White Ashes Part 30

On the five o'clock Mr. Gunterson left New York, and at a seasonable hour on Tuesday morning he started forth upon his travels from his Boston hotel. In search of a target at which he could aim, he went first to Mr. Osgood, to ask his aid in locating that target. Mr.

Osgood, who had hoped that Mr. Wintermuth himself would come, felt a tremor of premonitory dismay at the sight of this deputy; and his subsequent talk with Mr. Gunterson did nothing to allay his apprehension. In fact, it was his covert reflection that if Hancher was right, it was all over; the man whom Wintermuth sent was of no a.s.sistance.

In point of truth, it _was_ all over. It was barely possible that a strong and determined man could have effected something had he known how to set about it--but Mr. Gunterson did not know how. No hack actor suddenly confronted with a strange and difficult part felt more inept than he. He conceived that within him was the power to deliver a tremendous blow--but he could not find its mark. Aimlessly he consulted his acquaintances along Kilby Street. The agents of the influential Conference companies, primed to resist interviews, greeted him affably, congratulated him on his new connection, and blandly denied all knowledge of any radical move in process. That night Mr.

Gunterson, having accomplished absolutely nothing, returned to his hotel with an uneasy feeling of dissatisfaction with the day.

Wednesday came. Gunterson, hesitant, undecided, in need of help, early sought his only ally, Mr. Osgood. At the door of their offices he met Mr. Osgood and Mr. Cole on their way to the meeting of the Board. The Vice-President of the Guardian fell meekly into step. At the Board rooms the agents were gathered; the meeting came to order; the order of business began. After the transaction of a few routine affairs Mr.

Spence of Spence and Hardiwick rose and moved that the Eastern Conference separation rule be extended to cover Boston. His motion was seconded. There was no debate, and the only speaker was cut short by a call for the question.

In the chorus of ayes, Mr. Osgood's negative went unheard and unnoted.

The motion was carried almost unanimously, Cole not voting, but permitting the senior partner to cast the vote for the firm. And all this time there sat at Mr. Osgood's side the restless but impotent form of Mr. Gunterson. Twice he started to speak, and then repressed himself, his face a little flushed with helpless shame. Beside Mr.

Osgood he sat until the meeting concluded, and not a word did he say.

The meeting adjourned. In the hum of conversation Mr. Osgood turned to his junior partner.

"I'm through, Ben. You will have to go on without me. I cannot dismember my whole office organization; but James Wintermuth is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and when Silas Osgood and Company resign the Guardian--some one else must be in command."

Cole did not answer. The three moved slowly toward the door, and there in the doorway stood the author of their perplexity and distress.

O'Connor saw them coming, and held out his hand to the veteran underwriter.

"How do you do, Mr. Osgood," he said. "I hope you don't bear any ill will to me for what has just happened. I said I thought the rule would go through, and you can see for yourself that it was pa.s.sed almost unanimously. Perhaps we may be able to do business together after all.

Let us consider this as two sensible business men. Of course I'm glad the rule went through; but please don't think that I did it. I don't own the Boston Board."

The other man regarded him steadily.

"Probably you are right, Mr. O'Connor," he replied. "I do not seem to have correctly estimated the sentiment of to-day. No doubt you used your influence on the side of your company's interests. But I do not care to do business with you, sir--on that point my mind is unchanged."

"Well, I'm sorry you feel that way about it," said the other, with the good nature which as victor he could afford to maintain. "Good-day, Mr. Osgood."

Mr. Osgood pa.s.sed through the doorway, but Gunterson, following him, smitten with vague valor and sudden fury, turned.

"You--you!" was all he said, at a loss for words in his anger, and the President of the Salamander met him with a smile of humorous contempt.

"Why, h.e.l.lo!" he said, "here's Gunterson! Come to Boston to find a new agent, I suppose. So did I, to tell the truth. Good luck, old man."

Mr. Gunterson turned his back on his tormentor, and pa.s.sed on. He could think of no appropriate retort. But the situation could not be saved by any degree of repartee. Boston had voted for separation; Silas Osgood and Company must resign the Guardian; and Samuel Gunterson had made a humiliating failure of his quest.

Into his throbbing brain, however, a new idea had come, suggested by O'Connor's taunt. A new agent! Why not? If the Osgood office, consisting largely of Conference companies, was obliged to resign the Guardian, there must be some other agency where non-Conference companies predominated and where he could place the Guardian upon the withdrawal of a Conference company. After all, the Osgood office was not the only good agency in Boston. A new vigor fortified him--he would find an agent for the Guardian who should excel the Osgood connection as the sun outs.h.i.+nes the moon.

In one office of perhaps more notoriety than prominence, though Mr.

Gunterson knew it not, at that very moment the matter was being discussed.

"Well, Jake," said Sternberg, of Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, "they've pa.s.sed it."

