Poppy Ott’s Seven-League Stilts E-Book

Edwards Leo

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Edward Edson Lee (September 2, 1884 in Meriden, Illinois – September 28, 1944 in Rockford, Illinois), who wrote under the pen name of Leo Edwards, was a popular children’s literature author in the 1920s and 1930s. He was really a born story teller. If you have ever read any of his books, you will have to agree they are full of laughs on every page. Hundreds of thousands of boys who laughed until their sides ached over the weird and wonderful adventures of Jerry Todd and his gang demanded that Leo Edwards give them more books like the Jerry Todd stories with their belt-bursting laughs and creepy shivers. So he took Poppy Ott, Jerry Todd’s bosom chum and created the Poppy Ott Series. „Poppy Ott’s Seven-League Stilts” is №2 in the Poppy Ott series. Join in on the fun, mystery, and adventure!

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I. POPPY AND I DO SOME TOOTING

CHAPTER II. POPPY’S ADVERTISING NOVELTY SCHEME

CHAPTER III. THE SEVEN-LEAGUE STILTS

CHAPTER IV. OUR TRIP TO ASHTON

CHAPTER V. OUR FIRST ORDER

CHAPTER VI. IN THE BANKER’S OFFICE

CHAPTER VII. THE MAN IN THE BRICK HOUSE

CHAPTER VIII. THE BEGINNING OF A MYSTERY

CHAPTER IX. A WEIRD ADVENTURE

CHAPTER X. IN THE CEMETERY

CHAPTER XI. THE VANISHED WILL

CHAPTER XII. THE MAN FROM CHICAGO

CHAPTER XIII. OUR SKUNK TRAP

CHAPTER XIV. THE HOUSEKEEPER’S STORY

CHAPTER XV. KICKED OUT!

CHAPTER XVI. SMARTY GIVES A PARTY

CHAPTER XVII. THE FALLEN TOMBSTONE

CHAPTER XVIII. A NIGHT OF STORMS AND SHIVERS

CHAPTER XIX. THE GHOST KILLER

CHAPTER XX. POPPY SPRINGS A SURPRISE

CHAPTER XXI. THE SECRET OF THE BRICK HOUSE

CHAPTER I. POPPY AND I DO SOME TOOTING

Poppy Ott had me guessing. Every time I went to his house I caught him with his nose in a thick-backed book. Or if he wasn’t up to his ears in the new book he was fiddling with a home-made drawing board. Curious to know what he was doing, I tried to get a peek at his work. But he kept his drawing board hid. Nor would he let me see his book until I cornered him about it one day.

“What is it,” says I, “an arithmetic?”

“What’s what?” says he, pretending not to understand what I was driving at.

“The book that you’re packing away on the inside of your head,” says I.

“Oh!...” says he, looking out of the window at a yellow tomcat. “Isn’t it a nice day?”

“Of course it is,” says I. “But I wasn’t talking about the weather. I was talking about the book that you hurried out of sight when you saw me coming. What kind of a book is it?”

He grinned. For he saw that I had him cornered. But instead of answering me he picked up a copy of a weekly magazine.

“Just notice the hundreds of advertisements,” says he, letting the pages run through his fingers.

“What of it?” says I, wondering if this was another trick of his to sidetrack me.

He stopped at a full-page radio advertisement.

“What do you suppose it costs the advertiser,” says he, “to get an advertisement like that printed in one issue of the magazine?”

“A hundred dollars?” says I.

He looked at me as though I had said something dumb.

“A hundred dollars! Jerry, it costs five thousand dollars.”

“Back up,” says I.

“It’s a fact. I’ve been reading about it.”

“Ah-ha!” says I, sort of triumphant-like. “So that’s what you’ve been studying, hey? An advertising book!”

I wasn’t surprised. For he’s naturally a deep kid. And I could understand easily enough how an advertising book would strike his fancy.

“I’ve always been interested in advertising,” says he earnestly. “I like to read the advertisements in the magazines. With so much money being spent on advertising each year–millions and millions of dollars–it seems to me that there ought to be some fine chances for a young fellow in the business. And it’s work I’d like to take up. I’m quite sure of that.”

“You’re a funny kid,” says I.

“Funny!” says he, looking at me.

“An old advertising book wouldn’t interest me,” says I. “Besides, this advertising stuff that you’re spouting about is a man’s work. And you’re nothing but a boy.”

“I’m growing up fast,” says he, in his steady, thoughtful way. “And a fellow has got to look ahead if he’s going to amount to anything.”

I yawned.

