He then very briefly acquainted them with the qualities of the men under O'Connor in much the same way that he had reviewed them in his own mind. The directors listened in silence. In short, silence was their only possible attitude, for the contingency which now confronted them was one which took them wholly by surprise.

"To sum up the situation," Mr. Wintermuth concluded, "there is only one man now in the employ of the company who is qualified to fill the vice-presidency, and that is Richard Smith, our present General Agent."

He hesitated. Personally he would have been glad to go farther and recommend Smith for the position, but in his own mind he was not convinced of the wisdom of this.

"Isn't he pretty young?" inquired Mr. Whitehill, of Whitehill and Rhodes, the large real estate operators, who sat at Mr. Wintermuth's right.

"Yes, he is. I'm afraid he's almost too young," was the frank reply.

"How old is he, anyway?" another director asked.

"Thirty-two or thereabouts, I believe. But he's had good training."

"He won't do," said Mr. Whitehill, tersely. "The man for that job ought to be more seasoned—at least forty. Don't you agree with me?"

"I'm afraid I do," the President conceded, rather reluctantly. "At least I am afraid that Smith, good underwriter as he is, needs—as you say—a little more seasoning before being given so responsible a position."

"What's the alternative?" inquired Mr. Griswold, from the other end of the table.

"The alternative," answered Mr. Wintermuth, "is one which I like little better. It is to go outside and hire an underwriter from somewhere else."

"Do you know a good man—one we could get?"

"There are always plenty available if you look in the right place—and back up your invitation with a sufficient monetary inducement," said the President, a trifle caustically. "Little as I myself fancy the idea, it seems to me that it is what we shall have to do. Unless," he added, "you gentlemen should decide to risk giving Smith a chance."

"I'm in favor of going outside," Mr. Whitehill announced. "I've met Smith, and he's a nice clean-cut young fellow, but it would be an injustice to put him in such a place and expect him to make good. He's too much of a kid for such a job with a company like the Guardian."

There was a murmur, whether of approval or of passive acquiescence could not be told.

"Thirty-five is the minimum age for the President of the United States," suggested Mr. Wintermuth, detachedly.

"Well, thirty-five is quite young enough," retorted Mr. Whitehill. "Give the boy a few years' time. I say, hire an underwriter outside."

The President turned to face the table.

"I take it, then, that it is the wish of the Board that the company's rule regarding office promotions be waived in this instance. But we must remember—as I have always maintained—that it has a discouraging effect on loyalty and ambition, to import material to fill important places. However, it is for you gentlemen to decide."

"Have you thought of anyone for the position?" inquired one.

"Not seriously," responded the President. "I have scarcely had time. There are of course plenty of men we might get, but I have really not felt like considering the question of their relative desirability before submitting the matter to you."

"I heard a speech last week," said Mr. Griswold, "by some man who wanted to reduce the fire waste of the whole country. It was delivered before the Chamber of Commerce in Plainfield, New Jersey, where I live—I occasionally attend their meetings. He's got something to do with a Chicago company. I think his name is Lyon. He impressed me as being a clever talker. Do you know anything about him?"

"Oh, yes," replied Mr. Wintermuth, with a smile. "You mean Charles Lyon. He is President of the Liberty Fire—quite a new company. He is a clever talker—they say he can talk a bird out of a tree. To have organized the Liberty and gotten it started with real cash paid in was a distinct personal achievement. But I'm afraid he's a better promoter than an underwriter; the Liberty has been losing money at an astonishing rate ever since it actually commenced to write business. If he succeeds in cutting the fire waste of the country in two, his own company may survive and may even share in the benefits, although probably not to a disproportionate extent. But I'm afraid he's too much of a philanthropist—a little too unselfish for us. We want an underwriter, not a philanthropist—some one more interested in keeping down the losses of the Guardian Fire Insurance Company than those of the United States of America. And I imagine that Lyon at present would stick to the Liberty anyway, although I fancy he will be open for a new position before very long."

"Well, I move that the President be empowered to hunt up the most likely candidate he can find for Mr. O'Connor's position," said Mr. Whitehill, and the motion was carried. An adjournment was taken for a week, or until such time as Mr. Wintermuth should have a candidate ready for consideration.

There was one decided drawback to the successful accomplishment of the task to which Mr. Wintermuth now addressed himself. This was the fact that the Guardian was not disposed to pay exorbitantly for an underwriting head. It was willing to pay a reasonable salary, but it was not a corporation of unlimited resources or gigantic income, and the expense ratio had perforce to be considered. Plenty of men whose names occurred to the President would have been competent and in every way eligible, but they were men of recognized standing in the profession, and already occupied positions of trust. It is not often that highly capable men are open to change without unusual inducement, and Mr. Wintermuth, scanning the ranks of possibilities, found them dishearteningly scanty. All the men he wanted, he knew perfectly well could not be detached from their present allegiances, and the men who were detachable he didn't want. Moreover, it had been a good many years since Mr. Wintermuth had been actively at work in the field. The men with whose character and ability he was most familiar were too advanced in age; the younger generation he did not know.

Virgil and several others of the early classic authors have commented upon the surprising swiftness with which common rumor travels. If its speed was provocative of comment in those bygone days, which lacked most of the accelerating features now found on every hand, it should certainly fare far faster at the present time. At any rate, no tidings ever spread through the subliminal Chinese empire, warning of Magyar hordes beyond the Wall, with greater celerity than the news of Mr. Wintermuth's quest through the insurance world. The waves of it rolled echoing from office to office, from special agent to special agent, from city to city.

Like vultures out of an empty sky came the effects. Circumspect as Mr. Wintermuth had been, keeping the object of his search as secret as might be, it was not more than four days before he was driven ruefully to reflect that he might just as well have put an advertisement in the paper. Apparently everybody in the insurance world, including especially the insurance editor of the paper in which he did not advertise, knew he had decided to go outside his own office for a managing underwriter; and apparently every person within reach had some one—usually himself—to recommend for the position. Mr. Wintermuth finally found it necessary to deny himself to aspiring applicants who besieged his office, and went out on a still hunt in the lanes and byways where he was less likely to meet people with axes to grind. It was on one of these excursions, in a most natural and unpremeditated manner, that he found himself confronted by Mr. Samuel Gunterson.

Mr. Gunterson had, it was true, been suggested as a possibility, but through an outside source which Mr. Wintermuth felt sure was most unlikely to have been stimulated to the suggestion by the person most interested. The President was in a mood of despondency, incidental to the painful discovery of how frail a tissue of truth most of the recommendations of his applicants' supporters usually possessed. He had spent four days investigating the records of men whose names, enthusiastically presented to him, proved to be the only commendable thing about them. Now, after this discouraging experience, he hailed the prospect of independent selection with relief. It was with much lightened depression that he recognized that Mr. Gunterson was not—actively, at least—endeavoring to secure for himself the Guardian appointment, but seemed, on the contrary, quite well contented in his present position, and Mr. Wintermuth settled down to overtures with almost his customary cheerfulness.

Mr. Samuel Gunterson was, at this period of his highly variegated underwriting career, some forty-six years of age. A life whose private character no journal had as yet been tempted to divulge had left no trace upon the impassive contour of his face nor on the somber dignity of his bearing. He was of middle height, and somewhat stout, his hair was iron-gray, and he carried himself with a sort of restrained or reflective optimism, as though he forced himself to be cheerful and companionable at the cost of untold anguish to an inner ego that no one knew. It was an effective carriage, and few people attempted to take liberties with its possessor.

During his experience in the fire insurance business Mr. Gunterson had contrived to become connected with and separated from more different concerns than could be readily computed. He had averaged somewhat better than one change bi-yearly, and the history of his peregrinations could never have been written, for no one but himself could have furnished the necessary material, and on all matters concerning himself Mr. Gunterson was as cryptic as were the Delphic oracles of old. He chose to consider himself a victim of an astonishing series of circumstances, and in a certain sense this was true, although the circumstances were largely of his own creation. Good companies and bad, established concerns and promoters' flotations, auspicious ventures and forlorn hopes—he had been associated with them all, and from each one he emerged with untroubled calm while the unhappy machine, its steering gear usually crippled by his hand alone, went plunging downhill over the cliff into the soundless waters of oblivion.

Mr. Gunterson had been either President or underwriting manager of the Eureka Insurance Company of Pittsburgh, whose demise scarcely surprised those who were aware that its remarkable popularity with its agents was mainly due to the willingness with which it accepted their bad business in almost unlimited quantities; of the Florida Fire and Marine, whose annual premium income of about eight times the amount warranted by its resources attracted the thoughtful attention, although scarcely the respect, of some of the leading underwriters in New York; of the United of Omaha, whose heavy investment in the bonds of a subsequently exploded copper company promoted by Mr. Gunterson's brother-in-law precipitated its insolvency even before its underwriting losses could overtake it; of the Planters of Oklahoma, which the Insurance Commissioner of Massachusetts one day examined with the interesting discovery that its liabilities were nearly three times its assets; and of the Constitution Fire of Washington, D.C., which ceased to issue policies by request of the United States Government. From each of these unfortunate endeavors Mr. Gunterson had emerged with unblemished reputation, and even enhanced gravity and authority due to his wider experience, and with his air of slightly melancholy urbanity diminished not at all.

