Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories Part 19

"You can do your figuring there just as well as here," said he.

"I don't want your trip from Chicago to be altogether wasted, Mr.

Mitch.e.l.l."

Louis smiled and shook his head. "I can't take that Exposition back with me, and I can take this contract. I think I'll camp with my bid."

In the small hours of that night he made a discovery that electrified him. He found that the most commonly used section in his specifications, a twelve-inch I-beam, was listed under the English custom as weighing fifty-four pounds per foot, whereas the standardized American section, which possessed the same carrying strength, weighed four pounds less. Here was an advantage of eight per cent. in cost and freight! This put another round of the ladder beneath him; he was progressing well, but as yet he had learned nothing about his compet.i.tors.

The next morning he had some more dictation for Peebleby's stenographer, and niched another sovereign from his sad little bank-roll. When the girl gave him his copy he fell into conversation with her and painted a picture of Yankeeland well calculated to keep her awake nights. They gossiped idly, she of her social obligations, he of the cyanide-tank business--he could think of nothing else to talk about. Adroitly he led her out. They grew confidential. She admitted her admiration for Mr. Jenkins from Edinburgh. Yes, Mr.

Jenkins's company was bidding on the Krugersdorpf job. He was much nicer than Mr. Kruse from the Brussels concern, and, anyhow, those Belgian firms had no chance at this contract, for Belgium was pro-Boer, and--well, she had heard a few things around the office.

Mitch.e.l.l was getting "feed-box" information. When he left he knew the names of his dangerous compet.i.tors as well as those whom, in all likelihood, he had no cause to fear. Another step! He was gaining ground.

In order to make himself absolutely certain that his figures would be low, there still remained three things to learn, and they were matters upon which he could afford to take no slightest chance of mistake.

He must know, first, the dates of those other bids; second, the market-price of English steel at such times; and, third, the cost of fabrication at the various mills. The first two he believed could be easily learned, but the third promised to afford appalling difficulties to a man unfamiliar with foreign methods and utterly lacking in trade acquaintances. He went at them systematically, however, only to run against a snag within the hour. Not only did he fail to find the answer to question number one, but he could find no market quotations whatever on structural steel shapes such as entered into the Krugersdorpf job.

He searched through every possible trade journal, through reading rooms and libraries, for the price of I-beams, channels, Z-bars, and the like; but nowhere could he even find mention of them. His failure left him puzzled and panic-stricken; he could not understand it. If only he had more time, he reflected, time in which to learn the usages and the customs of this country. But time was what he had not. He was tired, very tired from his sleepless nights and hours of daylight strain--and meanwhile the days were rus.h.i.+ng past.

While engaged in these side labors, he had, of course, been working on his draftsmen friends, and more a.s.siduously even than upon his blue-prints. On Tuesday night, with but one more day of grace ahead of him, he gave a dinner to all of them, disregarding the fact that his bank-roll had become frightfully emaciated.

For several days after that little party blue-printing in the Robinson-Ray office was a lost art. When his guests had dined and had settled back into their chairs, Mitch.e.l.l decided to risk all upon one throw. He rose, at the head of the table, and told them who he was. He utterly destroyed their illusions regarding him and his position with Comer & Mathison, he bared his heart to those stoop-shouldered, shabby young men from Threadneedle Street and came right down to the nine hundred and twenty dollars and the girl. He told them what this Krugersdorpf job meant to him and to her, and to the four twenty-dollar bills in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

Those Englishmen listened silently. n.o.body laughed. Perhaps it was the sort of thing they had dreamed of doing some day, perhaps there were other girls in other tiny furnished flats, other hearts wrapped up in similar struggles for advancement. They were good mathematicians, it seemed, for they did not have to ask Mitch.e.l.l how the nine hundred and twenty was doing, or to inquire regarding the health of the other eighty. One of them, a near-sighted fellow with thick lenses, arose with the grave a.s.sertion that he had taken the floor for the purpose of correcting a popular fallacy; Englishmen and Yankees, he declared, were not cousins, they were brothers, and their interests ever had been and ever would be identical. He said, too, that England wanted to do business with America, and as for this particular contract, not only did the British nation as a whole desire America to secure it, but the chaps who bent over the boards at No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street were plugging for her tooth and nail. His hollow-chested companions yelled their approval of this statement, whereupon Mitch.e.l.l again arose, alternately flus.h.i.+ng and paling, and apologized for what had happened in 1776. He acknowledged himself ashamed of the 1812 affair, moreover, and sympathized with his guests over their present trouble with the Boers. When he had finished they voted him the best host and the best little cyanide tank-builder known to them--and then everybody tried to tell him something at once.

