers, saying that you have decided to discontinue all advertising in the daily papers as soon as your contracts expire. Hold your horses! Explain that you intend to reach your suburban trade through the fashion magazines, local papers, and circulars, and that for Manhattan and Brooklyn you have decided to use sandwiches--Don't talk yet!"

"I am only listening," Mr. Liebmann hastened to assure him.

"The newspapers know that you are a Napoleonic advertiser. They will pay to your communication the double compliment of belief and consternation. They know you know your business and that you are not only ultra-modern, but a pioneer. You have always been a highly intelligent advertiser. You will then let me supply you with one hundred of our best men, who will parade in front of the newspaper-offices in full regalia, and also in plain sight of your dear friends, the advertising managers. You know their psychology. Take it from me, you'll win.

"The only thing you mustn't do is to call the reductions rebates. There is no way by which the papers can get back at you. If I can make New York feed the hungry, would it be very difficult for me to make the advertising managers act wisely? Of course, if your letter does not bring about a saving of not less than ten thousand dollars a year you will not have to pay a penny for the sandwiches. I wish nothing written from you. The word of a Liebmann is enough for a Rutgers. My family has been in New York long enough for you to know whether a Rutgers is a man of his word or not."

"I'd rather shake hands with you than save a million a year in advertising," said Mr. Liebmann.

H. R. looked him straight in the eye--suspiciously, incredulously, insultingly. Mr. Liebmann flushed and then H. R. said, earnestly:

"I believe you, Mr. Liebmann!" and shook hands.

Mr. Liebmann, bareheaded, proudly escorted him to the sidewalk. He thanked H. R. to the last.

H. R. called on the other liberal advertisers and, with more or less ease, succeeded in impressing them as he had Mr. Liebmann.

Then he visited the managing editors of all the daily papers. He began with the best. The managing editor was delighted to see the man he had helped to make famous.

"I have come," H. R. told him, "to ask a great favor of you. I am, as you know, very greatly interested in charity work. Your paper has been good enough to publish my views."

H. R. spoke with a sort of restrained zeal simply, not humorously, obviously as a one-idea man, a crank, still young and undyspeptic. The editor prided himself on his quick and accurate insight into character. He said:

"Oh yes; I know about your work."

"Thank you. Well, sir, I find my usefulness to the cause somewhat impaired by the persistence with which my name is associated with the merely commercial phase of sandwiching. You know the sandwich men commercially were vermin, and I have taught them to pay for their own food. I took paupers and unpauperized them."

"And the signs in your parade were great. I told them at the Union League Club that at least one poor man's parade had shown brains. Not a single threat! Not one complaint! Not one window smashed! Not one spectator insulted! It showed genius!" And the editor held out his hand.

"I am a Christian, sir," said H. R., gently.

"Well, I'll shake hands, anyhow, if you'll let me," said the editor, cordially.

H. R. took his hand and looked so embarrassed that the editor would have sworn he blushed. This was no publicity-seeker, no fake modesty. Yes, that must be it--a Christian, the kind editors seldom shake hands with.

"And so," continued H. R., earnestly, "if you please, if you would only tell your reporters not to mention me in connection with sandwiches I could do more for the cause. You see, what I did with the sandwiches was merely the entering wedge. I don't want you to think I am complaining of your reporters, sir; they have been more than kind to me; but if you could see your way clear to not speaking about sandwiches as though they were my personal property--"

"You are the man who gave free sandwiches to New York," smiled the editor, as though he had said something original.

The situation was more serious than H. R. had believed, but he said, with dignity:

"I made free men of pariahs, sir. That job is finished. The newspapers have helped nobly; and to-day, thanks to them, charity is brought daily before their readers."

"But it is less picturesque than your courtship of Miss Goodchild with sandwiches."

"There were"--and H. R. smiled deprecatingly--"peculiar circumstances about my personal relations with Mr. Goodchild. Of course, I also desired to prove to intelligent but not very original business men that sandwiching is the most effective form of advertising. It is like all art, sir. The personal quality gives to it a human appeal that no combination of printed words on a page can have."

"How do you make that out?" asked the editor.

"When you read a play you see the printed words; but when you see the same play well acted you find that the same words you have read and liked reach the public through the senses of sight and of hearing as well as through the intellect, and is thus trebly efficient on the stage. Now, sandwiching is beyond question the highest form of commercial advertising. It succeeds even in love! And--"

"I congratulate you," said the editor, heartily.

H. R. looked so serious that the editor found himself saying, with even greater seriousness, "What you say is extremely interesting."

"I have long studied--in my humble way--the psychology of the crowd. I have discovered some very interesting things--at least they are interesting to me, sir," apologized H. R., almost humbly. "I am led to think, indeed I feel certain, that the art of sandwiching is in its infancy. The marvelous imagination of the American people, their resourcefulness and ingenuity, will make the development of artistic sandwiching one of the most extraordinary commercial phenomena of the twentieth century. But personally I am not interested in advertising, sir, except as in this instance as a means to an end. When the result is reached that is the end of my interest. And so, sir, though I feel gratitude for the noble work your paper is doing for the cause of charity, I really and honestly think that less attention should be paid to the business side of one of our successful experiments with the submerged tenth, and more to charity itself. Can't you tell your reporters that sandwiching at union wages has nothing to do with it?"