Four years prior to the time when fate led Mr. Wintermuth to his door, he had been the nerve if not the brains of the general agency of Hill and Daggett of William Street, representing in an extensive territory a fleet of some seven small companies with more sporting spirit than assets, and his astute helmsmanship had resulted in running all seven soundly and irrevocably upon the rocks. From the wreck he emerged, in the first lifeboat to leave, with his broad white brow as untroubled and serene as ever. The collapse, however, left him without visible means of support, so he took a short trip abroad, returning in a month or two as the American manager of a large German company which was just entering the United States.

It is doubtful by what, if any, method these Continental-European companies select their representatives in this country. Ability and probity seem to be regarded lightly—as scarcely worth careful investigation. But no well-known man whose lack of success has left unimpaired his fluency of speech need despair. So long as new foreign companies continue to establish American branches and appoint managers, any amiable detrimental with sufficient verbosity may secure for himself a comfortable berth. Mr. Gunterson had now for almost two years been in charge of the United States business of the Elsass-Lothringen on a loss ratio so surprisingly satisfactory that he himself was absolutely at a loss to explain it. For the first time in a considerable period he felt himself to be in a strong strategic position, and he received Mr. Wintermuth in what only his extreme courtesy prevented from being an offhand manner. It was obvious that he had no intention nor desire to meet any one halfway.

Now Mr. Wintermuth had always held that a man too anxious to change his affiliations was no proper man for the Guardian, and this indifference of Mr. Gunterson pleased him. It further developed that Mr. Gunterson had at last, in the Elsass-Lothringen, found almost what he had always been seeking; his company gave him an entirely free hand,—a highly desirable thing for an underwriting manager,—and he did not know whether he should ever care about looking for anything else. At the psychological moment he nonchalantly displayed to Mr. Wintermuth's interested gaze his twenty-two per cent loss ratio for the Elsass-Lothringen, but in the next breath, recalling a few recent preliminary tremors unpleasantly suggestive of other catastrophes through which he had passed, and not to overlook a link in his entangling chain, he stated that after all, though, he was an American, and intimated that as such he sometimes felt he would a little rather devote himself to the interests of an American underwriting institution. Only occasionally did he have this feeling—still, it was there, and he must needs admit it.

Such was the man to whom Mr. Wintermuth had come, and to whom he ultimately extended an invitation to present himself for the consideration of the Guardian's directorate. And Mr. Gunterson, uneasily suspecting that the structure of the German institution might at any moment collapse at some quite unexpected point, and calculating that he might secure the managerial berth for his equally inefficient brother-in-law, and thus keep the salary in the family, cautiously accepted the invitation. So this was the man who, a few days later, faced the full board, who with affable confidence in his own abilities won over even the somewhat skeptical Whitehill, and who was, on the ninth day of December, 1912, elected Vice-President and underwriting manager of the Guardian Fire Insurance Company of New York.

He guaranteed to free himself from his Teutonic engagements and alliances in time to join the Guardian by the first of January. Suave and profound, with his grave glance suggesting unutterable depth, he bowed himself out of the presence of Mr. Wintermuth and the other directors. And the ruminative elevator carried to the street level the best satisfied man in New York.

At once the appointment was made public, and newspapers and individuals alike refrained from expressing what the better informed among them feared and expected. Mr. Wintermuth heard nothing on every hand but flattering comments on his own acumen, and praises of the sterling qualities and experience of his new appointee. In fact, the insurance press as a whole spoke of Mr. Gunterson almost as kindly as though he had died, and it was—unofficially—understood that Mr. O'Connor realized that he had made a great mistake. Mr. O'Connor, however, having with considerable satisfaction moved into the Salamander's big room with "President" in brass letters on the door, ably restrained any irritation he may have felt. Privately he assured Mr. Murch that things could not have turned out better if he had ordered them himself.

"Gunterson is the very man for our purposes," he said. "He's a stuffed shirt if there ever was one. I couldn't have made a better appointment—for us—myself. We can bleed the Guardian of every desirable agent they've got, and he won't know how to stop us."

And Mr. Murch, smiling, suggested that the bleeding begin as soon as possible.

In the Guardian itself, opinion was divided. No one in the office knew much, if anything, about the new underwriter, and most of the men were inclined, in view of Mr. Wintermuth's recommendation, to take him at his own assessed valuation. But not so Wagstaff, and not so Smith. Wagstaff because it hung in his memory how, many years before, this same Gunterson had by rather questionable methods worsted him in a transaction affecting a schedule of cotton compresses in Georgia; Smith because he believed Mr. Gunterson to be a fraud of such monumental proportions that he deserved a place among the storied charlatans of the world.

His company and its reputation being more to Smith than almost anything else, he felt this thing very nearly in the light of a tragedy. Gloomily regarding the prospect, all he could see ahead was trouble and disgrace. And he knew that his own hands were tied. He was of course only an employee of the company, which could select as officers whom it chose, and any protest from him would very properly be disregarded—and worse than that, he would naturally and inevitably be suspected of speaking once for the company and twice for himself.

It was a rather troubled face that in spite of himself he presented in Washington Square North an evening or two after that eventful ninth of December.

"What is the matter with you? You look too discouraged for words," Helen told him, when the conversation was barely begun.

"Do I show it as plainly as that?" he replied, somewhat ruefully. "Well, I'll admit that, funereal as I may look, it's not a circumstance to the way I feel. That's partly why I came here—to see you and be cheered up."

Somewhere down in the still, chill Boston archives of Miss Maitland's supposedly well-schooled emotions a little quiver awoke and stirred. This was quite without warrant or suggestion from the girl herself, and she strove to convince herself that no stir had been felt. Unfortunately, however, she had received that day a letter from her mother bringing her to a decision which she must now convey to the man before her, and she felt a flash of almost reckless curiosity to see how he would receive it.

"If I were a horrible egotist," she said lightly, "I should think that a little part of your depression came from anticipating that I was going to tell you I am going back home next week."

Smith looked at her in silence. He looked at her until she felt the pause and broke again into speech.

"You see, I have to get back to be with mother at Christmas, and there are a lot of things to do before then—" she began, but he interrupted her.

"I said I came here to be cheered up—and that is what you tell me!" he said. "I came up here half hoping to be soothed back into my customary optimism—and this is what I get! This is certainly an accursed month in an accursed year!"

It occurred to Helen that, regarding the matter strictly from a standpoint of gallantry, the year wherein a young man met her and successfully won her friendship should not properly be termed in all ways and wholly accursed. She scarcely felt like pointing this out, however; and the compliment of Smith's real concern at her departure would compensate for a little gaucherie of expression. As though he had read her thought, Smith spoke again, this time with all trace of the sardonic gone from his tone.

"I beg your pardon—I didn't mean that," he said. "It has been a fine year. I won't revile it just because it ends with a double catastrophe. How soon do you expect to leave?"

"The end of next week, I think," the girl answered. There was an expression in his eyes which she did not quite understand, and therefore distrusted; and she hurriedly turned the conversation into another channel.

"If you flatter me by regarding my departure as one catastrophe, what is the other?" she asked. "What has happened? Is it something to do with O'Connor?"

"Well, it's all part of the same thing, I suppose," he said. "I had almost forgotten O'Connor, though, since Gunterson drove him out of my head."

"Who or what is Gunterson, please?"

Smith told her.

"If O'Connor can get the Eastern Conference to put through a separation rule now, we're absolutely helpless," he concluded. "Gunterson wouldn't have the vaguest idea of what to do—and wouldn't let any one else tell him. I can pretty nearly see the Guardian, under Samuel Gunterson's suicidal direction, setting sail with all flags flying, and heading straight for the bottom of the sea."

Helen could think of nothing to say.

"And you are leaving for Boston!" Smith added. "Well, it looks to me as though I might be out of a job before long, and perhaps I'll come up to Boston and strike your Uncle Silas for one. I think Mr. Osgood always rather liked me. And Boston's a pretty good town—or will be after next week."

He spoke a little bitterly, for it seemed that the possibility he mentioned was perhaps not so remote, after all. Even if the Guardian survived the staggering load of its Vice-President, he felt that he could not serve very long under such a man as Gunterson. And if such a thing should come to pass, he would be in no position to hope as he was now hoping, or to dream as he was now dreaming. Yet, after all, no wall that was ever built can shut out dreams.



CHAPTER XIV

The second day of January, 1913, was marked by the installation of Samuel Gunterson as underwriting head of the Guardian and by the announcement of a radical separation rule by the combined companies of the Eastern Conference. Each was likely to have a far-reaching effect.

