



Produced by Sean Pobuda









AVERAGE JONES

By Samuel Hopkins Adams




CHAPTER I. THE B-FLAT TROMBONE


Three men sat in the Cosmic Club discussing the question: "What's the
matter with Jones?" Waldemar, the oldest of the conferees, was the
owner, and at times the operator, of an important and decent newspaper.
His heavy face wore the expression of good-humored power, characteristic
of the experienced and successful journalist. Beside him sat Robert
Bertram, the club idler, slender and languidly elegant. The third member
of the conference was Jones himself.

Average Jones had come by his nickname inevitably. His parents had
foredoomed him to it when they furnished him with the initials A. V. R.
E. as preface to his birthright of J for Jones. His character apparently
justified the chance concomitance. He was, so to speak, a composite
photograph of any thousand well-conditioned, clean-living Americans
between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. Happily, his otherwise
commonplace face was relieved by the one unfailing characteristic of
composite photographs, large, deep-set and thoughtful eyes. Otherwise he
would have passed in any crowd, and nobody would have noticed him pass.
Now, at twenty-seven, he looked back over the five years since his
graduation from college and wondered what he had done with them; and at
the four previous years of undergraduate life and wondered how he had
done so well with those and why he had not in some manner justified the
parting words of his favorite professor.

"You have one rare faculty, Jones. You can, when you choose, sharpen
the pencil of your mind to a very fine point. Specialize, my boy,
specialize."

If the recipient of this admonition had specialized in anything, it was
in life. Having twenty-five thousand a year of his own he might have
continued in that path indefinitely, but for two influences. One was an
irruptive craving within him to take some part in the dynamic activities
of the surrounding world. The other was the "freak" will of his late
and little-lamented uncle, from whom he had his present income, and his
future expectations of some ten millions. Adrian Van Reypen Egerton had,
as Waldemar once put it, "--one into the mayor's chair with a good name
and come out with a block of ice stock." In a will whose cynical humor
was the topic of its day, Mr. Egerton jeered posthumously at the public
which he had despoiled, and promised restitution, of a sort, through his
heir.

"Therefore," he had written, "I give and bequeath to the said Adrian Van
Reypen Egerton Jones, the residue of my property, the principal to be
taken over by him at such time as he shall have completed five years of
continuous residence in New York City. After such time the virus of the
metropolis will have worked through his entire being. He will squander
his unearned and undeserved fortune, thus completing the vicious circle,
and returning the millions acquired by my political activities, in a
poisoned shower upon the city, for which, having bossed, bullied and
looted it, I feel no sentiment other than contempt."

"And now," remarked Waldemar in his heavy, rumbling voice, "you aspire
to disappoint that good old man."

"It's only human nature, you know," said Average Jones. "When a man
puts a ten-million-dollar curse on you and suggests that you haven't the
backbone of a shrimp, you--you--"

"--naturally yearn to prove him a liar," supplied Bertram.

"Exactly. Anyway, I've no taste for dissipation, either moral or
financial. I want action; something to do. I'm bored in this infernal
city."

"The wail of the unslaked romanticist," commented Bertram.

"Romanticist nothing!" protested the other. "My ambitions are practical
enough if I could only get 'em stirred up."

"Exactly. Boredom is simply romanticism with a morning-after thirst.
You're panting for romance, for something bizarre. Egypt and St.
Petersburg and Buenos Ayres and Samoa have all become commonplace to
you. You've overdone them. That's why you're back here in New York
waiting with stretched nerves for the Adventure of Life to cat-creep up
from behind and toss the lariat of rainbow dreams over your shoulders."

Waldemar laughed. "Not a bad diagnosis. Why don't you take up a hobby,
Mr. Jones?"

"What kind of a hobby?"

"Any kind. The club is full of hobby-riders. Of all people that I know,
they have the keenest appetite for life. Look at old Denechaud; he was a
misanthrope until he took to gathering scarabs. Fenton, over there, has
the finest collection of circus posters in the world. Bellerding's house
is a museum of obsolete musical instruments. De Gay collects venomous
insects from all over the world; no harmless ones need apply. Terriberry
has a mania for old railroad tickets. Some are really very curious. I've
often wished I had the time to be a crank. It's a happy life."

"What line would you choose?" asked Bertram languidly.

"Nobody has gone in for queer advertisements yet, I believe," replied
the older man. "If one could take the time to follow them up---but it
would mean all one's leisure."

"Would it be so demanding a career?" said Average Jones, smiling.

"Decidedly. I once knew a man who gave away twenty dollars daily on
clues from the day's news. He wasn't bored for lack of occupation."

"But the ordinary run of advertising is nothing more than an effort to
sell something by yelling in print," objected Average Jones.

"Is it? Well perhaps you don't look in the right place."

Waldemar reached for the morning's copy of the Universal and ran his eye
down the columns of "classified" matter. "Hark to this," he said, and
read:

     "Is there any work on God's green
     earth for a man who has just got
     to have it?"

"Or this:

     "WANTED--A venerable looking man with
     white beard and medical degree.  Good
     pay to right applicant."

