The odour of the dining room was different, but no better than that of
the office. There was evidently a closer contact with the bad cooking
and less of the warm rubber. There advanced to meet us across the black
and white tile floor a tall and majestic young lady with pyramidal
yellow hair and a black satin gown which fitted her most snugly. She
billowed up to us, turned upon her high patent leather heels, and
undulated over to a long table, her hips swinging like an Oriental water
carrier's. Meekly we trailed after her and sat where she indicated. Just
above our heads, a large wooden-propeller kept a swarm of flies
pleasantly agitated. On the table in front of my seat were a coffee
stain, a jar of wooden toothpicks, and a large wire fly-trap full of
prisoners buzzing over their misfortune. The Hebe-like personage
withdrew, to reappear with two very thick glasses filled to overflowing
with pale yellow ice water. These she casually spilled at each of our
places and added a dirty and grease-stained card containing an itemized
list of all the things the mind of man had as yet been able to conceive
as edible at breakfast. Seven varieties of tea alone were enumerated,
including many that had a novel sound. The lady disappeared and left us
to our emotions in tranquillity.
While I was still marvelling at the things the menu offered for
breakfast, I was suddenly aware of another damsel's presence. As I
looked up, I discovered her leaning pleasantly on her elbow, looking
over my shoulder, above which I noted her jaws in rapid motion about a
piece of chewing gum. When I finally reached her eyes, the mastication
ceased, and she smiled a most open and friendly smile. I did all I could
to return it as heartily. She put into its proper place an erring lock
of brilliant auburn hair, and in a voice that hurt, it was so sharp and
searching, she exclaimed:
"Well, gents--what'll it be? Baked apples, prunes, or oranges?" This was
completely to ignore the menu, which ranged all the way from peaches to
melon in its printed promises.
"What about cantaloupe?" I asked timidly.
"It's all out," she replied promptly; "nothin' in but baked apples,
prunes, and oranges."
"Then why this elaborate list?" I enquired.
"Gee whizz! What do you expect for fifty cents? This ain't the
Auditorium Hotel. Prunes is nice today." All this she spoke in one
breath.
"Bring me some prunes and milk," said Knowlton. I shuddered. I was
determined not to be bullied into ordering something I didn't want.
"I'll take an orange, bacon and eggs, and coffee," I said firmly. Her
jaws slowed down almost to a pause, as she looked me steadily in the
eye, decided she would not fight it out just then, and departed,
apparently much hurt. Knowlton rubbed his hands briskly, a sure sign he
was preparing to utter some cheerful remark. I looked at him in a way
which was an obvious defiance to any happy _bon-mot_ he might conceive,
so he thought better of it and returned to a contemplation of the menu.
For some time the room was empty and silent, save for the buzzing of the
captured flies and the hum of the overhead propeller. Then the
auburn-haired maid returned, with a bowl of prunes and a generous
pitcher of milk, upon whose bluish-ivory surface there struggled a
solitary fly.
"Where is my orange?" I ventured.
"'Scuse me--did you say 'orange'?" she asked as sweetly as that acid
voice would permit. "Thought you said 'ham an' eggs an' coffee'."
With a whish of her skirts she was gone once more, and I realized that
the first step in her revenge for my ignoring prunes was accomplished.
Knowlton deftly removed the fly from his milk with a teaspoon, flicked
the creature carelessly on to the floor, and poured the whole contents
remaining over the prunes. Next he seized a handful of crisp biscuits,
crushed them in the palms of his hands, and added them to the mixture.
The resultant compound seemed to me very nearly equivalent to half a
bushel, dry measure. With a large sized spoon he attacked the mess
vigorously. It was not wholly a silent operation. I pressed my lips
firmly together and said nothing as the level in his bowl rapidly
diminished.
Again the lady with sunset-glow hair came back. With a thump that
startled me, she dropped in front of me a platter on which was a thick
slice of ham ornamented by two highly glazed fried eggs. Beside it was
deposited a plate containing a pale roll, a piece of yellow corn-bread,
and a muffin made out of some strange refuse--all these warm and soggy.
