Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories Part 20

"You're not going back right away?"

"To-morrow; I've booked my pa.s.sage and cabled the girl to meet me in New York."

"My word! A girl! She'll be glad to hear of your success."

"Oh, I've told her already. You see, I knew I'd won."

The Director General of the Robinson-Ray Syndicate stared in open amazement, but Mitch.e.l.l hitched his chair closer, saying:

"Now let's get at those signatures. I've got to pack."

That night Louis Mitch.e.l.l slept with fifteen separate contracts under his pillow. He double-locked the door, pulled the dresser in front of it, and left the light burning. At times he awoke with a start and felt for the doc.u.ments. Toward morning he was seized with a sudden fright, so he got up and read them all over for fear somebody had tampered with them. They were correct, however, whereupon he read them a second time just for pleasure. They were strangely interesting.

On the _Deutschland_ he slept much of the way across, and by the time Liberty Statue loomed up he could dream of other things than blue-prints--of the girl, for instance.

She had enough left from the eighty dollars to bring her to New York and to pay for a week's lodging in West Thirty-fourth Street, though how she managed it Mitch.e.l.l never knew. She was at the dock, of course. He knew she would be. He expected to see her with her arms outstretched and with the old joyous smile upon her dimpled face, and, therefore, he was sorely disappointed when he came down the gang-plank and she did not appear. He searched high and low until finally he discovered her seated over by the letter "M," where his trunk was waiting inspection. There she was, huddled up on a coil of rope, crying as if her heart would break; her nerve was gone, along with the four twenty-dollar bills; she was afraid to face him, afraid there had been an error in his cablegram.

Not until she lay in his arms at last, sobbing and laughing, her slender body all aquiver, did she believe. Then he allowed her to feel the fifteen contracts inside his coat. Later, when they were in a cab bound for her smelly little boarding-house, he showed them to her. In return she gave him a telegram from his firm--a telegram addressed as follows:

Mr. LOUIS MITCh.e.l.l,

General Sales Manager, Comer & Mathison, New York City.

The message read:

That goes. COMER.

Mitch.e.l.l opened the trap above his head and called up to the driver: "Hey, Cabbie! We've changed our minds. Drive us to the Waldorf--at a gallop."

WITH INTEREST TO DATE

This is the tale of a wrong that rankled and a great revenge. It is not a moral story, nor yet, measured by the modern money code, is it what could be called immoral. It is merely a tale of sharp wits which clashed in pursuit of business, therefore let it be considered unmoral, a word with a wholly different commercial significance.

Time was when wrongs were righted by mace and battle-ax, amid fanfares and shoutings, but we live in a quieter age, an age of repression, wherein the keenest thrust is not delivered with a yell of triumph nor the oldest score settled to the blare of trumpets. No longer do the men of great muscle lord it over the weak and the puny; as a rule they toil and they lift, doing unpleasant, menial duties for hollow-chested, big-domed men with eye-gla.s.ses. But among those very spindle-shanked, terra-cotta dwellers who cower at draughts and eat soda mints, the ancient struggle for supremacy wages fiercer than ever. Single combats are fought now as then, and the flavor of victory is quite as sweet to the pallid man back of a roll-top desk as to the swart, bristling baron behind his vizored helmet.

The beginning of this story runs back to the time Henry Hanford went with the General Equipment Company as a young salesman full of hope and enthusiasm and a somewhat exaggerated idea of his own importance.

He was selling shears, punches, and other machinery used in the fabrication of structural steel. In the territory a.s.signed to him, the works of the Atlantic Bridge Company stuck up like a sore thumb, for although it employed many men, although its contracts were large and its requirements numerous, the General Equipment Company had never sold it a dollar's worth of anything.

In the course of time Hanford convinced himself that the Atlantic Bridge Company needed more modern machinery, so he laid siege to Jackson Wylie, Sr., its president and practical owner. He spent all of six months in gaining the old man's ear, but when he succeeded he laid himself out to sell his goods. He a.n.a.lyzed the Atlantic Bridge Company's needs in the light of modern milling practice, and demonstrated the saving his equipment would effect. A big order and much prestige were at stake, both of which young Hanford needed badly at the time. He was vastly encouraged, therefore, when the bridge-builder listened attentively to him.

"I dare say we shall have to make a change," Mr. Wylie reluctantly agreed. "I've been bothered to death by machinery salesmen, but you're the first one to really interest me."

Hanford acknowledged the compliment and proceeded further to elaborate upon the superiority of the General Equipment Company's goods over those sold by rival concerns. When he left he felt that he had Mr.

Wylie, Sr., "going."

At the office they warned him that he had a hard nut to crack; that Wylie was given to "stringing" salesmen and was a hard man to close with, but Hanford smiled confidently. Granting those facts, they rendered him all the more eager to make this sale; and the bridge company really did need up-to-date machinery.