"What's that?" asked Average Jones with awakened interest.

"Only a quack medical concern looking for a stall to impress their
come-ons," explained Waldemar.

Average Jones leaned over to scan the paper in his turn.

"Here's one," said he, and read:

     WANTED--Performer on B-flat trombone.
     Can use at once.  Apply with instrument,
     after 1 p. m. 300 East 100th Street.

"That seems ordinary enough," said Waldemar.

"What's it doing in a daily paper? There must be--er--technical
publications--er--journals, you know, for this sort of demand."

"When Average's words come slow, you've got him interested," commented
Bertram. "Sure sign."

"Nevertheless, he's right," said Waldemar. "It is rather misplaced."

"How is this for one that says what it means?" said Bertram.

     WANTED--At once, a brass howitzer and
     a man who isn't afraid to handle it.
     Mrs. Anne Cullen, Pier 49  1/2  East River.

"The woman who is fighting the barge combine," explained Waldemar. "Not
so good as it looks. She's bluffing."

"Anyway, I'd like a shy at this business," declared Average Jones with
sudden conviction. "It looks to me like something to do."

"Make it a business, then," advised Waldemar. "If you care really to go
in for it, my newspaper would be glad to pay for information such as you
might collect. We haven't time, for example, to trace down fraudulent
advertisers. If you could start an enterprise of that sort, you'd
certainly find it amusing, and, at times, perhaps, even adventurous."

"I wouldn't know how to establish it," objected Average Jones.

The newspaper owner drew a rough diagram on a sheet of paper and filled
it in with writing, crossing out and revising liberally. Divided, upon
his pattern, into lines, the final draft read:

     HAVE YOU BEEN STUNG?

     Thousands have.
     Thousands will be.
     They're Laying for You.

     WHO?
     The Advertising Crooks.

     A. JONES
     Ad-Visor
     Can Protect You
     Against Them.

     Before Spending Your
     Money Call on Him.
     Advice on all Subjects
     Connected with Newspaper,
     Magazine or Display Advertising.
     Free Consultation to
     Persons Unable to Pay.
     Call or Write, Enclosing
     Postage. This Is On The Level.


"Ad-Visor! Do you expect me to blight my budding career by a poisonous
pun like that?" demanded Average Jones with a wry face.

"It may be a poisonous pun, but it's an arresting catch-word," said
Waldemar, unmoved. "Single column, about fifty lines will do it in nice,
open style. Caps and lower case, and black-faced type for the name and
title. Insert twice a week in every New York and Brooklyn paper."

"Isn't it--er--a little blatant?" suggested Bertram, with lifted
eyebrows.

"Blatant?" repeated its inventor. "It's more than that. It's howlingly
vulgar. It's a riot of glaring yellow. How else would you expect to
catch the public?"

"Suppose, then, I do burst into flame to this effect?" queried the
prospective "Ad-Visor." "Et apres? as we proudly say after spending a
week in Paris."

"Apres? Oh, plenty of things. You hire an office, a clerk, two
stenographers and a clipping export, and prepare to take care of the
work that comes in. You'll be flooded," promised Waldemar.

"And between times I'm to go skipping about, chasing long white whiskers
and brass howitzers and B-flat trombones, I suppose."

"Until you get your work systematized you'll have no time for skipping.
Within six months, if you're not sandbagged or jailed on fake libel
suits, you'll have a unique bibliography of swindles. Then I'll begin to
come and buy your knowledge to keep my own columns clean."

The speaker looked up to meet the gaze of an iron-gray man with a harsh,
sallow face.

"Excuse my interrupting," said the new-comer.

"Just one question, Waldemar. Who's going to be the nominee?"

"Linder."

"Linder? Surely not! Why, his name hasn't been heard."

"It will be."

"His Federal job?"

"He resigns in two weeks."

"His record will kill him."

"What record? You and I know he's a grafter. But can we prove anything?
His clerk has always handled all the money."

"Wasn't there an old scandal--a woman case?"' asked the questioner
vaguely.

"That Washington man's wife? Too old. Linder would deny it flatly, and
there would be no witnesses. The woman is dead--killed by his brutal
treatment of her, they say. But the whole thing was hushed up at the
time by Linder's pull, and when the husband threatened to kill him
Linder quietly set a commissioner of insanity on the case and had
the man put away. He's never appeared since. No, that wouldn't be
politically effective."

The gray man nodded, and walked away, musing.

"Egbert, the traction boss," explained Waldemar. "We're generally on
opposite sides, but this time we're both against Linder. Egbert wants a
cheaper man for mayor. I want a straighter one. And I could get him this
year if Linder wasn't so well fortified. However, to get back to our
project, Mr. Jones--"

Get back to it they did with such absorption that when the group broke
up, several hours later, Average Jones was committed, by plan and rote,
to the new and hopeful adventure of Life.

In the great human hunt which ever has been and ever shall be till "the
last bird flies into the last light"--some call it business, some call
it art, some call it love, and a very few know it for what it is, the
very mainspring of existence--the path of the pursuer and the prey often
run obscurely parallel. What time the Honorable