The cup of coffee followed, in a cup innocent of any handle. The coffee
had already been diluted with milk and a spoon stuck in it.
"Sugar?" and she began to ladle heaping spoonfuls of granulated sugar
rapidly from a glass dish. There was no trace of any orange.
"Stop!" I commanded so suddenly she spilt a spoonful of sugar over the
table cloth. "Where is my orange?"
"Gee, did you want the orange first?" Her surprise sounded quite
genuine. "I thought you ordered it last."
"Never mind the orange now"--after all, I did know when I was thoroughly
beaten--"but I want black coffee, and I did say 'bacon,' not 'ham.' Also
some toast. You may leave the ham, now it's here."
"Gee, you're an awfully fussy eater," was her comment. "You didn't order
black coffee, did you?"
"No," I had to admit.
"Well, I'm only a waitress, not a mind reader," and with this
unanswerable retort she scooped up my cup of coffee with a skilfully
perilous gesture, and resumed her quest. Knowlton looked across at me
and grinned.
"Having trouble with your breakfast? You can't expect breakfast at
Schaefer's to be like dear old London," he went on, while something
approaching a serious outburst was struggling in me. "When in Rome, do
as the Romans do--that's the best plan."
"That's all very well," I said with extreme self-control, "but I am not
going to eat prunes if the whole Holy Roman Empire ate them. I don't see
why she can't bring me the breakfast I want when everything on God's
earth is on that bill of fare."
"You'll shake down all right," he said in what was meant to be a
soothing way. "Kicking about the grub won't do you any good. They don't
know any better in a place like this. What's the use of getting in wrong
with the waitress?"
It was hopeless to explain, so I snorted instead. Knowlton took a slice
of bread and polished the inside of his now empty bowl until it
glistened.
"Looks as though Fido had finished that off," he remarked, as he rolled
and lit a cigarette; "I'll knock some ashes into it so they'll have to
wash it."
The waitress appeared with a cup of coffee, a plate piled high with
thick slices of toast on which chunks of butter were still melting,
another plate with two oranges, and a third containing two rashers of
coarse bacon. With the grieved air of a person determined to do her duty
in the face of all rebuffs she silently grouped this food about me.
"What will you have, Mr. Knowlton?" There was just a faint emphasis upon
the "you."
"Thanks, you can bring me a steak, some German fried potatoes, a couple
of soft-boiled eggs, and some griddle cakes."
"Do you want black coffee too?" she asked with meaning.
"No, make mine half milk, and bring along another plate of rolls."
"Sure!" remarked the waitress cheerfully and vanished.
"And how did she know your name?" I asked, realizing it was quite
useless to question Knowlton about his theory of a hot weather diet.
"Oh, she asked the clerk, I guess. It's good business to always call
customers by name. Makes 'em feel at home."
I looked around the room again and inwardly decided that something more
than that simple and naive process would be needed in my case.
"They mean well," Knowlton went on, with his disconcerting habit of
reading my thoughts, "but they don't always know how. Now, you're used
to thinking of a girl like that as a servant. She isn't. She thinks
she's as good as you are, and I guess there's something in that too. You
treat her all right and she'll treat you the same. But don't pull any of
that European stuff here. They don't know what it means."
Knowlton's breakfast arrived, and he fell upon it with gusto.
"You gents come from Pittsburgh?" the waitress enquired, evidently much
mollified by Knowlton's treatment of his breakfast.
"Nope--New York," Knowlton answered.
"Gee, I'd like to go East," she said fervently. "It must be just grand.
What line you gents travelling in?"
"We aren't travelling men," Knowlton replied. "I'm an engineer, and my
friend here is just a plain business man."
"Oh," she said, somewhat disappointed, I thought. It was clear that she
did not rank us as highly as she did travelling men. "Just passin'
through the city, I suppose," she continued.
