Poppy Ott's Seven-league Stilts

Contents

Poppy AND I Do Some TooTinc .

Poppy’s ADVERTISING NovELTy SCHEME Tue SEVEN-LEAGUE STILTS .

Our Trip to ASHTON .

Chapter II Poppy’s Advertising Novelty Scheme

AFTER that a billboard was a hunk of chocolate cake to Poppy. He’d stop and feast his eyes on it and act as though he was going to take a bite out of it. Polarine cans and scouring-powder cartons pictured on the billboards were a beautiful sight to him. Once I had to take him by the head of the hair, as the saying is, and drag him away from a garbage can that had something or other posted on the side of it. Advertising! Having had a taste of advertising in the successful shoe sale, all he could think about now and all he cared to talk about was advertising. He got up some advertisements of his own, too. And they were pretty clever. However, I didn’t brag on them. For I didn’t want to make him any worse than he was. What he needed was some one to squash him instead of praise him.

“Well,” says I the following Tuesday, “have you got it figured out yet how we’re going to work that horn scheme of yours and get rich?”

13 ;

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14 POPPYOLTs

This inquiry was a merry little scheme of mine to kid him along. But he never tumbled. The _ poor fish!

“I’ve given the matter a lot of thought, Jerry,” says he earnestly.

“So I noticed,” says I, Reetiehiberiay how he had been walking around with his head in the clouds.

‘“‘And I’ve come to one conclusion.”

“Spill it,’ says I. “I’ve got two good ears. And they’re both uncovered.”

“If we’re going to make a success of the scheme —a big success, | mean—we’ve got to have a better premium than a horn.”

“How about a drum?” says I helpfully.

But my brilliant suggestion didn’t receive thunderous applause.

“No,” says he, shaking his head. “A drum is. no better than a horn. Both are common toys. As I see it, we’ve got to have something exclusive,”

“That’s an awful big word,” says I.

“I mean,” says he, “that we’ve got to have a > premium that no one else can sell to storekeepers except us.”

I looked at him curiously. And at the moment it seemed to me that I liked kim better than ever.

There was something about him that made me like him. It was his earnest enthusiasm, I guess. I suddenly wondered, in deeper appreciation of him, if great business men like Edison and Ford hadn’t acted like this when they were boys.

“You talk as though we're really going into business,” says I quietly.

“Why not?” was his reply.

“Well,” says I, shrugging, “I suppose we can, if you say so.”

He strutted around in fun.

‘Advertising specialists, Jerry! That’s us.”

“Fine!” says I, joining him in his nonsense. “T’ve always wanted to be an advertising specialist, only I don’t know what it is.”

“No?” and he laughed sort of contented-like. “Well, here’s my scheme. First we invent a new kind of toy. See? ‘Then we patent it and start manufacturing it. And then—”

“Wait a minute; wait a minute,” says I, stopping him with my hand. ‘‘What did you say we were going to be?”

“Advertising specialists.”

“But how can we be advertising specialists,” says I, puzzled, “when we’re inventors and manufacturers?”

He grinned.

bb)

““We’re inventors and manufacturers and advertising specialists all rolled up in one.”

I drew a deep breath.

“I’m glad you’re talking through your hat,” says I.

“But I mean it, Jerry. Honest I do.”

“Then you better count me out of it,” says I. “For this advertising specialist stuff is too deep for me. My talents run to pitching horseshoes and chewing gum.”

“Shucks, Jerry! We're going to have fun.”

“Maybe.”

“Besides,” says he, all wound up, “‘think of the money we're going to make.”

“Oh! . . .? says I, perking up. “We're going to make money, hey?”

“Oodles of it.”

“Hot dog!’ says I. “Now you’ve got me all excited.”

“Of course,” says he, as an afterthought, “we won't get rich the first month or two.”

“What a disappointment!’ I groaned.

“It'll take us some time to build up our business.”’

“That being the case,” says I, in further nonsense, “‘the sooner we start twisting the cow’s tail the sooner she’ll kick the bucket over.”

“Our first job,” says he, ‘‘will be to invent a new kind of toy.”

“For boys?”

“Principally. But we mustn’t forget about the girls.”

