"Perhaps that is so."
"Then you'll let me close in on him when it becomes necessary?" the other persisted.
"Possibly," said Mr. Wintermuth, cautiously; and more he would not say.
During the next few days Smith found himself a very busy man. There were a thousand and one matters demanding his attention, for in the three months' regime of his predecessor many things had come to loose ends. All through Conference territory agents had to be reassured; there were certain legal preparations to be made; definite instructions for a new plan of campaign had to be given to field men and office force. Smith found very little time to consider the two questions which most interested him—of which one was the next probable move of O'Connor and the other the securing of a new reinsurance contract.
To be sure this latter task was officially assumed by Mr. Wintermuth, but Smith felt reasonably certain that ultimately he himself would have to find the treaty. And this would not be an easy task, unless he should resort to the obvious and fashionable method of consulting Mr. Simeon Belknap and abiding by his selection on his own terms; and since the market was limited and Mr. Belknap's facilities in these delicate and complicated matters were unique, his services naturally were not cheaply held. Smith, with youthful self-confidence, decided that he himself would make a preliminary canvass of the reinsurance market; and so, when the first rush of new duties had abated, and his legal affairs were safely in the hands of counsel, and the interrupted agency machine of the Guardian was beginning to turn normally once more, he undertook this matter of a new reinsurance contract with all the energy at his command.
The one man in New York, aside from the eminent Mr. Belknap, who was the most powerful figure in reinsurance affairs and who best understood the situation on both sides of the Atlantic, was a solid, silent, almost venerable Teuton by the name of Scheidle. Mr. Scheidle occupied an anomalous position, but one of absolute authority, since he had been for many years the United States Manager of no less than three of the largest foreign reinsurance companies. He was unsociable, apparently uninterested in anybody save possibly himself, and disinclined to be lured by any call or beckoning whatsoever from his William Street office. An outsider would have said that most of his time was employed in crossing the ocean, for it seemed as though the Journal of Commerce reported every few days either his arrival or departure. Perhaps he reserved his loquacity for his native land, but at all events he exchanged in New York no converse with any one save in the strictest necessities of business; he had no intimates except a few anonymous Teutons as difficult of access as himself. He positively declined to make new friends, and it was evident that he had all the friends he desired to have; and in the same way he declined to consider any new business proposals, as all his companies were long established and all were in possession from numerous treaty contracts of premium incomes sufficiently large to satisfy their conservative manager.
This was the man that Smith, after careful deliberation, set himself to ensnare. But unfortunately, the more extended became his researches, the more impregnable appeared the cloudy barriers which Mr. Scheidle had raised between himself and the English-speaking world. At the end of a week of consistent effort Smith found himself precisely where he was when he began.
And then, just as his chances of success seemed faintest, the whole scroll suddenly unrolled itself before him. A chance inquiry of Mr. Otto Bartels provoked an answer of gutturals not especially euphonious in themselves, but which fell with vast and soothing solace on Smith's troubled sense.
"Sure do I know him," said Mr. Bartels. "Except when he goes to
Germany, with him I play pinochle on Tuesdays always."
Smith surveyed him, speechless.