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Where maint'nance f'r both roadway an' 'quipment is clearly surcharged," Breede was exploding, "extent of excess of maintenance over normal 'quirements cannot be taken as present earnin' power, an' this'll haf t' be understood before nex' meetin' d'r'ectors"
"No need of you making any fuss," wrote Bean. "Let Julia do that. I'm as good a man as anybody if you come right down to it."
"these prior-lien bon's an' receiver's stiff-cuts mus' natchally come ahead of firs'-mortgage bon's" continued Breede.
"Wouldn't care if she told you right now over that telephone," wrote Bean. "You wouldn't dare touch me, and you know it."
Later he wrote "Poor old Pops!" contemptuously, and put an evil sneer upon Breede's removed cuffs.
At the same time he wished that the flapper and Grandma hadn't been so set against long engagements. And how long had they meant? One day, a week, a month? Would they have it done the next time they took him out in that car for tea and things? They were capable of it. Why couldn't they be reasonable and let things stay quiet for a while?
And how about that small place with flowers and a tennis court and a motor to go marketing in? Did they believe he was made of money? About all he could do was to provide a place big enough for a growing dog. And Breede, of course, would cast the girl off penniless, as they always did, telling her never to darken his doors again. And he'd have to find a new job. Breede wouldn't think of keeping on the scoundrel who had lured his child away.
Still, the flapper's mind was set on an early marriage, and, for this once, at least, he would let her have her own way. No good being brutal at the start. They would get along; scrimp and save; even move to Brooklyn, maybe. He looked into the far years and saw his son, greatest of all left-handed pitchers, shutting out Pittsburgh without a single hit. A very aged couple in the grandstand tried to claim relationship with his pitching marvel, saying he was their grandson, but few of the yelling enthusiasts would credit it. One of the crowd would later question the phenomenon's father, who was none other than the owner of the home team, and he would say, "Oh, yes, quite true, but there has been no communication between the two families for more than twenty years."
There would now follow from the abject grandparents timid overtures for a reconciliation, they having at last seen their mistake. These overtures met with a varying response. Sometimes he was adamant and told them no; they had made their bed twenty years before, and now they could lie on it. Again, he would relent, allowing them to come to the house and associate with their superb descendant once every week. He didn't want to be too hard on them.
And he was not penniless. He would continue in the unexciting express business for a while, until he had amassed enough to buy the ball-team.
Out at his typewriter, turning off Breede's letters, his mind kept reverting to those nicely printed stock certificates Aunt Clara had sent to him, five of them for ten shares each, his own name written on them. Of course there were hundreds of shares at the brokers', but those seemed not to mean so much. And they had gone down a point, whatever that was, since his purchase. The broker had explained that this was because of an unexpectedly low dividend, 3 per cent. It showed bad management. All the more reason for getting a new man on the Board—a lot of old fossils!
He recalled the indignant-looking old gentleman who was so excessively well dressed. He wore choice gold-rimmed eyeglasses tethered by a black silk ribbon. They were intensely respectable things when adjusted to the nose, but he knew he should clash with that old party the moment he got on the Board. He would find him to be one of the sort that is always looking for trouble.
He wondered if he might not himself some day have sufficient excuse for wearing glasses like those, at the end of a silk ribbon. He thought they set off the face. And the old gentleman's white parted beard flowed down upon a waistcoat he wouldn't mind owning: black silk set with tiny-white stars, a good background for a small gold chain. There would be a bunch of important keys on one end of that chain. Bean had yearned to wear one of those key-chains, but he had never had more than a trunk-key and a latch-key, and it would look silly to pull those out on a chain before people; they'd begin to make fun of you!
He worked on, narrowly omitting to have Breede inform the vice-president of an important trunk-line that it wouldn't hurt him any to have those trousers pressed once in a while; also that plenty of barbers would be willing to cut his hair.
