I
They called him Wrong Number in the bank because he happened so often
and was so annoying. His presence in the White River National was
painful to bookkeepers, tellers and other practical persons connected
with this financial Gibraltar because, without having any definite
assignment, he was always busy. He was carried on the rolls as a
messenger, though he performed none of the duties commonly associated
with the vocation, calling or job of a bank messenger. No one assumed
responsibility for Wrong Number, not even the Cashier or the First Vice
President, and such rights, powers and immunities as he enjoyed were
either self-conferred or were derived from the President, Mr. Webster
G. Burgess.
Wrong Number’s true appellation as disclosed by the payroll was
Clarence E. Tibbotts, and the cynical note-teller averred that the
initial stood for Elmer. A small, compact figure, fair hair, combed to
onion-skin smoothness, a pinkish face and baby blue eyes--there was
nothing in Wrong Number’s appearance to arouse animosity in any but the
stoniest heart. Wrong Number was polite, he was unfailingly cheerful,
and when called upon to assist in one place or another he responded
with alacrity and no one had reason to complain of his efficiency.
He could produce a letter from the files quicker than the regular
archivist, or he could play upon the adding machine as though it were
an instrument of ten strings. No one had ever taught him anything; no
one had the slightest intention of teaching him anything, and yet by
imperceptible degrees, he, as a free lance, passed through a period
of mild tolerance into acceptance as a valued and useful member of
the staff. In the Liberty Loan rushes that well-nigh swamped the
department, Wrong Number knew the answers to all the questions that
were fired through the wickets. Distracted ladies who had lost their
receipts for the first payment and timidly reported this fact found
Wrong Number patient and helpful. An early fear in the cages that the
president had put Wrong Number into the bank as a spy upon the clerical
force was dispelled, when it became known that the young man did on
several occasions, conceal or connive at concealing some of those
slight errors and inadvertencies that happen in the best regulated of
banks. Wrong Number was an enigma, an increasing mystery, nor was he
without his enjoyment of his associates’ mystification.
Wrong Number’s past, though veiled in mist in the White River National,
may here be fully and truthfully disclosed. To understand Wrong Number
one must also understand Mr. Webster G. Burgess, his discoverer and
patron. In addition to being an astute and successful banker, Mr.
Burgess owned a string of horses and sent them over various circuits
at the usual seasons, and he owned a stock farm of high repute as may
be learned by reference to any of the authoritative stud books. If
his discreet connection with the racetrack encouraged the belief that
Mr. Burgess was what is vulgarly termed a “sport,” his prize-winning
short-horns in conjunction with his generous philanthropies did much to
minimize the sin of the racing stable.
Mr. Burgess “took care of his customers,” a heavenly attribute in any
banker, and did not harass them unnecessarily. Other bankers in town
who passed the plate every Sunday in church and knew nothing of Horse
might be suspicious and nervous and even disagreeable in a pinch,
but Mr. Burgess’s many admirers believed that he derived from his
association with Horse a breadth of vision and an optimism peculiarly
grateful to that considerable number of merchants and manufacturers
who appreciate a liberal line of credit. Mr. Burgess was sparing of
language and his “Yes” and “No” were equally pointed and final. Some of
his utterances, such as a warning to the hand-shaking Vice president,
“Don’t bring any anemic people into my office,” were widely quoted
in business circles. “This is a bank, not the sheriff’s office,” he
remarked to a customer who was turning a sharp corner. “I’ve told the
boys to renew your notes. Quit sobbing and get back on your job.”
It was by reason of their devotion to Horse that Burgess and Wrong
Number met and knew instantly that the fates had ordained the meeting.
Wrong Number had grown up in the equine atmosphere of Lexington--the
Lexington of the Blue Grass, and his knowledge of the rest of the world
was gained from his journeys to race meets with specimens of the horse
kind. Actors are not more superstitious than horsemen and from the time
he became a volunteer assistant to the stablemen on the big horse farm
the superstition gained ground among the _cognoscenti_ that the wings
of the Angel of Good Luck had brushed his tow head and that he was a
mascot of superior endowment. As he transferred his allegiance from
one stable to another luck followed him, and when he picked, one year,
as a Derby winner the unlikeliest horse on the card and that horse
galloped home an easy winner, weird and uncanny powers were attributed
to Wrong Number.