"It's hard to say," said Knowlton. "Maybe we'll be here sometime."
"Going to board here?"--her interest in us somewhat renewed, at this
announcement.
"We haven't settled on our eating joint yet. Thought we'd look round
first."
"This is as O. K. as any," she said. "The grub's nothing wonderful, but
it's as good as you'll get. Lou Meyer's Rathskeller hasn't anything on
us, and he charges a dollar a week more. 'Course, if your friend's
particular, he might try the Otooska House down on the park. They put on
a lot of airs and charge New York prices there, but it's the same old
grub."
"Well," said Knowlton, "we'll see. We'll try 'em all out before we
decide."
At this moment another customer entered, to be conducted by the
head-waitress with like ceremony, as in our case, to his seat, and our
blaze of glory departed to ascertain his wants. As Knowlton rose, seized
a toothpick, and started for the door, followed by me, I heard our
waitress beginning her searching personal questions all over again.
We paid for our breakfasts--fifty cents apiece--at the desk, where the
clerk took the same lack of interest in the transaction as before.
Knowlton asked him the way to the Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company, our
destination.
"West Twelfth Street car to the end of the line," was the brief reply,
and with that we set forth.
Although it was still very early in the morning, or seemed so to me,
unaccustomed to begin a day's work at six thirty, it was rapidly growing
hot with a peculiar dry, intense heat that made the sunlight painful.
West Twelfth Street proved to be in the direction of the railway
station, and, although it was only two blocks from Schaefer's, I was
thoroughly moist with perspiration when we joined a throng of
blue-overalled mechanics, waiting with shining tin dinner pails on the
corner for the arrival of the car. There was no car in sight when we got
there, and as we waited I listened to the peculiarly blasphemous
conversation of the men about me. Their talk was intelligent, far more
so than that of a corresponding class of English working-men, but it was
interlarded with an original and soul-curdling profanity. Rates of pay,
politics, baseball, their foremen, and women seemed to be the staples of
conversation. Young men predominated. Their faces were sharp and eager,
and they seemed tense and alive, although affecting and even boasting of
their dislike for their "jobs" and their dissatisfaction with the
management of their factories. But it was obvious at a glance that they
were well fed and clothed, and were excellent workmen. They played
incessant practical jokes on each other, rolled innumerable cigarettes,
and cheered the electric car when it at last arrived. Long before it
stopped they charged the car _en masse_, with rough good nature,
greeting conductor and motorman by name, and filled every inch of it
before Knowlton and I could fight our way to a bare foothold upon the
rear platform.
The car whizzed out a most dreary street--drearier even than the streets
across the river in Bermondsey or over beyond the Elephant and Castle.
It was six inches deep in a choking grey dust which the fast moving car
stirred up into a remorseless searching cloud. Overhead in the hot blue
sky hung masses of coal smoke, now beginning to pour from factory
chimneys. Parallel to the car line ran a railway track, quite unguarded
from the street proper, along which switch engines with freight cars
smoked and clanged. On either side we passed an endless row of factory
buildings, some of brick, but more of wood--even those which were
several stories high. In spite of the streaming, intense sunlight and
the final blue of the sky, the scene was one of desolation.
The car stopped with a jerk--we had reached the end, it seemed--and with
great promptness we pushed one another off the rear platform. This crowd
of workmen simply treated Knowlton and me as non-existent, and, if we
happened to be in front of them, attempted the physical paradox of
walking right through us. As I reached the pavement, I saw before me a
long narrow two-storied brick building, surrounded by various lesser
sheds and outhouses, the whole surmounted by a huge sign which read
"Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company." This was the magic purse of
Fortunatus which I had come so far to seek. It looked prosaic enough,
but not so dismal as my ride out Twelfth Street had caused me to fear.