Bulger condescendingly wrote at his own typewriter, as if he were the son of a millionaire pretending to work up from the bottom. Old Metzeger was deep in a dream of odd numerals. The half-dozen other clerks wrought at tasks not too absorbing to prevent frequent glances at the clock on the wall.
Tully, the chief clerk, marred the familiarity of the hour by approaching Bean's desk. He walked lightly. Tully always walked as if he felt himself to be on dangerously thin ice. He might get safely across; then again he mightn't. He leaned confidentially on the back of Bean's chair and Bean looked up and through the lenses that so alarmingly magnified Tully's eyes. Tully twitched the point of his blond beard with thumb and finger as if to reassure himself of its presence.
"By the way, Bean, I notice some fifty shares of Federal Express stock in your name. Now it is not impossible that the office would be willing to take them over for you."
That was Tully's way. He was bound to say "some" fifty shares instead of fifty, and of anything he knew to be true he could only aver "it is not impossible." Of a certain familiar enough event in the natural world he would have declared, "The sun sets not infrequently in the west."
Bean was for the moment uncertain of Tully's meaning.
"Shares," he said. "Right there in my desk."
"Quite so, quite so!" said Tully. "I'm not wholly uncertain, you know—this is between us—that I couldn't place them for you. I may say the office would not find even those few shares unwelcome."
"Well, you see, I don't know about that," said Bean. "You see, I had a kind of an idea"
"I think I may say they would take it not unkindly," said Tully.
" of holding on to them," concluded Bean.
"Your letting them go for a fair price might not inconceivably react to your advantage," suggested the luminous Tully.
"It is not impossible that I shall want them myself," responded Bean, unconsciously adopting the Tully indirection.
"The office is not unwilling" began Tully.
"I'll keep 'em a while," said Bean. "I have a sort of plan."
"I should not like to think it possible"
Bean was tired of Tully. What was the man trying to get at, anyway? He didn't know; but he would shut him off. His mind leaped with an inspiration.
"I can imagine nothing of less consequence," said Bean.
He was at once proud of the snappy way the words came out. Breede, he thought, could hardly have been snappier. He glared at Tully, who looked shocked, hurt, and disgusted. Tully sighed and walked back to his own desk, as if the ice cracked beneath his small feet at every step.
Bean resumed his work, with the air of one forgetting a past annoyance. But he was not forgetting. He might let them have the stock; he had never thought any too well of that express directorship; but let them send some one that could talk straight. He didn't care if he had been short with Tully. He was going to lose his job anyway, the day after that wedding, if not before.
He wrote many of Breede's letters, and was again interrupted, this time by Markham, Breede's confidential secretary. Markham's approach to Bean was emphatically footed, as that of a man unable to imagine ice being thin under his feet. He was bluff and open, where Tully lurked behind his "not impossibles." He was even jovial now. He smiled down at Bean.
"By the way, Bean, some one was telling me you have some Federal Express."
"Have the shares right there in my desk," admitted Bean, wonderingly. He was suspicious all at once. Tully and Markham had both opened on him with "By the way." He had always felt it a shrewd thing to suspect people who began with "By the way."
"Ah, yes, fifty shares, I believe." Markham smiled again, but seemed to try not to smile. He apparently considered it a rare jest that Bean should own any shares of anything; a thing for smiles even though one must humour the fellow.
"Fifty shares! Well, well, that's good! Now the fact is, old man, I can place those for you this afternoon. Some of the Federal people going to meet informally here, and they happen to want a little block or two of the stuff, for voting purposes, you know. Not that it's worth anything. How'd you happen to get down on such a dead one?"
"Well, you know, I had a sort of a plan about that stock. I don't know"
"Of course I can't get you what you paid for it," continued the affable Markham, "because it's poor stuff, but maybe they'll stand a point or two above to-day's quotations. Just let me have them and I'll get your check made out right away; you can go out of here with more money to-night than any one else will." Markham was prattling on amiably, still trying not to be overcome by the funny joke of Bean owning things.