“Let’s go swimming,” says I. “That’s more fun than studying advertising.”

“Wait a minute,” says he, as I started for the door. “I want to show you something.”

He got out his drawing board then in further confidence in me.

“What is it?” says I, squinting at his work.

“An advertisement,” says he proudly.

I didn’t make fun of his work. For I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But it’s a fact I didn’t know whether the picture that he had drawn in his advertisement was a cow or a nanny goat. Furthermore, I didn’t care.

He seemed to read my thoughts.

“I’m not very good at drawing,” he admitted. “However,” he added quickly, “that isn’t important in advertising work. What really counts is the idea. Once you have the idea it’s easy enough to explain to an artist what you want done.”

“And do we go swimming now?” says I, acting bored.

He laughed and dug me in the ribs.

“Jerry, I like you.... Sure thing we’ll go swimming, if you want to. Come on, old funny-face.”

On our way through town Lawrence Donner tried to shove us off the sidewalk in front of his father’s shoe store. He’s a mean kid. And it makes me disgusted the way he brags about the big fortune that he’s going to get when his rich uncle dies. I suppose it’s all right to inherit money, but I don’t think a fellow should run around talking about it ahead of time. That looks disrespectful to me. And if I ever get to be a rich old man, and it comes to my ears that my younger relatives are waiting around for me to die so that they can ram their greedy hands into my fat money box, bu-lieve me somebody is going to get fooled.

Lawrence Donner, Sr., the shoe-store proprietor, is a younger brother of the old retired manufacturer who lives in the lonely three-story brick house on Main Street. I have been told that Mr. Herman Donner is very wealthy. In Dad’s boyhood the big brick house was looked upon as one of Tutter’s finest residences. But to-day the place is run down and out of date, like its shambling, old-fashioned owner. And the rambling carriage factory that once gave steady jobs to several hundred men now stands idle, its machinery rusting and its water wheel rotting away. One time I asked Dad why things were so dead around the Donner carriage works. And he explained to me that there was no market for carriages. People were buying automobiles instead, he said. Consequently the factory had been compelled to close down for want of orders.

While Lawrence’s father isn’t rich, like his older brother, he has a good, paying shoe business, though how he can hold the trade is more than I can understand, for everybody in Tutter knows that he’s tricky. Mother won’t go in his store to buy a penny’s worth. I don’t go there either. When I need anything in the shoe line I go to Mr. Harper’s store, on the other side of the street.

Lawrence is the only kid in the family. And, bu-lieve me, he sure has a big opinion of himself. You should see him at school petting his pretty Glo-co pompadour and fussing with his necktie. He has the conceited idea that all of the high-school girls are wild over him. Every time I see him doing his sheik stuff I feel like soaking him with a ripe egg. For he’s a snob and a smart Aleck. More than that, he’s a great big bully.

Dressed up in style this morning, wearing long white trousers and a silk sports shirt set off with a flashy red necktie and green silk socks, he looked us over when we were passing his father’s store as though we were hunks of dirt.

“Hello, trampy,” says he to Poppy, sort of sneering-like.

“Soak him one,” says I to my indignant chum.

But Poppy held back, though his eyes flashed fire.

“I would like to take a crack at him, Jerry. But I don’t want to start a fight and have the people think I’m a rowdy.”

Here the shoe-store king motioned for us to move on.

“You don’t own the whole street,” says I, scowling at him.

“Git,” says he, important-like.

Poppy got my ear.

“Jerry,” says he, excitedly, “take notice of what he’s doing. He’s putting up a sign.”

“Huh!” says I, growling. “I’m not interested in his old shoe sale.”

“But don’t you catch on? It’s a scheme of his to cut in on Mr. Harper’s sale. Read the sign.”

I did. Here it is:

Be Wise! Buy Your Boys’ Shoes on This Side of the Street and Get Bigger Bargains. For What We Save in Newspaper Advertising Goes Into YOUR Pocket.

“Last night,” says Poppy, who can stow away more stuff in his head than any kid I know of, “Mr. Harper had a full-page advertisement in the Tutter newspaper telling about his new low prices on boys’ shoes. He’s having a sale today. The Donner kid saw the advertisement. See? And this sale of his is a scheme to cut in on the other store.”

“I like Mr. Harper,” says I, after a moment.

“So do I,” says Poppy warmly. “I’ve worked for him and I’ve found out that he’s a good man.”

I remembered then that Lawrence’s father was in New York City on business. I had read about it in the Tutter newspaper.

“Hot dog!” says I. “If we could only think up a scheme to switch all the shoe customers into Mr. Harper’s store. That would put a crimp in young Donner.”

