It was a fat little magazine, containing sixty-four pages, although rather small in format, six by nine inches, Sargent was to discover later. He turned the first page to the masthead and read the name, Ernest Pelkey, Managing Editor.
“By the way,” he said to Mildred O’Kelly, “what become of my predecessor? Did he quit?”
“Ernest? Why... uh, excuse me, I’ve got to transcribe a letter.”
The good-looking redhead disappeared. Sargent frowned at the open door, then shrugged and examined Turkey Talk. Obviously, it was a magazine devoted to turkey raising. Sargent supposed that turkeys were raised, although he’d never considered the matter before. Come to think of it, he had never seen a live turkey. He had eaten turkey, yes, but he had never seen a real, live turkey in his life.
Then, suddenly, the full import of his situation struck him and he sat in the swivel chair wide-eyed and open-mouthed. In River Forest he had seen a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The man had mentioned the name of Ben O. Chapman and because of idle curiosity — and because it was easier to follow through on even a vague lead than to pick a businessman out of a telephone book — he had come down to interview Ben O. Chapman. And instead of interviewing him, he had been employed as a trade paper editor.
Well, Chapman had guessed his situation well enough. He was doing field work for the Trotter Institute of Public Opinion because it was a fairly well-paying part-time job. He made enough to pay his room and board and a little extra. But there was no future in it. Trade journals... it sounded interesting.
A voice cut into Sargent’s mediations. “You’re the new man, eh?”
He looked up at a beetle-browed, broad-shouldered man of about forty. “Why, yes,” he said. “My name is Frank Sargent.”
“Hmm. Worked on trade journals before?”
“Why, no. Mr. Chapman didn’t seem to think that experience was necessary.”
“Oh, he didn’t! Well, I’ll tell him a thing or two, filling this office with a bunch of schoolboys hardly dry behind the ears.”
Sargent reddened, but before he could defend himself or make a retort the beetle-browed man went off. A moment later Sargent heard loud voices in Chapman’s office. He couldn’t quite distinguish the words until Chapman’s voice shrilled:
“I still hold fifty-one per cent of the stock, Sligo, and there’s nothing you can do about that.”
Immediately thereafter a door slammed loudly.
“Yippee!” yelled a rich baritone. “I got him. Signed on the dotted line, for six full pages. Old Zuskind himself, the so-and-so! Kiss me, sugar!”
Sargent heard two smacks, the second louder than the first. They were followed by a roar: “She loves me!”
He could almost feel the breeze before the newcomer sailed up to the door of his office and looked in; a short, barrel-chested man of about thirty with hair that was redder than that of Mildred O’Kelly.
“New man, eh? I’m Lew Thayer, the best damn’ agate hound in this town. Shake and welcome!”
Sargent took the advertising salesman’s hand and winced as Thayer’s fist crunched his knuckles.
“See you around, pal,” chortled Thayer. “We’ll h’ist one together. Gotta tell Ben about Zuskind. He didn’t think I could land him, the old skinflint.”
Thayer blew off to Chapman’s office and Sargent whistled softly. “What a place! Guess I may as well meet the rest of the... the menagerie.”
He got up and ventured out of his office. He looked into the adjoining one where Robertson was reading a newspaper, then proceeded.
The door of the next office was closed to a crack. As Sargent knocked, he heard a door slammed inside before a hearty voice called, “Come in!”
Sargent pushed open the door. “I’m a new man, so I thought I’d introduce myself.”
“Sure, sure,” said the occupant of the office. “H’arya. I’m Grosvenor Black. You spell it with an ‘s’ but it’s silent... like the ‘q’ in billiards. Ha-ha! Get it?”
Grosvenor Black had spindly legs topped by a torso that should, have belonged to a much bigger man. He was about five feet five. He had a couple of gold teeth in his mouth and enormous pop eyes.
“I’m the new editor of Turkey Talk,” Sargent said.
“Of course. Too bad about Pelkey. Always said he took things too serious.”
“What happened to him?”
“Don’t you know? Had a nervous breakdown. Don’t blame him. Place is a madhouse. D’you mind? I gotta run out and see an advertiser.”
Grosvenor Black caught up a magazine entitled The Slot Machine, rolled it up, and winking at Sargent practically pushed him out of the office.
He hurried down the aisle between the cubicles, whispered something to Mildred O’Kelly and went out.
Sargent returned to his own office, started to enter, then shrugging, stepped back and continued in the direction of Mildred’s desk to the last cubicle.
A handsome curly-haired man in his late twenties held up the palm of his hand. “Don’t tell me,” he said, in a dramatic voice. “You’re the new editor. I have ears to hear. I’ve heard. Your name is Sargent. I, sir, am Andrew Lawrence, editor of — guess what? Creep & Crawl! No less, the one and only magazine dedicated to the cockroach!”
“For Christ’s sake!” gasped Sargent. “Is everybody crazy around here?”
“You doubt my word?” cried Andrew Lawrence. “Look!” He scooped up a trade journal and thrust it at Sargent. Creep & Crawl, the Insecticide Magazine. “Yeah, goes to insecticide eliminators. You don’t talk about them, but they’re here — everywhere! And every town in this country has its insect exterminator. This sheet goes to him. It’s the second most profitable one in the house.”
“What’s the first?”
“The Slot Machine. That carries the whole shebang. Grosvenor Black runs it, in the odd moments he isn’t doping the ponies. Chap who just ran out to place a bet.”
“He said he was calling on an advertiser.”
“Naturally. You, too, will learn. Come the Yanks to play our White Sox or there’s a good bill down at McVickers — you stick a copy of your book in your pocket and call on an advertiser. Which reminds me, I think I’ll go call on an advertiser. See you tomorrow, Sargent.”
Chapter Three
Sargent returned to his office and seated himself with the copy of Turkey Talk. He read an article which told about the Billings plan of rotating turkeys in pens. It seemed that turkeys were susceptible to a disease called blackhead, so a professor at the University of Minnesota had evolved this system of raising turkeys which practically eliminated blackhead. You divided a field into four sections, kept the turkeys in one for three months, then moved them to the next, planting the vacated field with alfalfa. You moved the birds every three months, so that in a year they would be back in the original field, by which time the blackhead germs in the ground were dead.
“Interesting,” Sargent summed up the piece. He turned to the. editorial page, started to read and leaned forward as his interest was caught.
The editorial was nothing more nor less than a bitter harangue directed at the publisher of a rival turkey publication, called Turkey Tracks. The editorial practically called the rival a crook and wound up by intimating that the magazine was using a subscription list stolen from Turkey Talk. Business Journals, Incorporated, in fact, was offering substantial rewards to subscribers who could furnish damaging evidence to that effect. What sort of evidence was wanted was not stated, nor was the amount of the sizable reward.