Smith read the news with stolid eyes. He did not credit O'Connor with having had sufficient influence to carry the separation act through the Conference, but all that the astute President of the Salamander had hoped for, and in anticipation of which had laid his plans, had come to pass—the Guardian was out of the Conference, the separation rule was to take effect almost immediately—and Gunterson was at the wheel. Smith well knew what a leverage would be used against his company. He was still brooding over the fateful item when Mr. Wintermuth sent for him.

"Have you met your new chief yet?" asked the President, in a friendly manner.

"Yes," said the other, shortly. He held out the paper. "Have you seen this yet?" he inquired, in turn.

"The Journal of Commerce? No. Is there anything especial in it?"

For answer Smith laid the paper open on the desk, pointing silently to the item which meant so much to the Guardian—and to every company outside the Conference.

Mr. Wintermuth adjusted his glasses and read the article carefully.

"Well, well!" he said thoughtfully. "So they passed it, after all! I never believed they would dare. It's a little too much like a boycott—it gives them too much the appearance of a combination in restraint of trade. Tariff and rate-making associations are proper and necessary, but to attempt to dictate to agents what companies they shall not represent—or at any event penalize them for so doing—is going pretty far. No, I didn't think they'd dare."

"Three months ago perhaps they wouldn't have," Smith suggested. "It looks like a reprisal aimed at us, more than any one else. All the other outsiders are old hands and can take care of themselves, but we haven't gotten acclimated—we're liable to have a bad time. And I think I know who accelerated the whole movement, sir."

"Yes—I understand whom you mean," said the President, compressing his lips. "No doubt this was part of his plan. Well, you seem to have followed this thing pretty closely, Richard—what do you think we had better do?"

"Isn't that rather a matter for Mr. Gunterson to decide now, sir? I don't want him to start with the idea that I am trying to dictate the underwriting policy of the company. Of course, I have my own idea of what would best serve the interest of the company to do—although in some ways I'd hate to see us do it."

"And what may it be?"

"Go back into the Conference."

"What! Go limping back with our tail between our legs? Put O'Connor in a position where he could say that we were strong enough to go out and stand alone when he was with us, but after he left we were too weak to stick it out? Never! I won't go back into the Eastern Conference, if it costs the Guardian every agency in the field. . . . Boy, ask Mr. Gunterson if he will be so good as to step here a moment."

In the brief interval before the new Vice-President put in his dignified appearance, neither of the occupants of the office spoke.

"Ah, Mr. Gunterson. Good morning once more. You know Mr. Smith, our General Agent, I believe?"

Mr. Gunterson bowed with urbanity. Courtesies exchanged—a matter of some little time—the President again spoke.

"Did you notice, in this morning's Journal, that the Eastern Conference has passed a separation rule, Mr. Gunterson? I do not know whether you are aware that the Guardian is not a member of the Conference; shortly before the resignation of your predecessor we withdrew—largely upon his recommendations. There is no reasonable doubt that at the time Mr. O'Connor believed such a rule would go into effect, and very likely he was more or less instrumental in getting it adopted. At all events it is clear that he wanted us to get out, and here we are—out! And almost any time, now, we are likely to be put out of nearly every agency in the East where Conference companies predominate—which means ninety per cent of our agencies."

"I see," observed Mr. Gunterson, sagely. "I see."

"Now the question is: what are we going to do? Mr. Smith here advises that we confess our inability to operate in an open field without the invaluable assistance of our late Vice-president, and go back into the Conference. By merely sacrificing our self-respect we could save our Eastern agency plant. I have put you in charge of the underwriting of the Guardian, Mr. Gunterson, and I would like your advice on this."

The attitude to be assumed by the Vice-president was too obvious to be creditable to his sense of perception.

"I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing us reverse our policy and confess ourselves defeated—surrender before a gun was fired. We can fight and win," said Mr. Gunterson, promptly.

It was rudimentary cleverness; a babe could have perceived what reply Mr. Wintermuth desired.

"Good!" said that gentleman, much encouraged. "I'm glad to hear you say so. That's exactly the way I feel about it, myself. I'll see O'Connor damned before I'll let him think he has forced our hand. I think your attitude is quite correct, Mr. Gunterson—I like the way you begin."

"Thank you, sir," said the Vice-president, modestly; then, deprecatingly nodding toward Smith:—

"Probably from a strictly conservative viewpoint Mr. Smith's advice is good. And the Guardian is a conservative company. But a little properly placed radicalism is not a bad thing at times—is not that true, Mr. Wintermuth?"

To which Mr. Wintermuth assented with a smile.

"At all events the fight, if there is one, will be confined to the smaller places. They can't touch us in the big cities, can they?" pursued Mr. Gunterson, following up his advantage.

"No," said Smith, shortly. "The rule won't affect us here in New York, nor in Boston, nor Philadelphia, nor Buffalo, nor Baltimore. At least those places, and some others, have always been excepted cities—making their own rules. Unless the local agents through the local boards vote for separation, we're safe there. I'd hate to see a fight started in those towns, though."

"You seem a little reluctant to get into any controversy, Richard," said Mr. Wintermuth, kindly. "To be sure, you haven't been through so many as we have. But sometimes it is necessary to fight—and fight hard, too."

"He has not weathered as many storms as you, sir," Gunterson interpolated with a smile. "Nor," he added, "as many as I myself, perhaps."

"Perhaps not," said Smith, dryly. "Is there anything else you want of me, sir?" he turned to the President. "If not, I guess I'll get back to my mail."

"Go ahead," returned his chief. "Mr. Gunterson and I will plan this thing out together."

And Smith left the office with as much numb despondency in his heart as he had ever felt in his thirty-odd years. He knew—what the others did not seem fully to appreciate—that there was an animus in this attack of O'Connor's which would stick at nothing. He saw, or he believed he saw, the excepted cities of Boston, Philadelphia, and the rest, under the polite coercion of the Eastern Conference, passing similar separation rules of their own. He foresaw the Guardian forced out of Graham and Peck's agency in Philadelphia, out of the Silas Osgood office in Boston, and losing its long established connections in other cities where the Guardian's business was as well selected and profitable as that of any company of them all. He looked gloomily down a long vista of losses and disappointments, and it appeared to him there could naturally be but one end. However, it was no doing of his. He was there to obey orders and to transact the company's business as the management desired it to be done, and in the press of other crowding matters he was glad to forget everything but the tasks before him.

The days succeeding the Conference announcement brought very little in the way of further developments. So still was the insurance stage, indeed, that Mr. Gunterson began to think that there would be no trouble, after all, and Smith to speculate on the ominous stillness and on what new moves would flash from behind this seeming curtain of inaction.

Almost at the very time of this speculation on his part, a train was carrying toward Boston no less a person than F. Mills O'Connor of the Salamander. Almost at the very hour of a Tuesday morning, when Mr. Gunterson was gravely assuring Mr. Wintermuth that he believed he would be able, in spite of the Eastern Conference, to preserve the company's agency force without the loss of a single important agent, Mr. O'Connor, after more or less indirect preliminary conversation, was presenting his desires quite bluntly to Mr. Silas Osgood.

"To be perfectly frank, Mr. Osgood, the Salamander has never gotten the premium income it should get from Boston, and worse than that, it has always lost money. Now you've got a place for us in your office, and it's the Guardian's place. No—hold on a minute—let me finish. I know that Mr. Wintermuth is an old friend of yours, but Mr. Wintermuth is about finished with the fire insurance business. Now you know that your relations with Gunterson, who is a hopeless incompetent, will never be satisfactory, and you also know that Gunterson will probably put the company out of business within two years. You appreciate also that the Salamander is a bigger company than the Guardian—it has twice the Guardian's premium income—"

"And half the Guardian's surplus," interrupted Mr. Osgood, softly.

"No matter about the surplus. Edward E. Murch and his people are back of us, we've got the premium income, and we're in the game to stay, while you as a practical insurance man know, no matter how far your sympathies may go in the opposite direction, that the days of the Guardian are numbered. I'm offering you the chance to take on one of the livest companies in the field to-day in place of a concern that's headed for oblivion by the most direct route. It's a chance I would jump at if I were in your place, but I understand the sentimental consideration enters in,—it does credit to your heart, Mr. Osgood, and I respect you for it,—and in view of all that sort of thing I came here prepared to give you certain inducements to switch the Guardian's business to the Salamander."

"Inducements? Of what sort do you mean?" inquired Mr. Osgood, mildly, although his face was a little flushed.

"Well, increased latitude on lines and classes—a larger authorization in the congested district—those are some things. Possibly also," he suggested delicately, "a little extra allowance—let us say an entertainment fund—to be used in cultivating brokers with an especially desirable business."

"But," said Mr. Osgood, "we are members of the Boston Board. We cannot offer any greater inducements to brokers than any of our fellow members offer."

O'Connor saw his suggestion had not been taken kindly.

"Of course not," he agreed. "Although I know one Boston agent who once a month plays cards with his best broker, and curiously enough he always loses exactly five per cent of that broker's account with him for the previous month. Such things are sickening—and they put at a disadvantage those of us who live up to our agreements. But I don't suppose any Board could make a rule preventing an agent from taking a good customer out to dinner and perhaps the theater once in a while—that was all I meant to suggest."

