Bunker Bean Part 26

In the outer office, however, he was aware that his expansion was subtly making itself felt. Bulger had insensibly altered and was treating him after the manner of a fellow club man. Old Metzeger said "Good morning!"

to him affectionately--for Metzeger--and once he detected Tully staring at him through the enlarging gla.s.ses as if in an effort to read his very soul. But he knew his soul was not to be read by such as Tully. Tully, back there on the Nile, would have been a dancer--at the most, a fancy skater--if, indeed, he had risen to the human order, and were not still a slinking gazelle. Good name that, for Tully. He would remember it--gazelle!

At three o'clock he glanced aside from his typewriter to see a director enter Breede's room. He did not lift his look above the hem of the man's coat, but he knew him for the quiet one. And yet, when the door closed upon him, he seemed to become as noisy as any of them. Bean heard his voice rising.

Another director came, the big one who gripped a cigarette with an obviously cigar mouth. Once behind the shut door he seemed to approve of the noise and to be swelling its volume.

Three other directors hurried in, the elderly advanced dresser in the lead. He, of course, was always indignant, but now the other two were manifesting choler equal to his own. They puffed and glowered and, when the door had closed, they seemed to help skilfully with the uproar. It was a mob scene.

Bean was reminded of a newspaper line he had once or twice encountered: "The scene was one of indescribable confusion. Pandemonium reigned!"

Pandemonium indubitably seemed to reign over those directors. He wondered. He wondered uncomfortably.

"Buzz-z-z-z! Buzz-z-z-z-z! Buzz-z-z-z-z-z!"

He quit wondering. He knew.

Yet for a moment after he stood in their presence they seemed to take no note of him. They were not sitting decorously in chairs as he conceived that directors should. The big one with the cigarette sat on the table, ponderously balanced with a fat knee between fat red hands. Another stood with one foot on a chair. Only the quiet one was properly sitting down. The elderly advanced dresser was not even stationary. With the faultless coat thrown back by pocketed hands, revealing a waist line greater than it should have been, he strutted and stamped. He seemed to be trying to step holes into the rug, and to be exploding intimately to himself.

"Plain enough," said the man who had been studying his foot on the chair. "Some one pulled the plug."

"And away she goes--shoosh!" said the big man dramatically.

"Kennedy & Balch buying right and left. Open at a hundred and twenty-five to-morrow, sure!" said the quiet one quietly.

"Placed an order yesterday for four hundred shares and got 'em," said another, not so quietly. "And to-day they're bidding Federal Express up to the ceiling."

"Plug pulled!"

The advanced-dressing director strutted to the fore with a visibly purpling face.

"Plug pulled? Want t' know _where_ it was pulled? Right in this office.

Want to know who pulled it? _That!_" He pointed unmistakably to the child among them taking notes. At another time Bean might have quailed, at least momentarily; but he had now discovered that the advanced-dressing old gentleman used scent on his clothes. He was afraid of no man who could do that in the public nostrils. He surveyed the old gentleman with frank hostility, noting with approval, however, the dignified yet different pattern of his waistcoat. But he knew the other directors were looking hard at him.

"Shrimp! snake!" added the old gentleman, like a shocked naturalist encountering a loathsome hybrid.

"Been plowing with our heifer?" asked Breede incisively.

Bean was familiar with that homely metaphor. He felt easier.

"_Your_ heifer!" He would have liked to snort as the old gentleman did, but refrained from an unpractised effort! "Your heifer? No; I bought a good fat yoke of steers to do my plowing. Took _his_ money to buy one of 'em with!" He waved a careless arm at the smouldering-vessel across the table. They were all gasping, in horror, in disgust. He was a little embarra.s.sed. He sought to smooth the thing over a bit with his next words.

"Eagle shot down with its own feather," he said, hazily recalling something that had seemed very poetic when he read it.

"Wha'd I tell you? Wha'd I _tell_ you!" shouted the oldest director, doing an intricate dance step.

"Hold 'ny Federal?" asked Breede.

"A block or two; several margins of it," said Bean.

"How many shares?"

"Have to ask Kennedy & Balch; they're my brokers. I guess about some seven or eight hundred shares."

"Wha'd I tell you? Wha'd I _tell_ you?" again shouted the oldest director, and, as if despairing of an answer, he swore surprisingly for one of his refined garniture and aroma.

"Find out something in this office?" asked Breede, evenly.

"Why wouldn't I? I found out something the minute you sent people to me with that 'By the way--' stuff. I knew it as quick as you had them breaking their ankles trying to get my fifty shares. Knew it the very minute you sent that--that slinking gazelle to me." He pointed at Tully.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Oh, put up your trinkets!" said Bean, with a fine affectation of weariness]

He had not meant to call Tully that. It rushed out. Tully wriggled uneasily in his chair at the desk, blushed well into his yellow beard, then drew out a kerchief of purest white silk and began nervously to polish his gla.s.ses.

"Hoo-shaw-Ha-ha-Hooshway!"

It was Breede, with, for the moment, a second purple face on the Board of Directors. Neither Bean nor Tully ever knew whether he had suppressed a laugh or a sneeze.

"Come, come, _come_!" broke in the oldest, sweeping the largest director aside with one finger as he pulled a chair to the table.

"This'll never do with _us_, you know! How much, how much, how much?"

He again poised the chastely wrought fountain pen of gold above the dainty check-book in Morocco leather.

"Have to give 'em up you know; can't allow _that_ sort of underhand work; where'd the world be, where'd it be, where'd it _be_? Sign an order; tell me what you paid. Take your word for it!"

He was feeling for Bean the contempt which a really distinguished safe-blower is said to feel for the cheap thief who purloins bottles of milk from bas.e.m.e.nt doorways in the gray of dawn.

"Now, now, _now_, boy!" The pen was still poised.

"Oh, put up your trinkets," said Bean with a fine affectation of weariness.

The old gentleman sat back and exhaled a scented but vicious breath.

There was silence. It seemed to have become evident that the unprincipled young scoundrel must be taken seriously.

Then spoke the largest director, removing from his lips a cigarette which his own bulk seemed to reduce to something for a microscope only.

He had been silent up to this moment, and his words now caused Bean the first discomfort he had felt.

"You will come here to-morrow morning," he began, slanting his entire facial area toward Bean, "and you will make rest.i.tution for this betrayal of trust. I think I speak for these gentlemen here, when I say we will do nothing with you to-night. Of course, if we chose--but no; you are a free man until to-morrow morning. After that all will depend on you. You are still young; I shall be sorry if we are forced to adopt extreme measures. I believe we shall all be sorry. But I am sure a night of sober reflection will bring you to your senses. You will come here to-morrow morning. You may go."

The slow, cool words had told. He tried to preserve his confident front, as he turned to the door. He would have left his banner on the field but for the oldest director, who had too long been silent.

"Snake in the gra.s.s!" hissed the oldest director, and instantly the colours waved again from Bean's lifted standard. He did not like the oldest director and he soared into the pure ether of verbal felicity, forgetful of all threats.

He stared pityingly at the speaker a moment, then cruelly said:

"You know they quit putting perfumery on their clothes right after the Chicago fire."

He left the room with faultless dignity.

"_Im_pertinent young whelp!" spluttered the oldest director; but his first fellow-director who dared to look at him saw that he was gazing pensively from the high window, his back to the group.