Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories

by Beach, Rex Ellingwood

  Comer shook his head. "We'd keep you in a minute if there was any way to do it. You go home and see the wife. Of course if you can show us where you're worth it, we'll let you stay; but—well, you can't. There's no chance. I'll see you to-morrow."

  Ordinarily Mitchell would not have allowed himself the extravagance of a cab, but to-day the cars were too slow. He wondered how the girl would take this calamity, their very first. As a matter of fact, she divined the news even before he had voiced his exuberant greetings, and, leading him into the neat little front room, she curled up at his side, demanding all the reasons for his unexpected recall. He saw that she was wide-eyed and rather white. When he had broken the bad news she inquired, bravely:

  "What is your plan, boy?"

  "I haven't any."

  "Nonsense!"

  "I mean it. What can I do? I don't know anything except the steel business. I can lick my weight in wildcats on my own ground—but—" The wife nodded her blonde head in complete agreement. "But that lets me out," he concluded, despondently. "I can sell steel because I know it from the ground up; it's my specialty."

  "Oh, we mustn't think about making a change."

  "I've handled more big jobs than any man of my age and experience on the road, and yet—I'm fired." The husband sighed wearily. "I built that big pipe line in Portland; I sold those smelters in Anaconda, and the cyanide tanks for the Highland Girl. Yes, and a lot of other jobs, too. I know all about the smelter business, but that's no sign I can sell electric belts or corn salve. We're up against it, girlie."

  "Have people quit building smelters?"

  "They sure have—during this panic. There's nothing doing anywhere."

  The wife thought for a moment before saying, "The last time you were home you told me about some Western mining men who had gone to South Africa—"

  "Sure! To the Rand! They've made good, too; they're whopping big operators, now."

  "You said there was a large contract of some sort coming up in

  London."

  "Large! Well, rather! The Robinson-Ray job. It's the biggest ever, in my line. They're going to rebuild those plants the Boers destroyed. I heard all about it in Montana."

  "Well!" Mrs. Mitchell spoke with finality. "That's the place for you.

  Get the firm to send you over there."

  "Um-m! I thought about that, but it scared me out. It's too big. Why, it's a three-million-dollar job. You see, we've never landed a large foreign contract in this country as yet." Mitchell sat up suddenly. "But say! This panic might—" Then he relaxed. "Oh, what's the use? If there were a chance the firm wouldn't send me. Comer would go himself—he'd take the whole outfit over for a job like that. Besides, it's too big a thing for our people; they couldn't handle it."

  Mrs. Mitchell's eyes were as round as buttons. "Three million dollars' worth of steel in one contract! Do you think you could land it if you went?"

  "It's my line of work," the young man replied, doubtfully. "I'll bet I know more about cyanide tanks than any salesman in Europe, and if I had a decent price to work on—"

  "Then it's the chance we've been waiting for."

  The girl scrambled to her feet and, fetching a chair, began to talk earnestly, rapidly. She talked for a long time, until gradually the man's gray despondency gave way to her own bright optimism. Nor was it idle theory alone that she advanced; Mitchell found that she knew almost as much about the steel business as he did, and when she had finished he arose and kissed her.

  "You've put new heart into me, anyhow. If you're game to do your share, why—I'll try it out. But remember it may mean all we've got in the bank, and—" He looked at her darkly.

  "It's the biggest chance we'll ever have," she insisted. "It's worth trying. Don't let's wait to get rich until we are old."

  When Mr. Comer returned from lunch he found his youngest salesman waiting for him, and inside of ten minutes he had learned what Mitchell had on his mind. With two words Comer blew out the gas.

  "You're crazy," said he.

  "Am I? It's worth going after."

  "In the first place no big foreign job ever came to America—"

  "I know all that. It's time we got one."

  "In the second place Comer & Mathison are jobbers."

  "I'll get a special price from Carnegie."

  "In the third place it would cost a barrel of money to send a man to

  England."

  Mitchell swallowed hard. "I'll pay my own way."

  Mr. Comer regarded the speaker with genuine astonishment. "You'll pay your way? Why, you haven't got any money."