"I don't want to sell," declared Bean. There had been a moment's hesitation, but that opening, "By the way," of Markham's had finally decided him. You couldn't tell anything about such a man.
"Oh, come now, old chap," cajoled Markham, "be a good fellow. It's only needed for a technical purpose, you know."
"I guess I'll hold on to it," said Bean. "I've been thinking for a long time"
"Last quarter's dividend was 3 per cent.," reminded Markham.
"I know," admitted Bean, "and that's just why. You see I've got an idea"
"As a matter of fact, I think J. B. doesn't exactly approve of his people here in the office speculating. He doesn't consider it . . . well, you know one of you chaps here, if you weren't all loyal, might very often take advantage—you get my point?"
"I guess I won't sell just now," observed Bean.
"I don't understand this at all," said Markham, allowing it to be seen that he was shocked.
Bean wavered, but he was nettled. He was going to lose his job anyway. You might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. To Markham standing there, hurt and displeased, he looked up and announced curtly:
"I can imagine nothing of less consequence!"
He had the felicity to see Markham wince as from an unseen blow. Then Markham walked back to his own room. His tread would have broken ice capable of sustaining a hundred Tullys.
He saw it all now. They were plotting against him. They had learned of his plan to become a director and they were trying to freeze him out. He had never spoken of this plan, but probably they had consulted some good medium who had warned them to look out for him. Very well, if they wanted fight they should have fight. He wouldn't sell that stock, not even to Breede himself
"Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!" went the electric call over his desk. That meant Breede. Very well; he knew his rights. He picked up his note-book and answered the summons.
Breede, munching an innocent cracker, stared at him.
"How long you had that Federal stock?"
"Aunt bought it five years ago."
"Where?"
"Chicago."
"Want to sell?"
"I think I'd rather"
"You won't sell?"
"No!"
"'S all!"
Back at his machine he tried to determine whether he would have "let out" at Breede as he had at Tully and at Markham. He had supposed that Breede would of course nag him as the other two had. And would he have said to Breede with magnificent impudence, "I can imagine nothing of less consequence?" He thought he would have said this; the masks were very soon bound to be off Breede and himself. The flapper might start the trouble any minute. But Breede had given him no chance for that lovely speech. No good saying it unless you were nagged.
He became aware that the "Federal people" Markham had mentioned were gathering in Breede's room. Several of them brushed by him. Let them freeze him out if they could. He wondered what they said at meetings. Did every one talk, or only the head director? Markham had said this was to be an informal meeting.
It is probable that Bean would not have been much enlightened by the immediate proceedings of this informal meeting. The large, impressive, moneyed-looking directors sat easily about the table in Breede's inner room, and said little of meaning to a tyro in the express business.
The stock was pretty widely held in small lots, it seemed, and the agents out buying it up were obliged to proceed with caution. Otherwise people would get silly ideas and begin to haggle over the price. But the shares were coming in as rapidly as could be expected.
Bean would have made nothing of that. He would have been bored, until Markham made a reference to fifty shares that happened to be owned by a young chap in the outer office.
"Take 'em over," said one heavy-jowled director who incongruously held a cigarette between lips that seemed to demand the largest and blackest of cigars.
"He won't sell," answered Markham. "I spoke to him."
"Tell him to," said the director to Breede.
"Tell him yourself," said Breede. "He said he wouldn't sell."
"Um! Well, well!" said the director.
"Exactly what I told him," remarked the conscientious Tully, who was present to take notes, "and he said to me, 'Mr. Tully, I am unwilling to imagine anything of less consequence.' He seemed, uh—I might say—decided."
"Gave me the same thing," said Markham.
"Leak in the office," announced the elderly advanced dresser. "Fifty shares!" he added, twirling the glasses on their silk ribbon. "Hell! Going to let him get away with it?"
"Got to be careful," suggested a quiet director who had listened. "Can't tell who's back of him."
"Call him in," ordered the advanced dresser, fixing the glasses firmly on his purple nose. "Call him in! Bluff him in a minute!"
"Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!" smote fatefully on Bean's ears. He had expected it. If they didn't let him alone, he would tell them all that he could imagine nothing of less consequence.
He entered the room. He hardly dared scan the faces of those directors in the flesh, but they were all scanning him. He stood at the end of the table and fastened his eyes on a railway map that bedecked the opposite wall, one of those mendacious maps showing a trans-continental line of unbroken tangent; three thousand miles of railway without a curve, the opposition lines being mere spirals.
"Here, boy!" It was the advanced dresser of the white parted beard and the constant indignation. Bean looked at him. He had known from the first that he must clash with this man.
"That sort of thing'll never do with us, you know," continued the old gentleman, when he had diverted Bean's attention from the interesting map. "Never do at all; not at all; not-tat-tall. Preposterous! My word! What rot! "
The last was, phonetically, "Wha' trawt!"
Bean was studying the old gentleman's faultless garments. He wore a particularly effective waistcoat of white piqué striped with narrow black lines, and there was a pink carnation in the lapel of the superbly tailored frock coat.
"Wha' trawt!" repeated the ornate director. Bean looked again at the map.
"Here, boy, your last chance. We happen to need those shares in a little matter of voting. I'll draw you a check for the full amount."
He produced the daintiest of check-books and a fountain pen of a chaste design in gold. Bean's look was the look of those who see visions.
"Now then, now then!" spluttered the old gentleman, the pen poised. "Don't keep me waiting; don't keep me, I say! What amount? Wha' tamount?"
Bean's eyes were withdrawn from the wall. He came briskly to life.
"I'll tell you in a moment. I'll get the shares."
"Shrimp!" said the old gentleman triumphantly, when Bean had gone.
"He told me," began Tully. But the advanced dresser wanted no more of that.
"Shrimp!" he repeated.
Bean reëntered with the certificates. The old gentleman glanced angrily over them.
"Bean!" he exclaimed humorously. "Vegetable after all; not a fish! Funny name that! Bunker Bean! Boston, by gad! Not bad that, I say! Come, come, come! Want par, of course—all do! There y'are, boy!"
He blotted the check, tore it from the book and waved it toward Bean as he turned to the director of the cigarette.
"About that proposition before us to-day, Mr. Chairman" but Bean had gone. Observing this, the old gentleman looked about him.
"Shrimp!" he said contemptuously, with the convinced air of an expert in marine biology.
Bean, outside, once more addressed himself to typewriting. He wondered if he should be seized with a toothache or a fainting spell. Toothache was good, but perhaps Bulger had used that too often. Still Tully would "fall" for a toothache. It gave him a chance to say that if people would only go to a dentist once every three months Then he remembered that Tully was inside. He wouldn't make any excuse at all.
"Going out a few minutes," he explained to old Metezger as he swiftly changed from his office coat and adjusted the new straw hat.
Bulger glanced up from his machine, winked at him and shaped a word with his able mouth. An adept in lip-reading could have seen it to be "Chubbins." Bean in response leered confession at him.
The broker's office was in the adjoining block.
"I've just made a little deal," explained Bean to the person who inquired his business. "Here's the check. You know I've got a sort of an idea I'd like a little more of that Federal Express stuff. Just buy me some the same as you did before, as much as you can get on ten margins, er—I mean on ten points."
"Nothing much doing in that stock," suggested the expert. "Why don't you get down on some the live ones. Now there's Union Pacific"
"I know, but I want Federal Express. That is, you see, I want it merely for a technical purpose." He felt happy at recalling Markham's phrase.
"All right," said the expert resignedly. "We'll do what we can. May take three or four days."
Bean started for the door.
"Say," called the expert, as if on second thought, "you're up at Breede's office, ain't you—old J. B.'s?"
"Oh, I'm there for a few days yet," said Bean.
"Ah, ha!" said the expert. "Have a cigar!"
Bean aimlessly accepted the proffer.
"Sit down and gas a while," urged the expert genially. "Things looking up any over your way?"