“Boys like noisy toys,’ says I. “So let’s invent a new kind of horn. You put the big end of the horn in your mouth instead of the small end. See? That’s the new feature. And when you gurgle, _ the horn makes a noise like a jellyfish eating soup.”

“Jerry, you're crazy.”

“Of course I] am,” I laughed. ‘How could you expect me to be any different when I hang around with you?”

“Your horn idea is rotten.”

“Go ahead and knock on it,” says I. “You can’t make me sore. The trouble with you is that you’re jealous because I’m a smarter inventor than you are.”

“We've got to get something simpler than a horn,”’ says he, thinking. “Something we can manufacture ourselves.”

“And after we get it invented and manufactured—then what?”

“We sell it, of course.”

18 POPPY, OTUS

“To kids?”

“No, to storekeepers like Mr. Harper. We’re advertising specialists. See? That’s our business. And we tell the customer that we've got a scheme to help him sell more shoes. ‘Mr. Har- | per,’ we say, ‘here is a brand new toy—a double- © jointed whirligig. ‘The kids are crazy over it. They all want it. But they can’t buy it. No. The only way they can get it is by trading at your store. We don’t sell our goods to toy shops— we just sell to merchants like you. And if you give us an order your competitor across the street will be left out. For we won’t sell to him if we can sell to you. Boys will know that your store is the only place in town where they can get a double-jointed whirligig free. So you'll get all the kid shoe business.’ ”’

I let him run down.

“When did you memorize all that junk?” says I.

“Oh, I’ve been thinking about it.”

“You must have been dreaming about it, too.”

“Maybe I have,” says he, grinning. Then he went on: “We get an order from Mr. Harper. See? And then—”

“Is he the only customer we’re going to have?”

“e ae ead é

“Of course not. We're going to sell our premiums all over the country. From coast to coast. I just used his name as an illustration.”

“T'll tell the world,” says I, heaving a fullgrown sigh, “‘that we’re going to have our hands full. For first we invent a double-jointed whirligig. And then, having manufactured it, we tour

‘the country selling it. When are we going to eat and sleep?”

“After we get going, Jerry, we'll do our selling with advertising. That'll make it a lot easier for us.”

“So we’re going to send out advertising, hey?”

“Sure thing. As I say, that’ll be our way of getting business. Like the mail-order catalogues.”’

“What kind of advertising are we going to send out ?—billboards ?”

“You poor fish! I’ll use your head for a billboard if you don’t talk sense.”

“All right,” says I, grinning. ‘We get a lot of orders. And then what?”

“We ship the goods and collect the money, after which we split the profits fifty-fifty.”

““Which means,” says I, ‘‘that if we make a million dollars you get half a million and I get half a million.”

“Exactly.”

“Or, if we make ten million dollars, I get five million and you get five million.”

“Don’t be crazy, Jerry.”

‘I’m just trying to keep up with you,” says I. But old sober-sides didn’t see anything funny in that.

“I’ve always wanted to go into business for my- * self,’ says he. ‘‘And there’s no business I'd rather be in than advertising novelties.”

‘Advertising novelties ?” says I, looking at him. “T thought you said a moment ago that we were going to manufacture toys?”

“Tf we sold our double-jointed whirligig to the toy stores it would be called a toy. But used the other way, as a premium to boost sales, it’s an advertising novelty. For it advertises the store giving it away. That’s the purpose of it.”

IT laughed.

“The Tutter Advertising Novelty Company,” says I, giving our new company a name. “Poppy Ott, president, and Jerry Todd, vice-president.”

“Tl be the general manager, too,” says the chief whirligigger, “‘and you can be the secretary and treasurer.”

“That sounds big,” says I.

“The secretary and treasurer,” says he, “is the man who handles the money.”

‘I scratched my head.

“But how can I handle the money,” says I, _ “when we haven’t got any to handle?”

“Oh, we'll have plenty of money when our customers’ checks begin coming in.”

I saw a flaw in his brilliant little scheme.

“But if we’re going to run a factory and manufacture stuff,” says I, ‘“‘we’ve got to have money before we collect from our goods.”

“We'll borrow what money we need from the bank, All manufacturers do that.”

I let out a crazy yip.

“Us borrow money ?”’ says I, ridiculing the idea. “Say, you’re loony. The banker wouldn’t lend us fifteen cents.”

