OLD JOHN BURNIT'S ANCIENT ENEMY POINTS OUT THE WAY TO GRANDEUR
Mr. Johnson had no hair in the very center of his head, but, when he
was more than usually vexed, he ran his fingers through what was left
upon both sides of the center and impatiently pushed it up toward a
common point. His hair was in that identical condition when he knocked
at the door of Bobby's office and poked in his head to announce Mr.
Silas Trimmer.
"Trimmer," mused Bobby. "Oh, yes; he is the John Burnit Store's chief
competitor; concern backs up against ours, fronting on Market Street.
Show him in, Johnson."
Jack Starlett, who had dropped in to loaf a bit, rose to go.
"Sit down," insisted Bobby. "I'm conducting this thing all open and
aboveboard. You know, I think I shall like business."
"They tell me it's the greatest game out," commented Starlett, and
just then Mr. Trimmer entered.
He was a little, wiry man as to legs and arms, but fearfully rotund as
to paunch, and he had a yellow leather face and black eyes which,
though gleaming like beads, seemed to have a muddy cast. Bobby rose to
greet him with a cordiality in no degree abashed by this appearance.
"And what can we do for you, Mr. Trimmer?" he asked after the usual
inanities of greeting had been exchanged.
"Take lunch with me," invited Mr. Trimmer, endeavoring to beam, his
heavy, down-drooping gray mustache remaining immovable in front of the
deeply-chiseled smile that started far above the corners of his nose
and curved around a display of yellow teeth. "I have just learned that
you have taken over the business, and I wish as quickly as possible to
form with the son the same cordial relations which for years I enjoyed
with the father."
Bobby looked him contemplatively in the eye, but had no experience
upon which to base a picture of his father and Mr. Trimmer enjoying
perpetually cordial relations with a knife down each boot leg.
"Very sorry, Mr. Trimmer, but I am engaged for lunch."
"Dinner, then--at the Traders' Club," insisted Mr. Trimmer, who never
for any one moment had remained entirely still, either his foot or his
hand moving, or some portion of his body twitching almost incessantly.
Inwardly Bobby frowned, for, so far, he had found no points about his
caller to arouse his personal enthusiasm; and yet it suddenly occurred
to him that here was doubtless business, and that it ought to have
attention. His father, under similar circumstances, would find out
what the man was after. He cast a hesitating glance at his friend.
"Don't mind me, Bobby," said Starlett briskly. "You know I shall be
compelled to take dinner with the folks to-night."
"At about what time, Mr. Trimmer?" Bobby asked.
"Oh, suit yourself. Any time," responded that gentleman eagerly. "Say
half-past six."
"The Traders'," mused Bobby. "I think the governor put me up there
four or five years ago."
"I seconded you," the other informed him; "and I had the pleasure of
voting for you just the other day, on the vacancy made by your father.
You're a full-fledged member now."
"Fine!" said Bobby. "Business suit or----"
"Anything you like." With again that circular smile behind his
immovable mustache, Mr. Trimmer backed out of the room, and Bobby,
dropping into a chair, turned perplexed eyes upon his friend.
"What do you suppose he wants?" he inquired.
"Your eye-teeth," returned Jack bluntly. "He looks like a mucker to
me."
"Oh, I don't know," returned Bobby, a trifle uneasily. "You see, Jack,
he isn't exactly our sort, and maybe we can't get just the right angle
in judging him. He's been nailed down to business all his life, you
know, and a fellow in that line don't have a chance, as I take it, to
cultivate all the little--well, say artificial graces."
"Your father wasn't like him. He was as near a thoroughbred as I ever
saw, Bobby, and he was nailed down, as you put it, all _his_ life."
"Oh, you couldn't expect them all to be like the governor," responded
Bobby instantly, shocked at the idea. "But this chap may be no end of
a good sort in his style. No doubt at all he merely came over in a
friendly way to bid me a sort of welcome into the fraternity of
business men," and Bobby felt quite a little thrill of pride in that
novel idea. "By George! Wait a minute," he exclaimed as still another
brilliant thought struck him, and going into the other room he said to
Johnson: "Please give me the letter addressed: 'To My Son Robert, Upon
the Occasion of Mr. Trimmer's First Call.'"
For the first time in days a grin irradiated Johnson's face.
"Nothing here, sir," he replied.
"Let me go through that file."
"Strictly against orders, sir," said Johnson.
"Indeed," responded Bobby quizzically; "I don't like to press the bet,
Johnson, but really I'd like to know who has the say here."
"You have, sir, over everything except my private affairs; and that
letter file is my private property and its contents my private
trusteeship."
"I can still take my castor oil like a little man, if I have to,"
Bobby resignedly observed. "I remember that when I was a kiddy the
governor once undertook to teach me mathematics, and he never would
let me see the answers. More than ever it looks like it was up to
Bobby," and whistling cheerfully he walked back into his private
office.
Johnson turned to Applerod with a snarl.
"Mr. Applerod," said he, "you know that I almost never swear. I am now
about to do so. Darn it! It's a shame that Trimmer calls here again on
that old scheme about which he deviled this house for years, and we
forbidden to give Mr. Robert a word of advice unless he asks for it."
"Why is it a shame?" demanded Applerod. "I always have thought that
Trimmer's plan was a great one."
So, all unprepared, Bobby went forth that evening, to become
acquainted with the great plan.