Burgess had found him sitting on an upturned pail in front of the
stable that housed “Lord Templeton” at six o’clock of the morning of
the day the stallion strode away from a brilliant field and won an
enviable prestige for the Burgess stables. Inspired by Wrong Number’s
confidence, Burgess had backed “Lord Templeton” far more heavily than
he had intended and as a result was enabled to credit a small fortune
to his horse account. For four seasons the boy followed the Burgess
string and in winter made himself useful on the Burgess farm somewhere
north of the Ohio. He showed a genius for acquiring information and was
cautious in expressing opinions; he was industrious in an unobtrusive
fashion; and he knew about all there is to know about the care and
training of horses. Being a prophet he saw the beginning of the end
of the Horse Age and sniffed gasoline without resentment, and could
take an automobile to pieces and put it together again. Burgess was
his ideal of a gentleman, a banker, and a horseman, and he carried his
idolatry to the point of imitating his benefactor in manner, dress
and speech. Finding that Wrong Number was going into town for a night
course in a business college, Burgess paid the bill, and seeing that
Wrong Number at twenty-two had outgrown Horse and aspired to a career
in finance, Burgess took him into the bank with an injunction to the
cashier to “turn him loose in the lot.”
While Mrs. Burgess enjoyed the excitement and flutter of grandstands,
her sense of humor was unequal to a full appreciation of the social
charm of those gentlemen who live in close proximity to Horse. Their
ways and their manners and their dialect did not in fact amuse her, and
she entertained an utterly unwarranted suspicion that they were not
respectable. It was with the gravest doubts and misgivings that she
witnessed the rise of Wrong Number who, after that young gentleman’s
transfer to the bank, turned up in the Burgess town house rather
frequently and had even adorned her table.
On an occasion Web had wired her from Chicago that he couldn’t get home
for a certain charity concert which she had initiated and suggested
that she commandeer Wrong Number as an escort; and as no other man of
her acquaintance was able or willing to represent the shirking Webster,
she did in fact utilize Wrong Number. She was obliged to confess that
he had been of the greatest assistance to her and that but for his
prompt and vigorous action the programmes, which had not been delivered
at the music hall, would never have been recovered from the theatre to
which an erring messenger had carried them. Wrong Number, arrayed in
evening dress, had handed her in and out of her box and made himself
agreeable to three other wives of tired business men who loathed
concerts and pleaded important business engagements whenever their
peace was menaced by classical music. Mrs. Burgess’s bitterness toward
Webster for his unaccountable interest in Wrong Number was abated
somewhat by these circumstances though she concealed the fact and
berated him for his desertion in an hour of need.
Webster G. Burgess was enormously entertained by his wife’s social and
philanthropic enterprises and he was proud of her ability to manage
things. Their two children were away at school and at such times as
they dined alone at home the table was the freest confessional for her
activities. She never understood why Webster evinced so much greater
interest and pleasure in her reports of the warring factions than in
affairs that moved smoothly under her supreme direction.
“You know, Web,” she began on an evening during the progress of the
Great War, after watching her spouse thrust his fork with satisfaction
into a pudding she had always found successful in winning him to an
amiable mood; “you know, Web, that Mrs. Gurley hasn’t the slightest
sense of fitness,--no tact,--no delicacy!”
“You’ve hinted as much before,” said Webster placidly. “Cleaned you up
in a club election?”
“Web!” ejaculated Mrs. Burgess disdainfully. “You know perfectly well
she was completely snowed under at the Women’s Civic League election.
Do you think after all I did to start that movement I’d let such a
woman take the presidency away from me? It isn’t that I _cared_ for it;
heaven knows I’ve got enough to do without that!”
“Right!” affirmed Burgess readily. “But what’s she put over on you now?”
Mrs. Burgess lifted her head quickly from a scrutiny of the percolator
flame.
“Put over! Don’t you think I give her any chance to put anything over!
I wouldn’t have her _think_ for a minute that she was in any sense a
_rival_.”
“No; nothing vulgar and common like that,” agreed Webster.
“But that woman’s got the idea that she’s going to entertain all the
distinguished people that come here. And the Gurleys have only been
here two years and we’ve lived here all our lives! It’s nothing to me,
of course, but you know there _is_ a certain dignity in being an old
family, even here, and my great grandfather was a pioneer governor, and
yours was the first State treasurer and that ought to count and always
_has_ counted. And the Gurleys made all their money out of tomatoes and
pickles in a few years; and since they came to town they’ve just been
_forcing_ themselves everywhere.”
