"Oh, yes," replied Mr. Wintermuth, with a smile. "You mean Charles Lyon. He is President of the Liberty Fire—quite a new company. He is a clever talker—they say he can talk a bird out of a tree. To have organized the Liberty and gotten it started with real cash paid in was a distinct personal achievement. But I'm afraid he's a better promoter than an underwriter; the Liberty has been losing money at an astonishing rate ever since it actually commenced to write business. If he succeeds in cutting the fire waste of the country in two, his own company may survive and may even share in the benefits, although probably not to a disproportionate extent. But I'm afraid he's too much of a philanthropist—a little too unselfish for us. We want an underwriter, not a philanthropist—some one more interested in keeping down the losses of the Guardian Fire Insurance Company than those of the United States of America. And I imagine that Lyon at present would stick to the Liberty anyway, although I fancy he will be open for a new position before very long."
"Well, I move that the President be empowered to hunt up the most likely candidate he can find for Mr. O'Connor's position," said Mr. Whitehill, and the motion was carried. An adjournment was taken for a week, or until such time as Mr. Wintermuth should have a candidate ready for consideration.
There was one decided drawback to the successful accomplishment of the task to which Mr. Wintermuth now addressed himself. This was the fact that the Guardian was not disposed to pay exorbitantly for an underwriting head. It was willing to pay a reasonable salary, but it was not a corporation of unlimited resources or gigantic income, and the expense ratio had perforce to be considered. Plenty of men whose names occurred to the President would have been competent and in every way eligible, but they were men of recognized standing in the profession, and already occupied positions of trust. It is not often that highly capable men are open to change without unusual inducement, and Mr. Wintermuth, scanning the ranks of possibilities, found them dishearteningly scanty. All the men he wanted, he knew perfectly well could not be detached from their present allegiances, and the men who were detachable he didn't want. Moreover, it had been a good many years since Mr. Wintermuth had been actively at work in the field. The men with whose character and ability he was most familiar were too advanced in age; the younger generation he did not know.
Virgil and several others of the early classic authors have commented upon the surprising swiftness with which common rumor travels. If its speed was provocative of comment in those bygone days, which lacked most of the accelerating features now found on every hand, it should certainly fare far faster at the present time. At any rate, no tidings ever spread through the subliminal Chinese empire, warning of Magyar hordes beyond the Wall, with greater celerity than the news of Mr. Wintermuth's quest through the insurance world. The waves of it rolled echoing from office to office, from special agent to special agent, from city to city.
Like vultures out of an empty sky came the effects. Circumspect as Mr. Wintermuth had been, keeping the object of his search as secret as might be, it was not more than four days before he was driven ruefully to reflect that he might just as well have put an advertisement in the paper. Apparently everybody in the insurance world, including especially the insurance editor of the paper in which he did not advertise, knew he had decided to go outside his own office for a managing underwriter; and apparently every person within reach had some one—usually himself—to recommend for the position. Mr. Wintermuth finally found it necessary to deny himself to aspiring applicants who besieged his office, and went out on a still hunt in the lanes and byways where he was less likely to meet people with axes to grind. It was on one of these excursions, in a most natural and unpremeditated manner, that he found himself confronted by Mr. Samuel Gunterson.
Mr. Gunterson had, it was true, been suggested as a possibility, but through an outside source which Mr. Wintermuth felt sure was most unlikely to have been stimulated to the suggestion by the person most interested. The President was in a mood of despondency, incidental to the painful discovery of how frail a tissue of truth most of the recommendations of his applicants' supporters usually possessed. He had spent four days investigating the records of men whose names, enthusiastically presented to him, proved to be the only commendable thing about them. Now, after this discouraging experience, he hailed the prospect of independent selection with relief. It was with much lightened depression that he recognized that Mr. Gunterson was not—actively, at least—endeavoring to secure for himself the Guardian appointment, but seemed, on the contrary, quite well contented in his present position, and Mr. Wintermuth settled down to overtures with almost his customary cheerfulness.
Mr. Samuel Gunterson was, at this period of his highly variegated underwriting career, some forty-six years of age. A life whose private character no journal had as yet been tempted to divulge had left no trace upon the impassive contour of his face nor on the somber dignity of his bearing. He was of middle height, and somewhat stout, his hair was iron-gray, and he carried himself with a sort of restrained or reflective optimism, as though he forced himself to be cheerful and companionable at the cost of untold anguish to an inner ego that no one knew. It was an effective carriage, and few people attempted to take liberties with its possessor.
During his experience in the fire insurance business Mr. Gunterson had contrived to become connected with and separated from more different concerns than could be readily computed. He had averaged somewhat better than one change bi-yearly, and the history of his peregrinations could never have been written, for no one but himself could have furnished the necessary material, and on all matters concerning himself Mr. Gunterson was as cryptic as were the Delphic oracles of old. He chose to consider himself a victim of an astonishing series of circumstances, and in a certain sense this was true, although the circumstances were largely of his own creation. Good companies and bad, established concerns and promoters' flotations, auspicious ventures and forlorn hopes—he had been associated with them all, and from each one he emerged with untroubled calm while the unhappy machine, its steering gear usually crippled by his hand alone, went plunging downhill over the cliff into the soundless waters of oblivion.
Mr. Gunterson had been either President or underwriting manager of the Eureka Insurance Company of Pittsburgh, whose demise scarcely surprised those who were aware that its remarkable popularity with its agents was mainly due to the willingness with which it accepted their bad business in almost unlimited quantities; of the Florida Fire and Marine, whose annual premium income of about eight times the amount warranted by its resources attracted the thoughtful attention, although scarcely the respect, of some of the leading underwriters in New York; of the United of Omaha, whose heavy investment in the bonds of a subsequently exploded copper company promoted by Mr. Gunterson's brother-in-law precipitated its insolvency even before its underwriting losses could overtake it; of the Planters of Oklahoma, which the Insurance Commissioner of Massachusetts one day examined with the interesting discovery that its liabilities were nearly three times its assets; and of the Constitution Fire of Washington, D.C., which ceased to issue policies by request of the United States Government. From each of these unfortunate endeavors Mr. Gunterson had emerged with unblemished reputation, and even enhanced gravity and authority due to his wider experience, and with his air of slightly melancholy urbanity diminished not at all.
Four years prior to the time when fate led Mr. Wintermuth to his door, he had been the nerve if not the brains of the general agency of Hill and Daggett of William Street, representing in an extensive territory a fleet of some seven small companies with more sporting spirit than assets, and his astute helmsmanship had resulted in running all seven soundly and irrevocably upon the rocks. From the wreck he emerged, in the first lifeboat to leave, with his broad white brow as untroubled and serene as ever. The collapse, however, left him without visible means of support, so he took a short trip abroad, returning in a month or two as the American manager of a large German company which was just entering the United States.