  "I've got a thousand dollars—or the wife has. It's our nest-egg."

  "It would take five thousand to make the trip."

  "I'll make it on one. Yes, and I'll come back with that job. Don't you see this panic makes the thing possible? Yes, and I'm the one man to turn the trick; for it's right in my line. I'll see the Carnegie people at Pittsburgh. If they quote the right price I'll ask you for a letter, and that's all you'll have to do. Will you let me go?"

  "What sort of a letter?"

  "A letter stating that I am your general sales manager."

  The steel merchant's mouth fell open.

  "Oh, I only want it for this London trip," Mitchell explained. "I won't use it except as a credential. But I've got to go armed, you understand. Mr. Comer, if I don't land that Robinson-Ray contract, I won't come back. I—I couldn't, after this. Maybe I'll drive a 'bus—I hear they have a lot of them in London."

  "Suppose, for instance, you should get the job on a profitable basis; the biggest job this concern ever had and one of the biggest ever let anywhere—" Mr. Comer's brow was wrinkled humorously. "What would you expect out of it?"

  Mitchell grinned. "Well, if I signed all those contracts as your general sales manager, I'd probably form the habit."

  "There's nothing modest about you, is there?" queried the elder man.

  "Not a thing. My theory of business is that a man should either be fired or promoted. If I get that job I'll leave it to you to do what's right. I won't ask any questions."

  "The whole thing is utterly absurd," Mitchell's employer protested.

  "You haven't a chance! But—Wait!" He pressed a button on his desk.

  "We'll talk with Mathison."

  Louis Mitchell took the night train for Pittsburgh. He was back in three days, and that afternoon Mr. Comer, in the privacy of his own office, dictated a letter of which no carbon copy was preserved. He gave it to the young man with his own hand, and with these words: "You'd better think it over carefully, my boy. It's the most idiotic thing I ever heard of, and there isn't one chance in a million. It won't do you any good to fail, even on a forlorn hope like this."

  But Mitchell smiled. "I can't fail—I'm married." Then when the other seemed unimpressed by this method of reasoning, he explained: "I guess you never saw my wife. She says I can do it."

  It was only to this lady herself that Mitchell recited the details of his reception at Pittsburgh, and of the battle he had fought in the Carnegie office. The Carnegie men had refused to take him seriously, had laughed at him as at a mild-mannered lunatic.

  "But I got my price," he concluded, triumphantly, "and it sure looks good to me. Now for the painful details and the sad good-bys."

  "How long will you be gone?" his wife inquired.

  "I can't stay more than a month, the bank-roll is too small."

  "Oo-oo-h! A month! London is a long way off." Mrs. Mitchell's voice broke plaintively and her husband's misgivings at once took fire.

  "If I fail, as they all feel sure I will, what then?" he inquired. "I'll be out of a job! I'll be a joke in the steel business; I'll be broke. What will you do?"

  She gave him a ravishing, dimpled smile, and her eyes were brave once more. "Why, I haven't forgotten my shorthand, and there are always the department stores." In a high, querulous tone she cried "Ca—a—sh!" then laughed aloud at his expression. "Oh, it wouldn't hurt me any. But—you won't fail�
��you can't! We're going to be rich. Now, we'll divide our grand fortune." She produced a roll of currency from her purse and took four twenty-dollar bills from it.

  "Only eighty dollars?" he queried.

  "It's more than enough for me. You'll be back in a month." She thrust the remaining notes into his hand. "It's our one great, glorious chance, dear. Don't you understand?"

  Faith, hope and enthusiasm, the three graces of salesmanship, thrive best in bright places. Had it not been for his wife's cheer during those final hours young Mitchell surely would have weakened before it came time to leave on the following day. It was a far cry to London, and he realized 'way back in his head that there wasn't one chance in a million of success. He began to doubt, to waver, but the girl seemed to feel that her lord was bound upon some flaring triumph, and even at the station her face was wreathed in smiles. Her blue eyes were brimming with excitement; she bubbled with hopeful, helpful advice; she patted her husband's arm and hugged it to her. "You're going to win, boy. You're going to win," she kept repeating. For one moment only—at the actual parting—she clung to him wildly, with all her woman's strength, then, as the warning cry sounded, she kissed him long and hungrily, and fairly thrust him aboard the Pullman. He did not dream how she wilted and drooped the instant he had gone.