Mr. Osgood, who felt considerable doubt as to this innocent limitation, rose.

"I presume you would like my decision, Mr. O'Connor," he said, in a low voice.

"Why, yes—as soon as convenient—the sooner the better," the other man replied easily.

"Well, then, I will give it to you now," said the Bostonian. "Mr. O'Connor, I am an old man; I have lived in this city for nearly seventy years, and during those years I do not think I ever made a bargain which I would have been ashamed for the world to have seen. I am too old to begin to be either disloyal or dishonest now—for I do not see what else you can call what you have proposed but disloyalty to my friend Mr. Wintermuth and his company and dishonesty to my associates in the Boston Board. If I thought you intended to insult me, I would ask you to leave my office, but I do not think you intended your proposal as an insult, for I do not believe that by your own code you are doing anything which that code would condemn."

His visitor started to voice a protest, but the other man stopped him.

"Let me finish," he said. "I have known your former chief, Mr. Wintermuth, considerably more than half my lifetime. When I resign the Boston agency of the Guardian, it will be either at his request or because my day in the insurance world is over and I can no longer give the company a sufficient business. That is all. And now, Mr. O'Connor, I do not ask you to leave my office, but I hope you will never come into it again so long as I am here."

The President of the Salamander got to his feet, and his eyes narrowed.

"All right, Mr. Osgood," he said. "Don't worry—I won't stay where I'm not wanted. But my offer was made in good faith, it would have been advantageous to your firm, and I'm sorry you turned it down. I wanted to give you a chance, in a way that I admit would have been a good thing for me, to keep your own office organization intact—for the impression seems to be gaining ground that the Boston Board will pass a separation rule, and in that event you will have to give up the Guardian agency, anyway."

The Bostonian turned back to his desk.

"That is too remote a contingency for me to discuss with you," he replied, somewhat curtly. "Good-day, sir."

"Good-day, Mr. Osgood," said F. Mills O'Connor. He paused at the threshold. "I don't believe you've heard the last of this yet," he remarked, as he closed the door behind him.

It is a common saying with regard to any especially clever criminal: what a great man he would have made of himself if only he would have applied all this cleverness to legitimate ends! This is probably untrue in nine cases out of every ten, and perhaps in even a larger ratio, for the successful crook is successful only along crooked lines; his mind will work only in forbidden channels; it needs the spice and flavor of the illicit to stimulate its brilliancy. Let him address himself to a legitimate problem, ethical or commercial, and his efficiency evaporates—or rather it is non-existent.

Although not a criminal, F. Mills O'Connor was, to a limited degree, a demonstration of this fact. Mr. O'Connor had been competent but never particularly clever along strictly legitimate lines; it was always and only along ways just a little devious, a little tricky, a little sophistical, that his acumen mounted above the ordinary. His greatest successes with the Guardian had always been gained by methods which had been kept secret from his chief, for Mr. Wintermuth's keen sense of business honor would have prevented the fruition of every one.

He was now in the right company. The Salamander took its key from its leading director, and Mr. Murch's code of ethics briefly consisted of a belief that it was advisable to "stay inside the law"—unless he were absolutely certain that transgression would be undiscoverable or unpenalized. Into this scheme of things Mr. O'Connor fitted like water in a skin. Hence one need not have been astonished, half an hour later, had he overheard one end of a conversation conducted from Mr. Bennington Cole's private phone in the office of Silas Osgood and Company.

"Yes—this is Mr. Cole."

"Yes—I know who is speaking."

"Yes—I presume I could come over. Young's Hotel, did you say?"

"I understand. Room forty-three. I'll be there in about twenty minutes."

In twenty minutes room forty-three saw Mr. Cole being suavely greeted by Mr. O'Connor, and then it proceeded to furnish the scene for a little drama of business intrigue that would have been very interesting to an audience of law-abiding Conference companies who believed in living up to their pledges.

In the course of this undivulged conversation it developed that Mr. O'Connor was satisfied with what had just gone before; that Mr. Osgood had done exactly what both O'Connor and Cole had expected he would do, making it possible for Cole, by the proper playing of his cards, to succeed almost immediately to the management of the Osgood agency, and that aided thereto by the fact that the scrupulous Mr. Osgood would doubtless hesitate to interfere in any way with any act of his successor, the fuse was all laid for the introduction of the Salamander into the Osgood office by means of the passage of a separation rule in Boston at the very next meeting of the local board. The interview must have been a satisfactory one, for Cole's step, as he walked back to Kilby Street, was buoyant, and Mr. O'Connor bore himself as a deeply satisfied man.

Among the local agents in Boston there had never been any marked sentiment either for or against the adoption of a separation scheme. Some of the agents believed in it and some did not; but as most of the principal offices represented, with a few unimportant exceptions, only Conference companies, it had never been really a vital issue up to the time Mr. O'Connor came to Boston for the Salamander. By what means he contrived to bring the agents into line will never be known. Undoubtedly the time was precisely ripe, and he had the very influential cooperation of many of the strongest Conference companies. At all events, however he went to work, that way proved efficacious. The passage of the rule through the Board was assured. After its vote on the coming Wednesday, no agent in Boston representing a Conference company could, at the expiration of thirty days, continue to represent an outsider.

The effect that such a rule would have on the local interests of the Guardian was at once apparent. Representing, as the Osgood office did, a number of Conference companies, three of which it had represented almost as long as the Guardian, Mr. Osgood would have no practical choice. It was a case of one against the rest—and naturally the one would fall. Of all this, however, Mr. Osgood himself knew nothing as yet, save for the vague menace conveyed by O'Connor's valedictory address. Of this also the Boston insurance fraternity at large knew almost nothing, for the matter was to be jammed through the Board, and those behind it were sworn to secrecy.

Outside the inner ring who were back of the move, only one man in Boston caught wind of the matter which now only waited the coming of Wednesday to take its place among the rules of the Boston Board. This man was Mr. Francis Hancher of the Boston Index, the most alert insurance-news gatherer of New England. If anything of moment went on in the insurance world that centers in Boston, without coming under the attention of the inquisitive Mr. Hancher, it had to wear felt slippers and move about only at night. He had as unerring an instinct for insurance news as any ward boss for graft, and he was a man of humanity and bonhomie besides. Into his ears came the first faint rumors of things astir, and he began to work on the almost impalpable scent. Silently he worked, craftily, without arousing suspicion in the minds of those he questioned. Bit by bit, fragment by fragment, he gathered the makings of a Story, until at last, on the Saturday morning before the fateful Wednesday, he happened into the office of Silas Osgood and gained the last link in his chain.

"What's new?" was his greeting to Mr. Osgood.

"Could there be anything new that you do not know?" replied the other, with a smile.

"I see O'Connor's in town," said Hancher, abruptly, and his interest quickened when he saw the sudden change of Mr. Osgood's expression. "You've seen him, I suppose?" the journalist pursued nonchalantly.

"Yes," Mr. Osgood rather stiffly admitted.

Mr. Hancher took a sudden resolution. He drew up his chair a little closer, and leaned forward.

"I think you'd better tell me what he's here for—all you know about it," he said bluntly. "You know me—I won't use what you tell me unless I have your permission. And I've got an idea that you ought to know what's going on."

"I would very greatly prefer that it should not become common knowledge," Mr. Osgood replied with some hesitation; "but I may tell you, Mr. Hancher, that Mr. O'Connor came to see me with a proposal that we take the agency of the Salamander and turn over the Guardian's business to them. I told him—were you going to say anything?"

"No. That's it, then. Go on—what did you tell him?"

"I told him no. I didn't care to consider the matter," said the older man, simply.

"Mr. Osgood," said the other, "you've given me what I need to make what I suspected stand on a solid bottom. I can see the motive now for what's being done. It's the fact that O'Connor wants the Guardian's business. Now, I want to tell you something—or rather ask you something. Do you think your refusal to consider his proposition closed up the whole business completely?"

"Well, no," Mr. Osgood replied; "I suppose not. In fact, when he left, he rather intimated that I might look for further developments."

"That was temper," Hancher commented judicially. "Not good judgment, at all. Ordinarily he'd never have said such a thing. But he meant it, all right—you can believe that. If he can't get the Guardian business one way, he'll try it another. And the second way he has chosen is this—after the meeting of the Boston Board next Wednesday you will be obliged to choose between resigning either the Guardian or all your other companies."

"You mean that a separation rule will be put through?" Mr. Osgood inquired quickly.

"Surest thing you know," the journalist declared. "That is, unless somebody puts a little sand on the slide pretty all-fired soon. I say, Mr. Osgood,—I'm a non-combatant, but I like to see fair play,—why don't you write the Guardian people?—or wire them? I think this is something your friend Wintermuth ought to know."

Mr. Osgood reached toward the button that summoned his stenographer, and then drew back his hand.

"No," he said slowly. "What's the use? If it's decided, I can't stop it. And I fancy the best of my fighting days are over. That's for the younger men to do. I'll talk to Cole about it, and see what he thinks we'd better do."

