The boy, whose name was Jimmy, sped off, soliloquizing as he went: "Gee, there must be somethin' up to get O'C. as hot as that!" Arrived at the opposite end of the big room, he reconnoitered for a view of the President's office. By virtue of some little strategy he presently managed to catch sight of Mr. Wintermuth, seated at his desk, pen in hand, in his most magisterial attitude, listening judicially to the remarks of some visitor. Jimmy, who was no fool, recognized the stranger as the business manager of an insurance paper about half whose space was given to articles highly eulogistic of certain insurance companies whose advertisements, by some singular coincidence, invariably appeared further on in the publication. From the position of the two Jimmy deduced that the conversation was not likely to be terminated very soon, and dashed back to Mr. O'Connor with that intelligence. The Vice-President was still studying the many-colored sheet.
"Busy, eh? Well, leave that map turned up, and let me know as soon as he is at liberty." And he strode back to his own office and shut the door with a slam that disturbed the serene spectacles of Mr. Otto Bartels, who was sedulously studying a long row of figures on a reinsurance bordereau.
Mr. Bartels was Secretary of the Guardian, and his office adjoined that of the Vice-president. Mr. Bartels, who was very short and stout, and very methodical, and Teutonic beyond all else, looked up with mild surprise in his placid eyes and the hint of something on his face which in a more mobile countenance would have been an expression of gentle remonstrance. His place was lost, in the column he was scanning, by the dislodgment of his spectacles, which he wore well down toward the lower reaches of his nose—it would have been out of place to speak of that organ as possessing an end or a tip, for it was much too bulbous for any such term to fit. Taking the spectacles with both hands, he replaced them at their wonted angle, and with that phantom of disapproval still striving for expression and outlet among his features, he resumed his employment.
Otto Bartels was a discovery of Mr. Wintermuth's, many years before, when that gentleman occupied a less conspicuous position with the corporation of which he was now long since the head. One day, sitting at his desk, he looked up to observe a youth who stood gravely regarding him in silence for at least three minutes before his speech struggled near enough the surface to make itself audible. It appeared that the stranger was in need of a position, that he was accurate, though not quick at figures, and that he would begin work for whatever wage was found proper. He was given a trial in the accounts department, and for five years his sponsor heard no more of him. At the end of that time he found that his protégé had worked up to the position of assistant chief clerk. Three years later the drinking water of the New Jersey suburb where he resided terminated the earthly career of the chief clerk, and Bartels became chief clerk, managing the department as nearly as was humanly possible without speech of any kind. And when, twenty years from the time the Guardian saw him first, Otto Bartels found himself authorized to write Secretary after his flowing signature, it was an appointment inevitable. He had simply pushed his way out of the crowd by grace of his unremitting thoroughness, his industry, which was really not especially creditable, as nothing but work ever occurred to him, and a gratifying inability to make errors of detail. He knew the name of every agent on the company's list, when each one was expected to pay his balances, and how much in premiums each annually reported. He never wrote letters, for it was impossible for him to dictate to a stenographer; he rarely took a vacation, for he had nowhere to go and nothing to do outside the office; he never engaged in discernible social intercourse of any sort, for he had never known how to begin. Such was the methodical man who so efficiently kept the books and records of the Guardian. He knew and cared nothing about underwriting, regarding the insurance operations of the company as a possibly important but purely secondary consideration. In Mr. Bartels's opinion the company's records were the company.
The underwriting department of the Guardian occupied, with the officers' quarters, the upper two floors of the rather narrow building. On the top floor were the East and the South, under the immediate supervision of Smith, the General Agent, and the offices of Mr. Wintermuth, Mr. O'Connor, and Mr. Bartels. The President occupied the southeast corner and the two others the northeast end, while Smith's desk was out in the open office, with the maps and files and survey cases and his subordinates under his eye.
On the floor below Assistant-Secretary Wagstaff held forth; he was in charge of the Western Department, which comprised the states from Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee westward to the coast. Mr. Wagstaff was a competent, careful, unimaginative, unambitious man who did his work from day to day. He enters this story virtually not at all; be it enough to say that he had a red mustache and a bald, bright head and wore shoes with cloth tops. He took good care of his territory, and if he never made much money for the company, he never lost any. So much for Edgar Wagstaff.
Before returning to the top floor, however, one character in Mr. Wagstaff's entourage must be brought majestically forward into view. This dignified personage was Jenkins, the clerk of the Pacific Coast accounts. Mr. Jenkins was, in his youth, a mathematician of remarkable promise. His dexterity with arithmetic and algebra was such that his family began to think that could this ability at figures be translated into terms of Wall Street there might be a Napoleon of finance bearing the proud if somewhat homely name of Jenkins. But unfortunately it seemed otherwise to the fates, for Mr. Jenkins, with advancing years, found his Napoleonic onrush irresistibly diverted toward pleasant byways frequented in the golden age by one Bacchus, god of wine. Apparently the disinclination for the dusty road of duty had resulted in much satisfaction and no lasting damage to Bacchus, but far otherwise was it with Jenkins. He fared as conscientiously in Bacchus's footsteps as he could, but his was not the true Bacchanalian temperament. Under the influence of the grape Jenkins, instead of becoming gay, waxed ever more portentous and sublime. When he was almost sober, say of a Friday afternoon, he was grave, merely creating the impression that some long-past tragedy had clouded his life. When he was by way of being what one may denominate half-interested, his face assumed the saturnine expression of an ancient misanthrope, but when at last he reached the full flower of his magnificent endeavors, the silent severity of his countenance became so forbidding and sinister as to freeze the smile from the lips of a happy child. By his face you might know him, but it would of necessity be by the face alone, for so perfect was his control of his dominated limbs that never a quiver betrayed him, and no degree of saturation seemed to affect at all the impeccable footing of his columns.
A spiral staircase connected the seventh and eighth floors of the Guardian building, constructed for the convenience of the clerks who had to do with several departments. It was near the top of this staircase that Smith had his desk, in the center of the maelstrom. Smith strongly believed in being in the center of things, and from where he sat he could overlook every foot of the space occupied by the Eastern Department. As he was supervisor, he intended to supervise—wherein lay one of the chief sources of his value.
"Jimmy, bring me the Journal of Commerce," he said to the invaluable and ubiquitous one.
"Mr. O'Connor's got it on his desk, sir," replied that youth, almost breathlessly. Speed in action had so demanded equivalent celerity in diction that often speech came badly second in endurance, causing him to sputter and gasp for completed utterance.