It was the last of Twelfth Street, apparently, and the last of the
factories at that end of town, for beyond I caught a glimpse of green
cornfields, grey wooden fences, and, still further on, a blue sliver of
the lake. "At least, there's air from the west," I thought, as I
followed Knowlton, my heart thumping curiously now I was almost face to
face with my ordeal.
We entered a door marked "Office--No Admittance Except on Business," and
climbed a steep flight of stairs to pass into a railed-off outer room
full of desks and typewriters. There was only one young man, slightly
bald, with his coat off, adjusting black alpaca half-sleeves over his
cuffs as we entered. From one lip hung the inevitable toothpick which
seemed to be the totem pole of these regional tribes. He looked up at us
and advanced to meet us, holding out one hand.
"Mr. Knowlton? I'm sure glad to meet you. Walk in. My name's Kane, Phil
Kane, and I'm general sales manager for the D. H. M. Co."
He shook Knowlton's hand warmly.
"My friend and associate, Mr. Ted Jevons, of London, England," said
Knowlton.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Jevons," said Kane, looking at me with the
same curiosity I studied him with. "They tell me London is some town,"
he added with a forced laugh and an attempt at hearty conversation. "I
expect we seem a little out of it here by the lake, after them big
cities, but Deep Harbor's pretty up-to-date at that. We have more miles
of paved streets in proportion to our population than any city between
Buffalo and Toledo. Have you seen the view from the Soldiers' Home, Mr.
Jevons?"
I informed him that we had only just arrived and had come directly to
the factory, after a breakfast of sorts at Schaefer's.
"You'd ought to have taken Mr. Jevons to the Otooska House," said Kane,
laughing. "They have music with meals there, just like a New York hotel.
'Course, it's only an electric organ, but it makes you feel cheerful.
Come right in, won't you? Mr. Norwood won't be out to turn the factory
over to you gentlemen until about eight, but if there's anything I can
do to show you around first, just say the word."
As I passed through the little swinging gate that divided the inner from
the outer office, Kane seized my hat with a murmured apology and hung it
on a hook.
"This is the general manager's office, in there," he said, pointing
through the door in a wooden partition into a cubby hole containing one
roll-top desk, two chairs, and a large filing cabinet. "I suppose you'll
use this, Mr. Knowlton. Question is, where'll we put Mr. Jevons' desk?"
"Oh," I replied, "mine will be in the testing laboratory."
"Laboratory?" he repeated. "I saw something about that in the
correspondence over the sale of the plant, and I couldn't figure out
what you were going to build a laboratory for."
"To test and improve our product--also to systematize its factory
costs," I said.
"Well, maybe so," he remarked doubtfully, "but a laboratory seems to me
like an awful addition to overhead expenses. However, I don't presume to
know how to run your business, Mr. Jevons. I suppose you won't make any
radical changes in the selling department, will you?" There was a note
of genuine anxiety in his voice.
"Not for the present," Knowlton interjected crisply. "We shall continue
the policy and staff of the old company until we get our bearings. Then
there will be plenty of opportunity for good men to move up. Meanwhile,
we'll size up the efficiency of everybody and see what we've got."
Kane scratched the back of one ear with a pencil and turned this
statement over in his mind. I noticed that his eyes were pale and weak,
and that his manner was plainly that of a man who had little faith in
fortune's star. An efficiency test was clearly one he was not confident
of facing, but neither was I, and my sympathy went out to him. I had
never seen a man at close range before who actually feared for his bread
and butter, and that was what Kane's face showed, as he tried to
conciliate the two of us as representatives of the new owners. It was
not a pleasant sight. I could tell by Knowlton's sharp glance at him
that our engineer was remorselessly applying that uncanny faculty of his
of reading men's thoughts, and I guessed Kane had sealed his own doom.
But Knowlton said never a word. Instead he pulled some papers from his
pocket, checked his memoranda for the day, and read a few documents
which Kane turned over to him. I took out my pipe and started to light
it.
"No smoking in the factory!" exclaimed Knowlton sharply.