The journalist glanced at him somewhat skeptically.

"Well, you needn't fight, yourself—let the Guardian people attend to that. And if you take my advice, you'll write Wintermuth. Good-by."

Mr. Osgood wrote, and on Monday morning his letter came to the hand of Mr. Wintermuth, whose eye brightened at the sight of his friend's signature. But there was no pleasure in his tone when a moment later he sent for Mr. Gunterson.

"Look here," he said, "I'm afraid these Eastern Conference people mean trouble. We've been assuming that the excepted cities were safe—nothing could happen there. Well, I don't believe they're as safe as we thought. Read what Osgood says about Boston. Boston! where we've got as fine a business as any company of our size in the field. Look at that!"

With a dignified reticence Mr. Gunterson took the letter, and in a rich silence he perused it. Then, with a calm smile, he gave his decision.

"Mr. Osgood's evident alarm may be well founded—perhaps not. But at all events, I believe our interests at Boston should be protected by some one of authority, and I shall go up myself on the five o'clock this afternoon."

On the five o'clock Mr. Gunterson left New York, and at a seasonable hour on Tuesday morning he started forth upon his travels from his Boston hotel. In search of a target at which he could aim, he went first to Mr. Osgood, to ask his aid in locating that target. Mr. Osgood, who had hoped that Mr. Wintermuth himself would come, felt a tremor of premonitory dismay at the sight of this deputy; and his subsequent talk with Mr. Gunterson did nothing to allay his apprehension. In fact, it was his covert reflection that if Hancher was right, it was all over; the man whom Wintermuth sent was of no assistance.

In point of truth, it was all over. It was barely possible that a strong and determined man could have effected something had he known how to set about it—but Mr. Gunterson did not know how. No hack actor suddenly confronted with a strange and difficult part felt more inept than he. He conceived that within him was the power to deliver a tremendous blow—but he could not find its mark. Aimlessly he consulted his acquaintances along Kilby Street. The agents of the influential Conference companies, primed to resist interviews, greeted him affably, congratulated him on his new connection, and blandly denied all knowledge of any radical move in process. That night Mr. Gunterson, having accomplished absolutely nothing, returned to his hotel with an uneasy feeling of dissatisfaction with the day.

Wednesday came. Gunterson, hesitant, undecided, in need of help, early sought his only ally, Mr. Osgood. At the door of their offices he met Mr. Osgood and Mr. Cole on their way to the meeting of the Board. The Vice-President of the Guardian fell meekly into step. At the Board rooms the agents were gathered; the meeting came to order; the order of business began. After the transaction of a few routine affairs Mr. Spence of Spence and Hardiwick rose and moved that the Eastern Conference separation rule be extended to cover Boston. His motion was seconded. There was no debate, and the only speaker was cut short by a call for the question.

In the chorus of ayes, Mr. Osgood's negative went unheard and unnoted. The motion was carried almost unanimously, Cole not voting, but permitting the senior partner to cast the vote for the firm. And all this time there sat at Mr. Osgood's side the restless but impotent form of Mr. Gunterson. Twice he started to speak, and then repressed himself, his face a little flushed with helpless shame. Beside Mr. Osgood he sat until the meeting concluded, and not a word did he say.

The meeting adjourned. In the hum of conversation Mr. Osgood turned to his junior partner.

"I'm through, Ben. You will have to go on without me. I cannot dismember my whole office organization; but James Wintermuth is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and when Silas Osgood and Company resign the Guardian—some one else must be in command."

Cole did not answer. The three moved slowly toward the door, and there in the doorway stood the author of their perplexity and distress. O'Connor saw them coming, and held out his hand to the veteran underwriter.

"How do you do, Mr. Osgood," he said. "I hope you don't bear any ill will to me for what has just happened. I said I thought the rule would go through, and you can see for yourself that it was passed almost unanimously. Perhaps we may be able to do business together after all. Let us consider this as two sensible business men. Of course I'm glad the rule went through; but please don't think that I did it. I don't own the Boston Board."

The other man regarded him steadily.

"Probably you are right, Mr. O'Connor," he replied. "I do not seem to have correctly estimated the sentiment of to-day. No doubt you used your influence on the side of your company's interests. But I do not care to do business with you, sir—on that point my mind is unchanged."

"Well, I'm sorry you feel that way about it," said the other, with the good nature which as victor he could afford to maintain. "Good-day, Mr. Osgood."

Mr. Osgood passed through the doorway, but Gunterson, following him, smitten with vague valor and sudden fury, turned.

"You—you!" was all he said, at a loss for words in his anger, and the President of the Salamander met him with a smile of humorous contempt.

"Why, hello!" he said, "here's Gunterson! Come to Boston to find a new agent, I suppose. So did I, to tell the truth. Good luck, old man."

Mr. Gunterson turned his back on his tormentor, and passed on. He could think of no appropriate retort. But the situation could not be saved by any degree of repartee. Boston had voted for separation; Silas Osgood and Company must resign the Guardian; and Samuel Gunterson had made a humiliating failure of his quest.

Into his throbbing brain, however, a new idea had come, suggested by O'Connor's taunt. A new agent! Why not? If the Osgood office, consisting largely of Conference companies, was obliged to resign the Guardian, there must be some other agency where non-Conference companies predominated and where he could place the Guardian upon the withdrawal of a Conference company. After all, the Osgood office was not the only good agency in Boston. A new vigor fortified him—he would find an agent for the Guardian who should excel the Osgood connection as the sun outshines the moon.

In one office of perhaps more notoriety than prominence, though Mr. Gunterson knew it not, at that very moment the matter was being discussed.

"Well, Jake," said Sternberg, of Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, "they've passed it."

"What did I tell you?" demanded Jake Bloom. "Didn't I tell you them Conference companies would get what they wanted? They got it, all right. Now the question is, what do we get out of it?"

"What do you mean?" asked Sternberg, slowly. He was large and bald, and had a dead-white, soft-looking, pock-marked face, while Bloom was short, black, and untidy.

"Well, I mean for one thing, the Guardian gets thrown out of the Osgood agency. They're on the street. Why shouldn't we get 'em?"

"Sure! Why not?" Sternberg rejoined with enthusiasm. "We've got to get some one else in here before long or we'll be up in the air. I'm afraid we've been salting some of our people too hard. It sort of jarred me when the Spokane left us. We've got to do something pretty quick. Now, how will we get at Gunterson? He don't know us."

"And a blame good thing he don't," said McCoy, with perfect frankness. "A swell chance we'd have of landing the Guardian if we'd had the Elsass-Lothringen! There's no use of talking—we've been writing too freely. We must cut out the skates. Now, let's get together and land Gunterson."

"That's all right, too. But if we cut out the skates, what'll we have left? Anyhow, the main question is how'll we land Gunterson?" Sternberg persisted. The mind of this large man moved as slowly as a house in a small town being transported from one lot to another by one mule, a rope, and a windlass. McCoy's mind more resembled the agile and evasive flea.

"I bet my cousin Billy Gallagher knows him. Come to think of it, Billy was special agent up here for the Florida Fire and Marine at the time Gunterson was running them. We can square Billy all right, and I believe Billy can put it over."

"It looks like a cinch to me," said Bloom, lighting a cigarette.

"It is," said McCoy, briefly.

It was. And so it came about that in the forenoon of the following day a solemn trio of men, two Hebrews and an Irishman, were bowing a polite welcome to the distinguished Vice-President of the Guardian of New York, who, in company with his friend Mr. Gallagher, now an independent loss adjuster, had honored them with a call. Mr. Gunterson confessed that he was considering a change in the Guardian's Boston representation; he had not gone so far as to commit himself, but he was looking around—of course among the few agents with whom non-Conference companies predominated.

It had been agreed by the trio that McCoy should do the talking for the firm, and McCoy came from an island where the art of persuasive conversation is far from extinct.

"Well, Mr. Gunterson, I want to say right off the reel that Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy would like very much to take on the Guardian. The Guardian's got a good name, and its policy sells well; and in the last few weeks, especially—" he threw out suggestively.

"What's the last few weeks got to do with it?" inquired the innocent and obliging visitor.

"Well, I meant the company's desirability from the agent's point of view. You see, they've never had a really broad-gauge man directing their underwriting before you took charge. Nice people, but narrow, you understand—not a company that an agent would feel drawn to. O'Connor never had no nerve—or if he did, Wintermuth never let him show it. Now, no really progressive agent can do business with a petty piker. To get the best results you've got to let your agent run his field. Take your time, make the best appointment you can, and then give your agent a free hand—that's the only way to get a liberal income and make money too."

To these sage but scarcely original observations Sternberg and Bloom gravely assented.

"In case you found a place for us in your office, what kind of an income do you think we might expect?" Mr. Gunterson asked.

"Well, we wouldn't take you at all unless we could satisfy you," replied McCoy. "And I swear I don't quite see how we could take on another company just now. How much are you getting now from Osgood? Well, if we couldn't do better than that, we'd rather pass you up—although I don't know of any company that looks better to me than the Guardian under its present management. How about it, Jake?"

