Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 5, 1921 — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

316 ‘“‘ Nobody’s ever gone to prison for it,” ne reflected. He turned, and there, right in front of his eyes, was an open doorway and a couple of lathes blocking it partially and a sign over the door that said: AUGER & CO. MACHINERY EXCHANGE Drills Power and Foot Presses Machine tools Millers Punches Lathes Shafting Pulleys Belts Shapers Grinders WE BUY AND SELL ENTIRE PLANTS | Quicker than the‘ise of a football crowd at a successful forward pass, Bill was in- side the doorway and face to face with an individual whose general aspect indicated he was Auger & Co. “ How much ’l] you give me for a sixty- inch Miles Cement two-head boring mill with a taper attachment?” Bill hurls at him without any preliminaries. “With a taper attachment? A sixty- inch Miles Cement two-head ‘boring mill with a taper attachment?” is the only an- swer he gets. ‘“Yes—a taper attachment,” Bill re- peats, choking the words out as though he was mad clear through. He must have been kind of mad, too, for ever since he read in some book how one chap said to the other, “I despise a man who answers one question with another,” Bill has had that same view. “I said a taper attach- ment. How much ’Il you give me?” “ How much do you want?” comes back the other fellow quick. “Well, I might ask you a million dol- lars,” says Bill. “ But you wouldn’t get it.” “How much would I get, then? much will you give me?” “Ts it what you’ve said?” “Yes, it’s a sixty-inch Miles Cement two-head boring mill with a taper attach- ment, and it’s in Ai condition.” How before! ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. “Five thousand dollars,” says this Au- ger fellow without another word, like he was ordering a loaf of bread. ‘Ah, rats—you’re kidding me!” Bill responds, hesitates for a minute, and then sort of turns as though he intends to walk out of the place. He was pretty sore about the way this fellow was stringing him, Bill tells me later. Before he had more than made a sort of turn, however, and before he could say anything more, even if he had intended to, this fellow comes back at him. “Isn’t that good enough?” he asks in a voice whose tone made it seem he was dreadfully hurt. “ You know well enough it isn’t,” an- swers Bill, doing some tall thinking. “Well, I might give you six thousand,” says Auger. ‘Not to-day,” Bill answers, and walks out to the sidewalk. There he stops and gazes up at the Tombs and the Criminal Courts Building for as much as five min- utes. “I had to have something pretty solid to look at,” he told rhe when he recounted this chronicle of his adventures, “so that I’d know I was really awake. Six thou- sand dollars for something I’d bought for only twenty-five hundred about an hour And if I hadn’t been so darned ignorant about machinery and so darned afraid that I’d show I didn’t know what I was talking about, I’d have fixed an asking price of about $3,500 and taken less. And then I wouldn’t have insisted on knowing how much he’d give. And then—whew!’’ While he looked at that grim granite pile and its adjacent monstrosity, Bill did some more of that tall thinking I told about a minute ago. The burden of it was that if this one fellow made a bid of $§,000 right off the reel and then raised it $1,000 a minute later, the Miles Cement machine must be worth a pretty fair amount more. How much more? Well, Bill fixed in his mind that $10,000 would be about right. He walked on up the street a half block and stopped in another store that looked a counterpart of the first. “Tve got a sixty-ineb Mile Cement CO