"Do you mean to say," I protested, "that I've got to be here from seven
to six each day without even smoking?"
"Just that," replied Knowlton with a grin. "We lose our insurance if we
allow smoking."
At that moment a steam whistle began an infernal din, apparently over my
head--a din which was echoed from every point of the compass. Instantly
an even worse clatter and roar of machinery began under our feet, and
the flimsy wooden floor and partitions vibrated visibly.
"Seven o'clock!" said Knowlton, rising. "The day's work has begun. Come,
Ted, we'll take a walk through the machine-shop and look things over.
Never mind, Kane--we'll find our own way around. Don't lose time from
your job on our account."
With this hint Kane went suddenly back to his desk, while Knowlton and I
descended the stairs and entered the machine shop. As we passed through
the narrow aisles between closely packed lathes and planers, Knowlton
made a series of rapid notes on the back of an envelope. Nothing escaped
his eye, from a machine working too slowly to a foreman with too many
men to look after. At the time I had no way of judging whether his
inspection revealed a satisfactory condition or the reverse. The factory
had been bought, of course, after a preliminary inventory of contents
and orders on hand, but Knowlton's task was to judge of its efficiency
as an operating plant. For over an hour we went from one department to
another, until Knowlton's notes had covered all the scraps of paper
either of us had in our pockets.
"I guess we'll go upstairs now and talk to Norwood," said Knowlton. "By
the way, what did you think of the plant, Ted?" I felt as my old friend
Dr. Watson must have felt when Sherlock Holmes asked him one of those
sudden posers whose explanation was really so simple.
"It seems very busy," I said with conscious feebleness.
"Yes," he remarked drily, "that busyness is also costing them a lot of
money. I think we'll shake this old place up, Ted, before we're
through."
As I followed him I covertly looked at my watch. A little after eight!
Good heavens, how many hours to six o'clock! It seemed as if I had been
up since day before yesterday.
The upper office was now full of clerks and clicking typewriters,
presided over by some remarkably pretty girls. At least three of them
looked me straight in the eye as I went past, and I made a mental note
that they were a great improvement upon the waitresses at Schaefer's.
But my thoughts were interrupted by Norwood's coming forward to greet
us.
Norwood was one of the young millionaires of Deep Harbor--the son of a
father who had helped to create the town and whose capital was the
backbone of every enterprise of importance in the city. Young Norwood
had recently inherited the overlordship of Deep Harbor, and one of his
first acts had been to sell the Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company to the
interests represented by my father.
Norwood himself was rather a disappointment. He was a tall, weak-faced,
pale young man, whose clothes, neat and costly, were wrong in every
particular. His seal ring was too large, his watch chain too heavy, his
collar too high, and his cravat too loud. Even his shoes were ornamented
with fancy leatherwork in scroll patterns. His manner was cordial to the
point of oiliness, yet cold and insincere. In short, I took an instant
dislike to him.
Obsequiously he placed chairs for us, closed the door, and produced fat
black cigars, thus ignoring the office rule about smoking; and while he
was ostensibly listening to Knowlton I had the uncomfortable feeling
that he was studying me. As Knowlton ran over the items of his memoranda
I kept catching Norwood looking me over out of the corners of his watery
blue eyes. It was increasingly clearer that Knowlton's questions and
enthusiastic exposition of plans were boring Norwood, for, after
fidgeting more and more, he suddenly got up.
"Well, gentlemen," he said, "the business is yours now. I'm sorry I've
an engagement down-town. If there's anything I can do, or any advice I
can give you, just 'phone me and I'll look in, anytime. Glad to have met
you," and with a vigorous, cold handshake he left. Knowlton and I faced
each other. We were now in command of the ship. Knowlton carefully
extinguished his cigar.
"Ted," he said, "I don't trust this Norwood. He's sold this thing, and
it looks all right, but I'm afraid there is a Senegambian concealed
somewhere in the woodpile. You noticed how he dodged talking over the
business?"