COLONEL CRAIGHILL reached his office in anything but an amiable state of mind. As he disappeared into his own room and closed the door the chief book-keeper exchanged a wink with the prettiest stenographer, and the messenger turned up the collar of his coat to signify falling temperature.
At his own desk Colonel Craighill scanned the summarized reports that were so sufficient to his executive sense, but this inspection gave him no pleasure; and his personal mail disclosed matters that did not please him. And against all precedents the cashier entered unbidden, bearing memoranda that deepened the annoyance that Colonel Craighill had carried to the office. And, crowning irritation, the president of the Hercules National Bank, in which he was a director, and the cashier of the Greater City Trust Company called him by telephone and begged his early attendance at their offices.
In his perturbation Colonel Craighill narrowly escaped referring his own cashier to Walsh; and the fact that Walsh would, just at this moment, have been a substantial reed to lean upon did not ease Colonel Craighill’s burdens. “Ask Walsh,” had been, in old times, before the Wayne-Craighill Mercantile Company passed into Walsh’s hands, the commonest phrase of the office; and Walsh’s successor could not, in the nature of things, know the inner history of the many Craighill interests as Tom Walsh had. Several times within the past month, “Ask Wayne” had been heard in the outer offices; and this was not more remarkable than that, when the appeal had been made, it was found that Wayne knew!
Wayne was busy at his desk when his father entered and closed the door behind him. He had been checking an estimate of his father’s liabilities and he knew that Roger Craighill owed a large sum of money—a very large sum indeed—and in December the fog of the October scare still lay upon the land.
“Wayne, I want to see you for a few minutes,” and Wayne started guiltily at the sound of his father’s voice and thrust his memorandum out of sight in a drawer.
“You may not be aware,” began Colonel Craighill, “that the general financial conditions are serious.”
Wayne’s resentment rose on the instant, as always at these implications that he was unacquainted with the affairs of the business world. A sharp retort was on his lips; the morning papers had contained the latest of his father’s reassuring statements as to the brightening outlook, but he answered:
“Well, it’s been on for some time, hasn’t it? I thought everybody began to get to cover last spring.”
“Things tightened up in the fall but I had expected the trouble to be over by this time, but the pinch has grown sharper than I expected. The conditions are very unusual but they ought to adjust themselves. My anticipations have all been correct, though our financial mechanism is still slightly out of adjustment in vital quarters. My own affairs are, of course, subject to general laws like everyone else’s.”
Luck is a goddess in all our mythologies, but we credit our own wisdom when affairs prosper. Mistakes, when we assume blame for them at all, are at the most mere sinistral inadvertences: heavier losses we charge to the blindfold goddess and her dice-box.