“He will,” says Poppy, confident-like, “if we can show him that we can make the money grow. For it’s a bank’s business to lend money to reliable business men.” .

I was dizzy now. He had me all tangled up.

“But we’re just boys,” says I, trying to picture myself in business with him. “And if we go to the bank to borrow money they’ll laugh at us. They’ll think we’re cuckoo.”

The president and general manager of the Tutter Advertising Novelty Company showed in a _ cool look that he was out of patience with me.

_ “Terry, I do wish you’d forget this talk about ie . i wees i be CM Nir y

‘we’re just boys.’ You sprung it the other day. Yet we turned a neat advertising trick for Mr. Harper, didn’t we? So why can’t we do something bigger in advertising? J believe we can. In fact I know we can. It’s simply a matter of using our heads.”

I couldn’t get away from the thought of us borrowing money at the bank. ;

“And you really think,” says I, “that the banker will lend us money?”

“T don’t see why he shouldn’t. But don’t get the idea that we’re going to borrow a thousand dollars the first crack out of the box. Hardly. We’ve got to start our business in a small way and prove to the banker as we go along that we’ve got something worth supporting. Probably we won’t be able to borrow more than twenty-five dollars to start with. We’ll build fifty dollars’ worth of whirligigs with the money. As soon as we collect from our customers the banker gets his twenty-five dollars back, with interest. Then we borrow fifty dollars and build a hundred dollars’ worth of whirligigs. See how we grow? Every _ week we get bigger and bigger.”

I shook my head.

“It sounds fine,” says I, “but I want to see it to believe it.”

_ “There’s just one thing that puzzles me,” says he thoughtfully.

“Ves pa

“As yet I haven’t been able to figure out what

- we're going to manufacture.”

He got a disgusted stare from me then. Of all the crazy day-dreamers!

“And what’s more,” says I, losing all faith in his scheme, “you never will be able to figure it out.”

“What day is this?” says he, after a moment.

“Tuesday,” says I.

“Um. .. . It might hustle us to get our business going full blast by next Monday. Still, a fellow never knows what he can do till he tries.”

I got up then and started for home. For I was convinced that he was a hopeless case. Yes, sir, he was plum cuckoo. It was that blamed old advertising book! It was getting the best of him. I wondered if I hadn’t better snitch the book and

Chapter III The Seven-league Stilts

Tue following morning I meandered down Elm Street to Poppy’s house to see if his night’s rest had benefited him any. For sometimes sleep does drive the cobwebs out of a fellow’s head. However, I was prepared for the worst.

“Well,” says I, coming into the back yard where the world’s youngest advertising specialist was hard at work in the shade of a crab-apple tree, “how’s the whirligig business this morning ?”

He stopped working and skimmed the sweat from his dripping forehead. I saw then that he was sandpapering a strip of Georgia pine. Another similar strip stood against the tree.

“Jerry,” says he, “what is it that a boy wants that he can’t buy in a toy store?”

‘‘A baby elephant,” says I promptly.

“Aw! .. . he scowled. ‘‘Can’t you ever talk sense?” |

‘Not when I’m talking to you,” says I, after which clever little come-back I let out my neck at the wooden strip that the president and general |

-manager of the Tutter Advertising Novelty Company was favoring with his valuable attention. “What is it?” says I. ‘The left lung of one of the double-jointed whirligigs that we’re going to peddle from coast to coast ?”

“You haven’t answered my question yet,” says he, steady-like.

I screwed up my forehead.

*‘And you say it isn’t a baby elephant?”

**An elephant isn’t a toy—it’s a pet.”

“A toy,” says I, thinking. Then I looked at him. “Have I got one?”

“Sure thing. But you didn’t buy it.”

“Who did buy it?—my folks?”

“No one bought it. You made it.”

I laughed.

“Mother says the only thing J make around our house is a racket.”

“Guess.”

“A sling-shot ?”

““A doghouse ?”

“T give up.” ~ “Stilts,” says he, grinning.

“'T said stilts.”

“Like fun you did—you big bluffer!”’

I saw then what the two wooden strips were for. He was making a pair of stilts.”

