"Remember! Never again the typewriter!" the physician adjured sternly, when the fortnight of John's captivity was done. For although conveying this verdict immediately to Mitchell, the doctor had postponed its announcement to his patient till his discharge from the hospital. John was stunned. The typewriter was his bread. At first he rebelled, but with a rush like the swirl of waters over his head, the memory of that night when he was blind for an hour came to him and humbled him.
With the trembling courage of a coward, he opened the door of room 513; saw with sickening heart the strange face at his desk, shook the flabby hand of Heitmuller, and inwardly braced himself to enter for the last time between the double doors, where presently he confessed his plight as if it had been a crime.
"You don't imagine we would let you go, do you?" Mr. Mitchell asked, while an expression of amazement grew upon his face till it became a laugh. "Why, Jack"—Mr. Mitchell had never called him Jack before—"we should have to pay you a salary just to stick around and keep the rest of us straight."
The stenographer gulped. It was not the first note of praise he had ever received from this kindly railroad man, but it was the first time Mr. Mitchell or any one else in that whole office had ever acknowledged to John that he was valuable for what he knew as well as for what he beat out of his finger-tips.
"You are going to be my private secretary," explained Mr. Mitchell, still chuckling at the simplicity of John. "I have few letters to write, and you know enough to do most of them without dictation. You keep me reminded of things; handle my telephone calls and appointments. Gallagher says your eyes will probably give you no trouble whatever under these conditions. The salary will be fifteen dollars more a month."
The big awkward man was too confusedly grateful and overwhelmed even to attempt to murmur his thanks. Instead, he did a thing of unheard-of boldness. He reached over and touched the General Freight Agent on the arm,—just stabbed him in the upper, fleshy part of the arm with a thrust of his stiff fingers, accompanying the act with a monosyllabic croak. It was a clumsy touch, and it was presuming; but to a man of understanding, it was eloquent.
After one month in this new position, John found himself seeing the transportation business through new glasses. He had passed from details to principles, and the change stimulated his mind enormously.
One of his new duties now was to sit at the General Freight Agent's elbow in conferences, and later to make summaries of the arguments pro and con. In transcribing Mr. Mitchell's part of these talks, it interested John to elaborate a little. Soon he ventured to make the General Freight Agent's points stronger when he felt it could be done, and then waited, after laying the transcript on the big man's desk, for some word of reproof. Reproof did not come, and yet John thought the changes must be noticed.
But one day H. B. Anderson, Assistant General Freight Agent of the San Francisco and El Paso, a rival line, was in the office.
"Mitchell," Anderson began, "I am compelled to admit your argument reads a blamed sight stronger than it sounded to me the other day."