Mr. Bloom considered deeply.

"New business of the class this office writes is hard to get," he said thoughtfully. "It don't fall off the trees into your lap. But we might do it if we gave up a couple of our smaller companies. If we threw out the German National and the Spokane Fire, we might do something."

The two companies named had removed their policies and supplies from the office only the previous day, their respective special agents, after an underwriting experience too painful to describe, having descended in grief and rage upon their Boston representatives when patience had ceased to be a virtue and self-preservation had become the salient motive.

"There's thirty thousand apiece, easy—say sixty thousand the first year. Yes, we could let them two go, and if you were in any kind of way liberal—if you wrote a fair line in the congested district—we could guarantee you sixty thousand, and I believe we'd make it seventy-five."

Mr. Gunterson calculated this with deliberation. It was a great deal more than the Guardian had been receiving from Silas Osgood and Company; it sounded too good to be real.

"What kind of a record have you had?" he asked cautiously.

"Record? Well, good for some of our companies and not so good for others. We've had some pretty hard knocks, but we don't write practically nothing but first-class business, and of course we write pretty good-sized lines; and when some sprinkled risk or a brick apartment house or a wool storage warehouse makes a total loss, it hits us pretty hard. Still, if you keep on taking on the best business, you're bound to make money in the long run. I suppose we turn down two thirds of what's offered to us over the counter."

"What commission would you expect?" Mr. Gunterson inquired.

"Whatever you're paying now is all right with us," McCoy responded promptly. "And we'll guarantee you a liberal increase in premiums the first year."

The heart of the Guardian's Vice-President swelled in his breast when he anticipated O'Connor's chagrin over this development.

"The Spokane's man is in town," Bloom said, as if by an afterthought. "Put it in the form of a contract, Mr. Gunterson, and I'll notify him to-day that we're holding his supplies subject to his order."

The contract was promptly drawn, signed, and witnessed, each party retaining a copy, and Samuel Gunterson, with the sting of defeat removed by this brilliant achievement, and with his self-esteem and confidence wholly restored, turned blithely toward the South Station on his way to New York.



CHAPTER XV

Contemporary historians point out that in Egypt, more than four thousand years ago, those who bore bad tidings to the reigning monarch were in the habit of meeting death so swiftly that they could scarcely have been incommoded by the circumstance. In fact, they had all the satisfaction of inevitable demise with none of the discomforts necessarily attendant on lingering annihilation.

Mr. Samuel Gunterson, returning from Boston with the signed contract of Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, presently found himself in the position of sensing all the restlessness and unhappiness of an expiring frame with no hope of an early easement by carefree and cheerful decease. For the news of his first important agency appointment was received by William Street in a manner not at all calculated to flatter the man who had made it. Of the numerous opinions expressed or unexpressed, ranging from polite incredulity to unholy joy or open contempt, the only quality which all these opinions held in common was their invidiousness.

The appointment received perhaps its most kindly treatment from those most directly concerned. Mr. Wintermuth did not know anything about Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy—in fact, he had never heard of them. And so, when Mr. Gunterson, in his most convincing rhetoric; explained the merits of the new agents and the increased income which he felt confident the Guardian would receive, the President gave his assent, merely expressing his deep regret at concluding his business relations with Silas Osgood.

"But Mr. Osgood is retiring from the firm, anyway," said Mr. Gunterson.

"Indeed? I am glad to hear it," said Mr. Wintermuth.

With which comment the matter came to its discussion's end between them. Nor did the President learn for a long time the real truth regarding his Boston appointees, for with increasing years he had grown increasingly difficult of access and intolerant of ideas conceived on the outside and not in accord with his own. The men who once could have come to him and frankly told him that the Guardian's Boston appointment was a colossal blunder were, like himself, grown insensibly out of the true current of underwriting affairs, while those who knew the truth lacked either the purpose or the opportunity to lay before him the exact state of affairs.

Among those who could not carry out their inclinations was Smith, for he saw very little of Mr. Wintermuth in these early days of the premiership of Gunterson; and he felt, moreover, that the President, knowing his opinion of Mr. Gunterson, would be inclined to discount his criticism on matters connected with the administration of the Vice-President. So Mr. Wintermuth lived in ignorance until the results began to show on the surface—which was not a far day.

From William Street, however, the busy and irreverent Street, soon came the slings and arrows which pierced even Mr. Gunterson's almost impregnable self-esteem. Only a few days after his return he overheard a conversation between Mr. Cuyler and a placer, in the Guardian's own office, which showed how the Street regarded the Boston appointment.

"Sorry, but I can't take that, Eddy; we don't write the shoe polish manufacturers at all—there's too much naphtha used, and they all burn eventually," were the words that caught his attention, and in the shadow of the door he waited for the reply.

"Ah, come off, now—loosen up! I know the Guardian does write the class, for this same concern's got a factory in Boston and I got a Guardian policy on it only yesterday. That's why I'm giving you this. Your Boston agents, Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, place the Boston end for us. What's the matter—don't your agents have any prohibited list, or do you let them do things you can't do in your own office?"

"Eddy," said Mr. Cuyler, sternly, "you're talking nonsense. I tell you we don't write the class in my department, and I don't believe the agency department does. The Boston firm you mention has just been appointed, and probably they don't know our underwriting policy yet." He handed back the binder.

The placer, realizing that the decision was final, and irritated at the declination of a risk which he had found impossible to place elsewhere, laughed loudly.

"Don't know your underwriting policy, hey? Well, they don't need to—they've got an underwriting policy of their own. Do you know what it is? It's to take a line on anything that's not actually on fire. They're the slop bucket of Boston, the standard lemon of Kilby Street; they've got a loss ratio of three thousand per cent, and they've burnt the hide off every company that's ever touched them. You make me tired. You're a fine, consistent bunch, you are—to pose as a conservative company in New York and write every skate in Boston through Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy! All right—good-by."

And in his exit his coat sleeve almost brushed against the man in the hall who in his haste and folly had appointed Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy to represent the Guardian in the good city of Boston.

This was but the beginning. After this overture the stings and slurs came thick and fast. It seemed to the dismayed Vice-President that every one in New York took delight in recalling to publicity some detail discreditable to his Bostonian discovery. From all over the East he began to receive applications for agencies from men whom even he knew to be unworthy of trust; and he realized that he had encouraged their approach like vultures on the unhappy Guardian. Within a fortnight of making the Boston appointment he had seriously considered revoking it; but this would have necessitated the admission of his initial error, and he lacked the courage to carry out his better judgment. So, with a shrug of his mental shoulders and a cynical reflection that good luck might perhaps avert the results of his imprudence, he let the matter stand.

But good luck failed to materialize, and it was not long before the expected began to happen. Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy's business appeared outwardly passable, but curiously enough it almost always seemed—after the loss—that the risk was one on which the company should never have been committed. And there were two unpleasant incidents where the Guardian was "caught on a binder"—where the loss occurred before the agents could issue the policy or report the acceptance of the risk to the New York office; and though Smith investigated these, and in each case was obliged to hold the agents blameless, the experience left an unfortunate impression. However, Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy undoubtedly controlled an unusually large volume of business. If losses were heavy, so were premiums, and the relatively small losses which naturally attend a growing business where no policy has been in force more than a month or two, postponed, for a time at least, the worst of the evil days. But long before they came the heavens had grown dark with trouble in numerous other quarters.

The general ruling of the Conference, providing that, except under almost impossible qualifications and with reduced compensation, no agent could continue to represent both Conference and non-Conference companies, was now in effect. And it seemed as though never before had there been such precision and unanimity in Conference methods; and Smith, gloomily regarding the grim spectacle of the Guardian's decline, could only curse under his breath the act of O'Connor that had brought about this state of affairs.

Certainly there was no hesitancy about the Conference campaign, and the results became at once apparent in the non-Conference offices. Hardly a day passed which failed to bring to the Guardian the resignation of one or more of its agents, with none to take their places except the vultures, many of whom Mr. Gunterson remembered to have assisted in accelerating the downfall of some of the other underwriting institutions with which he had been connected. With a chill of dismay he read of what a splendid opening awaited the Guardian in the general agency of Henry Trafalgar and Company of Memphis, or Bates and Newsome of Atlanta.

From the Guardian's own agents the letters of resignation were very much alike, for the company was popular in a modest way, and most of the writers had represented it for many years.

"We are notified by the committee in charge of this district," they wrote, "that in order to secure the customary graded commission scale we must resign our non-Conference companies. We are extremely sorry to let the Guardian go, but the difference to us financially is such that we would not feel justified in declining the Conference offer."

And so, one after one, they went. Many an agent wrote bitterly attacking the Conference procedure and asking whether the Guardian could not arrange to take care of his entire business, and stating that if this could be done he would retain the Guardian and let the others go. This, however, in nearly every case was out of the question, and eventually all these agencies went with their fellows. During the first month of the new year almost one hundred agents, some of them among the most satisfactory and profitable of the Guardian's plant, had been compelled to resign. The income from these agencies reached to the neighborhood of one hundred thousand dollars annually, and Mr. Wintermuth began to take decided notice of his strategic position.

