HOW JACK ADDS ANOTHER FEATHER TO HIS CAP.
Next morning Jack appeared at Mr. William Atherton’s office a few
minutes before nine o’clock, ready for business.
Mr. Bishop hadn’t arrived, so the boy took a seat in the outer office
and waited for him.
He came about ten minutes later, and Jack reported to him as he had
been told to do.
The manager looked him over attentively and seemed to be pleased with
his looks.
“Well, Jack,” said Mr. Bishop, “Mr. Atherton has spoken to me about
you. You seem to be a smart boy, and that is what we want here. You
appear to have acquired something of a reputation for nerve and
cool-headedness for one so young. You have made good friends for
yourself by your courageous act of yesterday, which, I see, is reported
in the morning papers. It remains for you now to justify the excellent
opinion they have formed of you. Now, as to your immediate duties, you
will, for the rest of the week, assist our messenger, whose place you
have been employed to fill. He will leave on Saturday. I presume you
are tolerably acquainted with the financial district.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Jack, respectfully.
“Very good. Now come inside, and I will make you acquainted with the
boy you are to succeed.”
Frank Simpson, the messenger, was perched on a high stool at a desk,
sorting over a pile of papers for the head clerk.
He was a pleasant-featured boy of fifteen and appeared to be glad to
know his successor.
“Where have you been working?” he asked Jack.
“I was employed by Hogg & Newman, in Stone Street, but the firm went up
a couple of weeks ago.”
“Never worked in Wall Street, then?”
“No.”
“Well, you’ve struck a dandy place when you caught on here. How did you
come to get the tip?”
Evidently Simpson hadn’t read about Jack’s adventure in the papers.
“Mr. Seymour Atherton sent me here.”
“Oh, I see; you are acquainted with the old gent.”
Jack nodded, but did not mention how that acquaintance came about.
“Then I guess you’re solid, all right,” added Simpson. “There, I’m
through now. Come outside.”
The two boys walked into the outer office and took possession of a
couple of chairs in a corner.
“This is your post. When the boss or the manager wants you he taps a
bell and you answer it--see?”
Jack understood, and an instant later Mr. Bishop’s bell sounded.
“I’ll take the call,” said Simpson, skipping over to the manager’s
private office.
He was back in a moment.
“You’re to deliver this envelope at the address, on Exchange Place, and
wait for an answer. I’m off for the Seaman’s Bank.”
The boys seized their hats, descended the stairs together with a hop,
skip and a jump, and parted at the door.
Jack turned down Broad Street, crossed over, passed the Stock
Exchange, and hastened along until he came to Exchange Place, a narrow
thoroughfare, more like a lane than a street, which was somewhat
gloomy even on the brightest days because of the tall buildings that
fringed both sides.
He easily found the number he wanted, took an elevator, and was carried
to the top floor.
“Number Ninety-six, to your left,” said the elevator man as Jack
stepped out into the corridor.
Numberless doors, the upper part of which were fitted with frosted
glass bearing the name of a firm, stared the boy in the face as he
hurried forward and turned down a shorter corridor to the left as he
had been directed to do.
No. 96 was at the extreme end of the corridor facing him, so he had
nothing to do but walk straight ahead, turn the handle of the door and
enter.
He delivered the envelope to a dudish-looking clerk and then flopped
down on a cane chair.
At that moment there was a sudden commotion in the private office of
the firm.
All the clerks looked up in a startled way as a man’s voice exclaimed,
in hoarse accents:
“I tell you I’m utterly ruined! I can’t deliver that stock by noon, and
since you refuse to let up on me, Hartz, there’s nothing left for me to
do but this----”
“You’re crazy, man--put down that revolver!” in lower but not less
excited tones.
The words were followed by the noise of a struggle in the private
office.
A heavy chair was overturned, and then the second voice cried, “Help!”
Every one of the clerks dropped his pen and started for the little
door marked “Private,” but before one could reach it the door flew
open with a bang, and a big man, wild-eyed and disheveled, appeared,
struggling to shake off the hold of a smaller man with a sharp cast of
countenance, who had a firm grip on his right arm, in the hand of which
was grasped a cocked revolver.
