Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories Part 13

"They should."

"They are."

"Ship them to Trinidad."

"That's bully of you, Miss Santa Claus. I want to--" But the wire was dead.

Mitch.e.l.l grinned. Personality did count after all, and he had proved that it could be projected over a copper wire.

An hour later when Miss Northwestern called him for a price on stay-bolt iron she did not ring off for fifteen minutes, and at the end of that time she promised to take the first opportunity of having another chat. In a similar manner, once the ice had been broken at the C. & E.I., Mitch.e.l.l learned that the purchasing agent was at West Baden on his vacation; that he had stomach trouble and was cranky; that the speaker loved music, particularly Chaminade and George Cohan, although Beethoven had written some good stuff; that she'd been to Grand Haven on Sunday with her cousin, who sold hats out of Cleveland and was a prince with his money, but drank; and that the price on corrugated iron might be raised ten cents without doing any damage.

On the following afternoon Murphy, the Railroad Sales Manager, stopped on his way past Mitch.e.l.l's desk to inquire:

"Say, have you been sending orchids to Miss Dunlap over at the Santa Fe? I was in there this morning, and she wanted to know all about you."

"Did you boost me?" Louis inquired. "It won't hurt your sales to plug my game."

"She said you and she are 'buddies' over the wire. What did she mean?"

"Oh, wire pals, that's all. What kind of a looker is she, Mr. Murphy?"

The Sales Manager shrugged his shoulders. "She looks as if she was good to her mother." Then he sauntered away.

Mitch.e.l.l, in the days that followed, proceeded to become acquainted with the Big Four, and in a short time was so close to the Lackawanna that he called her Phoebe Snow. The St. Paul asked for him three times in one afternoon, and the Rock Island, chancing to ring up while he was busy, threatened to hang crepe on the round-house if he were not summoned immediately to enter an order for a manhole crab.

Within a week he became the most thoroughly telephoned person in the office, and had learned the tastes, the hopes, the aims, and the ambitions of his respective customers. Miss C. & E.I., for instance, whose real name was Gratz, was a bug on music; Miss Northwestern was literary. She had read everything Marion Crawford ever wrote, and considered her the greatest writer Indiana had produced, but was sorry to learn from Mitch.e.l.l that her marriage to Capt. Jack Crawford had turned out so unhappily--some men were brutes, weren't they? There was a hidden romance gnawing at the Big Four's heart, and Phoebe Snow had a picture of James K. Hackett on her desk and wanted to start a poultry farm. The Santa Fe had been married once, but had taken her maiden name, it was so much pleasanter in business.

As Mitch.e.l.l's telephone orders piled up, day after day, Murphy began to treat him more like an employee than a "hand," and finally offered him a moderate expense account if he cared to entertain his railroad trade. When the young man's amazement at this offer had abated sufficiently for him to accept he sent the office-boy around to the Santa Fe on the run, instructing him to size up Miss Dunlap and report. It was the first order he had ever issued in the office, and the news spread quickly that he had been "raised."

Mr. Gross took occasion to congratulate the despised underling with pompous insincerity, whereat Louis admonished him scowlingly to beat it back to his trial balance or he'd bounce a letter-press on his dome.

When the office-boy reappeared he turned in a laconic report, "She's a peach!"

Mitch.e.l.l sweated the lad for further details, then nearly strained a tendon in getting to the telephone booth.

"h.e.l.lo, Miss Dunlap," he called. "Are you tied up for to-night?"

"I'm knot. The k is silent."

"Will you go to the theater with me?"

"Nickelodeon?"

"No, Montgomery and Stone."

The lady muttered something unintelligible, then she t.i.ttered nervously. "Those top balconies make me dizzy."

"How about the orchestra--sixth row? Could you keep your head there?"

"You must own a bill-board."

"No, it's a bank-book; same initials, you see. I'm an heiress."

"See here, Mitch"--Miss Dunlap became serious--"you're a good little copper-wire comedian, but I don't know you nor your people."

"Well, I come from one of the oldest families in Atwood, Michigan, and that town was settled over thirty years ago."

