The Guarded Heights Part 28

"Mr. Alston," the deep voice went on, "tells me you're a great football player. That's a handicap. All you can tackle here is trouble, and the only kicking we have is when Mundy boots somebody out of a job. He's my office manager. Report to him. Wait a minute. I'd give a ping-pong player a job if Mr. Alston asked me to. He's a fine man. But then I'm through. It's up to the man and Mundy. If the man's no good Mundy doesn't even bother to tell me, and it's twenty stories to the street."

George started to thank him, but already the rotund figure was pressed against the desk, and the tiny eyes absorbed in important-looking papers.

Mundy, George decided, wasn't such an ogre after all. He wore gla.s.ses.

He was bald, thin, and stoop-shouldered. He had the benign expression of a parson; but behind that bald forehead, George soon learned, was stored all the knowledge he craved, without, however, the imagination to make it personally very valuable.

If he didn't sweep the office at first, George approximated such labour, straightening the desks of the mighty, checking up on the contents of waste-paper baskets, seeing that the proper people got mail and newspapers, running errands; and always, in the office or outside, he kept his ears open and his eyes wide. He absorbed the patter of the Street. He learned to separate men into cla.s.ses, the wise ones, who always made money, and the foolish, who now and then had good luck, but most of the time were settling their losses. And at every opportunity he was after what Mundy concealed behind his appearance of a parson.

At night he dissected the financial journals, watching the alterations in the market, and probing for the causes; applying to this novitiate the same grim determination he had brought to Squibs Bailly's lessons a year before. Never once was he tempted to seek a simple path to fortune.

"When I speculate," he told himself, "there'll be mighty little risk about it."

Even in those days his fifteen dollars a week condemned him to a cheap lodging house near Lexington Avenue, the simplest of meals, and practically no relaxation. He exercised each morning, and walked each evening home from the office, for he hadn't forgotten what Princeton expected from him in the fall.

Sylvia's photograph and the broken riding crop supervised his labours, but he knew he couldn't hope, except by chance, to see her this summer.

One Sat.u.r.day morning Goodhue came unexpectedly into the office and carried him off to Long Island. George saw the tiny eyes of Blodgett narrow.

Blodgett, perhaps because of Mr. Alston's letter, had condescended to chat with George a number of times in the outer office. On the Monday following he strolled up and jerked out:

"Wasn't that young Richard Goodhue I saw you going off with Sat.u.r.day?"

"Yes sir."

"Know him well?"

"Very. We're in the same cla.s.s. We're rooming together next year."

Blodgett grunted and walked on, mopping his puffy face with a shiny blue handkerchief. George wondered if he had displeased Blodgett by going with Goodhue. He decided he hadn't, for the picturesquely dressed man stopped oftener after that, chatting quite familiarly.

Whatever one thought of Blodgett's appearance and manner, one admired him. George hadn't been in the Street a week before he realized that the house of Blodgett and Sinclair was one of the most powerful in America, with numerous ramifications to foreign countries. There was no phase of finance it didn't touch; and, as far as George could see, it was all Josiah Blodgett, who had come to New York from the West, by way of Chicago. In those offices Sinclair was scarcely more than a name in gold on various doors. Once or twice, during the summer, indeed, George saw the partner chatting in a bored way with Blodgett. His voice was high and affected, like Wandel's, and he had a house in Newport. According to office gossip he had little money interest in the firm, lending the prestige of his name for what Blodgett thought it was worth. As he watched the fat, hard worker chatting with the b.u.t.terfly man, George suddenly realized that Blodgett might want a house in Newport, too. Was it because he was Richard Goodhue's room-mate that Blodgett stopped him in the hall one day, grinning with good nature?

"If I were a cub," he puffed, "I'd buy this very morning all the Katydid I could, and sell at eighty-nine."

George whistled.

"I knew something was due to happen to Katydid, but I didn't expect anything like that."

"How did you know?" Blodgett demanded.

He shot questions until he had got the story of George's close observation and night drudgery.

"Glad to see Mundy hasn't dropped you out the window yet," he grinned.

"Maybe you'll get along. Glad for Mr. Alston's sake. See here, if I were a cub, and knew as much about Katydid as you do, I wouldn't hesitate to borrow a few cents from the boss."

"No," George said. "I've a very little of my own. I'll use that."

He had, perhaps, two hundred dollars in the bank at Princeton. He drew a check without hesitation and followed Blodgett's advice. He had commenced to speculate without risk. Several times after that Blodgett jerked out similar advice, usually commencing with: "What does young Pierpont Morgan think of so and so?" And usually George would give his employer a reasonable forecast. Because of these discreet hints his balance grew, and Mundy one day announced that his salary had been raised ten dollars.

All that, however, was the brighter side. Often during those hot, heavy nights, while he pieced together the day's complicated pattern, George envied the fortunates who could play away from pavements and baking walls. He found himself counting the days until he would go back to Princeton and football, and Betty's charm; but even that prospect was shadowed by his doubt as to how he would emerge from the club tangle.

He didn't meet Sylvia, but one day he saw Old Planter step from an automobile and enter the marble temple where he was accustomed to sacrifice corporations and people to the G.o.ds of his pocket-book. The great man used a heavy stick and climbed the steps rather slowly, flanked by obsequious underlings, gaped at by a crowd, buzzing and over-impressed. Somehow George couldn't fancy Blodgett with the gout--it was too delightfully bred.

He peered in the automobile, but of course Sylvia wasn't there, nor, he gathered from his mother's occasional notes to thank him for the little money he could send her, was she much at Oakmont.

"I'll see her this fall," he told himself, "and next winter. I've started to do what I said I would."

As far as Wall Street was concerned, Blodgett evidently agreed with him.

"I can put up with you next summer," he said at parting. "I'll write Mr.

Alston you're fit for something besides football."

Mundy displayed a pastoral sadness.

"You ought to stay right here," he said. "College is all right if you don't want to amount to a hill of beans. It's rotten for making money."

Nevertheless, he agreed to send George a weekly letter, giving his wise views as to what was going on among the money makers. They all made him feel that even in that rushing place his exit had caused a perceptible ripple.

XXII

The smallness, the untidiness, the pure joy of Squibs Bailly's study!

The tutor ran his hands over George's muscles.

"You're looking older and a good deal worn," he said, "but thank G.o.d you're still hard."

Mrs. Bailly sat there, too. They were both anxious for his experiences, yet when he had told them everything he sensed a reservation in their praise.

"I think I should turn my share of the laundry back," he said, defiantly. "I've something like three thousand dollars of my own now."

"Does it make you feel very rich?" Mrs. Bailly asked.

He laughed.

"It's a tiny start, but I won't need half of it to get through the winter."

Bailly lighted his pipe, stretched his legs, and pondered.

"You're giving the laundry up," he said, finally, "because--because it savours of service?"

George didn't get angry. He couldn't with Squibs in the first place; and, in the second, hadn't that thought been at the bottom of his mind ever since Dalrymple's remark about dirty hands?

"I don't need it any more," he said, "and I'd like to have you dispose of it where it will do the most good."

His voice hardened.

"But to somebody who wants to climb, not to any wild-eyed fellow who thinks he sees salvation in pulling down."