Of course, whenever an agency was lost, there was the possibility of replacing the company in some non-Conference office; but this was not so easy a matter. The non-Conference agents were principally lower grade, cut-rate concerns, and not of the standard either professionally or financially to which the Guardian was accustomed. The company's field men, continually confronted by the discouraging task of finding in a town a satisfactory agent, when none existed save in Conference offices, became disheartened. Their letters to the home office indicated their demoralization and Mr. Gunterson could not think how to direct their campaigns for them.

At this juncture the hand on the reins needed to be both delicate and firm, and the hand of Mr. Gunterson, while it may have had its moments of inflexibility, was never delicate. And it was firm with less and less frequency as the days went by. Never any too well convinced, at the bottom of his heart, of the soundness of any course he elected to pursue, the apparent necessity of sitting helplessly in his office and watching his agency plant disintegrate before his eyes robbed him of much of the assurance that had always been one of his predominant factors. Outwardly his manner remained as impressive as ever, but it was retained with an ever increasing difficulty.

In this dark hour his only sustaining reflection was that this rule, which was working such havoc among the Guardian's smaller agencies, did not apply to the larger cities whence came a large proportion of the company's premium income. Boston, of course, with a local rule even more radical than that of the field generally, had gone the way of the small towns; but in New York separation was out of the question since most of the important companies maintained their own local departments, dispensing with agents altogether; in Philadelphia the local underwriters had never been able to agree among themselves on any drastic measures and there seemed no likelihood of a change; while in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore soothingly sepulchral silence and calm reigned.

As the month of January gave place to the briefest of his brothers, a temporary lull in hostilities appeared to have arrived. Mr. Gunterson, drawing a long breath, was wondering if it could be possible that the worst of the tempest had passed, when eruptions from three craters burst forth almost simultaneously, and by the light of their flames it was seen that all which had gone before was of minor moment compared to that which was now to come.

It was about the third week in February that a Conference war was declared in Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Baltimore. In the ears of Mr. Gunterson the triple detonation rang terribly, like the very voice of doom, and it was with the desperation of hopelessness that he addressed himself to the solution of this new problem.

He no longer trusted himself as direct mediator; his Boston experience had cured him of all personal meddlesomeness; it was much more dignified to remain quietly in New York directing the efforts of his subordinates and criticizing them when they failed to accomplish the impossible. He did not care to expose himself to another Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy triumvirate. So he sat in his office, dictating letters and giving endless pieces of impracticable advice to special agents who inwardly cursed; and to Mr. Wintermuth he bore weirdly distorted versions of situations and crises beyond any power of his to unravel or even to explain.

Even on matters of fact he was pleasingly vague.

"How many agencies have we lost?" the President demanded on one occasion.

"Really, I could hardly say exactly," Mr. Gunterson responded. "You see, some that haven't actually resigned have stopped sending us business—to any extent. But," he added, "we can more than make up such losses in income when our new appointments show the full results of their business."

"How long do you calculate that's going to take?" abruptly inquired the usually courteous Mr. Wintermuth.

Mr. Gunterson did not know, but he was decidedly of the opinion that it could not be very long before the tide was stemmed.

But as the days went by the tide continued to run in the same direction. Baltimore, threatening dire things, hung trembling in the balance; Buffalo had already gone over to the enemy; Philadelphia was as yet hesitating before the final irrevocable leap. So February wore away, and March entered.

James Wintermuth was more disturbed than he had been at any time covered by what was now a good and had once been a miraculous memory. His company had so long been his pride, his reliance, his solace, and almost his gospel that he had grown to think of it as a sort of fixed star, whose light perhaps might be exceeded by some larger and more pretentious luminary, but which would nevertheless shine steadily on, beyond the fear of any cosmic upheaval.

Now he beheld it not only overclouded, but even menaced—beheld its light in danger of being dimmed if not utterly extinguished. It was absurd, it was tragic, it was unbelievable—yet it was so. And when he was confronted with the fact, there crept back into the old gentleman's heart something of his old fire, as well as a slow, brooding sense of angry injury against the men or forces responsible for his present difficulties. His elder resentment was of course against O'Connor, who was taking advantage in every way of the Guardian's misfortunes; but as the palpably weakening hold of the company brought him more closely in touch with its underwriting affairs, as the questionable losses from Boston and other similar agencies began to arrive in faster and faster succession, and he clearly perceived the weakness and incapability of Gunterson's management, his irritation rightly directed itself more and more against the luckless Vice-President.

One other thing of recent occurrence had shaken—perhaps out of proportion to its consequences—what little confidence he still felt in the judgment of his underwriting manager. That related to the attempt of Mr. Gunterson to inject his advice into the Guardian's affairs financial. Early in February he had suggested to Mr. Wintermuth the advisability of purchasing for the Guardian some bonds of an embryonic steel company then erecting a plant in Alabama. Mr. Gunterson knew personally some of the people back of this, the bonds seemed remarkably cheap, and the bonus in common stock made the proposition in his opinion decidedly attractive. Mr. Wintermuth's investigation of the concern and its prospectus had quickly convinced him that its officers were of far more capability in the industry of disposing of what, by a polite extension of the term, might be called securities than in manufacturing steel, and a skeptical investing public evidently reached the same conclusion, for within a month after Mr. Gunterson's friendly suggestion, the Birmingham Bessemer Steel Corporation was in the hands of a receiver, who, after some hesitation, issued a statement to the effect that the bondholders might eventually realize fifteen cents on every dollar they had paid in.

On the second day of March an unusual thing happened. Mr. Cuyler entered the elevator and mounted to the top floor of the Guardian building, crossing the floor toward Mr. Wintermuth's office.

"Hello! What are you doing up here?" Smith inquired, knowing the stars must be strangely out of their courses to attract Mr. Cuyler to this unaccustomed altitude. A true local department man is always uncomfortable, never at home, above the grade floor. "Has the Sub-Treasury or the Aquarium made a total loss, or what's the matter?" he cheerfully proceeded.

"No," said Cuyler, sourly. And without further answer he passed on into the President's room.

"Good-afternoon, Mr. Cuyler," said the President, amiably, but the local secretary with a glum face stopped him.

"Well, we've lost O'Brien," he said.

"What's that?" demanded the other. "Lost O'Brien? What do you mean? Not O'Brien of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street?"

"That's the man. The best branch manager we ever had—the man we kept when the Exchange made us close all our branch offices but one. Well, he's thrown us."

"Thrown us! O'Brien? Why, he's been with us for fifteen years! Tell me about this at once, sir."

"There's nothing to tell, or nothing much," replied the local secretary, bitterly. "The business he's been giving us has been dropping off,—we haven't got a new risk out of him in a month and we've been losing a lot of our renewals,—and yesterday Charlie saw his placer going into the Salamander office with a bundle of binders."

"The Salamander? O'Connor!"

"Yes, sir, O'Connor. So to-day I went around to the restaurant where he eats when he comes down town. He was there."

"O'Brien, you mean? Well, what did he say?"

"He said," replied Cuyler, slowly, "that he had no complaint to make of the way we'd treated him, but that the Salamander was offering him facilities which we didn't offer him, and he felt obliged to do something for them."

"He means they're paying him excess brokerage or something of that sort," said Mr. Wintermuth, acidly.

"Yes, I suppose so, but of course that's a thing you can't say unless you're in a position to prove it. Anyhow, he's gone—and about twenty thousand dollars worth of preferred business with a thirty per cent loss ratio for ten years has gone with him."

The President rose and walked up and down his office. This was bringing the fight to his very door, with a vengeance.

"What can we do about it?" he said, stopping in front of Cuyler and fixing on that dismayed person a vaguely furious gaze.

"I don't know. I suppose we'll have to hunt around and dig up another branch manager in O'Brien's place. It'll take a lot of hunting, though. You don't pick up a business like that every day in the week."

The President could make no better suggestion, and in this instance he did not call the Vice-President into conference.

"Do the best you can, then," he said shortly; "and let me know how you're getting along."

Mr. Cuyler descended gloomily to his proper milieu, and took up the task of finding a branch office manager to replace the recreant O'Brien. But agents like O'Brien were few, and most of the best of them had their own old-established connections with other companies. Again, the Guardian's reputation for conservatism made Cuyler's task the harder. One or two, after considering the matter, were frightened away by their dread lest the Guardian accept nothing but their more desirable risks, making it all the more difficult for them to place those that were not so desirable. The Guardian's local secretary had as wide an acquaintance as any man on the Street, but he found himself confronted by an exceedingly difficult problem.

Meanwhile a branch manager must be secured. The company's local income was dropping behind in a way that had not happened within the memory of man. In this state of affairs it was not long before Cuyler again sought Mr. Wintermuth, and this time the advice of Mr. Gunterson was solicited.