“There never was a boy,” says he, tuning in on some more of his business stuff, “‘who didn’t like to walk on stilts. You know that. Stilt walking is fun. But, strange to say, no one interested in toys for boys ever thought of manufacturing stilts for the trade. At least J never saw a pair of stilts on sale. Did you?”

“A boy would rather build his own stilts,’ says I.

“You really think so?”

“T know so.”

“But you'd rather have a store coaster wagon than a home-made one, wouldn’t you ?”’

“Of course.”

“Why re

“Because the store coaster is better made.”

“That’s it exactly,” and he clinched the point with a bob of his head. ‘People who make a business of manufacturing coaster wagons can do a much better job on a wagon than a boy can. And so it will be with our stilts. Home-made stilts won’t look good to a boy after he sees our Seven-League stilts.”

I gave him a quick look.

‘Where did you get that name 2” says I.

“Oh, it just came to me.”

I sat down then.

“Poppy,” says I, quiet-like, “I’m going to open up my heart to you and tell you something.”

“Yes ?”’ says he, looking at me curiously.

“T’m going to make a confession to you.”

“Shoot,” says he, grinning.

“Yesterday I thought you were cuckoo. But to-day I think you’re only half cuckoo.”

“Thanks,” says he, laughing.

“Furthermore,” says I, ‘I’m beginning to wonder, in my growing appreciation of your talents, if it isn’t me who’s cuckoo instead of you. Seven- League stilts! That’s a peachy name. It took brains to think it up. Yet you did it without my help!”

His eyes were shining like peeled onions in my warm praise. And seeing how earnestly he took me, I became ashamed of myself for having poked fun at him. I told myself that I wouldn’t ever doit again. I’d have more faith in him after this. For he was one pal in a million,

“We'll paint them a bright red,” says he, running his fingers lovingly up and down the two strips. ‘‘For red is a boy’s favorite color.”

“They'll look swell,” says I.

“Won't they though!” he enthused, his eyes dancing. “And we'll letter the name on the side— Seven-League Stilts.”

“How did you happen to think of that name?”

~ T asked him again.

“Oh, I lay in bed last night sort of checking off in my mind the different kinds of toys boys had. First I checked off my own stuff. Then I went through your stuff. Stilts! There, says I, thinking of your stilts, is a toy that we can manufacture. Easy. It’s just the thing we need for our advertising novelty scheme. Red stilts, with a catchy name. I remembered then about the ogre’s seven-league boots. You’ve heard the story—every kid has. Seven-League Stilts! No trouble to remember that name, I told myself. And it was a name that fitted the article, too.”

I laughed.

“Maybe we ought to call our company the Tutter Stilt Company.”

“No,” says he, shaking his head, “I think the other name is the best. For later on we may want to bring out other toys. And if we called ourselves the Tutter Stilt Company the trade might get the idea that stilts were the only thing we manufactured.”

Here I was shown the adjustment that the stilt builder had rigged up for raising and lowering the steps.

“That’s a new wrinkle,” says I, examining the contrivance. ‘I made my steps rigid.”

“So you see, Jerry,”’ says he quickly, “‘how easily we can build better stilts for boys than they can build for themselves. For we can work to a patented design.”

“What?” says I. “Get a patent on a pair of stilts? Why, stilts are as old as the hills. And you can’t patent old things, can you?”

“T don’t know very much about patents,” he admitted. ‘‘But it would seem to me that we ought to be able to get a patent on our step lock. For that’s a new feature.”

“We'll be out of luck,” says I, after a moment’s thought, “if we can’t get a patent. For as soon as our business starts earning money some other manufacturer will copy after us.”

“The thing to do, I guess, is to see a lawyer. However,” he added quickly, “we won’t do that to-day. It’s more important to finish this job.”

The step lock that the woodworker had rigged up for his stilts was a sort of two-bolt arrangement. By loosening the bolts the stilt steps could be raised and lowered. The bolts were locked in the steps and there were holes in the stilt shafts for the bolts to go through. So that you will understand just what I’m talking about I’ll draw it out for you on the next page,

Well, we finished the stilts that morning and painted them. Boy, they sure did look nifty. I could hardly wait for them to dry, so anxious was I to try them out.

“To-morrow morning,” says Poppy, in planning things, ‘“‘we’ll go over to Ashton and get our first stilt order.”

I laughed.

