With a dignified reticence Mr. Gunterson took the letter, and in a rich silence he perused it. Then, with a calm smile, he gave his decision.
"Mr. Osgood's evident alarm may be well founded—perhaps not. But at all events, I believe our interests at Boston should be protected by some one of authority, and I shall go up myself on the five o'clock this afternoon."
On the five o'clock Mr. Gunterson left New York, and at a seasonable hour on Tuesday morning he started forth upon his travels from his Boston hotel. In search of a target at which he could aim, he went first to Mr. Osgood, to ask his aid in locating that target. Mr. Osgood, who had hoped that Mr. Wintermuth himself would come, felt a tremor of premonitory dismay at the sight of this deputy; and his subsequent talk with Mr. Gunterson did nothing to allay his apprehension. In fact, it was his covert reflection that if Hancher was right, it was all over; the man whom Wintermuth sent was of no assistance.
In point of truth, itwasall over. It was barely possible that a strong and determined man could have effected something had he known how to set about it—but Mr. Gunterson did not know how. No hack actor suddenly confronted with a strange and difficult part felt more inept than he. He conceived that within him was the power to deliver a tremendous blow—but he could not find its mark. Aimlessly he consulted his acquaintances along Kilby Street. The agents of the influential Conference companies, primed to resist interviews, greeted him affably, congratulated him on his new connection, and blandly denied all knowledge of any radical move in process. That night Mr. Gunterson, having accomplished absolutely nothing, returned to his hotel with an uneasy feeling of dissatisfaction with the day.
Wednesday came. Gunterson, hesitant, undecided, in need of help, early sought his only ally, Mr. Osgood. At the door of their offices he met Mr. Osgood and Mr. Cole on their way to the meeting of the Board. The Vice-President of the Guardian fell meekly into step. At the Board rooms the agents were gathered; the meeting came to order; the order of business began. After the transaction of a few routine affairs Mr. Spence of Spence and Hardiwick rose and moved that the Eastern Conference separation rule be extended to cover Boston. His motion was seconded. There was no debate, and the only speaker was cut short by a call for the question.
In the chorus of ayes, Mr. Osgood's negative went unheard and unnoted. The motion was carried almost unanimously, Cole not voting, but permitting the senior partner to cast the vote for the firm. And all this time there sat at Mr. Osgood's side the restless but impotent form of Mr. Gunterson. Twice he started to speak, and then repressed himself, his face a little flushed with helpless shame. Beside Mr. Osgood he sat until the meeting concluded, and not a word did he say.
The meeting adjourned. In the hum of conversation Mr. Osgood turned to his junior partner.
"I'm through, Ben. You will have to go on without me. I cannot dismember my whole office organization; but James Wintermuth is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and when Silas Osgood and Company resign the Guardian—some one else must be in command."
Cole did not answer. The three moved slowly toward the door, and there in the doorway stood the author of their perplexity and distress. O'Connor saw them coming, and held out his hand to the veteran underwriter.
"How do you do, Mr. Osgood," he said. "I hope you don't bear any ill will to me for what has just happened. I said I thought the rule would go through, and you can see for yourself that it was passed almost unanimously. Perhaps we may be able to do business together after all. Let us consider this as two sensible business men. Of course I'm glad the rule went through; but please don't think that I did it. I don't own the Boston Board."
The other man regarded him steadily.
"Probably you are right, Mr. O'Connor," he replied. "I do not seem to have correctly estimated the sentiment of to-day. No doubt you used your influence on the side of your company's interests. But I do not care to do business with you, sir—on that point my mind is unchanged."
"Well, I'm sorry you feel that way about it," said the other, with the good nature which as victor he could afford to maintain. "Good-day, Mr. Osgood."
Mr. Osgood passed through the doorway, but Gunterson, following him, smitten with vague valor and sudden fury, turned.
"You—you!" was all he said, at a loss for words in his anger, and thePresident of the Salamander met him with a smile of humorous contempt.
"Why, hello!" he said, "here's Gunterson! Come to Boston to find a new agent, I suppose. So did I, to tell the truth. Good luck, old man."
Mr. Gunterson turned his back on his tormentor, and passed on. He could think of no appropriate retort. But the situation could not be saved by any degree of repartee. Boston had voted for separation; Silas Osgood and Company must resign the Guardian; and Samuel Gunterson had made a humiliating failure of his quest.
Into his throbbing brain, however, a new idea had come, suggested by O'Connor's taunt. A new agent! Why not? If the Osgood office, consisting largely of Conference companies, was obliged to resign the Guardian, there must be some other agency where non-Conference companies predominated and where he could place the Guardian upon the withdrawal of a Conference company. After all, the Osgood office was not the only good agency in Boston. A new vigor fortified him—he would find an agent for the Guardian who should excel the Osgood connection as the sun outshines the moon.
In one office of perhaps more notoriety than prominence, though Mr. Gunterson knew it not, at that very moment the matter was being discussed.
"Well, Jake," said Sternberg, of Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, "they've passed it."
"What did I tell you?" demanded Jake Bloom. "Didn't I tell you them Conference companies would get what they wanted? They got it, all right. Now the question is, what do we get out of it?"
"What do you mean?" asked Sternberg, slowly. He was large and bald, and had a dead-white, soft-looking, pock-marked face, while Bloom was short, black, and untidy.
"Well, I mean for one thing, the Guardian gets thrown out of the Osgood agency. They're on the street. Why shouldn't we get 'em?"
"Sure! Why not?" Sternberg rejoined with enthusiasm. "We've got to get some one else in here before long or we'll be up in the air. I'm afraid we've been salting some of our people too hard. It sort of jarred me when the Spokane left us. We've got to do something pretty quick. Now, how will we get at Gunterson? He don't know us."
"And a blame good thing he don't," said McCoy, with perfect frankness."A swell chance we'd have of landing the Guardian if we'd had theElsass-Lothringen! There's no use of talking—we've been writing toofreely. We must cut out the skates. Now, let's get together and landGunterson."
"That's all right, too. But if we cut out the skates, what'll we have left? Anyhow, the main question is how'll we land Gunterson?" Sternberg persisted. The mind of this large man moved as slowly as a house in a small town being transported from one lot to another by one mule, a rope, and a windlass. McCoy's mind more resembled the agile and evasive flea.
"I bet my cousin Billy Gallagher knows him. Come to think of it, Billy was special agent up here for the Florida Fire and Marine at the time Gunterson was running them. We can square Billy all right, and I believe Billy can put it over."
"It looks like a cinch to me," said Bloom, lighting a cigarette.
"It is," said McCoy, briefly.