He inst.i.tuted an even more vigorous selling campaign, he sent much printed matter to Mr. Wylie, Sr., he wrote him many letters. Being a thoroughgoing young saleman, he studied the plant from the ground up, learning the bridge business in such detail as enabled him to talk with authority on efficiency methods. In the course of his studies he discovered many things that were wrong with the Atlantic, and spent days in outlining improvements on paper. He made the acquaintance of the foremen; he cultivated the General Superintendent; he even met Mr.

Jackson Wylie, Jr., the Sales Manager, a very polished, metallic young man, who seemed quite as deeply impressed with Hanford's statements as did his father.

Under our highly developed compet.i.tive system, modern business is done very largely upon personality. From the att.i.tude of both father and son, Hanford began to count his chickens. Instead of letting up, however, he redoubled his efforts, which was his way. He spent so much time on the matter that his other work suffered, and in consequence his firm called him down. He outlined his progress with the Atlantic Bridge Company, declared he was going to succeed, and continued to camp with the job, notwithstanding the firm's open doubts.

Sixty days after his first interview he had another visit with Wylie, senior, during which the latter drained him of information and made an appointment for a month later. Said Mr. Wylie:

"You impress me strongly, Hanford, and I want my a.s.sociates to hear you. Get your proposition into shape and make the same talk to them that you have made to me."

Hanford went away elated; he even bragged a bit at the office, and the report got around among the other salesmen that he really had done the impossible and had pulled off something big with the Atlantic. It was a busy month for that young gentleman, and when the red-letter day at last arrived he went on to Newark to find both Wylies awaiting him.

"Well, sir, are you prepared to make a good argument?" the father inquired.

"I am." Hanford decided that three months was not too long a time to devote to work of this magnitude, after all.

"I want you to do your best," the bridge-builder continued, encouragingly, then he led Hanford into the directors' room, where, to his visitor's astonishment, some fifty men were seated.

"These are our salesmen," announced Mr. Wylie. He introduced Hanford to them with the request that they listen attentively to what the young man had to say.

It was rather nervous work for Hanford, but he soon warmed up and forgot his embarra.s.sment. He stood on his feet for two long hours pleading as if for his life. He went over the Atlantic plant from end to end; he showed the economic necessity for new machinery; then he explained the efficiency of his own appliances. He took rival types and picked them to pieces, pointing out their inferiority. He showed his familiarity with bridge work by going into figures which bore out his contention that the Atlantic's output could be increased and at an actual monthly saving. He wound up by proving that the General Equipment Company was the one concern best fitted to effect the improvement.

It had taken months of unremitting toil to prepare himself for this exposition, but the young fellow felt he had made his case. When he took up the cost of the proposed instalment, however, Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., interrupted him.

"That is all I care to have you cover," the latter explained. "Thank you very kindly, Mr. Hanford."

Hanford sat down and wiped his forehead, whereupon the other stepped forward and addressed his employees.

"Gentlemen," said he, "you have just listened to the best argument I ever heard. I purposely called you in from the road so that you might have a practical lesson in salesmans.h.i.+p and learn something from an outsider about your own business. I want you to profit by this talk.

Take it to heart and apply it to your own customers. Our selling efficiency has deteriorated lately; you are getting lazy. I want you to wake up and show better results. That is all. You might thank this young gentleman for his kindness."

When the audience had dispersed, Hanford inquired, blankly, "Don't you intend to act on my suggestions?"

"Oh no!" said Mr. Wylie, in apparent surprise. "We are doing nicely, as it is. I merely wanted you to address the boys."

"But--I've spent three months of hard labor on this! You led me to believe that you would put in new equipment."

The younger Wylie laughed, languidly exhaling a lungful of cigarette smoke. "When Dad gets ready to purchase, he'll let you know," said he.

Six months later the Atlantic Bridge Company placed a mammoth order with Hanford's rival concern, and he was not even asked to figure on it.

That is how the seeds of this story were sown. Of course the facts got out, for those Atlantic salesmen were not wanting in a sense of humor, and Hanford was joshed in every quarter. To make matters worse, his firm called him to account for his wasted time, implying that something was evidently wrong with his selling methods. Thus began a lack of confidence which quickly developed into strained relations.

The result was inevitable; Hanford saw what was coming and was wise enough to resign his position.

But it was the ridicule that hurt him most. He was unable to get away from that. Had he been at all emotional, he would have sworn a vendetta, so deep and lasting was the hurt, but he did not; he merely failed to forget, which, after all, is not so different.

It seemed queer that Henry Hanford should wind up in the bridge business himself, after attempting to fill several unsatisfactory positions, and yet there was nothing remarkable about it, for that three months of intense application at the Atlantic plant had given him a groundwork which came in handy when the Patterson Bridge Company offered him a desk. He was a good salesman; he worked hard and in time he was promoted. By and by the story was forgotten--by every one except Henry Hanford. But he had lost a considerable number of precious years.