“Tt won’t be much of an order,” says I. “For we've got only one pair to sell.”

“Oh,” says he quickly, “‘we won’t sell this pair.”

“No?” i

“This is our selling sample.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We carry the sample along to show the storekeepers what our stilts are like. See? And they order from the sample.”

“It sounds easy to hear you tell it.”

“If we can get an order, Jerry, it is going to help us at the bank.”

“T get you.”

“And two orders, of course, will be better than one. So, while we are at it, we may go on to

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Steam Corners and try our luck there. Later on, as I say, we'll stay at home and manage the business and do our selling with advertising.”

“Why not go on to Chicago,” says I, grinning, “and get three orders? Maybe the Boston Store will buy a whole carload of our stilts.”

That started him to day-dreaming again.

“Jerry, I like to think of the time when we'll be getting carload orders.”

“T was just joking,” I told him quickly.

“IT know you were. But just the same the day is coming when we will be selling our stilts in carload lots.”

‘How many pairs to the car?” says I.

“Oh, ten or twelve thousand.”

‘“‘And how much a pair ?”

“Fifty cents.”

I did some quick figuring.

“Six thousand dollars,” I whistled.

“Sounds like a lot of money, hey?”

“It’s a fortune,” says I.

“You must remember, though, that the six thousand dollars isn’t all profit. The wood for the stilts will take a pile of money. And we'll have to pay our men.”

“What men?”

‘The workmen in our factory.”

“T didn’t know that we were going to hire work. men.”

“You poor fish! Do you think for one minute that-we could build six thousand pairs of stilts ourselves? It would take us a dozen years.”

I was beginning to get dizzy again.

' “Pm afraid I wasn’t cut out for a business man,” says I. ‘So you had better call it your business and let me be the office boy.”

“Not so you can notice it, This is a fifty-fifty proposition. If we go up, we go up together, And if we go down—”

**They telephone for the ambulance, hey?”

“I shouldn’t have said that,’’ came quickly. “For we aren’t going to fail. I won’t think of failure for a moment.”

And now, while our stilts are drying, as it were, Tl tell you who Poppy is and where he came from. Nicholas Carter Sherlock Holmes Ott! That was the name they hung on him when he was born. It was his father’s work, he told me. The - other name—Poppy—he got from peddling pop-

_ corn, In another book, Poppy OTT AND THE STUT- ’ TERING Parrot, I wrote down how we solved the weird mystery of Cap’n Tinkertop’s strange black parrot. Poppy was the leader in the surprising adventure. I was his chief lieutenant. If you have read any of the ‘Jerry Todd” books you know who I am. Yah, I’m the wonderful (?) Jerry Todd himself.

After me, on Poppy’s illustrious detective staff, came the invincible Scoop Ellery—a good kid to know, I should whisper to you, for his father runs a general store in Tutter, which means a lot of free chewing gum for the honorable young Mr. Todd and his gang. After Scoop came Peg Shaw and Red Meyers, the concluding members of Detective Ott’s staff of—ahem!—near-famous sleuths. However, in this story you can practically forget about the other three fellows, for at the time this happened they were earning spending money on Red’s uncle’s farm hoeing rubber plants —or maybe it was pumpkins. Anyway, that isn’t an important point.

To go back to Poppy, Red and I ran across the strange boy one summer morning in a shady place on the edge of town where tramps hang out.

Dressed raggedly, with dirty bare feet, we thought at first that he was a kid tramp. But we took a liking to him, even though he was dirty and shabbily dressed. Later on we came to know his father, a queer-acting, absent-minded old man who had the silly idea in his head that he was a second

- edition of the world-famous Sherlock Holmes. I could tell you some very funny things about Mr. Ott in connection with his silly ‘‘detective’ work. As a sleuth he sure was a lemon. In working on the black-parrot mystery we put it all over him. The two Otts, father and son, owned a rickety bungalow wagon. The wagon went to pieces in Tutter, or, rather, Poppy knocked the wheels to pieces so that he could stay in our town and go to school with us. To-day the Otts, in better circumstances, live in a small house in Elm Street, close to the idle carriage factory. We like to go to Poppy’s house. We always have fun there. A widower, and his own housekeeper, Mr. Ott never kicks on our racket. If we want to pop corn we go ahead and pop it—it’s all right with him. Or we can do any kind of cooking or play any kind of a game in the house that we choose. When he gets his nose buried in a detective book (and it was in honor of his two favorite detective heroes that his son had been given the stretched-out name of Nicholas Carter Sherlock Holmes Ott) he for-

: gets everything else. We could tear the house down, I guess, without him noticing that anything out of the ordinary was going on.