It was. And so it came about that in the forenoon of the following day a solemn trio of men, two Hebrews and an Irishman, were bowing a polite welcome to the distinguished Vice-President of the Guardian of New York, who, in company with his friend Mr. Gallagher, now an independent loss adjuster, had honored them with a call. Mr. Gunterson confessed that he was considering a change in the Guardian's Boston representation; he had not gone so far as to commit himself, but he was looking around—of course among the few agents with whom non-Conference companies predominated.
It had been agreed by the trio that McCoy should do the talking for the firm, and McCoy came from an island where the art of persuasive conversation is far from extinct.
"Well, Mr. Gunterson, I want to say right off the reel that Sternberg,Bloom, and McCoy would like very much to take on the Guardian. TheGuardian's got a good name, and its policy sells well; and in the lastfew weeks, especially—" he threw out suggestively.
"What's the last few weeks got to do with it?" inquired the innocent and obliging visitor.
"Well, I meant the company's desirability from the agent's point of view. You see, they've never had a really broad-gauge man directing their underwriting before you took charge. Nice people, but narrow, you understand—not a company that an agent would feel drawn to. O'Connor never had no nerve—or if he did, Wintermuth never let him show it. Now, no really progressive agent can do business with a petty piker. To get the best results you've got to let your agent run his field. Take your time, make the best appointment you can, and then give your agent a free hand—that's the only way to get a liberal income and make money too."
To these sage but scarcely original observations Sternberg and Bloom gravely assented.
"In case you found a place for us in your office, what kind of an income do you think we might expect?" Mr. Gunterson asked.
"Well, we wouldn't take you at all unless we could satisfy you," replied McCoy. "And I swear I don't quite see how we could take on another company just now. How much are you getting now from Osgood? Well, if we couldn't do better than that, we'd rather pass you up—although I don't know of any company that looks better to me than the Guardian under its present management. How about it, Jake?"
Mr. Bloom considered deeply.
"New business of the class this office writes is hard to get," he said thoughtfully. "It don't fall off the trees into your lap. But we might do it if we gave up a couple of our smaller companies. If we threw out the German National and the Spokane Fire, we might do something."
The two companies named had removed their policies and supplies from the office only the previous day, their respective special agents, after an underwriting experience too painful to describe, having descended in grief and rage upon their Boston representatives when patience had ceased to be a virtue and self-preservation had become the salient motive.
"There's thirty thousand apiece, easy—say sixty thousand the first year. Yes, we could let them two go, and if you were in any kind of way liberal—if you wrote a fair line in the congested district—we could guarantee you sixty thousand, and I believe we'd make it seventy-five."
Mr. Gunterson calculated this with deliberation. It was a great deal more than the Guardian had been receiving from Silas Osgood and Company; it sounded too good to be real.
"What kind of a record have you had?" he asked cautiously.
"Record? Well, good for some of our companies and not so good for others. We've had some pretty hard knocks, but we don't write practically nothing but first-class business, and of course we write pretty good-sized lines; and when some sprinkled risk or a brick apartment house or a wool storage warehouse makes a total loss, it hits us pretty hard. Still, if you keep on taking on the best business, you're bound to make money in the long run. I suppose we turn down two thirds of what's offered to us over the counter."
"What commission would you expect?" Mr. Gunterson inquired.
"Whatever you're paying now is all right with us," McCoy responded promptly. "And we'll guarantee you a liberal increase in premiums the first year."
The heart of the Guardian's Vice-President swelled in his breast when he anticipated O'Connor's chagrin over this development.
"The Spokane's man is in town," Bloom said, as if by an afterthought. "Put it in the form of a contract, Mr. Gunterson, and I'll notify him to-day that we're holding his supplies subject to his order."
The contract was promptly drawn, signed, and witnessed, each party retaining a copy, and Samuel Gunterson, with the sting of defeat removed by this brilliant achievement, and with his self-esteem and confidence wholly restored, turned blithely toward the South Station on his way to New York.
Contemporary historians point out that in Egypt, more than four thousand years ago, those who bore bad tidings to the reigning monarch were in the habit of meeting death so swiftly that they could scarcely have been incommoded by the circumstance. In fact, they had all the satisfaction of inevitable demise with none of the discomforts necessarily attendant on lingering annihilation.
Mr. Samuel Gunterson, returning from Boston with the signed contract of Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, presently found himself in the position of sensing all the restlessness and unhappiness of an expiring frame with no hope of an early easement by carefree and cheerful decease. For the news of his first important agency appointment was received by William Street in a manner not at all calculated to flatter the man who had made it. Of the numerous opinions expressed or unexpressed, ranging from polite incredulity to unholy joy or open contempt, the only quality which all these opinions held in common was their invidiousness.
The appointment received perhaps its most kindly treatment from those most directly concerned. Mr. Wintermuth did not know anything about Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy—in fact, he had never heard of them. And so, when Mr. Gunterson, in his most convincing rhetoric; explained the merits of the new agents and the increased income which he felt confident the Guardian would receive, the President gave his assent, merely expressing his deep regret at concluding his business relations with Silas Osgood.
"But Mr. Osgood is retiring from the firm, anyway," said Mr. Gunterson.
"Indeed? I am glad to hear it," said Mr. Wintermuth.
With which comment the matter came to its discussion's end between them. Nor did the President learn for a long time the real truth regarding his Boston appointees, for with increasing years he had grown increasingly difficult of access and intolerant of ideas conceived on the outside and not in accord with his own. The men who once could have come to him and frankly told him that the Guardian's Boston appointment was a colossal blunder were, like himself, grown insensibly out of the true current of underwriting affairs, while those who knew the truth lacked either the purpose or the opportunity to lay before him the exact state of affairs.
Among those who could not carry out their inclinations was Smith, for he saw very little of Mr. Wintermuth in these early days of the premiership of Gunterson; and he felt, moreover, that the President, knowing his opinion of Mr. Gunterson, would be inclined to discount his criticism on matters connected with the administration of the Vice-President. So Mr. Wintermuth lived in ignorance until the results began to show on the surface—which was not a far day.
From William Street, however, the busy and irreverent Street, soon came the slings and arrows which pierced even Mr. Gunterson's almost impregnable self-esteem. Only a few days after his return he overheard a conversation between Mr. Cuyler and a placer, in the Guardian's own office, which showed how the Street regarded the Boston appointment.
"Sorry, but I can't take that, Eddy; we don't write the shoe polish manufacturers at all—there's too much naphtha used, and they all burn eventually," were the words that caught his attention, and in the shadow of the door he waited for the reply.
"Ah, come off, now—loosen up! I know the Guardian does write the class, for this same concern's got a factory in Boston and I got a Guardian policy on it only yesterday. That's why I'm giving you this. Your Boston agents, Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, place the Boston end for us. What's the matter—don't your agents have any prohibited list, or do you let them do things you can't do in your own office?"
