Again he filled a cab with drawings, again he went back to the
Metropole and to maddening columns of new figures--back to the
monotony of tasteless meals served at his elbow.
But there were other things besides his own bid to think of now.
Mitchell knew he must find what other firms were bidding on the job,
and what prices they had bid. The first promised to require some
ingenuity, the second was a Titan's task.
Salesmanship, in its highest development, is an exact science. Given
the data he desired, Louis Mitchell felt sure he could read the
figures sealed up in those other bids to a nicety, but to get that
data required much concentrated effort and much time. Time was what he
needed above all things; time to refigure these myriad drawings, time
to determine when the other bids had gone in, time to learn trade
conditions at the competitive plants, time to sleep. There were not
sufficient hours in the day for all these things, so he rigidly
economized on the least important, sleep. He laid out a program
for himself; by night he worked in his room, by day he cruised for
information, at odd moments around the dawn he slept. He began to feel
the strain before long. Never physically robust, he began to grow blue
and drawn about the nostrils. Frequently his food would not stay down.
He was forced to drive his lagging spirits with a lash. To accomplish
this he had to think often of his girl-wife. Her letters, written
daily, were a great help; they were like some God-given cordial that
infused fresh blood into his brain, new strength into his flagging
limbs. Without them he could not have held up.
With certain definite objects in view he made daily trips to
Threadneedle Street. Invariably he walked into the general offices
unannounced; invariably he made a new friend before he came out.
Peebleby seemed to like him; in fact asked his opinion on certain
forms of structure and voluntarily granted the young man two days of
grace. Two days! They were like oxygen to a dying man.
Mitchell asked permission to talk to the head draftsman and received
it, and following their interview he requested the privilege of
dictating some notes regarding the interview. In this way he met the
stenographer. When he had finished with her he flipped the girl a gold
sovereign, stolen from the sadly melted nine hundred and twenty.
As Mitchell was leaving the office the Director General yielded to a
kindly impulse and advised his new acquaintance to run over to Paris
and view the Exposition.
"You can do your figuring there just as well as here," said he.
"I don't want your trip from Chicago to be altogether wasted, Mr.
Mitchell."
Louis smiled and shook his head. "I can't take that Exposition back
with me, and I can take this contract. I think I'll camp with my bid."
In the small hours of that night he made a discovery that
electrified him. He found that the most commonly used section in his
specifications, a twelve-inch I-beam, was listed under the English
custom as weighing fifty-four pounds per foot, whereas the
standardized American section, which possessed the same carrying
strength, weighed four pounds less. Here was an advantage of eight
per cent. in cost and freight! This put another round of the ladder
beneath him; he was progressing well, but as yet he had learned
nothing about his competitors.
The next morning he had some more dictation for Peebleby's
stenographer, and niched another sovereign from his sad little
bank-roll. When the girl gave him his copy he fell into conversation
with her and painted a picture of Yankeeland well calculated to keep
her awake nights. They gossiped idly, she of her social obligations,
he of the cyanide-tank business--he could think of nothing else to
talk about. Adroitly he led her out. They grew confidential. She
admitted her admiration for Mr. Jenkins from Edinburgh. Yes, Mr.
Jenkins's company was bidding on the Krugersdorpf job. He was much
nicer than Mr. Kruse from the Brussels concern, and, anyhow, those
Belgian firms had no chance at this contract, for Belgium was
pro-Boer, and--well, she had heard a few things around the office.
Mitchell was getting "feed-box" information. When he left he knew
the names of his dangerous competitors as well as those whom, in all
likelihood, he had no cause to fear. Another step! He was gaining
ground.
In order to make himself absolutely certain that his figures would be
low, there still remained three things to learn, and they were matters
upon which he could afford to take no slightest chance of mistake.
He must know, first, the dates of those other bids; second, the
market-price of English steel at such times; and, third, the cost of
fabrication at the various mills. The first two he believed could
be easily learned, but the third promised to afford appalling
difficulties to a man unfamiliar with foreign methods and utterly
lacking in trade acquaintances. He went at them systematically,
however, only to run against a snag within the hour. Not only did he
fail to find the answer to question number one, but he could find no
market quotations whatever on structural steel shapes such as entered
into the Krugersdorpf job.