  As the train pulled out he ran back to the observation car to wave a last farewell, and saw her clinging to the iron fence, sobbing wretchedly; a desolate, weak little girl-wife mastered by a thousand fears. She was too blind with tears to see him. The sight raised a lump in the young husband's throat which lasted to Fort Wayne.

  "Poor little thoroughbred," he mused. "I just can't lose, that's all."

  The lump was not entirely gone when the luncheon call came, so Mitchell dined upon it, reasoning that this kind of a beginning augured well for an economical trip.

  Now that he was away from the warmth of his wife's enthusiasm contemplation of his undertaking made the salesman rather sick. If only he were traveling at the firm's expense, if only he had something to fall back upon in case of failure, if only Comer & Mathison were behind him in any way, the complexion of things would have been altogether different. But to set out for a foreign land with no backing whatever in the hope of accomplishing that which no American salesman had ever been able to accomplish, and to finance the undertaking out of his own pocket on a sum less than he would have expected for cigarette money—well, it was an enterprise to test a fellow's courage and to dampen the most youthful optimism. His proposal to the firm to win all or lose all, he realized now, had been in the nature of a bluff, and the firm had called it. There was nothing to do, therefore, but go through and win; there could be no turning back, for he had burned his bridges.

  When one enters a race-horse in a contest he puts the animal in good condition, he grooms it, he feeds it the best the stable affords, he trains and exercises it carefully. Mitchell had never owned a race-horse, but he reasoned that similar principles should apply to a human being under similar conditions. He had entered a competition, therefore he decided to condition himself physically and mentally for the race. A doped pony cannot run, neither can a worried salesman sell goods.

  In line with this decision, he took one of the best state-rooms on the Lucania, and denied himself nothing that the ship afforded. Every morning he took his exercise, every evening a rub-down. He trained like a fighter, and when he landed he was fit; his muscles were hard, his stomach strong, his brain clear. He went first-class from Liverpool to London; he put up at the Metropole in luxurious quarters. When he stopped to think about that nine hundred and twenty, already amazingly shrunken, he argued bravely that what he had spent had gone to buy condition powders.

  On the way across he had posted himself so far as possible about the proposed Robinson-Ray plant. He learned that there were to be fifteen batteries of cyanide tanks, two high—eighty-four in all—supported by steel sub- and super-structures; the work to be completed at Krugersdorpf, twenty miles out of Johannesburg, South Africa. The address of the company was No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street. Threadneedle Street was somewhere in London, and London was the capital of a place called England.

  He knew other African contracts were under consideration, but he dismissed them from his thoughts and centered his forces upon this particular job. Once he had taken a definite scent his early trepidations vanished. He became obsessed by a joyous, purposeful, unceasing energy that would not let him rest.

  The first evening in London he fattened himself for the fray with a hearty dinner, then he strove to get acquainted with his neighbors and his environment. The nervous force within him needed outlet, but he was frowned upon at every quarter. Even the waiter at his table made it patent that his social standing would not permit him to indulge in the slightest intimacy with chance guests of the hotel, while the young Earl who had permitted Mitchell to register at the desk declined utterly to go further with their acquaintance. Louis spent the evening at the Empire, and the next morning, which was Sunday, he put in on the top of a 'bus, laying himself open to the advances of anybody who cared to pay him the slightest attention. But he was ignored; even the driver, who spoke a foreign language, evidently considered him a suspicious character. Like a wise general, Louis reconnoitered No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street during the afternoon, noting the lay of the land and deciding upon modes of transportation to and from. Under the pressure of circumstance he chose a Cannon Street 'bus, fare "tuppence."

  Now garrulity is a disease that must either break out or strike inward with fatal results. When Sunday night came, Mitchell was about ready to fare forth with gun and mask and take conversation away from anybody who had it to spare. He had begun to fear that his vocal cords would atrophy.

