“I’ve sometimes wondered whether Copeland shouldn’t be saved—a good subject for experiment, at least. To demonstrate that we have the courage of our convictions we must take a hard nut to crack. Queer thing, that religious effort, as we now see it, is directed solely to the poor and needy—the down-and-outers. Take a man of the day laborer type, the sort that casually beats his wife for recreation: gets clear down in the gutter, and the Salvation Army tackles his case—sets him up again; good work! Great institution—the Army. But you take the men who belong to clubs and eat course dinners; they don’t beat their wives—only say unpleasant things to them when the bills run too high; when such fellows get restless, absorb too much drink, neglect business, begin seeing their bankers in the back room—where’s your man, society, agency, to put the necessary hand on that particular shoulder? What we do, Amidon, when we see such a chap turning up Monday morning with a hang-over from Saturday night, is to remark, ‘Too bad about Tom’—or ‘Dick’ or ‘Harry’—and then go to the club and order a cocktail. That’s how we meet our reciprocal obligations!”
There seemed nothing that Amidon could add to this; but plainly it was “Billy” Copeland, who was in Eaton’s mind, and no imaginary Tom, Dick, or Harry; so he ventured to remark:—
“Well, I guess the boss hasn’t let go yet; he’ll pull up. He’s the best man on the street to work for—when you can feel you are working for him.”
“Pleasanter to work for a boss than the boss’s creditors, of course. And minor stockholders sometimes get anxious and cause trouble.”
These utterances were like important memoranda jotted down on the margin of a page whose text is of little value in itself. Amidon stared blankly.
“Well, I don’t know about that; I guess the house has always made money. We do more business than any other drug house in the State.”
“An excellent business, of course. And we’d imagine that a man falling heir to it would take pride in holding on to it. But if he doesn’t, somebody else will take the job. I’ve seen the signs change on a good many business houses in my day. Your boss has taken several little flyers on the outside since his father died; he’s rather fascinated with the idea of being vice-president of new concerns: minor trust companies, doubtful manufacturing schemes, and that sort of thing. All this is entirely in confidence; I’m using you as an incentive to thought. Kindly consider that my reflections are all inter nos. That murder business got us started—but of course, it hasn’t anything to do with your boss. It had occurred to me, though, that both you and I may have certain reciprocal obligations in some of these matters we have touched on. One never can tell where the opportunity to serve—to lay that friendly hand on a particular shoulder—may present itself!”
During a rather long silence Amidon pondered this, wholly mystified as to just what he or John Cecil Eaton had to do with the affairs of William B. Copeland, a gentleman whose shoulder did not, on the instant, seem to present itself as a likely object for the laying on of hands. But Eaton was saying:—
“Coming to the matter of outside investments, there’s Kinney’s ivory cement. The Kinney Manufacturing Company’s a client of mine, and it wouldn’t be proper for me to express an opinion even to you, Amidon, on the stability of its patents.”
“Well,” said Amidon, “everybody thinks Kinney’s making all the money there is; he’d have to, to put as much jam on his bread as he’s spreading. I meet his road men now and then, and they sob because they can’t fill orders. They’re not looking for new business; they’re shaking hands with the customers they’ve already got and telling ’em to sit at the freight house until the factory catches up with orders. And before he hit that cement, Kinney was bookkeeper in a brickyard!”