At the restless Traders' Club, where the precise corridors and columns
and walls and ceilings of white marble were indicative of great
formality, men with creases in their brows wore their derbies on the
backs of their heads and ceaselessly talked shop. Mr. Trimmer, more
creased of brow than any of them, was drifting from group to group
with his eyes turned anxiously toward the door until Bobby came in.
Mr. Trimmer was most effusively glad to see the son of his old friend
once again, and lost no time in seating him at a most secluded table,
where, by the time the oysters came on, he was deep in a catalogue of
the virtues of John Burnit; and Bobby, with a very real and a very
deep affection for his father which seldom found expression in words,
grew restive. One thing held him, aside from his obligations as a
guest. He was convinced now that his host's kindness was in truth a
mere graceful act of welcome, due largely to his father's standing,
and the idea flattered him very much. He strove to look as
businesslike as possible, and thought again and again upon his father;
of how he had sat day after day in this stately dining-hall, honored
and venerated among these men who were striving still for the ideal
that he had attained. It was a good thought, and made for pride of the
right sort. With the entree Mr. Trimmer ordered his favorite vintage
champagne, and, as it boiled up like molten amber in the glasses, so
sturdily that the center of the surface kept constantly a full quarter
of an inch above the sides, he waited anxiously for Bobby to sample
it. Even Bobby, long since disillusioned of such things and grown
abstemious from healthy choice, after a critical taste sipped slowly
again and again.
"That's ripping good wine," he acknowledged.
"There's only a little over two hundred bottles of it left in the
world," Mr. Trimmer assured him, and then he waited for that first
glass to exert its warming glow. He was a good waiter, was Silas
Trimmer, and keenly sensitive to personal influences. He knew that
Bobby had not been in entire harmony with him at any period of the
evening, but after the roast came on--a most careful roast, indeed,
prepared under a certain formula upon which Mr. Trimmer had
painstakingly insisted--he saw that he had really found his way for a
moment to Bobby's heart through the channel provided by Nature for
attacks upon masculine sympathy, and at that moment he leaned forward
with his circular smile, and observed:
"By the way, Mr. Burnit, I suppose your father often discussed with
you the great plan we evolved for the Burnit-Trimmer Arcade?"
Bobby almost blushed at the confession he must make.
"I'm sorry to say that he didn't," he owned. "I never took the
interest in such things that I ought, and so I missed a lot of
confidences I'd like to have had now."
"Too bad," sympathized Mr. Trimmer, now quite sure of his ground,
since he had found that Bobby was not posted. "It was a splendid plan
we had. You know, your building and mine are precisely the same width
and precisely in a line with each other, back to back, with only the
alley separating us, the Trimmer establishment fronting on Market
Street and the Burnit building on Grand. The alley is fully five feet
below our two floor lines, and we could, I am quite sure, get
permission to bridge it at a clearance of not to exceed twelve feet.
By raising the rear departments of your store and of mine a foot or
so, and then building a flight of broad, easy steps up and down, we
could almost conceal the presence of this bridge from the inside, and
make one immense establishment running straight through from Grand to
Market Streets. The floors above the first, of course, would bridge
over absolutely level, and the combined stores would comprise by far
the largest establishment in the city. Of course, the advantage of it
from an advertising standpoint alone would be well worth while."
Bobby could instantly see the almost interminable length of store area
thus presented, and it appealed to his sense of big things at once.
"What did father say about this?" he asked.
"Thought it a brilliant idea," glibly returned Mr. Trimmer. "In fact,
I think it was he who first suggested such a possibility, seeing very
clearly the increased trade and the increased profits that would
accrue from such an extension, which would, in fact, be simply the
doubling of our already big stores without additional capitalization.
We worked out two or three plans for the consolidation, but in the
later years your father was very slow about making actual extensions
or alterations in his merchandising business, preferring to expend his
energies on his successful outside enterprises. I feel sure, however,
that he would have come to it in time, for the development is so
logical, so much in keeping with the business methods of the times."
Here again was insidious flattery, the insinuation that Bobby must be
thoroughly aware of "the business methods of the times."
"Of course, the idea is new to me," said Bobby, assuming as best he
could the air of business reserve which seemed appropriate to the
occasion; "but I should say, in a general way, that I should not care
to give up the identity of the John Burnit Store."
"That is a fine and a proper spirit," agreed Mr. Trimmer, with great
enthusiasm. "I like to see it in a young man, but I've no doubt that
we can arrange that little matter. Of course, we would have to
incorporate, say, as the Burnit-Trimmer Mercantile Corporation, but
while having that name on the front of both buildings, it might not be
a bad idea, for business as well as sentimental reasons, to keep the
old signs at the tops of both, just as they now are. Those are little
details to discuss later; but as the stock of the new company, based
upon the present invoice values of our respective concerns, would be
practically all in your hands and mine, this would be a very amicable
and easily arranged matter. I tell you, Mr. Burnit, this is a
tremendous plan, attractive to the public and immensely profitable to
us, and I do not know of anything you could do that would so well as
this show you to be a worthy successor to John Burnit; for, of course,
it would scarcely be a credit to you to carry on your father's
business without change or advance."
It was the best and the most crafty argument Mr. Trimmer had used, and
Bobby carried away from the Traders' Club a glowing impression of this
point. His father had built up this big business by his own unaided
efforts. Should Bobby leave that legacy just where he had found it, or
should he carry it on to still greater heights? The answer was
obvious.