"Eddy," said Mr. Cuyler, sternly, "you're talking nonsense. I tell you we don't write the class in my department, and I don't believe the agency department does. The Boston firm you mention has just been appointed, and probably they don't know our underwriting policy yet." He handed back the binder.
The placer, realizing that the decision was final, and irritated at the declination of a risk which he had found impossible to place elsewhere, laughed loudly.
"Don't know your underwriting policy, hey? Well, they don't need to—they've got an underwriting policy of their own. Do you know what it is? It's to take a line on anything that's not actually on fire. They're the slop bucket of Boston, the standard lemon of Kilby Street; they've got a loss ratio of three thousand per cent, and they've burnt the hide off every company that's ever touched them. You make me tired. You're a fine, consistent bunch, you are—to pose as a conservative company in New York and write every skate in Boston through Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy! All right—good-by."
And in his exit his coat sleeve almost brushed against the man in the hall who in his haste and folly had appointed Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy to represent the Guardian in the good city of Boston.
This was but the beginning. After this overture the stings and slurs came thick and fast. It seemed to the dismayed Vice-President that every one in New York took delight in recalling to publicity some detail discreditable to his Bostonian discovery. From all over the East he began to receive applications for agencies from men whom even he knew to be unworthy of trust; and he realized that he had encouraged their approach like vultures on the unhappy Guardian. Within a fortnight of making the Boston appointment he had seriously considered revoking it; but this would have necessitated the admission of his initial error, and he lacked the courage to carry out his better judgment. So, with a shrug of his mental shoulders and a cynical reflection that good luck might perhaps avert the results of his imprudence, he let the matter stand.
But good luck failed to materialize, and it was not long before the expected began to happen. Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy's business appeared outwardly passable, but curiously enough it almost always seemed—after the loss—that the risk was one on which the company should never have been committed. And there were two unpleasant incidents where the Guardian was "caught on a binder"—where the loss occurred before the agents could issue the policy or report the acceptance of the risk to the New York office; and though Smith investigated these, and in each case was obliged to hold the agents blameless, the experience left an unfortunate impression. However, Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy undoubtedly controlled an unusually large volume of business. If losses were heavy, so were premiums, and the relatively small losses which naturally attend a growing business where no policy has been in force more than a month or two, postponed, for a time at least, the worst of the evil days. But long before they came the heavens had grown dark with trouble in numerous other quarters.
The general ruling of the Conference, providing that, except under almost impossible qualifications and with reduced compensation, no agent could continue to represent both Conference and non-Conference companies, was now in effect. And it seemed as though never before had there been such precision and unanimity in Conference methods; and Smith, gloomily regarding the grim spectacle of the Guardian's decline, could only curse under his breath the act of O'Connor that had brought about this state of affairs.
Certainly there was no hesitancy about the Conference campaign, and the results became at once apparent in the non-Conference offices. Hardly a day passed which failed to bring to the Guardian the resignation of one or more of its agents, with none to take their places except the vultures, many of whom Mr. Gunterson remembered to have assisted in accelerating the downfall of some of the other underwriting institutions with which he had been connected. With a chill of dismay he read of what a splendid opening awaited the Guardian in the general agency of Henry Trafalgar and Company of Memphis, or Bates and Newsome of Atlanta.
From the Guardian's own agents the letters of resignation were very much alike, for the company was popular in a modest way, and most of the writers had represented it for many years.
"We are notified by the committee in charge of this district," they wrote, "that in order to secure the customary graded commission scale we must resign our non-Conference companies. We are extremely sorry to let the Guardian go, but the difference to us financially is such that we would not feel justified in declining the Conference offer."
And so, one after one, they went. Many an agent wrote bitterly attacking the Conference procedure and asking whether the Guardian could not arrange to take care of his entire business, and stating that if this could be done he would retain the Guardian and let the others go. This, however, in nearly every case was out of the question, and eventually all these agencies went with their fellows. During the first month of the new year almost one hundred agents, some of them among the most satisfactory and profitable of the Guardian's plant, had been compelled to resign. The income from these agencies reached to the neighborhood of one hundred thousand dollars annually, and Mr. Wintermuth began to take decided notice of his strategic position.
Of course, whenever an agency was lost, there was the possibility of replacing the company in some non-Conference office; but this was not so easy a matter. The non-Conference agents were principally lower grade, cut-rate concerns, and not of the standard either professionally or financially to which the Guardian was accustomed. The company's field men, continually confronted by the discouraging task of finding in a town a satisfactory agent, when none existed save in Conference offices, became disheartened. Their letters to the home office indicated their demoralization and Mr. Gunterson could not think how to direct their campaigns for them.
At this juncture the hand on the reins needed to be both delicate and firm, and the hand of Mr. Gunterson, while it may have had its moments of inflexibility, was never delicate. And it was firm with less and less frequency as the days went by. Never any too well convinced, at the bottom of his heart, of the soundness of any course he elected to pursue, the apparent necessity of sitting helplessly in his office and watching his agency plant disintegrate before his eyes robbed him of much of the assurance that had always been one of his predominant factors. Outwardly his manner remained as impressive as ever, but it was retained with an ever increasing difficulty.
In this dark hour his only sustaining reflection was that this rule, which was working such havoc among the Guardian's smaller agencies, did not apply to the larger cities whence came a large proportion of the company's premium income. Boston, of course, with a local rule even more radical than that of the field generally, had gone the way of the small towns; but in New York separation was out of the question since most of the important companies maintained their own local departments, dispensing with agents altogether; in Philadelphia the local underwriters had never been able to agree among themselves on any drastic measures and there seemed no likelihood of a change; while in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore soothingly sepulchral silence and calm reigned.
As the month of January gave place to the briefest of his brothers, a temporary lull in hostilities appeared to have arrived. Mr. Gunterson, drawing a long breath, was wondering if it could be possible that the worst of the tempest had passed, when eruptions from three craters burst forth almost simultaneously, and by the light of their flames it was seen that all which had gone before was of minor moment compared to that which was now to come.
It was about the third week in February that a Conference war was declared in Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Baltimore. In the ears of Mr. Gunterson the triple detonation rang terribly, like the very voice of doom, and it was with the desperation of hopelessness that he addressed himself to the solution of this new problem.
He no longer trusted himself as direct mediator; his Boston experience had cured him of all personal meddlesomeness; it was much more dignified to remain quietly in New York directing the efforts of his subordinates and criticizing them when they failed to accomplish the impossible. He did not care to expose himself to another Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy triumvirate. So he sat in his office, dictating letters and giving endless pieces of impracticable advice to special agents who inwardly cursed; and to Mr. Wintermuth he bore weirdly distorted versions of situations and crises beyond any power of his to unravel or even to explain.