They told him among other things that every bid except his had been in for two weeks, and that they were in the vault under the care of Mr.

Pitts, the head draftsman. They promised to advise him if any new bids came in or if any changes occurred, and, most important of all, they told him that in England all structural steel shapes, instead of being cla.s.sified as in America, are known as "angles," and they told him just how and where to find the official reports giving the price of the same for every day in the year.

The word "angles" was the missing key, and those official market reports formed the lock in which to fit it. Mitch.e.l.l had taken several mighty strides, and there remained but one more step to take.

When his guests had finally gone home, swearing fealty, and declaring this to be the best dinner they had ever drunk, he hastened back to his room, back to the desert of blueprints and to the interminable columns of figures, and over them he worked like a madman.

He slept two hours before daylight, then he was up and toiling again, for this was his last day. Using the data he had gathered the night before, he soon had the price of English and Scottish steel at the time the last bids were closed. Given one thing more--namely, the cost of fabrication in these foreign shops, and he would have reduced this hazard to a certainty, he would be able to read the prices contained in those sealed bids as plainly as if they lay open before him. But his time had narrowed now to hours.

He lunched with John Pitts, the head draughtsman, going back to pick up the boomerang he had left the week before.

"Have you gone over my first bid?" he asked, carelessly.

"I have--lucky for you," said Pitts. "You made a mistake."

"Indeed! How so?"

"Why, it's thirty per cent. too low. It would be a crime to give you the business at those figures."

"But, you see, I didn't include the sub-structure. I didn't have time to figure that." Mitch.e.l.l prayed that his face might not show his eagerness. Evidently it did not, for Pitts walked into the trap.

"Even so," said he; "it's thirty per cent. out of the way. I made allowance for that."

The boomerang had finished its flight!

Once they had separated, Mitch.e.l.l broke for his hotel like a hunted man. He had made no mistake in his first figures. The great Krugersdorpf job was his; but, nevertheless, he wished to make himself absolutely sure and to secure as much profit as possible for Comer & Mathison. Without a handsome profit this three-million-dollar job might ruin a firm of their standing.

In order to verify Pitts's statement, in order to swell his proposed profits to the utmost, Mitch.e.l.l knew he ought to learn the "overhead"

in English mills; that is, the fixed charges which, added to shop costs and prices of material, are set aside to cover office expenses, cost of operation, and contingencies. Without this information he would have to go it blind, after a fas.h.i.+on, and thereby risk penalizing himself; with it he could estimate very closely the amounts of the other bids and insure a safe margin for Comer & Mathison. In addition to this precaution he wished to have his own figures checked up, for even under normal conditions, if one makes a numerical error in work of this sort, he is more than apt to repeat it time and again, and Mitch.e.l.l knew himself to be deadly tired--almost on the verge of collapse. He was inclined to doze off whenever he sat down; the raucous noises of the city no longer jarred or startled him, and his surroundings were becoming unreal, grotesque, as if seen through the spell of absinthe. Yes, it was necessary to check off his figures.

But who could he get to do the work? He could not go to Threadneedle Street. He thought of the Carnegie representative and telephoned him, explaining the situation and his crying need, only to be told that no one in that office was capable of a.s.sisting him. He was referred, however, to an English engineer who, it was barely possible, could handle the job. In closing, the Carnegie man voiced a vague warning:

"His name is Dell, and he used to be with one of the Edinburgh concerns, so don't let him know your inside figures. He might spring a leak."

A half-hour later Mitch.e.l.l, his arms full of blue-prints, was in Mr.

Dell's office. But the English engineer hesitated; he was very busy; he had numerous obligations. Mitch.e.l.l gazed over the threadbare rooms and hastily estimated how much of the nine hundred and twenty dollars would be left after he had paid his hotel bill. What there was to do must be done before the next morning's sun arose.

"This job is worth ten sovereigns to me if it is finished tonight," he declared, briskly.

Mr. Dell hesitated, stumbled, and fell. "Very well. We'll begin at once," said he.

He unrolled the blue-prints, from a drawer he produced a sliding-rule.