"News is news," said the editor, shaking his head regretfully. "We print what is of interest to our readers."

"If your readers were made to think of filling other people's stomachs instead of their own there would be less dyspepsia--and more newspaper-readers, sir. It is a discouraging fact that the world appears to be more concerned over making money than over the unspeakable folly of dying rich."

"We can do without death more easily than without money," observed the editor, sententiously.

"Oh no! Death was invented in order to teach men how to live wisely. This is the only reason why the cessation of the organic functions, which is life's one great commonplace, has at all times attained to the dignity of rhetoric. But I am taking your time. I hope you will be good enough to drop sandwiches and stick to charity. I thank you for your kindness; and--and," he finished, diffidently, "I should like to shake hands with you."

He looked appealingly at the editor, who thereupon shook his hand warmly.

"I'll do what I can for you, Mr. Rutgers. I am very glad to have met you. Anything we can do to help you in your efforts we shall gladly do. You are a very remarkable man and you have done greater work than you seem to realize."

H. R. shook his head vehemently, however, and retired in obvious confusion.

With a few trifling differences, due to the divers editorial personalities, he did the same thing to the other managing editors. All of them thought that none of the reporters really knew what manner of man H. R. was. Withal, all of them were right. He was a wonder!

On the next morning the eyes of the business managers of the great metropolitan dailies, morning and evening, were made to glow by twenty-seven letters from their biggest advertisers. The tenor of the communications was that, as soon as existing contracts expired, the twenty-seven biggest would do their urban advertising by means of S. A. S. A. sandwiches. They expected to reach the suburbs through fashion journals, circulars, and local media.

The advertising managers smiled, not only at the palpable bluff, but at the evidence of an infantile conspiracy. Before ten o'clock, however, the vast crowds in front of their very doors made them swear. Scores of sandwich men, advertising the said twenty-seven shops and the day's bargains, were parading up and down, causing said crowds to collect and to comment audibly and admiringly.

The advertising managers rushed to the managing editors to tell than that something must be done to prevent their sudden death. The managing editors, to a man, recalled H. R.'s prophecy of the marvelous growth of the most effective form of advertising.

"That H. R.," said the managing editor of the _Times_, "is a wizard!"

"You fellows made him," bitterly retorted the business manager. "He's had more free advertising than I can book in a hundred and ten years!"

"Why, he particularly asked me not to mention sandwiches!"

"Well, by gad, you'd better not!" Then, "What d'ye want?" he snarled at his first assistant, who came in with a sheet of paper in his right hand and a look of perplexity in both eyes.

The assistant silently gave him the copy:

ALL THE LEADING SHOPS AND THE BIG DEPARTMENT STORES OF GREATER NEW YORK ARE USING OUR SANDWICHES. THEY EMPLOY THE BEST ADVERTISING TALENT IN THE WORLD.

THEIR EXPERTS UNANIMOUSLY HAVE DECIDED THAT SANDWICHING IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF ADVERTISING YET DISCOVERED. IT IS THE CHEAPEST WHEN RETURNS AND RESULTS ARE CONSIDERED.

ARE YOU USING OUR SANDWICHES, MR. MERCHANT?

THEY WILL MOVE YOUR SHOP TO FIFTH AVENUE.

TRY IT! EMPLOY ONLY UNION MEN.

SOCIETY AMERICAN SANDWICH ARTISTS, ALLIED ARTS BUILDING.

For the first time in history the familiar

O. K. H. R., _Sec._

was absent.

It bore out the managing editor's assertion of H. R.'s distaste of publicity.

"Go out and lasso your maverick advertisers," said the managing editor, sternly, after he had read the S. A. S. A. advertisement--full-page, too! "I'll take care of the news columns."

"The damned sandwich men are so thick in this town I'll have trouble in breaking through their lines."

"Use dynamite!" said the managing editor, savagely. He owned ten bonds of his own paper.

He then summoned the city editor and said, sternly:

"Mr. Welles, under no circumstances whatever must this paper mention sandwiches or sandwich advertising or the S. A. S. A."

"Did you see their latest exploit? Two hundred and seventy-six sandwiches to the block, by actual count. Talk about high art!"

"They have commercialized it," frowned the managing editor. "Not a line--ever!"

The same thing must have happened in all the other offices. The public talked about the advertising revolution and the wonderful new styles in boards; and they looked in the next morning's papers to get all the picturesque details, as usual. Not a word!

XXX

H. R. called, shortly after ten o'clock the next morning, at the Ketcham National Bank to discuss with his father-in-law-to-be interest rates on the balance he did not yet have.