For a while after coming to Tutter to live the old detective worked in a brickyard. But he

Bt i didn’t like that job, And learning that a gardener was needed at the big brick house on Main Street, he went there to work.

It was partly through Mr. Ott that we came to know Mrs. Fillingham. And it was through the carriage manufacturer’s elderly housekeeper that we later heard the old spiritualist’s weird story.

Br-r-r-r! Talk about a spooky mystery! I bet you'll shiver when I come to it.

my ©

Chapter IV, Our Trip To Ashton

THERE are a number of small towns scattered about Tutter. One of the most important of these towns is Ashton, the county seat. If you have read my book, JERRY Topp AND THE OAK IsLAND TREASURE, you know what kind of a town Ashton is. For it was there, as you will remember, that we put on our big magic show and later on got into trouble with the law through dropping a greased pig into a room where the marshal, who was against us, was playing poker with our other chief enemy, the town bill poster. Golly Ned! We sure had fun that night.

I thought of the greased-pig trick the following morning as I got into my Sunday clothes. And I wondered curiously if Poppy and I would scare up some new kind of excitement in our trip to the county seat.

I found my chum dressed up as slick as a button.

“Tl tell the world,” says I, strutting around in

my good togs, ‘‘that there’s real class to the offi- 37

38 POPPYtOLS cers of the Tutter Advertising Novelty Company. Any one would think to look at us that we were going away to get married.”

“Good clothes,’ says Poppy, “always helps a salesman in his work. For a great many business firms size up a man by his appearance. And if he looks seedy they conclude that he is a failure and therefore a poor person to do business with.”

‘When do we start ?” says I.

“There’s an interurban car leaving here at eight-thirty. It gets to Ashton at nine-fifteen. By snappy work we ought to finish in the first town and get over to Steam Corners by eleventhirty. Then, if we hustle, we can catch the one-thirty car for home, getting here before the bank closes.”

“Do you know anybody at the bank ?” says I.

“T know the president when I see him.”

“Old Mr. Lorring and Dad are great friends,” says I.

“Isn’t there a younger man in the bank by the same name ?”’

‘“That’s the president’s son,” says I. ‘Mr. Thomas Lorring, Jr.”

Poppy went to the mirror and took a last careful squint at himself.

“Wait a minute,” says I, standing back and cocking my eyes critical-like at his smoothly combed head.

‘““What’s the matter?”

“There’s one hair out of place,” says I, patting it down. Then, before he could swat me, I gave his rubber necktie a yank and let it fly back.

“For the love of mud!” says he, scowling. “If you're going to keep up this horseplay you’d better stay at home.”

““What’s the idea of being so stiff-backed ?” says I, strutting around in fun. ‘We aren’t going to sing at a funeral.”

He flicked a particle of dust from the sleeve of his coat.

“Carry a little dignity around with you, kid. Remember that you’re the secretary and treasurer of the world’s foremost stilt concern.”

“Yes, Mr. President and General Manager,” says I, bowing.

Well, it was close to car time now. So we grabbed the complete output of the world’s fore-

-most stilt factory and skittered down the street to the interurban waiting room, where we enriched the traction company to the extent of thirtyfive cents apiece.

Just before we drew into Ashton young Donner whizzed by us in his father’s red sedan. Boy, he sure was cutting the wind.

—>“We ought to have rode over with him,” I laughed, ‘‘and saved our car fare.”

Poppy snorted.

“Him give me a free ride? Hardly!”

“What’s the matter?” says I, grinning. ‘Doesn’t he like the way you part your hair ?”

“‘Fe’s had it in for me ever since that shoe sale. And when I meet him in the street he almost glares a hole through me. His father acts the same way, too.”

I shrugged.

“We should worry. The Donners aren’t the kind of people to have for close friends, anyway.”

Here our private coach merrily swung around a curve and sat down to rest in front of the Ashton