Even on matters of fact he was pleasingly vague.
"How many agencies have we lost?" the President demanded on one occasion.
"Really, I could hardly say exactly," Mr. Gunterson responded. "You see, some that haven't actually resigned have stopped sending us business—to any extent. But," he added, "we can more than make up such losses in income when our new appointments show the full results of their business."
"How long do you calculate that's going to take?" abruptly inquired the usually courteous Mr. Wintermuth.
Mr. Gunterson did not know, but he was decidedly of the opinion that it could not be very long before the tide was stemmed.
But as the days went by the tide continued to run in the same direction. Baltimore, threatening dire things, hung trembling in the balance; Buffalo had already gone over to the enemy; Philadelphia was as yet hesitating before the final irrevocable leap. So February wore away, and March entered.
James Wintermuth was more disturbed than he had been at any time covered by what was now a good and had once been a miraculous memory. His company had so long been his pride, his reliance, his solace, and almost his gospel that he had grown to think of it as a sort of fixed star, whose light perhaps might be exceeded by some larger and more pretentious luminary, but which would nevertheless shine steadily on, beyond the fear of any cosmic upheaval.
Now he beheld it not only overclouded, but even menaced—beheld its light in danger of being dimmed if not utterly extinguished. It was absurd, it was tragic, it was unbelievable—yet it was so. And when he was confronted with the fact, there crept back into the old gentleman's heart something of his old fire, as well as a slow, brooding sense of angry injury against the men or forces responsible for his present difficulties. His elder resentment was of course against O'Connor, who was taking advantage in every way of the Guardian's misfortunes; but as the palpably weakening hold of the company brought him more closely in touch with its underwriting affairs, as the questionable losses from Boston and other similar agencies began to arrive in faster and faster succession, and he clearly perceived the weakness and incapability of Gunterson's management, his irritation rightly directed itself more and more against the luckless Vice-President.
One other thing of recent occurrence had shaken—perhaps out of proportion to its consequences—what little confidence he still felt in the judgment of his underwriting manager. That related to the attempt of Mr. Gunterson to inject his advice into the Guardian's affairs financial. Early in February he had suggested to Mr. Wintermuth the advisability of purchasing for the Guardian some bonds of an embryonic steel company then erecting a plant in Alabama. Mr. Gunterson knew personally some of the people back of this, the bonds seemed remarkably cheap, and the bonus in common stock made the proposition in his opinion decidedly attractive. Mr. Wintermuth's investigation of the concern and its prospectus had quickly convinced him that its officers were of far more capability in the industry of disposing of what, by a polite extension of the term, might be called securities than in manufacturing steel, and a skeptical investing public evidently reached the same conclusion, for within a month after Mr. Gunterson's friendly suggestion, the Birmingham Bessemer Steel Corporation was in the hands of a receiver, who, after some hesitation, issued a statement to the effect that the bondholders might eventually realize fifteen cents on every dollar they had paid in.
On the second day of March an unusual thing happened. Mr. Cuyler entered the elevator and mounted to the top floor of the Guardian building, crossing the floor toward Mr. Wintermuth's office.
"Hello! What are you doing up here?" Smith inquired, knowing the stars must be strangely out of their courses to attract Mr. Cuyler to this unaccustomed altitude. A true local department man is always uncomfortable, never at home, above the grade floor. "Has the Sub-Treasury or the Aquarium made a total loss, or what's the matter?" he cheerfully proceeded.
"No," said Cuyler, sourly. And without further answer he passed on into the President's room.
"Good-afternoon, Mr. Cuyler," said the President, amiably, but the local secretary with a glum face stopped him.
"Well, we've lost O'Brien," he said.
"What's that?" demanded the other. "Lost O'Brien? What do you mean?Not O'Brien of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street?"
"That's the man. The best branch manager we ever had—the man we kept when the Exchange made us close all our branch offices but one. Well, he's thrown us."
"Thrown us! O'Brien? Why, he's been with us for fifteen years! Tell me about this at once, sir."
"There's nothing to tell, or nothing much," replied the local secretary, bitterly. "The business he's been giving us has been dropping off,—we haven't got a new risk out of him in a month and we've been losing a lot of our renewals,—and yesterday Charlie saw his placer going into the Salamander office with a bundle of binders."
"The Salamander? O'Connor!"
"Yes, sir, O'Connor. So to-day I went around to the restaurant where he eats when he comes down town. He was there."
"O'Brien, you mean? Well, what did he say?"
"He said," replied Cuyler, slowly, "that he had no complaint to make of the way we'd treated him, but that the Salamander was offering him facilities which we didn't offer him, and he felt obliged to do something for them."
"He means they're paying him excess brokerage or something of that sort," said Mr. Wintermuth, acidly.
"Yes, I suppose so, but of course that's a thing you can't say unless you're in a position to prove it. Anyhow, he's gone—and about twenty thousand dollars worth of preferred business with a thirty per cent loss ratio for ten years has gone with him."
The President rose and walked up and down his office. This was bringing the fight to his very door, with a vengeance.
"What can we do about it?" he said, stopping in front of Cuyler and fixing on that dismayed person a vaguely furious gaze.
"I don't know. I suppose we'll have to hunt around and dig up another branch manager in O'Brien's place. It'll take a lot of hunting, though. You don't pick up a business like that every day in the week."
The President could make no better suggestion, and in this instance he did not call the Vice-President into conference.
"Do the best you can, then," he said shortly; "and let me know how you're getting along."
Mr. Cuyler descended gloomily to his proper milieu, and took up the task of finding a branch office manager to replace the recreant O'Brien. But agents like O'Brien were few, and most of the best of them had their own old-established connections with other companies. Again, the Guardian's reputation for conservatism made Cuyler's task the harder. One or two, after considering the matter, were frightened away by their dread lest the Guardian accept nothing but their more desirable risks, making it all the more difficult for them to place those that were not so desirable. The Guardian's local secretary had as wide an acquaintance as any man on the Street, but he found himself confronted by an exceedingly difficult problem.
Meanwhile a branch manager must be secured. The company's local income was dropping behind in a way that had not happened within the memory of man. In this state of affairs it was not long before Cuyler again sought Mr. Wintermuth, and this time the advice of Mr. Gunterson was solicited.
It had been nearly a week since Mr. Gunterson had been impaled upon any very serious dilemma, and in this interval he had regained much of his shaken confidence, so that he addressed himself to the solution of Mr. Cuyler's difficulties with much of his pristine assurance.
"Why not get Joe Darkner? He's got a fine class of business and a lot of it," he suggested at once.
"Yes, but he's sewed up body and soul with the National of Norway,"Cuyler responded shortly.
