“It means,” cried Dolly tremulously, “I’m backing my dream. I’ve always
believed in your book. Now, I’m backing it. Our lawyers sent me to an
advertising agent. His name is Spink, and he is awfully clever. I asked
him if he could advertise a book so as to make it sell. He said with my
money and his ideas he could sell last year’s telephone book to people
who did not own a telephone, and who had never learned to read. He is
proud of his ideas. One of them was buying out the first edition. Your
publishers told him your book was ‘waste paper,’ and that he could have
every copy in stock for the cost of the plates. So he bought the whole
edition. That’s how it was sold out in one day. Then we ordered a second
edition of one hundred thousand, and they’re printing it now.
“The presses have been working all night to meet the demand!”
“But,” cried Carter, “there isn’t any demand!”
“There will be,” said Dolly, “when five million people read our
advertisements.”
She dragged him to the window and pointed triumphantly into the street.
“See that!” she said. “Mr. Spink sent them here for me to inspect.”
Drawn up in a line that stretched from Fifth Avenue to Broadway were an
army of sandwich men. On the boards they carried were the words: “Read
‘The Dead Heat.’ Second Edition. One Hundred Thousand!” On the fence
in front of the building going up across the street, in letters a foot
high, Carter again read the name of his novel. In letters in size more
modest, but in colors more defiant, it glared at him from ash-cans and
barrels.
“How much does this cost?” he gasped.
“It cost every dollar you had in bank,” said Dolly, “and before we are
through it will cost you twice as much more. Mr. Spink is only waiting
to hear from me before he starts spending fifty thousand dollars; that’s
only half of what you won on Red Wing. I’m only waiting for you to make
me out a check before I tell Spink to start spending it.”
In a dazed state Carter drew a check for fifty thousand dollars and
meekly handed it to his wife. They carried it themselves to the office
of Mr. Spink. On their way, on every side they saw evidences of his
handiwork. On walls, on scaffolding, on bill-boards were advertisements
of “The Dead Heat.” Over Madison Square a huge kite as large as a
Zeppelin air-ship painted the name of the book against the sky, on
“dodgers” it floated in the air, on handbills it stared up from the
gutters.
Mr. Spink was a nervous young man with a bald head and eye-glasses.
He grasped the check as a general might welcome fifty thousand fresh
troops.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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