“I tell you I will do it!” cried the large man, in frenzied tones,
making a violent effort to free himself.
He swung Hartz, who was the head of the firm that occupied the offices,
around as if he had been a feather, flooring three of the clerks, who
went down like so many cornstalks before the sweep of the old-time
scythe.
And Hartz, losing his grip, went on top of them.
The big man, then rushing clear of the group, raised the revolver to
his head.
But Jack, who had jumped to his feet at the commencement of the rumpus,
divining his intention, cleared the rail at a bound and grabbed his arm
just as he pulled the trigger.
The sharp explosion mingled with the splintering of glass as the bullet
grazed the would-be suicide’s temple and crashed through the window
pane fronting on Exchange Place.
Partly stunned, the desperate man staggered forward two or three feet
and then sank down, while Jack succeeded in wrenching the pistol from
his relaxed fingers.
By this time Mr. Hartz and his clerks had picked themselves up and were
looking with blanched faces at the fallen visitor, down whose pale
countenance trickled a thin stream of blood, from which they seemed to
infer that the big man had succeeded in destroying himself.
The shot had aroused all the offices along the corridor, and brokers,
clerks, visitors, and others came rushing out.
Nobody knew exactly whence the report had come, but somebody opened
Hartz’s door and looked in, and he saw enough to satisfy him of the
true state of affairs.
Others crowded in after him, and soon the intelligence flew through the
building that a man had committed suicide in Broker Hartz’s office.
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” cried Hartz, waving his arms. “Please don’t
crowd in here. Schultz,” to a clerk, “telephone to the precinct station
for an officer and a doctor. Gentlemen, I beg of you to stand back.”
Jack, kneeling beside the big man, wiped the blood away from the scalp
wound.
“He’ll be all right in a minute or two,” said the boy to the excited
broker, who seemed to have lost his head over the affair.
“He didn’t kill himself, eh?” said Hartz, in shaky tones.
“No; I grabbed the revolver in the nick of time.”
“Where did the bullet go?”
“It smashed one of your window panes.”
“What have you done with the revolver?”
“I’ve got it in my pocket.”
“You’d better let me have it before he revives.”
“He’s coming to now,” said Jack, handing the weapon to the broker, who
rushed into his private office and hid it.
The big man, whose name Jack had found out was Oliver Bird, recovered
his senses and looked blankly around as if he didn’t comprehend what
had happened to him or where he was.
“How do you feel now, sir?” asked Jack, assisting him to rise.
“Feel? Why, what’s the matter with me? I didn’t have a fit, did I?”
The boy didn’t feel like making an explanation, for he knew the man
would realize the situation in a moment.
“Let me assist you into the private office, sir,” he suggested,
thinking it well that Mr. Bird should be removed from the curious gaze
and remarks of the outsiders who blocked up the space outside the
railing.
Oliver Bird made no objection to this, but as soon as his eyes fell on
the face of Mr. Hartz everything came back to him like a flash.
He glared at the broker, and for a moment it looked to Jack as if there
was going to be trouble.
Hartz, however, staved it off by saying, quickly:
“Sit down, Mr. Bird, and we’ll talk the matter over again. I’ve decided
to let you have twenty-four hours in which to settle up.”
As Bird sank into the chair, apparently pacified, Jack retired and shut
the door.
“You’ve got something going back to Atherton’s, haven’t you?” he said
to the dude clerk.
“Upon my word, I don’t know what I did with that envelope you brought.
This excitement knocked it out of my mind.”
“I think it’s sticking out of your pocket,” said Jack, with a grin.
“Bless me! So it is. Just wait a moment.” And he rushed over to the
head bookkeeper, who, with the cashier, was trying to induce the mob to
leave.
Jack had to wait several minutes before another envelope was handed to
him to take back.
While he was waiting for it several of the clerks gathered about him,
complimented him on his nerve and presence of mind, and asked him his
name.
On his way to the elevator he passed an officer and a man in plain
clothes, aiming for Hartz’s office.
“Gee!” he said to himself, “I guess it’s a mighty lucky thing for Bird
I was on hand. He evidently meant to put that bullet into his brains.”