"Indeed? I am glad to hear it," said Mr. Wintermuth.
With which comment the matter came to its discussion's end between them. Nor did the President learn for a long time the real truth regarding his Boston appointees, for with increasing years he had grown increasingly difficult of access and intolerant of ideas conceived on the outside and not in accord with his own. The men who once could have come to him and frankly told him that the Guardian's Boston appointment was a colossal blunder were, like himself, grown insensibly out of the true current of underwriting affairs, while those who knew the truth lacked either the purpose or the opportunity to lay before him the exact state of affairs.
Among those who could not carry out their inclinations was Smith, for he saw very little of Mr. Wintermuth in these early days of the premiership of Gunterson; and he felt, moreover, that the President, knowing his opinion of Mr. Gunterson, would be inclined to discount his criticism on matters connected with the administration of the Vice-President. So Mr. Wintermuth lived in ignorance until the results began to show on the surface—which was not a far day.
From William Street, however, the busy and irreverent Street, soon came the slings and arrows which pierced even Mr. Gunterson's almost impregnable self-esteem. Only a few days after his return he overheard a conversation between Mr. Cuyler and a placer, in the Guardian's own office, which showed how the Street regarded the Boston appointment.
"Sorry, but I can't take that, Eddy; we don't write the shoe polish manufacturers at all—there's too much naphtha used, and they all burn eventually," were the words that caught his attention, and in the shadow of the door he waited for the reply.
"Ah, come off, now—loosen up! I know the Guardian does write the class, for this same concern's got a factory in Boston and I got a Guardian policy on it only yesterday. That's why I'm giving you this. Your Boston agents, Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, place the Boston end for us. What's the matter—don't your agents have any prohibited list, or do you let them do things you can't do in your own office?"
"Eddy," said Mr. Cuyler, sternly, "you're talking nonsense. I tell you we don't write the class in my department, and I don't believe the agency department does. The Boston firm you mention has just been appointed, and probably they don't know our underwriting policy yet." He handed back the binder.
The placer, realizing that the decision was final, and irritated at the declination of a risk which he had found impossible to place elsewhere, laughed loudly.
"Don't know your underwriting policy, hey? Well, they don't need to—they've got an underwriting policy of their own. Do you know what it is? It's to take a line on anything that's not actually on fire. They're the slop bucket of Boston, the standard lemon of Kilby Street; they've got a loss ratio of three thousand per cent, and they've burnt the hide off every company that's ever touched them. You make me tired. You're a fine, consistent bunch, you are—to pose as a conservative company in New York and write every skate in Boston through Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy! All right—good-by."
And in his exit his coat sleeve almost brushed against the man in the hall who in his haste and folly had appointed Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy to represent the Guardian in the good city of Boston.