"Oh, so-so, only," said Bean. "But I can't stop, thanks! Got to hurry back to see a man."
"Drop in again any time," said the expert. "We try to make this little den a home for our customers."
"Thanks!" said Bean. "I'll be sure to."
"Ah ha, and ah ha!" said the expert to himself. "Now I wonder."
On his way back to the office Bean suddenly discovered that he was chewing an unlighted cigar. He stopped to observe in a polished window its effect on his face. He rather liked it. He pulled the front of his hat down a bit and held the cigar at a confident angle. He thought it made him look forceful. He wished he might pass the purple-faced old gentleman—the whole Breede gang, for that matter—and chew the cigar at them.
"I'll show them," he muttered, over and around the impeding cigar. "I'll show them they can't keep me off that board. I knew what to do in a minute. Napoleon of Finance, eh? I'll show them who's who!"
He was back at his desk finishing the last of Breede's letters for the day. Tully had not discovered his absence. He winked at Bulger to assure him that the worst interpretation could be put upon that absence. He wondered if anything else could happen before the day ended.
"Telephone for Boston Bean," called the wag of an office boy.
This time he closed the double door of the booth, letting Bulger think what he pleased.
"I forgot to ask what you take, mornings," pealed the flapper.
"Take—mornings?"
"For breakfast, silly! Because I think it's best for you to take just eggs and toast; a little fruit of course; not all that meat and things."
"Oh, yes, of course; eggs and—things. Never want much."
"Well, all right, I just perfectly knew you'd see it that way. I'm making up lists. Tell me, do you like a panelled dining-room, you know, fumed oak, or something?"
"Only kind I'd ever have."
"I knew you would. What are you doing all the time?"
"Oh, me? I'm getting things into shape. You see, I have an idea"
"Don't you buy the least little thing until I know. We want to be sure everything harmonizes and I've just perfectly got everything in my head the way it will be."
"That's right; that's the only way."
"You didn't say anything about—you know—to poor old Pops, did you?"
"Why, no. I didn't. You see he's been pretty much thinking about other things all day, and I"
"Well, that's right. I was afraid you'd be just perfectly impatient. But you leave it all to me. I'll manage. It's the dearest joke! I may not tell them for two or three days. Every time I get alone I just perfectly giggle myself into spasms. Isn't it the funniest?"
"Ha, ha, ha, ha! I should think it was." He was fearfully hoping her keen sense of humour might continue to rule.
"We do, don't we?"
"Do what?"
"You know, stupid!"
"Yes, yes indeed! We just perfectly do!"
"More than any two people ever did before, don't we?"
"Well, I should think so; and then some."
"I knew you'd feel that way. Well, good-bye!"
He could fancy her giving the double nod as she hung up the receiver.
During the ride uptown he talked large with a voluble gentleman who had finished his evening paper and who wished to recite its leading editorial from memory as something of his own. They used terms like "the tired business man," "increased cost of living," "small investor," "the common people," and "enemies of the Public Good." The man was especially bitter against the Wall Street ring, and remarked that any one wishing to draw a lesson from history need look no farther back than the French Revolution. The signs were to be observed on every hand.
Bean felt a little guilty, though he tried to carry it off. Was he not one of that same Wall Street ring? He pictured himself as a tired business man eating boiled eggs of a morning in a dining-room panelled with fumed oak, the flapper across the table in some little old rag. He thought it sounded pretty luxurious—like a betrayal of the common people. Still he had to follow his destiny. You couldn't get around that.
He stood a long time before Ram-tah that night, grateful for the lesson he had drawn from him in the afternoon. Back there among those fierce-eyed directors, badgered by the most objectionable of them, nerving himself to say presently that he could imagine nothing of less consequence, there had come before his eyes the inspiring face of the wise and good king. But most unaccountably, as he gazed, it seemed to him that the great Ram-tah had opened those long-closed eyes; opened them full for a moment; then allowed the left eye to close swiftly.