The Umbrella Man and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

and he had no trouble getting into the house. He told his story and produced a suitcase full of sample novels, and a contract for the man to sign which guaranteed him so much a year for life. The man listened politely, decided he was dealing with a lunatic, gave him a drink, then firmly showed him to the door.
    The second writer on the list, when he saw Knipe was serious, actually attacked him with a large metal paperweight, and the inventor had to flee down the garden followed by such a torrent of abuse and obscenity as he had never heard before.
    But it took more than this to discourage Adolph Knipe. He was disappointed but not dismayed, and off he went in his big car to seek his next client. This one was a female, famous and popular, whose fat romantic books sold by the million across the country. She received Knipe graciously, gave him tea, and listened attentively to his story.
    “It all sounds very fascinating,” she said. “But of course I find it a little hard to believe.”
    “Madam,” Knipe answered. “Come with me and see it with your own eyes. My car awaits you.”
    So off they went, and in due course, the astonished lady was ushered into the machine house where the wonder was kept. Eagerly,Knipe explained its workings, and after a while he even permitted her to sit in the driver’s seat and practise with the buttons.
    “All right,” he said suddenly, “you want to do a book now?”
    “Oh yes!” she cried. “Please!”
    She was very competent and seemed to know exactly what she wanted. She made her own pre-selections, then ran off a long, romantic, passion-filled novel. She read through the first chapter and became so enthusiastic that she signed up on the spot.
    “That’s one of them out of the way,” Knipe said to Mr. Bohlen afterwards. “A pretty big one too.”
    “Nice work, my boy.”
    “And you know
why
she signed?”
    “Why?”
    “It wasn’t the money. She’s got plenty of that.”
    “Then why?”
    Knipe grinned, lifting his lip and baring a long pale upper gum. “Simply because she saw the machine-made stuff was better than her own.”
    Thereafter, Knipe wisely decided to concentrate only upon mediocrity. Anything better than that—and there were so few it didn’t matter much—was apparently not quite so easy to seduce.
    In the end, after several months of work, he had persuaded something like seventy per cent of the writers on his list to sign the contract. He found that the older ones, those who were running out of ideas and had taken to drink, were the easiest to handle. The younger people were more troublesome. They were apt to become abusive, sometimes violent when he approached them; and more than once Knipe was slightly injured on his rounds.
    But on the whole, it was a satisfactory beginning. This last year—the first full year of the machine’s operation—it was estimated that at least one half of all the novels and stories published in the English language were produced by Adolph Knipe upon the Great Automatic Grammatizator.
    Does this surprise you?
    I doubt it.
    And worse is yet to come. Today, as the secret spreads, many more are hurrying to tie up with Mr. Knipe. And all the time the screw turns tighter for those who hesitate to sign their names.
    This very moment, as I sit here listening to the howling of my nine starving children in the other room, I can feel my own hand creeping closer and closer to that golden contract that lies over on the other side of the desk.
    Give us strength, Oh Lord, to let our children starve.

America is the land of opportunities for women. Already they own about eighty-five per cent of the wealth of the nation. Soon they will have it all. Divorce has become a lucrative process, simple to arrange and easy to forget; and ambitious females can repeat it as often as they please and parlay their winnings to astronomical figures. The husband’s death also brings satisfactory rewards and some ladies prefer to rely upon this method. They