Next morning Mr. Hanson informed him coldly of the necessity of
punching the time-clock at seven every morning, and delivered
him for instruction into the hands of a fellow worker, one
Charley Moore.
Charley was twenty-six, with that faint musk of weakness hanging
about him that is often mistaken for the scent of evil. It took
no psychological examiner to decide that he had drifted into
indulgence and laziness as casually as he had drifted into life,
and was to drift out. He was pale and his clothes stank of
smoke; he enjoyed burlesque shows, billiards, and Robert
Service, and was always looking back upon his last intrigue or
forward to his next one. In his youth his taste had run to loud
ties, but now it seemed to have faded, like his vitality, and
was expressed in pale-lilac four-in-hands and indeterminate
gray collars. Charley was listlessly struggling that losing
struggle against mental, moral, and physical anæmia that takes
place ceaselessly on the lower fringe of the middle classes.
The first morning he stretched himself on a row of cereal
cartons and carefully went over the limitations of the Theron
G. Macy Company.
"It's a piker organization. My Gosh! Lookit what they give me.
I'm quittin' in a coupla months. Hell! Me stay with this bunch!"
The Charley Moores are always going to change jobs next month.
They do, once or twice in their careers, after which they sit
around comparing their last job with the present one, to the
infinite disparagement of the latter.
"What do you get?" asked Dalyrimple curiously.
"Me? I get sixty." This rather defiantly.
"Did you start at sixty?"
"Me? No, I started at thirty-five. He told me he'd put me on the
road after I learned the stock. That's what he tells 'em all."
"How long've you been here?" asked Dalyrimple with a sinking
sensation.
"Me? Four years. My last year, too, you bet your boots."
Dalyrimple rather resented the presence of the store detective
as he resented the time-clock, and he came into contact with him
almost immediately through the rule against smoking. This rule
was a thorn in his side. He was accustomed to his three or four
cigarettes in a morning, and after three days without it he
followed Charley Moore by a circuitous route up a flight of back
stairs to a little balcony where they indulged in peace. But
this was not for long. One day in his second week the detective
met him in a nook of the stairs, on his descent, and told him
sternly that next time he'd be reported to Mr. Macy. Dalyrimple
felt like an errant schoolboy.
Unpleasant facts came to his knowledge. There were
"cave-dwellers" in the basement who had worked there for ten or
fifteen years at sixty dollars a month, rolling barrels and
carrying boxes through damp, cement-walled corridors, lost in
that echoing half-darkness between seven and five-thirty and,
like himself, compelled several times a month to work until nine
at night.
At the end of a month he stood in line and received forty
dollars. He pawned a cigarette-case and a pair of field-glasses
and managed to live--to eat, sleep, and smoke. It was, however,
a narrow scrape; as the ways and means of economy were a closed
book to him and the second month brought no increase, he voiced
his alarm.
"If you've got a drag with old Macy, maybe he'll raise you," was
Charley's disheartening reply. "But he didn't raise ME till I'd
been here nearly two years."
"I've got to live," said Dalyrimple simply. "I could get more
pay as a laborer on the railroad but, Golly, I want to feel I'm
where there's a chance to get ahead."
Charles shook his head sceptically and Mr. Macy's answer next
day was equally unsatisfactory.
Dalyrimple had gone to the office just before closing time.
"Mr. Macy, I'd like to speak to you."
"Why--yes." The unhumorous smile appeared. The voice was faintly
resentful.
"I want to speak to you in regard to more salary."
Mr. Macy nodded.
"Well," he said doubtfully, "I don't know exactly what you're
doing. I'll speak to Mr. Hanson."
He knew exactly what Dalyrimple was doing, and Dalyrimple knew
he knew.
"I'm in the stock-room--and, sir, while I'm here I'd like to
ask you how much longer I'll have to stay there."
"Why--I'm not sure exactly. Of course it takes some time to
learn the stock."
"You told me two months when I started."
"Yes. Well, I'll speak to Mr. Hanson."
Dalyrimple paused irresolute.
"Thank you, sir."
Two days later he again appeared in the office with the result
of a count that had been asked for by Mr. Hesse, the bookkeeper.
Mr. Hesse was engaged and Dalyrimple, waiting, began idly
fingering in a ledger on the stenographer's desk.
Half unconsciously he turned a page--he caught sight of his name
--it was a salary list:
Dalyrimple
Demming
Donahoe
Everett