"Well, what's the matter with Hart and Leith?"
"Nothing but East Side stuff. Besides, they're dead ones—won't last out the year," replied the local underwriter, somewhat impatiently. As though he had not canvassed such obvious possibilities as these!
"Why not try Schermerhorn and Snow?" was Mr. Gunterson's next suggestion.
The President broke into the discussion.
"They've been uptown managers of the Inland for twenty years. And Snow is a big stockholder in the company. We would be wasting our time to approach them."
There was a hint of contempt in his tone. A man who volunteered helpful advice about a difficult situation without being in possession of the most rudimentary information bearing on it was hardly worthy of serious attention. Perhaps the keen ear of the Vice-President detected this, for he flushed slightly, and was silent for a moment.
"I'll give the matter my attention," he said reassuringly to Cuyler. "I'm a little out of touch with local affairs, but I know plenty of first-rate uptown brokers, and I guess I can locate us to good advantage. I'll see you about it later."
And he made his majestic exit.
The matter being now under his august advisement, it might have been supposed that relief was in sight and a new and desirable connection as good as made. But in less than a week from the time of this conversation Mr. Cuyler again sought the President, and the expression of his face could not have been misinterpreted.
"Well, what's the matter now?" Mr. Wintermuth inquired, as the local underwriter seated himself.
"Who do you think is gone now?" said Cuyler, abruptly.
"Who?" demanded his superior officer.
"Jenkinson—and Hammond, Dow, and Company."
"Gone!" repeated the President, slowly. The brokers in question were known to be on the most friendly terms with the company, and it was generally supposed that the first choice of most of their business went to the Guardian. "Gone! What do you mean? Nothing has happened to either of those people! What are you talking of?"
"I mean they're gone, so far as the Guardian is concerned. We've taken as much as ten thousand a year from each of those offices. And now O'Connor's got them."
The President looked at him in silence.
"I knew something was the matter, and to-day I saw O'Connor and Jenkinson at lunch, laughing and talking as familiar as though they'd been friends for years. It's no use, sir—he's going after every really good broker that we've got attached to us."
"But the Salamander can't take care of all their business. Why, those two firms must do business with nearly every office on the Street, anyway."
"The Salamander will take all the best of the business we get now, or most of it, and help them out, I suppose, on a lot of tough risks that I've never been willing to write. O'Connor's a plunger, you know, when he's got a gambling company back of him. It looks to me as if we'd only get what he left—targets, and big lines where Jenkinson and Hammond Dow have enough to go round."
Mr. Cuyler's oldest friend had never seen him more troubled than at this moment. So deep, in fact, was his gloom that the President put aside his own concern to try to reassure his old counterman. In this he succeeded not at all; Mr. Cuyler's dejection was settled.
"What about a branch manager in place of O'Brien?" inquired Mr. Wintermuth at length, thinking at least to change the subject, and hoping to touch a brighter theme. Mr. Cuyler's face darkened still further, if such a thing were possible.
"Nothing doing," he said inelegantly but comprehensively.
"Hasn't Mr. Gunterson—?" the President began, but he stopped short."What's that?" he asked sharply. "What were you going to say?"
"I guess I'd better not say it," responded the local underwriter with deliberation.
"Go ahead," said his chief.
"Well, then," the other answered, "I was going to say 'To hell withGunterson!'"
Mr. Wintermuth leaned back in his chair, with his eyes fixed on his subordinate.
"Cuyler," he said, "Mr. Gunterson is your superior officer, and that was an entirely improper thing for you to say. But I've known you, Cuyler, for forty years, and I don't mind telling you that that is exactly what I have been wanting to say about Mr. Gunterson for the last three weeks."
A rueful smile broke through the gloom of both.
"Well, I'm glad you feel the same way about it, and I'm glad I got it out of my system; but I don't see that it helps things much, does it?" the local underwriter replied.
"I'm not so sure of that," said Mr. Wintermuth. "It helps me, and possibly the assistance will spread to the whole situation later on."
Meanwhile the gentleman who was thus summarily consigned to the infernal regions was doing his vague utmost to cope with three situations at once, any one of which would have been entirely beyond his capabilities to control. New York, Philadelphia, and the Eastern field as a whole,—each was a problem in itself, and each was getting farther and farther out of hand. The Guardian's field men were demoralized, beholding the fine agency plant of their company crumble and melt away while they stood helpless to hold it together. And Mr. Gunterson, when asked for remedies, could reply only in nebulous words of even more crepuscular and doubtful pertinence. New York was admittedly beyond him, and Philadelphia, harkening to siren voices that promised great things, was presently to vote on the separation rule for that city.
It is a depressing business, this watching the burning of one's own ancestral house, the sinking of one's proudest ship of all the fleet. It was altogether too much for Mr. Wintermuth. For nearly a week he was missing from the office, and no man at the Guardian knew of his whereabouts. With the decline in volume of the company's business, the amount of routine work in the office became unbearably, demoralizingly light. The map clerks loafed and the bookkeepers joked with one another. Smith found time hanging heavy on his hands; but by Mr. Gunterson's orders he stayed at his desk, although he could have done much, had he been permitted to go out among his agents in the field, to stem the tide.
In the local department the atmosphere was charged with the contagious mourning of Mr. Cuyler, who with funereal face sat contemplating the shrinkage of his business. For with the loss of his branch manager and his two best brokers, there was a deficit in his premium returns which he could not overcome. And certainly his melancholy countenance did not attract business; it was a bold placer indeed who tried with quip and banter to secure Mr. Cuyler's acceptance of a doubtful risk. His world was awry, and all who ran might read it. His brow became unpleasantly corrugated, his smile a thing of the past. If Mr. O'Connor had wanted evidence of the success of his local campaign, he could have gained it from one look at Mr. Cuyler.
Above stairs, however, doom being still a matter of immediate prospect rather than a thing accomplished, Mr. Gunterson still held forth, maintaining a sort of fictitious calm. At times he was even cheerful, and did his best to rally his dazed and despondent subordinates. But Bartels, seeing slip away accounts of agents he had audited for twenty years, was in a state of stubborn, uncompromising rage which closely resembled the dementia of a dumb animal, and Mr. Gunterson could do nothing with him. Still the Vice-President struggled manfully to keep his head above water, to seem cheerful and optimistic. He came from his room one morning, and spoke briskly to Smith.
"I notice that some of your clerks leave their hats around loose instead of hanging them up," he said. "That should not be allowed in a well-conducted office. Please give the necessary orders."
Smith looked at him. This was the closest Mr. Gunterson had come to real contact with the vital problems before him. A company in his charge was disintegrating under his hesitant and futile hand—and he talked about clerks' hats which should properly be hung up!
