But Homer doubted it.
'One thing more,' said Steen. 'It is just a minor matter, but you should know about it. We have a car agency, you see. Many agencies, in fact. We can supply almost any make of car…'
'But how did you do…'
'We know our way around. Any make of car a person would want. And anyone who leases must buy a car from us.'
'Mister,' Homer said, 'I've heard a lot of fast ones in the auto business, but this one beats them all. If you think I'll sell cars for you…'
'There's nothing wrong with it,' said Steen. 'We have some good connections. Any car one wants at a fair and honest price. And we are prepared to give good value on their trade-ins, too. It would never do to have old rattle- traps in a high-class development like this.'
'And what else? I think you'd better tell me how many other tie-in deals you have.'
'Not a single one. The automobile is all.'
Homer put the car in gear and drove slowly toward the gate.
The uniformed gateman saw them coming and swung the gates wide open. He waved to them cheerily as they went past his kiosk.
'I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole,' Homer told his wife, Elaine, 'if there weren't so much money in it. But things have been kind of slow with this higher interest rate and all and this deal would give me a chance…'
'If it's Mr. Steen wearing his shoes on the wrong feet,' Elaine said. 'I don't think you need to worry. You remember Uncle Eb?'
'Sure. He was the one who wore his vest inside out.'
'Pure stubbornness, that's what it was with Uncle Eb. He put it on inside out one day and someone laughed at him. So Uncle Eb said that was the way to wear a vest. And that's the way he wore it to his dying day.'
'Well, sure,' said Homer, 'that might be it, of course. But wearing a vest inside out wouldn't hurt your chest. Shoes on the wrong feet would hurt something terrible.'
'This poor Mr. Steen might be a cripple of some sort. Maybe he was born that way.
'If you lease all those houses, we can go to Europe like we've always planned. As far as I'm concerned, he can barefoot if he wants.'
'Yeah, I suppose so.'
'And we need a car,' Elaine said, beginning on her catalog 'And drapes for the living-room. And I haven't had a new dress in ages. And it's shameful to be using our old silver. We should have replaced it years ago. It's the old stuff Ethel gave us when we were married…'
'All right,' said Homer. 'If I lease the houses, if the deal holds up, if I don't get in jail?we'll go to Europe.' He knew when he was licked.
He read the contract carefully. It was all right. It said black and white, that he got the whole five thousand.
Maybe, he told himself, he should have a lawyer see it. Congdon could tell him in a minute if it was ironclad. But he shrank from showing it. There seemed something sinful, almost shameful, about his getting all that money.
He checked on the Happy Acres Bank. A charter had been issued and all regulations had been met. He checked on building permits and they were in order.
So what was a man to do?
Especially when he had a wife who had yearned loudly for ten years to go to Europe.
Homer sat down and wrote an ad for the real estate section of the Sunday paper. On second thought he dismissed purple prose that he had planned to use. He employed the old key technique. The ad wasn't long. It didn't cost too much and read:
$4.16!!!!!
WOULD YOU PAY ONLY $4.16
a month to live in a house
that would sell for $35,000
to $50,00O?
If so, call or see
JACKSON REAL ESTATE
The first prospect was a man named H. F. Morgan. He came into the office early Sunday morning. He was belligerent. He slammed the folded want ad section down on Homer's desk. He had ringed Homer's ad with a big red-pencil mark.
'This isn't true!' yelled Morgan. 'What kind of come-on is this?'
'It's substantially true,' Homer answered quietly. 'That's what it figures out to.'
'You mean I just pay $4.16 a month?'
'Well,' hedged Homer, 'it's not quite as simple as all that. You lease it for ninety-nine years.'
'What would I want with a house for ninety-nine years? I won't live that long.'
'Actually, it's better than owning a house. You can live there a lifetime, just as if you owned the place, and there are no taxes and no maintenance. And if you have children, they can go on living there.'
'You mean this is on the level?'
Homer emphatically nodded. 'Absolutely.'
'What's wrong with this house of yours?'
'There's nothing wrong with it. It's a new house among other new houses in an exclusive neighbourhood. You have a shopping centre just up the road that's as good as any city…'
'You say it's new?'
'Right. There are fifty houses. You can pick out the one you want. But I wouldn't take too long to decide, because these will go like hotcakes.'
'I got my car outside.'
'All right,' said Homer, reaching for his hat. 'I'll take my car and show you the way. The houses are unlocked. Look at them and choose the one you want.'
Out on the street, Homer got into his car and sat down on something angular. He cursed because it hurt. He lifted himself and reached down and picked up the thing he'd sat on.
It was nothing he had ever seen before and he tossed it to the other side of the seat. It was, he thought, something like one of those clip-together plastic blocks that were made for children but how it had gotten in his car, he could not imagine.
He wheeled out into the street and signalled for the Morgan car to follow.
There were Mrs. Morgan and Jack, a hell-raising eight-year-old, and Judy, a winsome five-year-old, and Butch, the Boxer pup. All of them, Homer saw, were taken by surprise at the sight of Happy Acres. He could tell by the way Mrs. Morgan clasped her hands together and by the way suspicion darkened Morgan's face. One could almost hear him thinking that no on was crazy enough to offer a deal like this.
Jack and Butch, the pup, went running in the woods and Judy danced gaily on the lawn and, Homer told himself, he had them neatly hooked.
Homer spent a busy day. His phone was jammed with calls. House-hunting families, suspicious, half-derisive, descended on the office. He did the best he could. He'd never had a crowd like this before. He directed the house- hunting families out to Happy Acres. He patiently explained to callers that it was no hoax, that there were houses to be had. He urged all of them to hurry and make up their minds.
'They won't last long,' he told them, intoning unctuously that most ancient of all real estate selling gimmicks.
After church, Elaine came down to the office to help him with the phone while he talked to the prospects who dropped in.
Late in the afternoon, he drove out to Happy Acres. The place was an utter madhouse. It looked like a homecoming or a state fair or a monster picnic. People were wandering around, walking through the houses. One
