Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 5, 1921 — page 29: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

LUCK! was a cinch, he told me later, that when the price was named as promptly as that it meant they’d been considering selling the machine for some time and had fixed on $3,000 only as an asking price. And, too, he remembers that remark about the ma- chine having been outgrown. Naturally, he didn’t know of Charley helping him. “It’s a lot of money to ask for a ma- chine you’ve had for some time,” he states, after appearing to think some more, and taking a chance on what he’d ought to say. “ We've only had it six years,” Charley protests. ‘‘ And $3,000 isn’t much for a machine like that.” _ “How much did it cost?” Bill comes back at him suddenly. “ Thirty-eight hundred,’ Charley tells him, probably surprised into spilling it by Bill’s unexpected question. “Ti give you twenty-five hundred for it,” Bill shoots back at him without an- other word. ‘“* Make it twenty-eight,” says Charley. “Twenty-five, flat, is mv limit.” ‘All right then. Done!”’ In another few minutes they had the papers drawn up by which it was agreed that Bill was to become the owner of the machine for $2,500, receipt of $500 of which was acknowledged in the form of Bill’s check, the balance to be paid in thirty days. And in another few minutes Bill was on his way back to New York with $250 left to his credit and Lady Luck squeezing him so tight by the hand it’s a wonder he didn’t yell “Ouch!” Asa matter of fact, though, he was saying something quite different, wondering if he’d made a fool of himself, thinking that his offer had been snapped up mighty quick, imagining that Center Street would give him the merry laugh. Yes, of course, that’s where he was headed for—Center Street. If you know New York at all, you know Center Street and its shop after shop filled with oddly assorted machines, many of them crowded out to the sidewalk—great, big blowers with gaping mouths a foot and a half or two feet wide blocking some doorways or Standing in cigar-store Indian-sign fashion $15 beside cellar stairways; pieces of shafting strewn along shop-fronts; motors and dynamos of assorted sizes looming like sentinels; lathes—all kinds .of them— everywhere; presses, drills, pulleys, belt- ing—everything known to machinery find- ing place somewhere, somehow, in shop or on sidewalk all the way from Leonard Street to Broome on either side of Center, and with some cross-streets, like Hester and Howard and Canal, taking care of the overflow. Bill had had Center Street in mind from the minute Lucy spoke of machinery to him. Now, as the subway rushed him over from Long Island City to Grand Cen- tral and from there down to Brooklyn Bridge, he way thinking Center Street and saying over and over to himself in the back of his mind, “It’s a sixty-inch Miles Ce- ment two-head boring mil) with a taper attachment; it’s a sixty-inch Miles Cement two-head boring mill with a taper attach- ment.”’ That’s what Bill knew he was the owner of—all that he knew he was the owner of —and he wanted to be sure he had it down right when it came to negotiating with those Center Street machinery sharps. When he got out at Brooklyn Bridge and started to walk back, there was a cold wind blowing down from the north that chilled through and through. It got Bill so cold that I guess he lost some of his nerve. Anyway, he walked clear up Cen- ter Street to Broome and half a block past there before he saw there weren’t any more machinery dealers above Broome. Then he walked on down again to Leonard Street. It seemed to him, he said, as though all the machinery in all the world had been assembled right there in Center Street on those few blocks. And here he was coming to sell another piece, and he didn’t know a darned thing about it except that it was a sixty-inch Miles Cement two-head boring mill with a taper attachment! He was just about making up his mind that he couldn’t go through with it when he got to Leonard Street again, and then he stopped to look at the great gramite bulk of the Tombs across the street. ecomicloolks CO