Helen, with discreet but none the less comprehensive scrutiny, saw before her a man of thirty-three or four years, erect of figure, with a clean-shaven face and gray eyes. One thing she noticed about him was a certain odd immobility of carriage, which was not in any way to be mistaken for lassitude or lethargy; on the contrary, it reminded her of a coiled spring. He was somewhat above the middle height, and he had rather lean hands, and he wore no jewelry except an unobtrusive scarf pin—thus far had Helen's assessment proceeded when a question from Mr. Wintermuth recalled her.
"Would you like to start now to look us over?"
"If it is quite convenient to you," replied the girl, a shade stiffly. This impassive young man, who seemed quite different from any one she had met in her Boston set, was a little out of her calculations. She knew it was unreasonable to expect Mr. Wintermuth himself to act as cicerone, but just the same she was not entirely certain that she did not resent being so definitely turned over to this youthfully unexpected substitute. Probably Mr. Otto Bartels would have been initially more acceptable to her.
"Show Miss Maitland everything—begin at the beginning, and don't leave anything out," said the President, and dismissed them both with a fatherly wave of the hand as he pressed the button that summoned his stenographer.
Smith looked keenly at the girl as they walked slowly out into the office; he was wondering what her object might be in this pilgrimage. His mind flitted briefly over the ideas of muck-raking reporters and inquisitive lady novelists; yet surely this self-possessed but quiet young lady suggested nothing of either class, and besides, a niece of Silas Osgood's could scarcely deserve suspicion. At the same time, detecting in her manner what impressed him as a slightly Bostonian attitude of mental hauteur, Smith remained wary.
"This is the Eastern Department," he said, stopping before the first long map desk that stretched along the whole side of the room. Helen assented politely to this information, and the young man led the way through the other departments. Through the lower floors they went, Smith sketching briefly the function of each department as they passed it.
"Here is the City Department," he said, as they reached the ground floor; and for a little while they stood and watched Cuyler in his traffic with the brokers. He was engaged in a spirited argument with a very small and somewhat soiled person who insistently thrust upon Mr. Cuyler what that gentleman had obviously no intention of accepting. Risk after risk was declined, and the turns and ripostes were fast and furious.
Finally the soiled placer presented a binder which called for five thousand dollars to cover Jacob Warbalowsky on his stock of artificial flowers and feathers while contained on the fourth loft of a six-story factory building which Mr. Cuyler knew to be of cheap and light construction, dirty and hazardous throughout, and each floor but one of which was tenanted by a concern whose name indicated that its pyromorality, so to speak, was to say the least questionable. Mr. Cuyler quite distinctly recalled, scanning the names of the tenants in the card cabinet which gave the occupation and tariff rate of each, that a few years before, the concern on the third floor, having manufactured a stock of raincoats which it found impossible to sell, had been strongly suspected of disposing of its goods to the fire insurance companies instead of to the retail trade by the simple expedient of the double gas jet. This popular device was as follows. The proprietor, who was detained at his office after his employees had gone home, would, when he himself departed, leave two gas jets turned on, one at each end of the factory, one burning (as usual) and the other unlit. Long enough afterward so as to establish an alibi and remove all suspicion from himself, the escaping gas would meet the flame, and there would be an explosion and a fire which usually resulted in the desired destruction of the useless but fully insured merchandise. The cause of the fire could almost always be traced to a leaky gas jet, for which, of course, the assured was not responsible.
Mr. Cuyler, regarding the names of the tenants, noticed that the top floor was occupied by a maker of automobile accessories, named Pendleton. He turned cheerfully back to the placer.
"Phil, I'd like to help you out," he said, "but I can't write anything in that building. I know it's hard to get. Why, my brother-in-law's factory is on the top floor, and only last Sunday, when I saw him up at the house, he asked me if I wasn't going to loosen up and put the Guardian on for a small line. His broker can't get anywhere near enough to cover him. And I had to tell him nay, nay. You couldn't really expect me to do something for you, Phil, that I couldn't do for one of my own family."