  He was up early, had breakfasted, and was at 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street promptly at nine, beating the janitor by some twenty minutes. During the next hour and a half he gleaned considerable information regarding British business methods, the while he monotonously pounded the sidewalk.

  At nine-thirty a scouting party of dignified office-boys made a cautious approach. At nine-thirty-five there came the main army of clerks, only they were not clerks, but "clarks"—very impressive gentlemen with gloves, spats, sticks, silk hats and sack coats. At this same time, evidently by appointment, came the charwomen—"char" being spelled s-c-r-u-b, and affording an example of how pure English has been corrupted out in the Americas.

  After the arrival of the head "clarks" and stenographers at nine-forty-five, there ensued fifteen minutes of guarded conversation in front of the offices. During this time the public issues of the day were settled and the nation's policies outlined. At ten o'clock the offices were formally opened, and at ten-thirty a reception was tendered to the managers who arrived dressed as for any well-conducted afternoon function.

  To Mitchell, who was accustomed to the feverish, football methods of American business life, all this was vastly edifying and instructive; it was even soothing, although he was vaguely offended to note that passers-by avoided him as if fearful of contamination.

  Upon entering 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street, he was halted by an imperious office-boy. To him Louis gave his card with a request that it be handed to Mr. Peebleby, then he seated himself and for an hour witnessed a parade of unsmiling, silk-hatted gentlemen pass in and out of Mr. Peebleby's office. Growing impatient, at length, he inquired of the boy;

  "Is somebody dead around here or is this where the City Council meets?"

  "I beg pardon?" The lad was polite in a cool, superior way.

  "I say, what's the idea of the pall-bearers?"

  The youth's expression froze to one of disapproval and suspicion.

  "I mean the parade. Are these fellows Congress- or minstrel-men?"

  His hearer shrugged and smiled vacuously, then turned away, whereupon

  Mitchell took him firmly by the arm.

  "Look here, my boy," he began. "There seems to be a lot of information coming to both of us. Who are these over-dressed gentlemen I
see promenading back and forth?"

  "Why—they're callers, customers, representatives of the firms we do business with, sir."

  "Is this Guy Fawkes Day?"

  "No, sir."

  "Are these men here on business? Are any of them salesmen, for instance?"

  "Yes, sir; some of them. Certainly, sir."

  "To see Mr. Peebleby about the new construction work?"

  "No doubt."

  "So, you're letting them get the edge on me."

  "I beg pardon?"

  "Never mind, I merely wanted to assure you that I have some olive spats, a high hat, and a walking-stick, but I left them at my hotel. I'm a salesman, too. Now then let's get down to business. I've come all the way from America to hire an office-boy. I've heard so much about English office-boys that I thought I'd run over and get one. Would you entertain a proposition to go back to America and become my partner?"

  The boy rolled his eyes; it was plain that he was seriously alarmed.

  "You are ragging me, sir," he stammered, uncertainly.

  "Perish the thought!"

  "I—I—Really, sir—"

  "I pay twenty-five dollars a week to office-boys. That's five 'pun' in your money, I believe. But, meanwhile, now that I'm in London, I have some business with Mr. Peebleby." Mitchell produced an American silver dollar and forced it into the boy's hand, whereupon the latter blinked in a dazed manner, then hazarded the opinion that Mr. Peebleby might be at leisure if Mr. Mitchell had another card.

  "Never mind the card; I can't trust you with another one. Just show me the trail and I'll take it myself. That's a way we have in America."

  A moment later he was knocking at a door emblazoned, "Director General." Without awaiting an invitation, he turned the knob and walked in. Before the astonished Mr. Peebleby could expostulate he had introduced himself and was making known his mission.

  Fortunately for Mitchell, Englishmen are not without a sense of humor. The announcement that this young man had come all the way from Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., to bid on the Krugersdorpf work struck Mr. Peebleby as amusing. Not only was the idea in itself laughable, but also the fact that a mere beardless youth should venture to figure on a contract of such gigantic proportions quite convulsed the Director General, and in consequence he smiled. Then fearing that his dignity had been jeopardized, he announced politely but firmly that the proposition was absurd, and that he had no time to discuss it.