“I’d hardly say that,” commented Burgess. “There’s no stone wall around
this town. I was on a committee of the Chamber of Commerce that invited
Gurley to move his canning factory here.”
“And after that he was brazen enough to take his account to the
Citizen’s!” exclaimed Mrs. Burgess.
“That wasn’t altogether Gurley’s fault, Gertie,” replied Burgess,
softly.
“You don’t mean, Web----”
“I mean that we could have had his account if we’d wanted it.”
“Well, I’m glad we’re under no obligations to carry them round.”
“We’re not, if that’s the way you see it. But Mrs. Gurley wears pretty
good clothes,” he suggested, meditatively removing the wrapper from his
cigar.
“Webster Burgess, you don’t _mean_----”
“I mean that she’s smartly set up. You’ve got to hand it to her,
particularly for hats.”
“You never see what I wear! You haven’t paid the slightest attention to
anything I’ve worn for ten years! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!
That woman buys all her clothes in New York, every stitch and feather,
and they cost five times what I spend! With the war going on, I don’t
feel that it’s _right_ for a woman to spread herself on clothes. You
know you said yourself we ought to economize, and I discharged Marie
and cut down the household bills. Marie was worth the fifty dollars a
month I paid her for the cleaner’s bills she saved me.”
Mrs. Burgess was at all times difficult to tease, and Webster was
conscious that he had erred grievously in broaching the matter of
Mrs. Gurley’s apparel, which had never interested him a particle.
He listened humbly as Mrs. Burgess gave a detailed account of her
expenditures for raiment for several years, and revealed what she had
never meant to tell him, that out of her personal allowance she was
caring for eight French orphans in addition to the dozen she had told
him about.
“Well, you’re a mighty fine girl, Gertie. You know I think so.”
The tears in Mrs. Burgess’s eyes made necessary some more tangible
expression of his affection than this, so he walked round and kissed
her, somewhat to the consternation of the butler who at that moment
appeared to clear the table.
“As to money,” he continued when they had reached the living-room, “I
got rid of some stock I thought was a dead one the other day and I
meant to give you a couple of thousand. You may consider it’s yours for
clothes or orphans or anything you like.”
She murmured her gratitude as she took up her knitting but he saw that
the wound caused by his ungallant reference to Mrs. Gurley’s wardrobe
had not been healed by a kiss and two thousand dollars. Gertrude
Burgess was a past mistress of the art of extracting from any such
situation its fullest potentialities of compensation. And Webster knew
as he fumbled the evening newspaper that before he departed for the
meeting of the War Chest Committee that demanded his presence downtown
at eight o’clock he must make it easy for her to pour out her latest
grievances against Mrs. Gurley. He is a poor husband who hasn’t learned
the value of the casual approach. To all outward appearances he had
forgotten Mrs. Gurley and for that matter Mrs. Burgess as well when,
without looking up from the Government estimate of the winter wheat
acreage, he remarked with a perfectly-feigned absent air:
“By-the-way, Gertie, you started to say something about that Gurley
woman. Been breaking into your fences somewhere?”
“If I thought you would be interested, Web----”
This on both sides was mere routine, a part of the accepted method, the
established technique of mollification.
“Of course I want to hear it,” said Webster, throwing the paper down
and planting himself at ease before her with his back to the fire.
“I don’t want you to think me unkind or unjust, Web, but there are
_some_ things, you know!”
He admitted encouragingly that there were indeed some things and bade
her go on.
“Well, what made me very indignant was the way that woman walked off
with the Italian countess who was here last week to speak to our
Red Cross workers. You know I wired Senator Saybrook to extend an
invitation to the Countess to come to our house, and he wrote me that
he had called on her at the Italian Embassy and she had accepted; and
then when the Countess came and I went to the station to meet her, Mrs.
Gurley was there all dressed up and carried her off to her house. For
sheer impudence, Web, that beat anything I ever heard of. Every one
_knows_ our home is always open and it had been in the papers that we
were to entertain the Countess Paretti. It was not only a reflection on
me, Web, but on you as well. And of course the poor Countess wasn’t to
blame, with all the hurry and confusion at the station, and she didn’t
know me from Adam; and Mrs. Gurley simply captured her--it was really
a case of the most shameless kidnapping--and hurried her into her
limousine and took her right off to her house.”