"Yes, sir," said Smith, quietly. "I'll speak about it."
The weeks followed one another with intolerable slowness. March began, and dragged its weary length along, and still the darkness increased in the Guardian's skies. From Boston the Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy losses were beginning to come with the frequency and regularity of the shots from a rapid-fire gun. The East was thoroughly disorganized, and even the West, apparently by some subtle psychological influence, was beginning to experience a sympathetic slump. Philadelphia still hung on, the local agents not having been able to agree on any plan of compensation for separating its Conference sheep from their alien goat associates.
Mr. Wintermuth, silent and noncommittal, had returned to the office, but took little part in the conduct of his company's underwriting affairs. And in this manner March wore itself almost out—and it seemed as though the Guardian's span of life were growing rapidly shorter.
On the last day of the month there was a meeting of the directors in the closed room off the President's own. It was a short meeting, and Mr. Wintermuth did the most of the talking, while Mr. Whitehill, who had advocated the election of Mr. Gunterson, had little to say. And so it befell that the directors, after voting him salary in advance for a liberal term, accepted the resignation from the Guardian of Samuel Gunterson; and to fill the vacancy so created, there was unanimously elected to be Vice-President and under-writing manager, Richard Smith.
Smith took office at nine o'clock on the first business day of April. The fifteen minutes following were spent by him in patiently listening to Mr. Wintermuth's diagnosis of the various ills with which the Guardian was afflicted, related supposedly for his education. When the first pause was reached, the new Vice-President said:—
"I've followed things pretty carefully, sir; and with what you have just told me I think I know about where we stand. We're certainly in bad shape at present, from the agency standpoint, but it's by no means hopeless. And financially we seem to be well off. I looked over the statement Mr. Bartels gave me last night, and since the first of the year some of our investments must have appreciated handsomely; I see that Ninth National Bank stock is selling away above the valuation we put on it in our statement."
"Yes; it is thought that some of the Duane Trust Company people are trying to buy a controlling interest," the President responded more cheerfully.
"But of course that is not in my province," Smith continued. "The question with me is what immediate action to take with reference to the agency plant. Now, Boston is gone—there's no hurry there. Buffalo is lost, too. It seems unlikely that New York will get in any deeper trouble this week or next—although of course you can't tell. But Philadelphia and Pittsburgh need attention right away." He glanced at the small clock on Mr. Wintermuth's desk. "If you'll excuse me, sir," he said, "I think I can make the ten o'clock on the Pennsylvania. I brought my suitcase down here, thinking that I might want to start in a hurry."
"Go ahead, my boy. Good luck," said his chief.
And so Smith caught the ten o'clock express from the Pennsylvania station, leaving behind him in the Guardian office an elderly gentleman in whose breast an undefined cheerfulness had awakened. But it was to neither Philadelphia nor Pittsburgh that the Vice-President's ticket read; he had taken a ticket to Harrisburg.
Many years before, the Attorney-General of the state of Pennsylvania had been a famous football player at the state university; whether his gridiron career had any bearing on his legal equipment or not was a question, but it certainly did not make him a worse man. His name was James K. Prior, he stood six feet one, and weighed two hundred pounds.
Mr. Prior was a believer in modern government, although in fighting his way up to the attorney-generalship he had seen enough of the Pennsylvania variety to have given a lesser optimist his doubts. He also believed in modern business conditions, and so far as he properly could, he officially encouraged what he regarded as being legitimate commercial combinations. But he did not believe in trusts. He had followed local legislation long enough to be very sure that there was in it far too much sophistry and too little equity, and he was a strong upholder of what he termed fair play, whether it came peacefully along statutory lines or whether it had to be jerked raw from the shambles of a hundred confused and specious lawyer-made laws.
All in all, he made an active and satisfactory attorney-general.
Now it chanced that during the last session of an unusually prolific legislature a political opponent of Mr. Prior's had contrived to secure the passage of a bill designed to give a certain latitude to certain rather questionable combinations of capital, known in the vernacular as trusts. Senator McGaw, Mr. Prior's antagonist, had managed this bit of special legislation very craftily indeed. The bill was so innocently worded as to disarm the most vigilant and radical trust-buster; it appeared as though its purpose was exactly the reverse of that for which it had been subtly designed; in fact, in an excessive effort to avert suspicion a couple of clauses had found their way into this document which gave Mr. Prior some of the keenest pleasure of his career.
"You are perfectly safe in signing that bill, Governor," he had said to the State's chief executive, who had asked his advice in the matter. "I'll bet my professional reputation that the courts will hold that it gives us more than it takes away. McGaw's people think it ties the State's hands from proceeding against concerns which operate in restraint of trade by restricting their distributing centers. Instead of which we'll have them on the hip—that section four went a little too far. Just let one of them try to keep his product exclusively in the hands of his sole distributers, and I give you my word I'll have the responsible officer of that concern in jail! Go ahead and sign the bill, Governor—it's all right with me."
It was the draft of this bill, now signed and recently become a law, which occupied the attention of Smith during a large part of the ride from New York to Harrisburg. And the more he studied it, the more hopeful became his expression. And it was with the most buoyant of steps that he made his way from Harrisburg station to the office of Mr. Prior. To that distinguished gentleman he sent in a card whereon he added after his name two things: first, "Vice-President Guardian Fire Insurance Co. of New York," and second, by a whimsical but considered afterthought, "I saw you kick that goal from the field against Cornell."
Mr. Prior was thoroughly inured to conversing with corporation executives,—they were no novelty to him,—presumably, therefore, it was the second memorandum which caused Smith to be ushered almost immediately into the presence of the Attorney-General, who regarded his visitor with a good-humored smile on his clean-shaven lips.
"Mr. Smith, I presume?" he inquired.
"Yes, sir," the other answered.
"I gather from this card," Mr. Prior pursued, glancing at it, "that you remember having seen me—elsewhere."
"When I was fifteen years old," Smith replied. "And I've been to a good many games since, but I don't think I ever saw any one else kick a goal from the field at a mean angle on the forty-yard line with a stiff wind quartering against him."
"Perhaps not—at least in the last two minutes of play," the Attorney-General agreed reflectively; and the New Yorker could easily pardon this embellishment.
It was some little time later when Mr. Prior somewhat reluctantly returned to things mundanely legal so far as to ask his caller's business.
Smith explained.
When, on the following afternoon, he walked into President Wintermuth's office, if there was in his manner a certain undertrace of elation, it must be forgiven him, for this, his first stroke in his broad horizon, seemed thus far up to every expectation of success.
"Well, what did you do?" was Mr. Wintermuth's greeting, as he looked up to find Smith before him.