"What did I tell you?" demanded Jake Bloom. "Didn't I tell you them Conference companies would get what they wanted? They got it, all right. Now the question is, what do we get out of it?"

"What do you mean?" asked Sternberg, slowly. He was large and bald, and had a dead-white, soft-looking, pock-marked face, while Bloom was short, black, and untidy.

"Well, I mean for one thing, the Guardian gets thrown out of the Osgood agency. They're on the street. Why shouldn't we get 'em?"

"Sure! Why not?" Sternberg rejoined with enthusiasm. "We've got to get some one else in here before long or we'll be up in the air. I'm afraid we've been salting some of our people too hard. It sort of jarred me when the Spokane left us. We've got to do something pretty quick. Now, how will we get at Gunterson? He don't know us."

"And a blame good thing he don't," said McCoy, with perfect frankness.

"A swell chance we'd have of landing the Guardian if we'd had the Elsa.s.s-Lothringen! There's no use of talking--we've been writing too freely. We must cut out the skates. Now, let's get together and land Gunterson."

"That's all right, too. But if we cut out the skates, what'll we have left? Anyhow, the main question is how'll we land Gunterson?"

Sternberg persisted. The mind of this large man moved as slowly as a house in a small town being transported from one lot to another by one mule, a rope, and a windla.s.s. McCoy's mind more resembled the agile and evasive flea.

"I bet my cousin Billy Gallagher knows him. Come to think of it, Billy was special agent up here for the Florida Fire and Marine at the time Gunterson was running them. We can square Billy all right, and I believe Billy can put it over."

"It looks like a cinch to me," said Bloom, lighting a cigarette.

"It is," said McCoy, briefly.

It was. And so it came about that in the forenoon of the following day a solemn trio of men, two Hebrews and an Irishman, were bowing a polite welcome to the distinguished Vice-President of the Guardian of New York, who, in company with his friend Mr. Gallagher, now an independent loss adjuster, had honored them with a call. Mr. Gunterson confessed that he was considering a change in the Guardian's Boston representation; he had not gone so far as to commit himself, but he was looking around--of course among the few agents with whom non-Conference companies predominated.

It had been agreed by the trio that McCoy should do the talking for the firm, and McCoy came from an island where the art of persuasive conversation is far from extinct.

"Well, Mr. Gunterson, I want to say right off the reel that Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy would like very much to take on the Guardian. The Guardian's got a good name, and its policy sells well; and in the last few weeks, especially--" he threw out suggestively.

"What's the last few weeks got to do with it?" inquired the innocent and obliging visitor.

"Well, I meant the company's desirability from the agent's point of view. You see, they've never had a really broad-gauge man directing their underwriting before you took charge. Nice people, but narrow, you understand--not a company that an agent would feel drawn to.

O'Connor never had no nerve--or if he did, Wintermuth never let him show it. Now, no really progressive agent can do business with a petty piker. To get the best results you've got to let your agent run his field. Take your time, make the best appointment you can, and then give your agent a free hand--that's the only way to get a liberal income and make money too."

To these sage but scarcely original observations Sternberg and Bloom gravely a.s.sented.

"In case you found a place for us in your office, what kind of an income do you think we might expect?" Mr. Gunterson asked.

"Well, we wouldn't take you at all unless we could satisfy you,"

replied McCoy. "And I swear I don't quite see how we could take on another company just now. How much are you getting now from Osgood?

Well, if we couldn't do better than that, we'd rather pa.s.s you up--although I don't know of any company that looks better to me than the Guardian under its present management. How about it, Jake?"

Mr. Bloom considered deeply.

"New business of the cla.s.s this office writes is hard to get," he said thoughtfully. "It don't fall off the trees into your lap. But we might do it if we gave up a couple of our smaller companies. If we threw out the German National and the Spokane Fire, we might do something."

The two companies named had removed their policies and supplies from the office only the previous day, their respective special agents, after an underwriting experience too painful to describe, having descended in grief and rage upon their Boston representatives when patience had ceased to be a virtue and self-preservation had become the salient motive.

"There's thirty thousand apiece, easy--say sixty thousand the first year. Yes, we could let them two go, and if you were in any kind of way liberal--if you wrote a fair line in the congested district--we could guarantee you sixty thousand, and I believe we'd make it seventy-five."

Mr. Gunterson calculated this with deliberation. It was a great deal more than the Guardian had been receiving from Silas Osgood and Company; it sounded too good to be real.

"What kind of a record have you had?" he asked cautiously.

"Record? Well, good for some of our companies and not so good for others. We've had some pretty hard knocks, but we don't write practically nothing but first-cla.s.s business, and of course we write pretty good-sized lines; and when some sprinkled risk or a brick apartment house or a wool storage warehouse makes a total loss, it hits us pretty hard. Still, if you keep on taking on the best business, you're bound to make money in the long run. I suppose we turn down two thirds of what's offered to us over the counter."

"What commission would you expect?" Mr. Gunterson inquired.