White Ashes Part 26

An expression of slight mystification appeared on the broad brow of the waiter, but he was inured to eccentric gastronomic requests, and fulfilled this one with his accustomed dignity.

"There!" said Smith. "There's my bet paid, though strictly speaking you couldn't have held me for it, since you were betting on a certainty."

"May I pa.s.s the spoils?" replied the girl, with a laugh.

The memory of those three macaroons had to stand Smith in the stead of other things for the last days of November. On his arrival at the office on the morning following Thanksgiving Day, Mr. O'Connor requested him to go down to Baltimore on company business requiring some little time to transact, and not until after the first of December did he set foot again in New York.

He arrived at about eight o'clock in the morning; and as he was obliged to go home first, he did not reach William Street until nearly ten. As he entered the Guardian office, he was aware that something unusual had happened. Business seemed somehow to have been oddly interrupted.

Around the map desks and file cases little groups of clerks were gathered, talking in low tones.

Smith watched them in silence for a moment, and as no one volunteered to enlighten him as to what had occurred, he walked over to Mr.

Bartels's office and went in.

"What's the matter here this morning? Is there a conflagration anywhere?" he asked the stolid personage at the desk, who barely ceased his figuring to make response:--

"Go and see the boss. He and O'Connor have had a quarrel--funny business--I don't know anything about it, that's all."

Smith went. Mr. O'Connor was in his room, busily engaged at his desk; the table beside him was heaped high with papers and books, which was an unusual sight, for O'Connor was a methodical man and the room was customarily bare of litter. The General Agent walked thoughtfully over to the other side of the office, and glanced through the President's door. Mr. Wintermuth was walking up and down, his hands behind him and his face a little flushed. Smith hesitated, then deliberately opened the door and entered.

"Good morning, sir. I have--" he began, but his chief, with an expression in which anger was still the predominant characteristic, said abruptly:--

"Do you know what has happened?"

"No, sir, I do not."

"Mr. O'Connor has tendered his resignation, as Vice-President of the Guardian!"

Smith stood still a long minute without answering, and then he saw suddenly and clearly all that for so many weeks the darkness had hidden from him.

"And did you accept his resignation, sir?" he asked at last.

The President turned swiftly to face the question.

"He tendered his resignation as of December thirty-first. I told him his resignation was accepted as of nine-forty-five this morning. And I told him to pack up his stuff and get out of here and never show himself in the Guardian office again."

CHAPTER XIII

In the course of his extended career Mr. Wintermuth had been called upon to face many serious and unexpected crises. Conflagrations; rate wars; eruptions of idiotic and ruinous legislation adopted by state senates and a.s.semblies composed of meddlesome agriculturalists, saloon keepers, impractical young lawyers, and intensely practical old politicians;--all these he had lived through not once, but often, and had always piloted the Guardian's bark to port in safety. In fact, he had done this with such aplomb that long ago he had dismissed from his mind such a thing as the possibility of a wave insurmountable.

In his first flush of anger against O'Connor's betrayal--for by Mr.

Wintermuth the action of his Vice-President could not otherwise be regarded--he had but one thought, and that was to make O'Connor's act recoil upon his own head. At that time, however, he was still in ignorance of the full scope of the betrayal, and when the element of bitter personal resentment had largely faded out, his pride and dignity rea.s.serted themselves and bade him choose a different course. Let O'Connor go his way--inevitably justice would overtake him. After all, the first duty was to the company, and the first thing to be done was to fill O'Connor's place.

The cardinal principle of Mr. Wintermuth's administration of the Guardian, during all the years he had been chief executive, had been that all vacancies be filled by promotion of the company's own men.

All those who occupied positions of responsibility with the Guardian had come up from the ranks, and it was one of the President's favorite themes for self-congratulation that it had always been possible to fill every opening without going outside the home office.

Unfortunately, however, of late years the current flowing toward the top had been rather clogged by the unusual pertinacity of the inc.u.mbents of important places. O'Connor, Bartels, Wagstaff--for years undisturbed all these had held their positions. Even Smith, the youngest man to occupy a place of trust, had been in his present capacity for quite a while. And the natural result of this was that new material in the company, or at least material capable of advancement and development, was painfully scarce.

Bartels was not an underwriter at all, but an accountant, and it was inconceivable that he would ever be anything else. Wagstaff, who supervised the Southern and a part of the Western field, was a good enough machine man, capable in a routine way and within his limitations, but helpless outside them; he had no initiative, wholly lacked dash and imagination, and it was out of the question that he be given charge of the general underwriting of the company, even under such a chief as Mr. Wintermuth. Cuyler, the head of the local department, was a city underwriter pure and simple; his knowledge and his interest stopped short where the jurisdiction of the New York Exchange ended; he knew no more, nor did he care for anything else.

