It is doubtful by what, if any, method these Continental-European companies select their representatives in this country. Ability and probity seem to be regarded lightly—as scarcely worth careful investigation. But no well-known man whose lack of success has left unimpaired his fluency of speech need despair. So long as new foreign companies continue to establish American branches and appoint managers, any amiable detrimental with sufficient verbosity may secure for himself a comfortable berth. Mr. Gunterson had now for almost two years been in charge of the United States business of the Elsass-Lothringen on a loss ratio so surprisingly satisfactory that he himself was absolutely at a loss to explain it. For the first time in a considerable period he felt himself to be in a strong strategic position, and he received Mr. Wintermuth in what only his extreme courtesy prevented from being an offhand manner. It was obvious that he had no intention nor desire to meet any one halfway.
Now Mr. Wintermuth had always held that a man too anxious to change his affiliations was no proper man for the Guardian, and this indifference of Mr. Gunterson pleased him. It further developed that Mr. Gunterson had at last, in the Elsass-Lothringen, found almost what he had always been seeking; his company gave him an entirely free hand,—a highly desirable thing for an underwriting manager,—and he did not know whether he should ever care about looking for anything else. At the psychological moment he nonchalantly displayed to Mr. Wintermuth's interested gaze his twenty-two per cent loss ratio for the Elsass-Lothringen, but in the next breath, recalling a few recent preliminary tremors unpleasantly suggestive of other catastrophes through which he had passed, and not to overlook a link in his entangling chain, he stated that after all, though, he was an American, and intimated that as such he sometimes felt he would a little rather devote himself to the interests of an American underwriting institution. Only occasionally did he have this feeling—still, it was there, and he must needs admit it.
Such was the man to whom Mr. Wintermuth had come, and to whom he ultimately extended an invitation to present himself for the consideration of the Guardian's directorate. And Mr. Gunterson, uneasily suspecting that the structure of the German institution might at any moment collapse at some quite unexpected point, and calculating that he might secure the managerial berth for his equally inefficient brother-in-law, and thus keep the salary in the family, cautiously accepted the invitation. So this was the man who, a few days later, faced the full board, who with affable confidence in his own abilities won over even the somewhat skeptical Whitehill, and who was, on the ninth day of December, 1912, elected Vice-President and underwriting manager of the Guardian Fire Insurance Company of New York.
He guaranteed to free himself from his Teutonic engagements and alliances in time to join the Guardian by the first of January. Suave and profound, with his grave glance suggesting unutterable depth, he bowed himself out of the presence of Mr. Wintermuth and the other directors. And the ruminative elevator carried to the street level the best satisfied man in New York.
At once the appointment was made public, and newspapers and individuals alike refrained from expressing what the better informed among them feared and expected. Mr. Wintermuth heard nothing on every hand but flattering comments on his own acumen, and praises of the sterling qualities and experience of his new appointee. In fact, the insurance press as a whole spoke of Mr. Gunterson almost as kindly as though he had died, and it was—unofficially—understood that Mr. O'Connor realized that he had made a great mistake. Mr. O'Connor, however, having with considerable satisfaction moved into the Salamander's big room with "President" in brass letters on the door, ably restrained any irritation he may have felt. Privately he assured Mr. Murch that things could not have turned out better if he had ordered them himself.
"Gunterson is the very man for our purposes," he said. "He's a stuffed shirt if there ever was one. I couldn't have made a better appointment—for us—myself. We can bleed the Guardian of every desirable agent they've got, and he won't know how to stop us."
And Mr. Murch, smiling, suggested that the bleeding begin as soon as possible.
In the Guardian itself, opinion was divided. No one in the office knew much, if anything, about the new underwriter, and most of the men were inclined, in view of Mr. Wintermuth's recommendation, to take him at his own assessed valuation. But not so Wagstaff, and not so Smith. Wagstaff because it hung in his memory how, many years before, this same Gunterson had by rather questionable methods worsted him in a transaction affecting a schedule of cotton compresses in Georgia; Smith because he believed Mr. Gunterson to be a fraud of such monumental proportions that he deserved a place among the storied charlatans of the world.
His company and its reputation being more to Smith than almost anything else, he felt this thing very nearly in the light of a tragedy. Gloomily regarding the prospect, all he could see ahead was trouble and disgrace. And he knew that his own hands were tied. He was of course only an employee of the company, which could select as officers whom it chose, and any protest from him would very properly be disregarded—and worse than that, he would naturally and inevitably be suspected of speaking once for the company and twice for himself.
It was a rather troubled face that in spite of himself he presented in
Washington Square North an evening or two after that eventful ninth of
December.