"Well," said Knowlton, "we'll see. We'll try 'em all out before we decide."
At this moment another customer entered, to be conducted by the head-waitress with like ceremony, as in our case, to his seat, and our blaze of glory departed to ascertain his wants. As Knowlton rose, seized a toothpick, and started for the door, followed by me, I heard our waitress beginning her searching personal questions all over again.
We paid for our breakfasts—fifty cents apiece—at the desk, where the clerk took the same lack of interest in the transaction as before. Knowlton asked him the way to the Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company, our destination.
"West Twelfth Street car to the end of the line," was the brief reply, and with that we set forth.
Although it was still very early in the morning, or seemed so to me, unaccustomed to begin a day's work at six thirty, it was rapidly growing hot with a peculiar dry, intense heat that made the sunlight painful. West Twelfth Street proved to be in the direction of the railway station, and, although it was only two blocks from Schaefer's, I was thoroughly moist with perspiration when we joined a throng of blue-overalled mechanics, waiting with shining tin dinner pails on the corner for the arrival of the car. There was no car in sight when we got there, and as we waited I listened to the peculiarly blasphemous conversation of the men about me. Their talk was intelligent, far more so than that of a corresponding class of English working-men, but it was interlarded with an original and soul-curdling profanity. Rates of pay, politics, baseball, their foremen, and women seemed to be the staples of conversation. Young men predominated. Their faces were sharp and eager, and they seemed tense and alive, although affecting and even boasting of their dislike for their "jobs" and their dissatisfaction with the management of their factories. But it was obvious at a glance that they were well fed and clothed, and were excellent workmen. They played incessant practical jokes on each other, rolled innumerable cigarettes, and cheered the electric car when it at last arrived. Long before it stopped they charged the car en masse, with rough good nature, greeting conductor and motorman by name, and filled every inch of it before Knowlton and I could fight our way to a bare foothold upon the rear platform.
The car whizzed out a most dreary street—drearier even than the streets across the river in Bermondsey or over beyond the Elephant and Castle. It was six inches deep in a choking grey dust which the fast moving car stirred up into a remorseless searching cloud. Overhead in the hot blue sky hung masses of coal smoke, now beginning to pour from factory chimneys. Parallel to the car line ran a railway track, quite unguarded from the street proper, along which switch engines with freight cars smoked and clanged. On either side we passed an endless row of factory buildings, some of brick, but more of wood—even those which were several stories high. In spite of the streaming, intense sunlight and the final blue of the sky, the scene was one of desolation.
The car stopped with a jerk—we had reached the end, it seemed—and with great promptness we pushed one another off the rear platform. This crowd of workmen simply treated Knowlton and me as non-existent, and, if we happened to be in front of them, attempted the physical paradox of walking right through us. As I reached the pavement, I saw before me a long narrow two-storied brick building, surrounded by various lesser sheds and outhouses, the whole surmounted by a huge sign which read "Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company." This was the magic purse of Fortunatus which I had come so far to seek. It looked prosaic enough, but not so dismal as my ride out Twelfth Street had caused me to fear. It was the last of Twelfth Street, apparently, and the last of the factories at that end of town, for beyond I caught a glimpse of green cornfields, grey wooden fences, and, still further on, a blue sliver of the lake. "At least, there's air from the west," I thought, as I followed Knowlton, my heart thumping curiously now I was almost face to face with my ordeal.
We entered a door marked "Office—No Admittance Except on Business," and climbed a steep flight of stairs to pass into a railed-off outer room full of desks and typewriters. There was only one young man, slightly bald, with his coat off, adjusting black alpaca half-sleeves over his cuffs as we entered. From one lip hung the inevitable toothpick which seemed to be the totem pole of these regional tribes. He looked up at us and advanced to meet us, holding out one hand.
"Mr. Knowlton? I'm sure glad to meet you. Walk in. My name's Kane, Phil Kane, and I'm general sales manager for the D. H. M. Co."
He shook Knowlton's hand warmly.