There remained but one possibility--Smith. And Smith was very young.

There had been few or no cases in the annals of fire insurance where the underwriting of such a company as the Guardian had been placed in the hands of a man scarcely turned thirty. Mr. Wintermuth, going over the situation carefully, began to wish that he had looked a little farther into the future. A sharp sense of indecision came disagreeably to him, and very reluctantly he reached the conclusion that he did not quite know what to do.

By his order a special meeting of the directors had been called for the next morning, and for the intervening hours he possessed his soul in what patience he could command. If the reflection occurred to him that perhaps it would have been wiser to retain O'Connor until his successor could be selected, he dismissed it at once. The company would have to go on as best it could without a vice-president until such time as the proper man could be found.

It was ten-thirty to the minute when Mr. Wintermuth took the chair and looked about the table at his board. Eleven directors in all, including the President, were in attendance; and although no one except Mr. Wintermuth knew why they had been called together, there was an undercurrent of concern among those present. This was soon crystallized, for Mr. Wintermuth's opening words wakened the active interest and lively perturbation of every man.

"Gentlemen," he said, "this meeting has been called as the result of my having received the following letter. 'James Wintermuth, Esq., and so forth--I hereby tender my resignation as Vice-President of the Guardian Fire Insurance Company of New York, to take effect on December thirty-first or on such earlier date as may suit your convenience.

Signed, F. Mills O'Connor.' That is the letter, and so far as I am concerned, that closes the matter, except for the vote whereby I ask you gentlemen to confirm my action in accepting Mr. O'Connor's resignation--as of yesterday morning."

There was no discussion, and the vote was taken.

"Now," continued Mr. Wintermuth, "the office of Vice-president has been declared vacant, and I will request your consideration of the filling of the vacancy. As you know, it has always been the policy of the Guardian to fill all vacancies, official and otherwise, by the promotion of its own men. It is my own belief that this is the only satisfactory and in fact the only honorable system. But Mr. O'Connor's resignation was so unexpected as to leave us unprepared--perhaps more so than we should have been--and it now seems as though a deviation from our usual course might be forced upon us."

He then very briefly acquainted them with the qualities of the men under O'Connor in much the same way that he had reviewed them in his own mind. The directors listened in silence. In short, silence was their only possible att.i.tude, for the contingency which now confronted them was one which took them wholly by surprise.

"To sum up the situation," Mr. Wintermuth concluded, "there is only one man now in the employ of the company who is qualified to fill the vice-presidency, and that is Richard Smith, our present General Agent."

He hesitated. Personally he would have been glad to go farther and recommend Smith for the position, but in his own mind he was not convinced of the wisdom of this.

"Isn't he pretty young?" inquired Mr. Whitehill, of Whitehill and Rhodes, the large real estate operators, who sat at Mr. Wintermuth's right.

"Yes, he is. I'm afraid he's almost too young," was the frank reply.

"How old is he, anyway?" another director asked.

"Thirty-two or thereabouts, I believe. But he's had good training."

"He won't do," said Mr. Whitehill, tersely. "The man for that job ought to be more seasoned--at least forty. Don't you agree with me?"

"I'm afraid I do," the President conceded, rather reluctantly. "At least I am afraid that Smith, good underwriter as he is, needs--as you say--a little more seasoning before being given so responsible a position."

"What's the alternative?" inquired Mr. Griswold, from the other end of the table.

"The alternative," answered Mr. Wintermuth, "is one which I like little better. It is to go outside and hire an underwriter from somewhere else."

"Do you know a good man--one we could get?"

"There are always plenty available if you look in the right place--and back up your invitation with a sufficient monetary inducement," said the President, a trifle caustically. "Little as I myself fancy the idea, it seems to me that it is what we shall have to do. Unless," he added, "you gentlemen should decide to risk giving Smith a chance."

"I'm in favor of going outside," Mr. Whitehill announced. "I've met Smith, and he's a nice clean-cut young fellow, but it would be an injustice to put him in such a place and expect him to make good. He's too much of a kid for such a job with a company like the Guardian."

There was a murmur, whether of approval or of pa.s.sive acquiescence could not be told.

"Thirty-five is the minimum age for the President of the United States," suggested Mr. Wintermuth, detachedly.

"Well, thirty-five is quite young enough," retorted Mr. Whitehill.