WRONG NUMBER
I
They called him Wrong Number in the bank because he happened so often and was so annoying. His presence in the White River National was painful to bookkeepers, tellers and other practical persons connected with this financial Gibraltar because, without having any definite assignment, he was always busy. He was carried on the rolls as a messenger, though he performed none of the duties commonly associated with the vocation, calling or job of a bank messenger. No one assumed responsibility for Wrong Number, not even the Cashier or the First Vice President, and such rights, powers and immunities as he enjoyed were either self-conferred or were derived from the President, Mr. Webster G. Burgess.
Wrong Number’s true appellation as disclosed by the payroll was Clarence E. Tibbotts, and the cynical note-teller averred that the initial stood for Elmer. A small, compact figure, fair hair, combed to onion-skin smoothness, a pinkish face and baby blue eyes—there was nothing in Wrong Number’s appearance to arouse animosity in any but the stoniest heart. Wrong Number was polite, he was unfailingly cheerful, and when called upon to assist in one place or another he responded with alacrity and no one had reason to complain of his efficiency. He could produce a letter from the files quicker than the regular archivist, or he could play upon the adding machine as though it were an instrument of ten strings. No one had ever taught him anything; no one had the slightest intention of teaching him anything, and yet by imperceptible degrees, he, as a free lance, passed through a period of mild tolerance into acceptance as a valued and useful member of the staff. In the Liberty Loan rushes that well-nigh swamped the department, Wrong Number knew the answers to all the questions that were fired through the wickets. Distracted ladies who had lost their receipts for the first payment and timidly reported this fact found Wrong Number patient and helpful. An early fear in the cages that the president had put Wrong Number into the bank as a spy upon the clerical force was dispelled, when it became known that the young man did on several occasions, conceal or connive at concealing some of those slight errors and inadvertencies that happen in the best regulated of banks. Wrong Number was an enigma, an increasing mystery, nor was he without his enjoyment of his associates’ mystification.
Wrong Number’s past, though veiled in mist in the White River National, may here be fully and truthfully disclosed. To understand Wrong Number one must also understand Mr. Webster G. Burgess, his discoverer and patron. In addition to being an astute and successful banker, Mr. Burgess owned a string of horses and sent them over various circuits at the usual seasons, and he owned a stock farm of high repute as may be learned by reference to any of the authoritative stud books. If his discreet connection with the racetrack encouraged the belief that Mr. Burgess was what is vulgarly termed a “sport,” his prize-winning short-horns in conjunction with his generous philanthropies did much to minimize the sin of the racing stable.
Mr. Burgess “took care of his customers,” a heavenly attribute in any banker, and did not harass them unnecessarily. Other bankers in town who passed the plate every Sunday in church and knew nothing of Horse might be suspicious and nervous and even disagreeable in a pinch, but Mr. Burgess’s many admirers believed that he derived from his association with Horse a breadth of vision and an optimism peculiarly grateful to that considerable number of merchants and manufacturers who appreciate a liberal line of credit. Mr. Burgess was sparing of language and his “Yes” and “No” were equally pointed and final. Some of his utterances, such as a warning to the hand-shaking Vice president, “Don’t bring any anemic people into my office,” were widely quoted in business circles. “This is a bank, not the sheriff’s office,” he remarked to a customer who was turning a sharp corner. “I’ve told the boys to renew your notes. Quit sobbing and get back on your job.”
It was by reason of their devotion to Horse that Burgess and Wrong Number met and knew instantly that the fates had ordained the meeting. Wrong Number had grown up in the equine atmosphere of Lexington—the Lexington of the Blue Grass, and his knowledge of the rest of the world was gained from his journeys to race meets with specimens of the horse kind. Actors are not more superstitious than horsemen and from the time he became a volunteer assistant to the stablemen on the big horse farm the superstition gained ground among the cognoscenti that the wings of the Angel of Good Luck had brushed his tow head and that he was a mascot of superior endowment. As he transferred his allegiance from one stable to another luck followed him, and when he picked, one year, as a Derby winner the unlikeliest horse on the card and that horse galloped home an easy winner, weird and uncanny powers were attributed to Wrong Number.
Burgess had found him sitting on an upturned pail in front of the stable that housed “Lord Templeton” at six o’clock of the morning of the day the stallion strode away from a brilliant field and won an enviable prestige for the Burgess stables. Inspired by Wrong Number’s confidence, Burgess had backed “Lord Templeton” far more heavily than he had intended and as a result was enabled to credit a small fortune to his horse account. For four seasons the boy followed the Burgess string and in winter made himself useful on the Burgess farm somewhere north of the Ohio. He showed a genius for acquiring information and was cautious in expressing opinions; he was industrious in an unobtrusive fashion; and he knew about all there is to know about the care and training of horses. Being a prophet he saw the beginning of the end of the Horse Age and sniffed gasoline without resentment, and could take an automobile to pieces and put it together again. Burgess was his ideal of a gentleman, a banker, and a horseman, and he carried his idolatry to the point of imitating his benefactor in manner, dress and speech. Finding that Wrong Number was going into town for a night course in a business college, Burgess paid the bill, and seeing that Wrong Number at twenty-two had outgrown Horse and aspired to a career in finance, Burgess took him into the bank with an injunction to the cashier to “turn him loose in the lot.”
While Mrs. Burgess enjoyed the excitement and flutter of grandstands, her sense of humor was unequal to a full appreciation of the social charm of those gentlemen who live in close proximity to Horse. Their ways and their manners and their dialect did not in fact amuse her, and she entertained an utterly unwarranted suspicion that they were not respectable. It was with the gravest doubts and misgivings that she witnessed the rise of Wrong Number who, after that young gentleman’s transfer to the bank, turned up in the Burgess town house rather frequently and had even adorned her table.
On an occasion Web had wired her from Chicago that he couldn’t get home for a certain charity concert which she had initiated and suggested that she commandeer Wrong Number as an escort; and as no other man of her acquaintance was able or willing to represent the shirking Webster, she did in fact utilize Wrong Number. She was obliged to confess that he had been of the greatest assistance to her and that but for his prompt and vigorous action the programmes, which had not been delivered at the music hall, would never have been recovered from the theatre to which an erring messenger had carried them. Wrong Number, arrayed in evening dress, had handed her in and out of her box and made himself agreeable to three other wives of tired business men who loathed concerts and pleaded important business engagements whenever their peace was menaced by classical music. Mrs. Burgess’s bitterness toward Webster for his unaccountable interest in Wrong Number was abated somewhat by these circumstances though she concealed the fact and berated him for his desertion in an hour of need.