“I’d like to see Mr. Harper get the business,” says Poppy earnestly.

Here a thought popped into my head.

“Say!” says I, excited. “How about that advertising stuff of yours? Can’t you use it now?”

The other’s eyes danced.

“Gee! I wish I could.”

“Go ahead,” says I, crazy to get him started. “I’ll help you.”

Well, he did some quick thinking. And pretty soon he let out a tickled yip.

“Jerry!... I’ve got it!”

“Hurray!” says I.

“Have you got any money?”

“Sure thing,” says I, jingling my wealth.

“Fine! Don’t ask me any questions, but run down to the variety store and buy a dollar’s worth of ten-cent horns. Or, if you haven’t got a dollar, buy as many horns as you can. Get some real loud ones. And hurry back.”

Well, I didn’t know what his scheme was. But I had a lot of confidence in him. For he’s smart. Besides, I was willing to lend a hand to any kind of a fair scheme that would fix young Donner. So down the street I went on the gallop. And soon I was back in the shoe store with eleven ten-cent horns.

Poppy met me at the door. He had been talking to the proprietor. Everything was hunky-dory, he grinned. Giving my horns the quick once-over, he hung them up in the front part of the store. Sort of on display. I saw then that in the short time that I had been away he had printed a paper sign. Here it is:

Toot! Toot! Buy Your Shoes Here, Boys, and Get a Swell Horn FREE!

“Now,” says the world’s coming advertising genius, handing me one of the horns, “take this outside and do some tooting.”

Say, maybe you think we didn’t have a barrel of fun that morning! Every time we saw a man or woman heading for the Donner store with a kid in tow we tooted our heads off. And then, in almost every case, the kid made a bee-line for our store. Our free horns were a big attraction, I want to tell you.

A jolly, easy-going man, Mr. Harper wasn’t taken up with our scheme at first, though, in his interest in Poppy, he had consented to let us go ahead and try it out. So you can imagine how surprised and pleased he was when the customers began pouring into his store.

Well, the more business we got for him the harder we tooted. Once I did the tooting all alone While my chum ran down the street to the ten-cent store for more horns. When he came back his arms were loaded. He told me, with a broad grin, that he had bought up all the horns the storekeeper had.

Young Donner, of course, was wise to what was going on. He ridiculed us at first, calling us names across the street. But we kept on tooting. And when he saw that he was losing out he began to prance around like a mad bull.

“Say,” says he, coming across the street, his pretty face all clouded up, “if you kids don’t beat it I’ll have you arrested.”

“Don’t answer him,” says Poppy, red in the face, “but toot as hard as you can toot.”

So we tooted. I even shoved my horn in smarty’s face and tooted. He tried to grab the horn away from me, but I was too quick for him. Boy, it tickled me to get the best of him. Angrier than ever, he ran down the street to the police station. But we knew he was bluffing, so we weren’t scared. Anyway, we had Mr. Harper back of us.

We learned afterwards that the other shoe store, in seeking to pattern after our clever scheme, had tried to buy a supply of horns like ours. But right there is where the swelled-up young proprietor got left, for, as I say, Poppy had been ahead of him and had bought up all the horns in town. Long before noon we could hear kids tooting in every direction. Mr. Harper gave each of us a dollar. We were smart boys, he said. And he hired Poppy to work in the store that afternoon.

“Hot dog!” says I to my chum, when we were walking home to dinner. “This is fun.–I’d like to do it every day in the week.”

There was a dreamy far-away look in the other’s eyes.

“Yes,” says he, “this is fun. But I want to do something bigger than this, Jerry. I want to handle millions of dollars. I won’t be satisfied until I have the biggest advertising job in the country.”

“You’ll never get it in Tutter,” says I, thinking of the town’s small population.

“Probably not. But a fellow can get a start here.”

I laughed as I thought of how we had trimmed young Donner.

“If you want to go into the advertising business,” says I, “why don’t you get a patent on your horn scheme? It sure earned a lot of money for Mr. Harper. And it ought to work just as well in other stores.”

“Giving away premiums to boost sales is an old scheme,” says he, “so I couldn’t get it patented, even if I wanted to. Still,” he added, reflective-like, “I might be able to work the old scheme in a new way. I’ll think about it.”

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?”

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, remembering 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, I 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 him 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. “I’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.

“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.”

“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. Harper,’ 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?”

“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.”

“I’ll tell the world,” says I, heaving a full-grown 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 myself,” says he. “And there’s no business I’d rather be in than advertising novelties.”

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