"But you don't know me," the lady demurred.

"I do, too. You're a tall blonde, gray eyes, blue dress; you have a dimple--"

"Well, I declare! All right, then; seven-thirty to-night, six hundred and twelve Filbert Street, fourth apartment, and many thanks."

Fifteen minutes before the appointed time Louis Mitch.e.l.l was fidgeting nervously outside the Filbert Street cold-water "walk-up" known as Geraldine Manor, wondering if Miss Dunlap would notice his clothes.

Twelve dollars a week had starved his wardrobe until it resembled the back-drop for a "Pity the Blind" card; but promptly on the minute he punched the b.u.t.ton at the fourth apartment. An instant later he realized that no matter how he looked he had it on Miss Dunlap by eighty per cent.

She was a blonde, to be sure, for the time being, and by the grace of H_{2}O_{2}. One glance convinced her caller of two things--_viz_., that his office-boy did not care much for peaches, and that the Santa Fe purchasing agent had a jealous wife. The most that possibly could be said in praise of Miss Dunlap's appearance was that she was the largest stenographer in Chicago. Then and there, however, her caller qualified as a salesman; he smiled and he chatted in a free and easy way that had the lady roped, thrown, and lashed to his chariot in three minutes by her alarm-clock.

They went to the theater, and when Montgomery sprang a joke or Stone did a fall Miss Dunlap showed her appreciation after the fashion of a laughing hyena. Between times she barked enthusiastically, giving vent to sounds like those caused when a boy runs past a picket fence with a stick in his hand. She gushed, but so does Old Faithful. Anyhow, the audience enjoyed her greatly.

At supper Mitch.e.l.l secured parking s.p.a.ce for his companion at the Union Cafe, and there he learned how a welsh rabbit may be humiliated by a woman. During the _debacle_ he fingered the money in his pocket, then shut his eyes and ordered a bottle of champagne, just to see if it could be done. Contrary to his expectation, the waiter did not swoon; nor was he arrested. Root-beer had been Mitch.e.l.l's main intoxicant heretofore, but as he and the noisy Miss Dunlap sipped the effervescing wine over their ice-cream, they pledged themselves to enjoy Monday evenings together, and she told him, frankly:

"Mitch, you're the nickel-plated entertainer, and I'll never miss another Monday eve unless I'm in the shops or the round-house. You certainly have got cla.s.s."

At breakfast Miss Harris regarded Lotus darkly, for Mr. Gross had told her just enough to excite her curiosity.

"Where were you last night?" she inquired.

"I went to a show."

"Were the pictures good?"

"They don't have pictures at the Grand."

"Oh--h!" The manicurist's violet eyes opened wide. "Louis--you _drank_ something. You're awful pale. What was it?"

"Clicquot! That's my favorite brand."

Miss Harris clutched the table-cloth and pulled a dish into her lap.

After a moment she said: "Maybe you'll take me somewhere to-night. We haven't been out together for the longest time."

"Oh, I see! This is Gross's night at the Maccabbees', isn't it?" Louis gloated brutally over her confusion. "Sorry, but I'll probably have to entertain some more customers. The firm is keeping me busy."

At the office things went most pleasantly for the next few weeks; sixty per cent. of the city's railroad business came to Comer & Mathison; the clerks began to treat Mitch.e.l.l as if he were an equal; even Gross lost his patronizing air and became openly hateful, while Murphy--Louis no longer called him Mister--increased his a.s.sistant's expense account and confided some of his family affairs to the latter.

Mr. Comer, the senior partner, began to nod familiarly as he pa.s.sed the quotation clerk's desk.

Nor were Louis's customers all so eccentric as Miss Dunlap. Phoebe Snow, for instance, was very easy to entertain, and the Northwestern took to his custody like a hungry urchin to a barbecue. He gave them each one night a week, and in a short time all his evenings were taken, as a consequence of which he saw less and less of Miss Harris.

But, although he and his manicurist were becoming strangers, he soon began to call the waiters at Rector's by their given names, and a number of the more prominent cab-drivers waved at him.