"The Attorney-General of Pennsylvania," said Smith slowly, "is going into court to-morrow to ask for an injunction, alleging conspiracy and restraint of trade, forbidding the Eastern Conference from enforcing a separation rule anywhere within the boundaries of the state."
"What's that?" said the President, sharply. "A restraining order, you say?"
"Yes. Mr. Prior, the Attorney-General, thinks he will have little trouble in securing a temporary injunction. Later on he will move to make this permanent, and there will doubtless be a fight on that; but he thinks he can beat them under the new Anti-Trust Law. In the meantime it ties up the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh boards, and I think we can get back most of the smaller Pennsylvania agents we've lost. Most of them are well disposed toward us; other things being equal, they'd be glad to restore the status quo, and none of them are anxious to be made joint defendants with the Conference companies in a conspiracy suit."
Mr. Wintermuth said nothing for a long minute; then his face broke into almost the first sincere smile which had been seen on it since the opening of the year.
"That's very well done—a good idea and well executed, Richard," he said.
"Thank you, sir," said Smith.
There was more discussion to follow, and the two went over the situation as a whole more fully than had been hitherto possible.
"Of course," Smith pointed out, "this is just a beginning. ButPhiladelphia and Pittsburgh are safe—that's something. And Baltimorewill never dare make a move after this, for Maryland always followsPennsylvania. No, our chief problem at present is New York and NewEngland."
"Yes," agreed the older man. His face darkened. "Boston! How aboutBoston? What can we do up there?"
"I don't know," returned Smith, slowly. "But there's one thing we can do, and do at once. We can close the Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy agency. We can decapitate that crew in forty-eight hours, and with your permission I'll go up there and do it myself."
"Go ahead," said the President.
That night Mr. Wintermuth enjoyed the first peaceful rest for almost three months. Smith, on the contrary, perhaps through his anxiety to put his Boston agency house in order, remained sleepless far into the small, still hours. Nevertheless he departed next day for Boston on the three o'clock express, arriving in Boston at eight, although he might as well have taken a later train, for it was certain that neither Sternberg, Bloom, nor McCoy would be apt to remain in their offices until that hour of night. Doubtless it was for this reason that he left the train at the Huntington Avenue station and turned west toward Deerfield Street.
Fifteen minutes later he was waiting in the reception hall of an apartment house, the construction of which he had once, in the Guardian office at New York, quite minutely described for the edification of a certain young lady visitor. In due course of time he was conveyed to the proper floor, and a moment later found himself shaking hands with the identical young lady.
"Mother, this is Mr. Richard Smith of New York, a friend of UncleSilas, of whom I told you."
Smith found himself bowing to a little gray lady whose manner was so gentle that he unconsciously lowered his voice in speaking to her. She was dressed all in gray, and her hair was gray, and the silvery lights that glistened in it moved through the folds of a tiny lace object which might, had it been developed, have proved to be a cap. To call so filmy and nebulous a thing a garment of any kind was perhaps absurd; but if this premise was once granted, it would have been correct to say that Mrs. Maitland clung to caps. Certainly no article could have better suited her, and in her single person she had done almost as much as all the rest of Boston to revivify a dying but delightful institution.
The little lady, for all her mildness of manner and appearance, proved to be as wide awake as any one of the three. She even found a way to discover, without Smith's being aware of it, whether he possessed the typical New Yorker's attitude toward her native city. Mrs. Maitland lived in the firm and fixed belief that all New Yorkers, dwelling as they did in a restless and artificial milieu of restaurants and theaters and dollars, had for Boston and Bostonians a kind of patronizing pity. The fact that she herself regarded New Yorkers in very much the same light had never occurred to her.
Smith, however, was not a typical New Yorker. He had too real and intense an interest in all created things to fear Mrs. Maitland's gently suspicious inquisition. In addition to this he was so genuinely interested in at least one of the Bostonians before him that he naturally and easily escaped the pitfalls into which another might have tumbled. So thoroughly, indeed, did he win approval and disarm suspicion that before very long he had his reward in being left, before the small but cheerful fire, with the daughter of the house.
This tactful withdrawal did not lessen the attraction of Mrs. Maitland in Smith's eyes, and it was with real admiration in his tone that he said to Helen:—
"I think your mother is charming."
"I have thought so," returned Helen, with assumed loftiness, "for thirty or forty years."
"So long?" queried Smith, thoughtfully. "That merely goes to show how one can be deceived."
"Deceived!" said Miss Maitland. "Unless you mean self-deception, I would like an explanation of that remark."
But her visitor said that in his opinion to explain anything, however occult, to a Bostonian, savored of intellectual impudence, and was, at the least, a piece of presumption of which he hoped he should never be guilty.
"And yet I can remember," said the girl, laughing, "an occasion when explanationsweremade to a young lady from Boston—and explanations that took some time, too. I—even I—can bear witness to that."
"My life," Smith rejoined, "has been like that of a candidate for office, such that he who runs may read—and he need not necessarily be a ten-second sprinter, either. Only one dark, shameful page is in it, and that is the record of the day when I talked deaf, dumb, and blind the helpless stranger within the Guardian's gates."
"Are you really sorry?" Helen asked more seriously.
Smith looked at her.
"It has been more than three months since you left New York," he said."I have been glad of it—and sorry for it—every day of that time."
"And which are you now?" inquired the girl, with interest.
"If I should start on that subject, I should probably regret it.Hadn't we better talk of something else?"
"As you wish," Helen returned lightly. "But you can at least tell me about the Guardian, and what has been happening since I left. In an occasional letter which I have received from an insurance friend of mine in New York, there has never been a word about his company."
"Your correspondent no doubt wanted to be cheerful when he wrote to, you, and for that reason it has been necessary for him to omit all reference to the Guardian's affairs."
"But I heard indirectly about them, just the same—from Uncle Silas. I know of course that he retired from the active management of Silas Osgood and Company because he was humiliated and chagrined at being obliged to resign the agency of his old friend Mr. Wintermuth's company, and I know that, although he would not interfere with Mr. Cole after Mr. Cole took charge of the business, he disapproved of Mr. Cole's accepting the agency of the Salamander."
"Well, if you know as much as that, you know that our suspicions of Mr. O'Connor proved all too true. He not only engineered the scheme to get us out of the Eastern Conference, but after we got out he has tried to steal all our best agents and business for his own company, and, thanks to the lack of any resistance on our part, he has been able in many cases to succeed."
"But why didn't you resist? I don't quite understand. Couldn't anybody—couldn't you stop him?"
"I—I didn't have a chance," answered Smith.
"Indeed? And why not?" continued his inquisitor.
"From the series of pointed questions you are putting me, I might almost imagine I was being interviewed by the representative of a muck-raking magazine," countered her visitor, in covert concern.
