Jacob's Ladder. E. Phillips Oppenheim
needn’t rub it in. My appearance is against me in business and in every way. I can’t help it. I have troubles.”
“They are at an end,” Jacob declared. “Don’t jump out of the window or do anything ridiculous, my friend, but sit still and listen. You have been starving with a wife and two children on three pounds a week. Your salary from to-day is ten pounds a week, with expenses.”
Dauncey shook his head.
“You are not well this morning, man.”
Jacob produced the letters and handed them over to his friend, who read them with many exclamations of wonder. When he returned them, there was a little flush in his face.
“I congratulate you, Jacob,” he said heartily. “You are one of those men who have the knack of keeping a stiff upper lip, but I know what you have suffered.”
“Congratulate yourself, too, old chap,” Jacob enjoined, holding out his hand. “Exactly what I am going to do in the future I haven’t quite made up my mind, but this I do know—we start a fresh life from lunch-time to-day, you and I. You can call yourself my secretary, for want of a better description, until we settle down. Your screw will be ten pounds a week, and if you refuse the hundred pounds I am going to offer you at our luncheon table at Simpson’s to-day, I shall knock you down.”
Dauncey apologised shamefacedly, a few minutes later, for a brief period of rare weakness.
“It’s the wife, old chap,” he explained, as they drew near the terminus. “You see, I married a little above my station, but there was never any money, and the two kids came and there didn’t seem enough to clothe them properly, or feed them properly, or put even a trifle by in case anything should happen to me. Life’s been pretty hard, Jacob, and I can’t make friends. Or rather I never have been able to until you came along.”
They shook hands once more, a queer but very human proceeding in those overwrought moments.
“Just you walk to the office this morning,” Jacob said, “with your head in the air, and keep on telling yourself there’s no mistake about it. You’re going home to-night with a hundred pounds in bank notes in your pocket, with a bottle of wine under one arm, and a brown paper parcel as big as you can carry under the other. You’re out of the wood, young fellow, and you be thankful for the rest of your life that you found the way to smile one morning. So long till one o’clock at Simpson’s,” he added, as they stepped out on to the platform. “Hi, taxi!”
Mr. Bultiwell came hurrying along, with a good deal less than his usual dignity. He was not one of those men who were intended by nature to proceed at any other than a leisurely pace.
“Pratt,” he called out, “wait a minute. We’ll share that taxi, eh?”
Jacob glanced over his shoulder.
“Sorry,” he answered, “I’m not going your way.”
Soon after the opening of that august establishment, Jacob, not without some trepidation, visited the Bank of England. At half-past ten, he strolled into the warehouse of Messrs. Smith and Joyce, leather merchants, Bermondsey Street, the firm for which he had been working during the last two years. Mr. Smith frowned at him from behind a stack of leather.
“You’re late this morning, Pratt,” he growled. “I thought perhaps you had gone over to see that man at Tottenham.”
“The man at Tottenham,” Jacob remarked equably, “can go to hell.”
Mr. Smith was a short, thin man with a cynical expression, a bloodless face and a loveless heart. He opened his mouth a little, a habit of his when surprised.
“I suppose it is too early in the morning to suggest that you have been drinking,” he said.
“You are right,” Jacob acknowledged. “A little later in the day I shall be able to satisfy everybody in that respect.”
Mr. Smith came out from behind the stack of leather. He was wearing a linen smock over his clothes and paper protectors over his cuffs.
“I don’t think you’re quite yourself this morning, Pratt,” he observed acidly.
“I am not,” Jacob answered. “I have had good news.”
Mr. Smith was a farseeing man, with a brain which worked quickly. He remembered in a moment the cause of Jacob’s failure. Oil might be found at any time!
“I am very glad to hear it, Pratt,” he said. “Would you like to come into the office and have a little chat?”
Jacob looked his employer squarely in the face.
“Never so long as I live,” he replied. “Just the few words I want to say to you, Mr. Smith, can be said here. You gave me a job when I was down and out. You gave it to me not out of pity but because you knew I was a damned good traveller. I’ve trudged the streets for you, ridden in tram-cars, ’buses and tubes, sold your leather honestly and carefully for two years. I’ve doubled your turnover; I’ve introduced you to the soundest connection you ever had on your books. Each Christmas a clerk in the counting house has handed me an extra sovereign—to buy sweets with, I suppose! You’ve never raised my salary, you’ve never uttered a word of thanks. I’ve brought you in three of the biggest contracts you ever had in your life, and you accepted them with grudging satisfaction, pretended they didn’t pay you, forgot that I knew what you gave for every ton of your leather that passed through my hands. You’ve been a cold, calculating and selfish employer. You’ll never be a rich man because you haven’t the imagination, and you’ll never be a poor one because you’re too stingy. And now you can go on with your rotten little business and find another traveller, for I’ve finished with you.”
“You can’t leave without a week’s notice,” Mr. Smith snapped.
“Sue me, then,” Jacob retorted, as he turned away. “Put me in the County Court. I shall have the best part of a million to pay the damage with. Good morning to you, Mr. Smith, and I thank Providence that never again in this life have I got to cross the threshold of your warehouse!”
Jacob passed out into the street, whistling lightly. He was beginning to feel himself.
Half an hour later, seated in the most comfortable easy chair of Mr. Pedlar’s private office, a sanctum into which he had never before been asked to penetrate, Jacob discussed the flavour of a fine Havana cigar and issued his instructions for the payment of his debts in full. Mr. Stephen Pedlar, a suave, shrewd man of much versatility, congratulated himself that he had, at all times during his connection with Jacob, treated this erstwhile insignificant defaulter with the courtesy which at least had cost him nothing.
“Most interesting position, yours, Pratt,” the man of figures declared, loitering a little over the final details. “I should like to talk it over with you sometime. What about a little lunch up in the West End to-day?”
Jacob shook his head.
“I am lunching with a friend,” he said. “Thank you very much, all the same.”
“Some other time, then,” Mr. Pedlar continued. “Have you made any plans at all for the future?”
“None as yet worth speaking of.”
“You are a young man,” the accountant continued. “You must have occupation. If the advice of a man of the world is worth having, count me at your disposal.”
“I am very much obliged,” Jacob acknowledged.
“I can be considered wholly impartial,” Mr. Pedlar went on, “because I have no direct interest in whatever you may choose to do with your money, but my advice to you, Mr. Pratt, would be to buy a partnership in one of the leading firms engaged in the industry with which you have been associated.”
“I see,” Jacob reflected. “Go into business again on a larger scale?”
“Exactly,”