“Well, after the time you’d spent thinking up Italian dishes for the
lady to consume, I should say that the spaghetti was on us,” said
Burgess, recalling with relief that the Countess’ failure to honor his
home had released him for dinner with a British aviator who had proved
to be a very amusing and interesting person. “I meant to ask you how
the Gurleys got into the sketch. It was a contemptible thing to do, all
right. No wonder you’re bitter about it. I’ll cheerfully punch Gurley’s
head if that’ll do any good.”
“What I’ve been thinking about, Web, is this,” said Mrs. Burgess,
meditatively. “You know there’s an Illyrian delegation coming to town,
a special envoy of some of the highest civil and military officials of
poor war-swept Illyria. And I heard this afternoon that the Gurleys
mean to carry them all to their house for luncheon when the train
arrives Thursday at noon just before Governor Eastman receives them at
the statehouse, where there’s to be a big public meeting. The Gurleys
have had their old congressman from Taylorville extend the invitation
in Washington and of course the Illyrians wouldn’t _know_, Web.”
“They would not,” said Webster. “The fame of our domestic cuisine
probably hasn’t reached Illyria and the delegation would be sure to
form a low opinion of Western victualing if they feed at the Gurleys.
The Gurleys probably think it a chance to open up a new market for
their well-known Eureka brand of catsup in Illyria after the war.”
“Don’t be absurd!” admonished Mrs. Burgess.
“I’m not absurd; I’m indignant,” Webster averred. “Put your cards on
the table and let’s have a look. What you want to do, Gertie, is to
hand the Gurleys one of their own sour pickles. I sympathize fully with
your ambition to retaliate. I’ll go further than that,” he added with a
covert glance at the clock; “I’ll see what I can do to turn the trick!”
“I don’t see _how_ it can be done without doing something we can’t
stoop to do,” replied Mrs. Burgess with a hopeful quaver in her voice.
“We must do no stooping,” Webster agreed heartily. “It would be far
from us to resort to the coarse kidnapping tactics of the Gurleys. And
of course you can’t go to the mat with Mrs. Gurley in the trainshed.
A rough and tumble scrap right there before the Illyrians would be
undignified and give ’em a quaint notion of the social habits of the
corn belt. But gently and firmly to guide the Illyrian commissioners
to our humble home, throw them a luncheon, show ’em the family album
and after the show at the statehouse give ’em a whirl to the art
institute, and walk ’em through the Illyrian relief rooms, where a
pretty little Illyrian girl dressed in her native costume would hand
’em flowers--that’s the ticket.”
“Oh, Web, you are always so helpful when you want to be! That’s the
most beautiful idea about the flowers. And perhaps a _group_ of
Illyrian children would do some folk dances! I’m sure the visitors
would be deeply touched by that.”
“It would certainly make a hit,” said Webster, feeling that he was
once more rehabilitated in his wife’s affections and confidence. “You
say the Gurleys’ publicity agent has already gazetted their hospitable
designs? Excellent! The more advance work they do on the job the
better. We’ll give a jar to the pickles--that’s the game! Did you get
that, Gertie? Pickles, a jar of pickles; a jar to the pickle industry?”
“I was thinking,” said Mrs. Burgess, with a far-away look in her eyes,
“how charming the folk dances would be and I must see the settlement
house superintendent about choosing just the _right_ children. But,
Web, is it _possible_ to do this so _no one_ will know?”
“Don’t worry about that,” he assured her. “Arrange your luncheon and
do it right. I’ve heard somewhere that a great delicacy in Illyria is
broiled grasshoppers, or maybe it’s centipedes. Better look that up to
be sure not to poison our faithful ally. You’d better whisper to Mrs.
Eastman that you’ll want the Governor, but tell her it’s to meet a
prison reformer or a Congo missionary; Eastman is keen on those lines.
And ask a few pretty girls and look up the Illyrian religion and get a
bishop to suit.”
“But you haven’t told me how you _mean_ to do it, Web. Of course we
must be careful----”
“Careful!” repeated Burgess shaking himself into his top coat in the
hall door. “My name is discretion. You needn’t worry about that part of
it! The whole business will be taken care of; dead or alive you shall
have the Illyrians.”