There's always a second-hand bookstore somewhere
about, where you can pick up odds and ends. And every now and then I
write to a wholesaler in New York for some stuff. When I buy a book
I mark in the back just what I paid for it, then I know what I can
afford to sell it for. See here."
He pulled up a book from behind the seat--a copy of "Lorna Doone" it
was--and showed me the letters _a m_ scrawled in pencil in the back.
"That means that I paid ten cents for this. Now, if you sell it for
a quarter you've got a safe profit. It costs me about four dollars a
week to run Parnassus--generally less. If you clear that much in six
days you can afford to lay off on Sundays!"
"How do you know that _a m_ stands for ten cents?" I asked.
"The code word's _manuscript_. Each letter stands for a figure,
from 0 up to 9, see?" He scrawled it down on a scrap of paper:
m a n u s c r i p t
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
"Now, you see _a m_ stands for 10, _a n_ would be 12, _n s_ is 24,
_a c_ is 15, _a m m_ is $1.00, and so on. I don't pay much over
fifty cents for books as a rule, because country folks are shy of
paying much for them.
Pages:
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46