He searched through every possible trade journal, through reading
rooms and libraries, for the price of I-beams, channels, Z-bars, and
the like; but nowhere could he even find mention of them. His failure
left him puzzled and panic-stricken; he could not understand it. If
only he had more time, he reflected, time in which to learn the usages
and the customs of this country. But time was what he had not. He was
tired, very tired from his sleepless nights and hours of daylight
strain--and meanwhile the days were rushing past.
While engaged in these side labors, he had, of course, been working
on his draftsmen friends, and more assiduously even than upon his
blue-prints. On Tuesday night, with but one more day of grace ahead of
him, he gave a dinner to all of them, disregarding the fact that his
bank-roll had become frightfully emaciated.
For several days after that little party blue-printing in the
Robinson-Ray office was a lost art. When his guests had dined and had
settled back into their chairs, Mitchell decided to risk all upon one
throw. He rose, at the head of the table, and told them who he was. He
utterly destroyed their illusions regarding him and his position with
Comer & Mathison, he bared his heart to those stoop-shouldered, shabby
young men from Threadneedle Street and came right down to the nine
hundred and twenty dollars and the girl. He told them what
this Krugersdorpf job meant to him and to her, and to the four
twenty-dollar bills in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
Those Englishmen listened silently. Nobody laughed. Perhaps it was the
sort of thing they had dreamed of doing some day, perhaps there were
other girls in other tiny furnished flats, other hearts wrapped up in
similar struggles for advancement. They were good mathematicians, it
seemed, for they did not have to ask Mitchell how the nine hundred
and twenty was doing, or to inquire regarding the health of the other
eighty. One of them, a near-sighted fellow with thick lenses, arose
with the grave assertion that he had taken the floor for the purpose
of correcting a popular fallacy; Englishmen and Yankees, he declared,
were not cousins, they were brothers, and their interests ever had
been and ever would be identical. He said, too, that England wanted
to do business with America, and as for this particular contract, not
only did the British nation as a whole desire America to secure it,
but the chaps who bent over the boards at No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle
Street were plugging for her tooth and nail. His hollow-chested
companions yelled their approval of this statement, whereupon Mitchell
again arose, alternately flushing and paling, and apologized for what
had happened in 1776. He acknowledged himself ashamed of the 1812
affair, moreover, and sympathized with his guests over their present
trouble with the Boers. When he had finished they voted him the best
host and the best little cyanide tank-builder known to them--and then
everybody tried to tell him something at once.
They told him among other things that every bid except his had been in
for two weeks, and that they were in the vault under the care of Mr.
Pitts, the head draftsman. They promised to advise him if any new bids
came in or if any changes occurred, and, most important of all, they
told him that in England all structural steel shapes, instead of being
classified as in America, are known as "angles," and they told him
just how and where to find the official reports giving the price of
the same for every day in the year.
The word "angles" was the missing key, and those official market
reports formed the lock in which to fit it. Mitchell had taken several
mighty strides, and there remained but one more step to take.
When his guests had finally gone home, swearing fealty, and declaring
this to be the best dinner they had ever drunk, he hastened back to
his room, back to the desert of blueprints and to the interminable
columns of figures, and over them he worked like a madman.
He slept two hours before daylight, then he was up and toiling again,
for this was his last day. Using the data he had gathered the night
before, he soon had the price of English and Scottish steel at the
time the last bids were closed. Given one thing more--namely, the cost
of fabrication in these foreign shops, and he would have reduced this
hazard to a certainty, he would be able to read the prices contained
in those sealed bids as plainly as if they lay open before him. But
his time had narrowed now to hours.
He lunched with John Pitts, the head draughtsman, going back to pick
up the boomerang he had left the week before.
"Have you gone over my first bid?" he asked, carelessly.
"I have--lucky for you," said Pitts. "You made a mistake."
"Indeed! How so?"
"Why, it's thirty per cent. too low. It would be a crime to give you
the business at those figures."
"But, you see, I didn't include the sub-structure. I didn't have time
to figure that." Mitchell prayed that his face might not show his
eagerness. Evidently it did not, for Pitts walked into the trap.
"Even so," said he; "it's thirty per cent. out of the way. I made
allowance for that."
The boomerang had finished its flight!
Once they had separated, Mitchell broke for his hotel like a
hunted man. He had made no mistake in his first figures. The great
Krugersdorpf job was his; but, nevertheless, he wished to make himself
absolutely sure and to secure as much profit as possible for Comer
& Mathison. Without a handsome profit this three-million-dollar job
might ruin a firm of their standing.
