"Yes," said the Vice-president. He was passing the desk of the General Agent, and he took care that his remark might be overheard. "And it looks to me like something we ought not to have had."
"What's that?" rejoined the older man, quickly. "We're not accepting business that we shouldn't write, are we? What is it? And who passed it?"
"Smith seems to have approved the line," O'Connor said slowly.
"Herbert, I thought I told you to leave that Providence map out for me."
"It's right there, sir," said the map clerk; "right where you left it, sir."
"Here's the risk," said the Vice-president, pointing it out to his superior with every sign of decent regret. "It seems to be a mattress factory, a class we never write. . . . Smith appears to have passed it—there's his initial. Of course, he may have had some special reason for—"
Mr. Wintermuth interrupted him.
"Herbert, ask Mr. Smith if he will not step this way for a moment, please."
To the man from Maine the General Agent said: "You'll excuse me for a minute?"
And Darius Howell, with astonishing definiteness, replied: "Sure—go ahead."
Smith found his two officers awaiting him by the open map. From the expression on O'Connor's face he suspected that that gentleman had discovered something not displeasing to him, and unconsciously he found his own shoulders squaring themselves as though for a conflict.