It had been nearly a week since Mr. Gunterson had been impaled upon any very serious dilemma, and in this interval he had regained much of his shaken confidence, so that he addressed himself to the solution of Mr. Cuyler's difficulties with much of his pristine assurance.

"Why not get Joe Darkner? He's got a fine class of business and a lot of it," he suggested at once.

"Yes, but he's sewed up body and soul with the National of Norway," Cuyler responded shortly.

"Well, what's the matter with Hart and Leith?"

"Nothing but East Side stuff. Besides, they're dead ones—won't last out the year," replied the local underwriter, somewhat impatiently. As though he had not canvassed such obvious possibilities as these!

"Why not try Schermerhorn and Snow?" was Mr. Gunterson's next suggestion.

The President broke into the discussion.

"They've been uptown managers of the Inland for twenty years. And Snow is a big stockholder in the company. We would be wasting our time to approach them."

There was a hint of contempt in his tone. A man who volunteered helpful advice about a difficult situation without being in possession of the most rudimentary information bearing on it was hardly worthy of serious attention. Perhaps the keen ear of the Vice-President detected this, for he flushed slightly, and was silent for a moment.

"I'll give the matter my attention," he said reassuringly to Cuyler. "I'm a little out of touch with local affairs, but I know plenty of first-rate uptown brokers, and I guess I can locate us to good advantage. I'll see you about it later."

And he made his majestic exit.

The matter being now under his august advisement, it might have been supposed that relief was in sight and a new and desirable connection as good as made. But in less than a week from the time of this conversation Mr. Cuyler again sought the President, and the expression of his face could not have been misinterpreted.

"Well, what's the matter now?" Mr. Wintermuth inquired, as the local underwriter seated himself.

"Who do you think is gone now?" said Cuyler, abruptly.

"Who?" demanded his superior officer.

"Jenkinson—and Hammond, Dow, and Company."

"Gone!" repeated the President, slowly. The brokers in question were known to be on the most friendly terms with the company, and it was generally supposed that the first choice of most of their business went to the Guardian. "Gone! What do you mean? Nothing has happened to either of those people! What are you talking of?"

"I mean they're gone, so far as the Guardian is concerned. We've taken as much as ten thousand a year from each of those offices. And now O'Connor's got them."

The President looked at him in silence.

"I knew something was the matter, and to-day I saw O'Connor and Jenkinson at lunch, laughing and talking as familiar as though they'd been friends for years. It's no use, sir—he's going after every really good broker that we've got attached to us."

"But the Salamander can't take care of all their business. Why, those two firms must do business with nearly every office on the Street, anyway."

"The Salamander will take all the best of the business we get now, or most of it, and help them out, I suppose, on a lot of tough risks that I've never been willing to write. O'Connor's a plunger, you know, when he's got a gambling company back of him. It looks to me as if we'd only get what he left—targets, and big lines where Jenkinson and Hammond Dow have enough to go round."

Mr. Cuyler's oldest friend had never seen him more troubled than at this moment. So deep, in fact, was his gloom that the President put aside his own concern to try to reassure his old counterman. In this he succeeded not at all; Mr. Cuyler's dejection was settled.

"What about a branch manager in place of O'Brien?" inquired Mr. Wintermuth at length, thinking at least to change the subject, and hoping to touch a brighter theme. Mr. Cuyler's face darkened still further, if such a thing were possible.

"Nothing doing," he said inelegantly but comprehensively.

"Hasn't Mr. Gunterson—?" the President began, but he stopped short. "What's that?" he asked sharply. "What were you going to say?"

"I guess I'd better not say it," responded the local underwriter with deliberation.

"Go ahead," said his chief.

"Well, then," the other answered, "I was going to say 'To hell with Gunterson!'"

Mr. Wintermuth leaned back in his chair, with his eyes fixed on his subordinate.

"Cuyler," he said, "Mr. Gunterson is your superior officer, and that was an entirely improper thing for you to say. But I've known you, Cuyler, for forty years, and I don't mind telling you that that is exactly what I have been wanting to say about Mr. Gunterson for the last three weeks."

A rueful smile broke through the gloom of both.

"Well, I'm glad you feel the same way about it, and I'm glad I got it out of my system; but I don't see that it helps things much, does it?" the local underwriter replied.

"I'm not so sure of that," said Mr. Wintermuth. "It helps me, and possibly the assistance will spread to the whole situation later on."

Meanwhile the gentleman who was thus summarily consigned to the infernal regions was doing his vague utmost to cope with three situations at once, any one of which would have been entirely beyond his capabilities to control. New York, Philadelphia, and the Eastern field as a whole,—each was a problem in itself, and each was getting farther and farther out of hand. The Guardian's field men were demoralized, beholding the fine agency plant of their company crumble and melt away while they stood helpless to hold it together. And Mr. Gunterson, when asked for remedies, could reply only in nebulous words of even more crepuscular and doubtful pertinence. New York was admittedly beyond him, and Philadelphia, harkening to siren voices that promised great things, was presently to vote on the separation rule for that city.

It is a depressing business, this watching the burning of one's own ancestral house, the sinking of one's proudest ship of all the fleet. It was altogether too much for Mr. Wintermuth. For nearly a week he was missing from the office, and no man at the Guardian knew of his whereabouts. With the decline in volume of the company's business, the amount of routine work in the office became unbearably, demoralizingly light. The map clerks loafed and the bookkeepers joked with one another. Smith found time hanging heavy on his hands; but by Mr. Gunterson's orders he stayed at his desk, although he could have done much, had he been permitted to go out among his agents in the field, to stem the tide.

In the local department the atmosphere was charged with the contagious mourning of Mr. Cuyler, who with funereal face sat contemplating the shrinkage of his business. For with the loss of his branch manager and his two best brokers, there was a deficit in his premium returns which he could not overcome. And certainly his melancholy countenance did not attract business; it was a bold placer indeed who tried with quip and banter to secure Mr. Cuyler's acceptance of a doubtful risk. His world was awry, and all who ran might read it. His brow became unpleasantly corrugated, his smile a thing of the past. If Mr. O'Connor had wanted evidence of the success of his local campaign, he could have gained it from one look at Mr. Cuyler.

Above stairs, however, doom being still a matter of immediate prospect rather than a thing accomplished, Mr. Gunterson still held forth, maintaining a sort of fictitious calm. At times he was even cheerful, and did his best to rally his dazed and despondent subordinates. But Bartels, seeing slip away accounts of agents he had audited for twenty years, was in a state of stubborn, uncompromising rage which closely resembled the dementia of a dumb animal, and Mr. Gunterson could do nothing with him. Still the Vice-President struggled manfully to keep his head above water, to seem cheerful and optimistic. He came from his room one morning, and spoke briskly to Smith.

"I notice that some of your clerks leave their hats around loose instead of hanging them up," he said. "That should not be allowed in a well-conducted office. Please give the necessary orders."

Smith looked at him. This was the closest Mr. Gunterson had come to real contact with the vital problems before him. A company in his charge was disintegrating under his hesitant and futile hand—and he talked about clerks' hats which should properly be hung up!

"Yes, sir," said Smith, quietly. "I'll speak about it."

The weeks followed one another with intolerable slowness. March began, and dragged its weary length along, and still the darkness increased in the Guardian's skies. From Boston the Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy losses were beginning to come with the frequency and regularity of the shots from a rapid-fire gun. The East was thoroughly disorganized, and even the West, apparently by some subtle psychological influence, was beginning to experience a sympathetic slump. Philadelphia still hung on, the local agents not having been able to agree on any plan of compensation for separating its Conference sheep from their alien goat associates.

Mr. Wintermuth, silent and noncommittal, had returned to the office, but took little part in the conduct of his company's underwriting affairs. And in this manner March wore itself almost out—and it seemed as though the Guardian's span of life were growing rapidly shorter.

On the last day of the month there was a meeting of the directors in the closed room off the President's own. It was a short meeting, and Mr. Wintermuth did the most of the talking, while Mr. Whitehill, who had advocated the election of Mr. Gunterson, had little to say. And so it befell that the directors, after voting him salary in advance for a liberal term, accepted the resignation from the Guardian of Samuel Gunterson; and to fill the vacancy so created, there was unanimously elected to be Vice-President and under-writing manager, Richard Smith.



CHAPTER XVI

Smith took office at nine o'clock on the first business day of April. The fifteen minutes following were spent by him in patiently listening to Mr. Wintermuth's diagnosis of the various ills with which the Guardian was afflicted, related supposedly for his education. When the first pause was reached, the new Vice-President said:—

"I've followed things pretty carefully, sir; and with what you have just told me I think I know about where we stand. We're certainly in bad shape at present, from the agency standpoint, but it's by no means hopeless. And financially we seem to be well off. I looked over the statement Mr. Bartels gave me last night, and since the first of the year some of our investments must have appreciated handsomely; I see that Ninth National Bank stock is selling away above the valuation we put on it in our statement."

"Yes; it is thought that some of the Duane Trust Company people are trying to buy a controlling interest," the President responded more cheerfully.