"From the lack of actual information in your replies one might almost imagine you were," Helen cordially agreed. "Now are you going to answer my inquiry?"
"Well, the Guardian directors selected another man to take charge of its underwriting affairs, and we didn't hit it off very well—naturally he did things in his own way."
"I know," said the girl, nodding her head; "Mr. Gunterson."
"Good heavens!" said the young man, "is there any use in my attempting to give information to some one who already has it all? If you know all about this and what has gone on, why ask me?"
"I wanted to hear what you'd say. It is a natural desire, I'm sure, and you ought to be willing to help gratify it. You see, you are responsible for my interest in the affairs of your insurance company, and you have almost a parental responsibility."
"How is Wilkinson?" said Smith, engagingly.
"Presently it may be that the conversation can be diverted to Mr.Wilkinson. But not now."
"Well, then, to go back to the affairs of the Guardian, how is Mr. Osgood? It's rather dangerous for a man who's been in harness so long to get out of it so suddenly. It's not good for a man—in my opinion."
"More adroit—for I really want to tell you about Uncle Silas. But business first—then pleasure."
"Well," said her visitor, with resignation, "go ahead, Miss Portia."
"I wish to know all about what happened in the Guardian while Mr.Gunterson was in charge," said Helen, simply.
And finally, with a few evasions which were immediately detected and some omissions which were possibly suspected, Smith told the story of the decline of the Guardian.
"So Mr. Gunterson left," commented the girl, when all was said. "What happened then?"
"Why, that's substantially all, to date," returned the New Yorker, dishonestly; "except that I've been sent up here to see what I can do to improve our position in Boston."
"Ah! Who sent you? Who is in charge of the Guardian now?" continuedMiss Maitland, calmly.
"Mr. Wintermuth, of course," replied her victim.
"And under Mr. Wintermuth? Has no one been elected to fill Mr.Gunterson's place?"
"Well, you see, Mr. Gunterson only resigned a few days ago. Boards of directors don't as a rule move very rapidly. There hasn't really been a great deal of time."
"Who has been elected to fill Mr. Gunterson's place?"
"Are you under the impression that—?"
"Do you wish me to say it again? Who has been elected Vice-President of the Guardian?"
"A man," said her visitor slowly, "by the name of Smith."
Helen leaned back in her chair in mock exhaustion.
"That was certainly awfully difficult," she said, with a little laugh of triumph. "I thought you would never admit it."
"I suppose you'd have found it out sometime, anyway," Smith said philosophically.
"No, you're wrong," his companion denied, "for the very good and simple reason that I already knew it."
"You knew it! And yet you put me through this cross-examination?"
Helen nodded complacently.
"Uncle Silas told me this afternoon."
"But how did he know? No announcement has been made."
"Mr. Wintermuth wrote him."
"Well," said Smith, "no ring master with a long, cracking whip ever made a reluctant poodle jump through a series of hoops in a more professional manner than you put me through my little story."
"Yes," said Helen, demurely. Then, growing suddenly more serious, she said, "And won't you let me congratulate you, Mr. Vice-President?"
"I will," said Smith. "There is no one I know by whom I would rather be congratulated."
He took in his own her offered hand, and for just a moment an enchanted silence abode in the room. Then, with no effort on Smith's part to detain her, Helen withdrew her hand.
"Now I can tell you about Uncle Silas and Charlie Wilkinson," she said. "And both are so interesting as topics that I hardly know where to begin."
"Begin with Mr. Osgood, please," her visitor suggested.
"Very well, then. I have been seeing quite a little of Uncle Silas lately. After he turned over the management of his business to Bennington Cole, it seems as if he hardly knew what to do with himself. For many years he has been such a busy man that this leisure has left him at a loss to pass his time. So he has been playing around with me to some extent. We have had lots of long talks together; among other subjects we have even discussed you."
"So I learn," Smith responded.
"Don't be saturnine," the girl rejoined. "Seriously, though, while I've enjoyed Uncle's Silas's society, I don't believe this idleness is good for him. In fact, I'm rather worried about him—I think having nothing to do makes him despondent, for it makes him feel as though his day's work was over. And there's no reason why it should be. He's not really old, although he looks rather frail, and I believe he'd be better and happier if he went back into business now."
"Why doesn't he, then?" the other asked. "He still retains his interest in the agency, doesn't he?"
"Yes, I believe so. But it's largely a matter of pride with him. He retired because it was necessary for the firm to resign the Guardian, and I doubt whether he would go back unless it could be arranged that the Guardian go back too. Can't you arrange it?"
"Well, hardly—that is, right away," Smith replied. "Present conditions are about the same as when the company left the Osgood agency, but I feel more encouraged, myself, to believe there may be a way around. I'll call on Mr. Osgood to-morrow the first thing I do—no, the second."
"What is the first?—if I may ask."
"To close the agency of our present Boston representatives, Messrs.Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy. And now tell me the news about Mr.Charles Wilkinson, the hero of the Hurd trolley schedule."
"Mr. Wilkinson is about to extend his responsibilities in connection with the Hurd family."
"You don't mean that old John M. Hurd was so impressed that he—?"
"Quite another thing. Undoubtedly Mr. Hurd was impressed with Mr. Wilkinson's talents as an insurance broker, but scarcely to the extent of desiring him for a son-in-law."
"A son-in-law! You mean—"
"That Charlie got a trolley schedule and a fiancée out of the same family."
"Well, well! So Miss Hurd is going to marry Wilkinson! Well, she'll acquire an ingenious and enterprising husband, at any rate. And what does John M. say?"
"Not a great deal—he's quite laconic, as usual. But what little he says is very much to the point. He says he had supposed a daughter of his would have more sense. However, since she hasn't, he can merely state that he withholds his consent to the match. Isabel's of age, and if she chooses to marry Charlie she can do so, but without approval or assistance from her father."
"Meaning," said Smith, "an unpleasant codicil in the paternal last will and testament, providing that instead of a previous bequest, his beloved daughter be paid two hundred dollars a month as long as she lives. What does Wilkinson say to Mr. Hurd's attitude? One might gather that it would make a certain difference with him, for, although Miss Hurd is certainly very attractive, I somehow gained the general impression that your friend Charlie had a very clear eye on the main chance."
"Isabel doesn't seem a bit disturbed, for I think she anticipated her father's point of view; and as for Charlie, seeing that his chief source of income at present depends wholly on the favor of a man who is angry enough to disinherit his daughter for wanting to marry him—well, one would expect that Charlie would be depressed, or at least thoughtful. But not at all. He's in the highest of spirits, and says that the mere rumor that he is going to marry into the Hurd family will establish a line of credit good enough to last ten years."
"But really—isn't the young man a bit mercurial?"