In order to verify Pitts's statement, in order to swell his proposed
profits to the utmost, Mitchell knew he ought to learn the "overhead"
in English mills; that is, the fixed charges which, added to shop
costs and prices of material, are set aside to cover office expenses,
cost of operation, and contingencies. Without this information
he would have to go it blind, after a fashion, and thereby risk
penalizing himself; with it he could estimate very closely the amounts
of the other bids and insure a safe margin for Comer & Mathison. In
addition to this precaution he wished to have his own figures checked
up, for even under normal conditions, if one makes a numerical error
in work of this sort, he is more than apt to repeat it time and again,
and Mitchell knew himself to be deadly tired--almost on the verge
of collapse. He was inclined to doze off whenever he sat down; the
raucous noises of the city no longer jarred or startled him, and his
surroundings were becoming unreal, grotesque, as if seen through the
spell of absinthe. Yes, it was necessary to check off his figures.
But who could he get to do the work? He could not go to Threadneedle
Street. He thought of the Carnegie representative and telephoned him,
explaining the situation and his crying need, only to be told that
no one in that office was capable of assisting him. He was referred,
however, to an English engineer who, it was barely possible, could
handle the job. In closing, the Carnegie man voiced a vague warning:
"His name is Dell, and he used to be with one of the Edinburgh
concerns, so don't let him know your inside figures. He might spring a
leak."
A half-hour later Mitchell, his arms full of blue-prints, was in Mr.
Dell's office. But the English engineer hesitated; he was very busy;
he had numerous obligations. Mitchell gazed over the threadbare rooms
and hastily estimated how much of the nine hundred and twenty dollars
would be left after he had paid his hotel bill. What there was to do
must be done before the next morning's sun arose.
"This job is worth ten sovereigns to me if it is finished tonight," he
declared, briskly.
Mr. Dell hesitated, stumbled, and fell. "Very well. We'll begin at
once," said he.
He unrolled the blue-prints, from a drawer he produced a sliding-rule.
He slid this rule up; he slid it down; he gazed through his glasses
at space; he made microscopic Spencerian figures in neat rows and
columns. He seemed to pluck his results from the air with necromantic
cunning, and what had taken the young man at his elbow days and nights
of cruel effort to accomplish--what had put haggard lines about his
mouth and eyes--the engineer accomplished in a few hours by means
of that sliding-rule. Meanwhile, with one weary effort of will, his
visitor summoned his powers and cross-examined him adroitly. Here was
the very man to supply the one missing link in the perfect chain;
but Mr. Dell would not talk. He did not like Americans nor American
methods, and he made his dislike apparent by sealing his lips.
Mitchell played upon his vanity at first, only to find the man wholly
lacking in conceit. Changing his method of attack, Mitchell built a
fire under Mr. Dell. He grilled everything British, the people, their
social customs, their business methods, even English engineers, and
he did it in a most annoying manner. Mr. Dell began to perspire.
He worked doggedly on for a while, then he arose in defense of his
country, whereupon Mitchell artfully shifted his attack to English
steel-mills. The other refuted his statements flatly. At length the
engineer was goaded to anger, he became disputative, indignant,
loquacious.
When Louis Mitchell flung himself into the dark body of his cab,
late that evening, and sank his legs knee-deep into those hateful
blue-prints, he blessed that engineer, for Dell had told him all he
wished to know, all he had tried so vainly to discover through other
sources. The average "overhead" in British mills was one hundred and
thirty per cent., and Dell _knew_.
The young man laughed hysterically, triumphantly, but the sound was
more like a tearful hiccough. To-morrow at ten-thirty! It was nearly
over. He would be ready. As he lolled back inertly upon the cushions
he mused dreamily that he had done well. In less than two weeks, in a
foreign country, and under strange conditions, without acquaintance or
pull or help of any sort, he had learned the names of his competitive
firms, the dates of their bids, and the market prices ruling on every
piece of steel in the Krugersdorpf job when those bids were figured.
He had learned the rules governing English labor unions; he knew all
about piece-work and time-work, fixed charges and shop costs, together
with the ability of every plant figuring on the Robinson-Ray contract
to turn out the work in the necessary time. All this, and more, he
had learned legitimately and without cost to his commercial honor.
Henceforth that South-African contract depended merely upon his own
ability to add, subtract, and multiply correctly. It was his just as
surely as two and two make four--for salesmanship is an exact science.