He slid this rule up; he slid it down; he gazed through his gla.s.ses at s.p.a.ce; he made microscopic Spencerian figures in neat rows and columns. He seemed to pluck his results from the air with necromantic cunning, and what had taken the young man at his elbow days and nights of cruel effort to accomplish--what had put haggard lines about his mouth and eyes--the engineer accomplished in a few hours by means of that sliding-rule. Meanwhile, with one weary effort of will, his visitor summoned his powers and cross-examined him adroitly. Here was the very man to supply the one missing link in the perfect chain; but Mr. Dell would not talk. He did not like Americans nor American methods, and he made his dislike apparent by sealing his lips.

Mitch.e.l.l played upon his vanity at first, only to find the man wholly lacking in conceit. Changing his method of attack, Mitch.e.l.l built a fire under Mr. Dell. He grilled everything British, the people, their social customs, their business methods, even English engineers, and he did it in a most annoying manner. Mr. Dell began to perspire.

He worked doggedly on for a while, then he arose in defense of his country, whereupon Mitch.e.l.l artfully s.h.i.+fted his attack to English steel-mills. The other refuted his statements flatly. At length the engineer was goaded to anger, he became disputative, indignant, loquacious.

When Louis Mitch.e.l.l flung himself into the dark body of his cab, late that evening, and sank his legs knee-deep into those hateful blue-prints, he blessed that engineer, for Dell had told him all he wished to know, all he had tried so vainly to discover through other sources. The average "overhead" in British mills was one hundred and thirty per cent., and Dell _knew_.

The young man laughed hysterically, triumphantly, but the sound was more like a tearful hiccough. To-morrow at ten-thirty! It was nearly over. He would be ready. As he lolled back inertly upon the cus.h.i.+ons he mused dreamily that he had done well. In less than two weeks, in a foreign country, and under strange conditions, without acquaintance or pull or help of any sort, he had learned the names of his compet.i.tive firms, the dates of their bids, and the market prices ruling on every piece of steel in the Krugersdorpf job when those bids were figured.

He had learned the rules governing English labor unions; he knew all about piece-work and time-work, fixed charges and shop costs, together with the ability of every plant figuring on the Robinson-Ray contract to turn out the work in the necessary time. All this, and more, he had learned legitimately and without cost to his commercial honor.

Henceforth that South-African contract depended merely upon his own ability to add, subtract, and multiply correctly. It was his just as surely as two and two make four--for salesmans.h.i.+p is an exact science.

The girl would be very happy, he told himself. He was glad that she could never know the strain it had been.

Again, through the slow, silent hours of that Wednesday night, Mitch.e.l.l fought the fatigue of death, going over his figures carefully. There were no errors in them.

Dawn was creeping in on him when he added a clean thirty-per-cent.

profit for his firm, signed his bid, and prepared for bed. But he found that he could not leave the thing. After he had turned in he became a.s.sailed by sudden doubts and fears. What if he had made a mistake after all? What if some link in his chain were faulty? What if some other bidder had made a mistake and underfigured? Such thoughts made him tremble. Now that it was all done, he feared that he had been overconfident, for could it really be possible that the greatest steel contract in years would come to him? He grew dizzy at the picture of what it meant to him and to the girl.

He calmed himself finally and looked straight at the matter, sitting up in bed, his knees drawn up under his chin. While so engaged he caught sight of his drawn face in the mirror opposite and started when he realized how old and heavy with fatigue it was. He determined suddenly to shave that profit to twenty-nine per cent. and make a.s.surance doubly sure, but managed to conquer his momentary panic.

Cold reasoning told him that his figures were safe.

Louis Mitch.e.l.l was the only salesman in Mr. Peebleby's office that morning who did not wear a silk hat, pearl gloves, and spats. In consequence the others ignored him for a time--but only for a time.

Once the proposals had been read, an air of impenetrable gloom spread over the room. The seven Scotch, English, and Belgian mourners stared cheerlessly at one another and then with growing curiosity at the young man from overseas who had underbid the lowest of them by six thousand pounds sterling, less than one per cent. After a while they bowed among themselves, mumbled something to Mr. Peebleby, and went softly out in their high hats, their pearl gloves, and their spats--more like pall-bearers now than ever.

"Six hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred pounds sterling!"

said the Director General. "By Jove, Mitch.e.l.l, I'm glad!" They shook hands. "I'm really glad."

"That's over three million dollars in real money," said the youth.

"It's quite a tidy little job."

Peebleby laughed. "You've been very decent about it, too. I hope to see something of you in the future. What?"

"You'll see my smoke, that's all."