Mr. Fleming accompanied Cameron to the door.
“Now, a word with you, Mr. Cameron. You may find Mr. Bates a little difficult—he is something of a driver—but, remember, he is in charge of this office; I never interfere with his orders.”
“I understand, Sir,” said Cameron, resolving that, at all costs, he should obey Mr. Bates' orders, if only to show the general manager he could recognise and appreciate a gentleman when he saw one.
Mr. Fleming was putting it mildly when he described Mr. Bates as “something of a driver.” The whole office staff, from Jimmy, the office boy, to Jacobs, the gentle, white-haired clerk, whose desk was in the farthest corner of the room, felt the drive. He was not only office manager, but office master as well. His rule was absolute, and from his decisions there was no appeal. The general manager went on the theory that it was waste of energy to keep a dog and bark himself. In the policy that governed the office there were two rules which Mr. Bates enforced with the utmost rigidity—the first, namely, that every member of the staff must be in his or her place and ready for work when the clock struck eight; the other, that each member of the staff must work independently of every other member. A man must know his business, and go through with it; if he required instructions, he must apply to the office manager. But, as a rule, one experience of such application sufficed for the whole period of a clerk's service in the office of the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company, for Mr. Bates was gifted with such an exquisiteness of ironical speech that the whole staff were wont to pause in the rush of their work to listen and to admire when a new member was unhappy enough to require instructions, their silent admiration acting as a spur to Mr. Bates' ingenuity in the invention of ironical discourse.
Of the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of Mr. Bates' system, however, Cameron was quite ignorant; nor had his experience in the office of Messrs. Rae & Macpherson been such as to impress upon him the necessity of a close observation of the flight of time. It did not disturb him, therefore, to notice as he strolled into the offices of the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company the next morning that the hands of the clock showed six minutes past the hour fixed for the beginning of the day's work. The office staff shivered in an ecstasy of expectant delight. Cameron walked nonchalantly to Mr. Bates' desk, his overcoat on his arm, his cap in his hand.
“Good morning, Sir,” he said.
Mr. Bates finished writing a sentence, looked up, and nodded a brief good morning.
“We deposit our street attire on the hooks behind the door, yonder!” he said with emphatic politeness, pointing across the room.
Cameron flushed, as in passing his desk he observed the pleased smile on the lanky boy's sallow face.
“You evidently were not aware of the hours of this office,” continued Mr. Bates when Cameron had returned. “We open at eight o'clock.”