II.
I was in a hurry to have the position filled; it wasn’t much of a job, and I wanted to waste as little time as possible, so I advertised and gave my office address. Of course it was foolish, but I was pressed with work and did it without thought. However, I saw no reason why the janitor should lose his temper. Anyway, I can’t abide impertinence in an inferior, and I let him understand this before the elevator reached the top floor. Once there I admitted to myself he had reason for—well, for respectful annoyance. A pathway was forced for me through the crowd of men which choked the hallway and blocked the entrance to my office, but I couldn’t get in until a score or so were driven down the stairs. I locked myself in my private room and cursed my folly and the janitor’s impudence. But there was no time to lose—we had to be rid of those men—so I slipped a note under the door directing my clerk to send them in to me, one at a time, until further orders.
It didn’t take long to find the man I wanted. He was the third in line, I think—a respectable fellow—far above the position, I should have said, but he told me he wasn’t, that he had a family to support, and all that sort of thing, so I engaged him and sent him out with a note to the superintendent. As he left the room I hastily tore open a letter which looked as though it needed an immediate answer. At the same moment my door opened again.
“Confound that ass Junkin, why the devil didn’t he give me time to ring the bell and tell him I’d engaged a man!—Why the devil doesn’t he——”
It was just as I expected. That letter was important to a degree, and during the next ten minutes I was so deeply absorbed that when I looked up from my reading and saw a man standing beside me, I started with a nervous exclamation which turned to a surprised greeting as I recognised Sandy McWhiffle. He had changed somewhat since I’d seen him last—six months before—and not for the better. His gaunt face was even more sallow than before, giving to the features a harder caste, chiselling the nose into more of a hook, and deepening the lines under the eyes. He looked ravenous, but not with the hunger of appetite, and I thought—yes, I was quite sure—he smelt rather strongly of liquor.
“Well, Sandy,” I began, “where did you come from?”
“From the hospital,” he answered.
“Ah,” I observed, “bad places—those—er—hospitals, Sandy. They breed a great deal of sickness. There are seventy-two in my district.”
“You think I’ve been in a saloon, drinking?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I answered, with a mental reservation favouring knowledge.
“Well, I haven’t been, anyway. You smell whisky on me. They gave it to me at the hospital so’s I could get down here. I ain’t discharged yet, but I was bound to come when I saw your name in the papers and knew I’d get the job if I could only see you. I’ve been here since six this morning. Will you give me a try at it?”
“Well, no, I can’t, McWhiffle,” I said, with a good deal more ease than I could have felt if I hadn’t smelt the liquor and heard that hospital story. “The fact is, I’ve taken a man on, and so the job’s gone.”
Sandy gazed at me with a bewildered, frightened look, but his answer was only a mumble about his being sure of a steady job this time, seeing how he knew me and all.
Mechanically I made a memorandum of the hospital at which he was allegedly a patient, but my mail was awaiting me, and he must have gone while I was intent upon its contents. Anyway, he’d disappeared when I looked up, but the odour of whisky in the room was strong enough to destroy any interest I might have felt in my late supper companion.
Whisky and “that tired feeling” are mainly responsible for the army of the “unemployed.” They talk about there not being enough work to go around! One good job’d last the whole shiftless lot a year. They don’t want work, they want help—permanent and increasing help.
Some such thoughts occupied me until I happened to see a telegram protruding from the bundle of unopened letters on my desk.
“Gods and powers! Will that triple idiot never learn to separate the telegrams from the letters? What the devil—Junkin! Junkin!” I crashed the bell with each repetition of the fool’s name, at the same time tearing open the yellow envelope.
“For God’s sake, Junkin, how many times must you be told to keep these things separate? Half an hour gone, and here’s this cipher still untranslated. Do you think you’ve nothing to do but draw your salary——”
“I’m sorry, Sir, but you see these men came——”
“Quick, get the code and translate—don’t stand around arguing! Here, give me the book!”
I rushed into the outer office, but stopped almost at the threshold of my door. The room was completely encircled by a line of men, and every eye in the crowd was turned upon me. What a motley throng it was—shabbily dressed and unshaven for the most part—untidy to the point of dirtiness. Hardly a bright, healthy face among the lot—surly and ill-tempered looking many of them. Bah! I don’t like humanity in the abstract, and loathe it in the concrete of crowds. My disgust must have been apparent, and my thought audible as I said:
“Now, my men, the place is filled. You’d better all clear out.”
But my words, forbidding as they were, did not free me.
“No, I haven’t any other job. No, I don’t expect to have any.... Yes, well, I can’t help it, can I?... Of course, I know—don’t bother me! I tell you the place is gone.... No, we never have any places in this office.... Charity Organisation, Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue.... Yes, yes, yes, I don’t doubt it, but I tell you I’ve filled the job—Junkin—get the janitor and clear the room—they’ll drive me mad!”
Almost frenzied, I rushed back to my private office.
How I was worked that day! The Section Traction Company almost caught us napping, and they’d have done it surely if we hadn’t obtained the Judge’s signature to the injunction by four o’clock that afternoon. They not only laid two miles of track inside of eighteen hours, and came within four blocks of crossing our main line, but they sold our stock on the market, thousands and thousands of shares—poured it in from ten o’clock till three, pounding and hammering every supporting bid we made, and the only thing that saved us was the Exchange closing at three o’clock. As it was, our Board man, Reynolds, became hysterical as the gong struck, and he’s never been up to much since.
Well, it was a shrewd, ably-planned move, and, executed earlier, would have succeeded in wrecking us. But it cost them, as we figured it, two millions, and sent them higher than a kite. I didn’t know they were so big—employed three thousand men, they say.