The girl would be very happy, he told himself. He was glad that she
could never know the strain it had been.
Again, through the slow, silent hours of that Wednesday night,
Mitchell fought the fatigue of death, going over his figures
carefully. There were no errors in them.
Dawn was creeping in on him when he added a clean thirty-per-cent.
profit for his firm, signed his bid, and prepared for bed. But he
found that he could not leave the thing. After he had turned in he
became assailed by sudden doubts and fears. What if he had made a
mistake after all? What if some link in his chain were faulty? What if
some other bidder had made a mistake and underfigured? Such thoughts
made him tremble. Now that it was all done, he feared that he had been
overconfident, for could it really be possible that the greatest steel
contract in years would come to him? He grew dizzy at the picture of
what it meant to him and to the girl.
He calmed himself finally and looked straight at the matter, sitting
up in bed, his knees drawn up under his chin. While so engaged he
caught sight of his drawn face in the mirror opposite and started
when he realized how old and heavy with fatigue it was. He determined
suddenly to shave that profit to twenty-nine per cent. and make
assurance doubly sure, but managed to conquer his momentary panic.
Cold reasoning told him that his figures were safe.
Louis Mitchell was the only salesman in Mr. Peebleby's office that
morning who did not wear a silk hat, pearl gloves, and spats. In
consequence the others ignored him for a time--but only for a time.
Once the proposals had been read, an air of impenetrable gloom spread
over the room. The seven Scotch, English, and Belgian mourners stared
cheerlessly at one another and then with growing curiosity at the
young man from overseas who had underbid the lowest of them by six
thousand pounds sterling, less than one per cent. After a while they
bowed among themselves, mumbled something to Mr. Peebleby, and
went softly out in their high hats, their pearl gloves, and their
spats--more like pall-bearers now than ever.
"Six hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred pounds sterling!"
said the Director General. "By Jove, Mitchell, I'm glad!" They shook
hands. "I'm really glad."
"That's over three million dollars in real money," said the youth.
"It's quite a tidy little job."
Peebleby laughed. "You've been very decent about it, too. I hope to
see something of you in the future. What?"
"You'll see my smoke, that's all."
"You're not going back right away?"
"To-morrow; I've booked my passage and cabled the girl to meet me in
New York."
"My word! A girl! She'll be glad to hear of your success."
"Oh, I've told her already. You see, I knew I'd won."
The Director General of the Robinson-Ray Syndicate stared in open
amazement, but Mitchell hitched his chair closer, saying:
"Now let's get at those signatures. I've got to pack."
That night Louis Mitchell slept with fifteen separate contracts under
his pillow. He double-locked the door, pulled the dresser in front of
it, and left the light burning. At times he awoke with a start and
felt for the documents. Toward morning he was seized with a sudden
fright, so he got up and read them all over for fear somebody had
tampered with them. They were correct, however, whereupon he read them
a second time just for pleasure. They were strangely interesting.
On the _Deutschland_ he slept much of the way across, and by the
time Liberty Statue loomed up he could dream of other things than
blue-prints--of the girl, for instance.
She had enough left from the eighty dollars to bring her to New York
and to pay for a week's lodging in West Thirty-fourth Street, though
how she managed it Mitchell never knew. She was at the dock, of
course. He knew she would be. He expected to see her with her arms
outstretched and with the old joyous smile upon her dimpled face, and,
therefore, he was sorely disappointed when he came down the gang-plank
and she did not appear. He searched high and low until finally he
discovered her seated over by the letter "M," where his trunk was
waiting inspection. There she was, huddled up on a coil of rope,
crying as if her heart would break; her nerve was gone, along with the
four twenty-dollar bills; she was afraid to face him, afraid there had
been an error in his cablegram.
Not until she lay in his arms at last, sobbing and laughing, her
slender body all aquiver, did she believe. Then he allowed her to feel
the fifteen contracts inside his coat. Later, when they were in a cab
bound for her smelly little boarding-house, he showed them to her. In
return she gave him a telegram from his firm--a telegram addressed as
follows:
Mr. LOUIS MITCHELL,
General Sales Manager, Comer & Mathison, New York City.
The message read:
That goes. COMER.
Mitchell opened the trap above his head and called up to the driver:
"Hey, Cabbie! We've changed our minds. Drive us to the Waldorf--at a
gallop."