White Ashes. Sidney R. Kennedy
and able to bear with his growing acerbity better than he could have done had he not known the real spirit of the man. During the past year or two it seemed to Smith that his chief was showing his age more plainly than ever before. He was still under sixty-five, but he was coming to live more than ever in the past, and was growing more and more impervious to the new ideas and new methods which modern conditions constantly brought.
"The greatest trouble with the old man is," as Cuyler was heard to say on one occasion, "he has the 4 per cent bond habit."
It was perfectly, true. What was safe and what was sure appealed more strongly to James Wintermuth with the passage of every year. Not for him were the daring methods of those companies who employed their resources in tremendous plunges in and out of the stock market, not for him the long chances in which most of his competitors gloried. The Guardian was doing well enough. Its capital of $750,000 was ample; its surplus of $500,000 very respectable; its premium income of a million and three quarters perfectly adequate, in Mr. Wintermuth's opinion. And the stockholders, receiving dividends of 12 per cent per annum, lean years and fat alike, never audibly complained.
In appearance the Guardian's President upheld the best traditions of the old school from which he sprang. Above middle height, his erect figure gave him still much the air of a cavalier. His acute black eyes and trim white mustache made him certain to attract notice wherever he went—a fact of which he was not wholly unconscious. Even now, when gradually, almost imperceptibly, the springiness was fading from his step, he seemed a strong and virile man. His directors, most of them his contemporaries and whose insurance knowledge was limited to what they had learned on the Guardian directorate, trusted and believed in him with absolute implicitness. Any act on behalf of the company, when done by the President, they promptly ratified; and indeed they had for many years made it palpable to the meanest intelligence that they considered James Wintermuth the head, brain, heart, and all the other vital organs of the company which they—nominally—directed. In short, James Wintermuth was the Guardian.
There was in all the Street one man alone who would have taken exception to this analysis—and he kept his opinion securely locked in his secretive, his very secretive brain. This man was F. Mills O'Connor, Vice-President of the Guardian.
CHAPTER V
"Turn up Providence Two," said Mr. O'Connor. As the gentleman in question appeared at his office door en route to the map desk, his asperity of manner seemed to Herbert, the map clerk, even more pronounced than usual, and his voice was fully accordant. It was never a dulcet organ, at best; but its owner rarely felt that his business transactions could be assisted by the employment of flute notes; when he did, he sank his tones to a confidential whisper intended to flatter and impress his auditor, and it usually seemed to serve the purpose. But with his map clerks and his subordinates generally he gave free play to his natural raucousness, and he probably acted upon excellent judgment.
Herbert, whose eye and ear from long practice had grown to detect the exact degree of urgency in every call, with the agility of his Darwinian ancestry quickened by his native wit, dashed over to the desk under which the Rhode Island maps reposed. He swung the big gray-bound volume up onto the broad, flat counter with all the skill of a successful vaudeville artist, and none too soon, for he who had demanded it was at his elbow.
"What page do you want, Mr. O'Connor?" asked Herbert.
The Vice-president glanced at the daily report he held in his hand, and turned back the yellow telegraph blank that was pinned to it.
"Sheet one fifty-six," he said shortly. "No—one fifty-six. That will do." He turned to a boy. "Find out for me if Mr. Wintermuth is in his office."
The boy, whose name was Jimmy, sped off, soliloquizing as he went: "Gee, there must be somethin' up to get O'C. as hot as that!" Arrived at the opposite end of the big room, he reconnoitered for a view of the President's office. By virtue of some little strategy he presently managed to catch sight of Mr. Wintermuth, seated at his desk, pen in hand, in his most magisterial attitude, listening judicially to the remarks of some visitor. Jimmy, who was no fool, recognized the stranger as the business manager of an insurance paper about half whose space was given to articles highly eulogistic of certain insurance companies whose advertisements, by some singular coincidence, invariably appeared further on in the publication. From the position of the two Jimmy deduced that the conversation was not likely to be terminated very soon, and dashed back to Mr. O'Connor with that intelligence. The Vice-President was still studying the many-colored sheet.
"Busy, eh? Well, leave that map turned up, and let me know as soon as he is at liberty." And he strode back to his own office and shut the door with a slam that disturbed the serene spectacles of Mr. Otto Bartels, who was sedulously studying a long row of figures on a reinsurance bordereau.
Mr. Bartels was Secretary of the Guardian, and his office adjoined that of the Vice-president. Mr. Bartels, who was very short and stout, and very methodical, and Teutonic beyond all else, looked up with mild surprise in his placid eyes and the hint of something on his face which in a more mobile countenance would have been an expression of gentle remonstrance. His place was lost, in the column he was scanning, by the dislodgment of his spectacles, which he wore well down toward the lower reaches of his nose—it would have been out of place to speak of that organ as possessing an end or a tip, for it was much too bulbous for any such term to fit. Taking the spectacles with both hands, he replaced them at their wonted angle, and with that phantom of disapproval still striving for expression and outlet among his features, he resumed his employment.
Otto Bartels was a discovery of Mr. Wintermuth's, many years before, when that gentleman occupied a less conspicuous position with the corporation of which he was now long since the head. One day, sitting at his desk, he looked up to observe a youth who stood gravely regarding him in silence for at least three minutes before his speech struggled near enough the surface to make itself audible. It appeared that the stranger was in need of a position, that he was accurate, though not quick at figures, and that he would begin work for whatever wage was found proper. He was given a trial in the accounts department, and for five years his sponsor heard no more of him. At the end of that time he found that his protégé had worked up to the position of assistant chief clerk. Three years later the drinking water of the New Jersey suburb where he resided terminated the earthly career of the chief clerk, and Bartels became chief clerk, managing the department as nearly as was humanly possible without speech of any kind. And when, twenty years from the time the Guardian saw him first, Otto Bartels found himself authorized to write Secretary after his flowing signature, it was an appointment inevitable. He had simply pushed his way out of the crowd by grace of his unremitting thoroughness, his industry, which was really not especially creditable, as nothing but work ever occurred to him, and a gratifying inability to make errors of detail. He knew the name of every agent on the company's list, when each one was expected to pay his balances, and how much in premiums each annually reported. He never wrote letters, for it was impossible for him to dictate to a stenographer; he rarely took a vacation, for he had nowhere to go and nothing to do outside the office; he never engaged in discernible social intercourse of any sort, for he had never known how to begin. Such was the methodical man who so efficiently kept the books and records of the Guardian. He knew and cared nothing about underwriting, regarding the insurance operations of the company as a possibly important but purely secondary consideration. In Mr. Bartels's opinion the company's records were the company.
The underwriting department of the Guardian occupied, with the officers' quarters, the upper two floors of the rather narrow building. On the top floor were the East and the South, under the immediate supervision of Smith, the General Agent, and the offices of Mr. Wintermuth, Mr. O'Connor, and Mr. Bartels. The President occupied the southeast corner and the two others the northeast end, while Smith's desk was out in the open office, with the maps and files and survey cases and his subordinates under his eye.
On the floor below Assistant-Secretary Wagstaff held forth; he was in charge of the Western Department, which comprised the states from Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee westward