It was one minute before eleven when the card of Mr. Charles Wilkinson
was borne gingerly, by a large youth from South Framingham who served
as door boy, into the presence of Mr. Hurd. That gentleman, reading
the bit of pasteboard with a grunt which might have been indicative of
any one of a dozen invidious sentiments, opened the proximate corner of
his mouth.
"Send him in," came from the brief orifice.
A moment later Mr. Wilkinson stood in the presence of his prey. Or
perchance--but no, this was to be Marengo, not Waterloo--and above all,
not Moscow. Something of this was in his eyes when he lifted them to
meet those of his distinguished relation.
"Are you at liberty for a few moments?" he soberly inquired. He took
care to delete every vestige of animation from his tone and manner, and
so radical a change did this effect that his step-uncle blinked. A man
as keen as John M. Hurd could not be blind to a mutation so great. He
looked Mr. Wilkinson over with more care than he had ever employed
before, for he recognized at once that this was no ordinary visit.
"I am as much at liberty as I am likely to be," he replied
noncommittally.
His visitor wistfully and somewhat suggestively eyed a chair, but made
no move to be seated. He felt that, no matter how the interview was to
close, punctiliousness should begin it.
"Be seated," said Mr. Hurd, briefly.
"I have come to see you, sir," his young relative began, feeling his
way cautiously, "with reference to a matter that I have never mentioned
to you, although I have been studying it for some time. Perhaps you
may be of the opinion that if it were of paramount importance I could
have presented it to you without a long preliminary investigation. But
each of us has to work in his own way, and this affair was of a sort in
which I had little or no previous experience. The result was that it
has taken me a considerable time to formulate my idea, and I want you
to give it a fair opportunity to sink in, so to speak, before you reach
any decision."
With his curiosity somewhat stirred, his hearer grunted a qualified
assent.
"I have, of course, fortified myself by the possession of
facts,--actual facts, sir,--and without them I should not have
trespassed on your time, for I must tell you at once that my
proposition concerns itself with the fire insurance of the
Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company."
The knowledge that this was probably the most perilous point in his
passage would have caused Wilkinson to hurry past with all possible
speed, but his uncle interrupted him with a grim laugh.
"That need give you no concern, my young friend," he said curtly, "for
the company does not carry any insurance."
A trace of Mr. Wilkinson's normal impudence returned momentarily to his
tone when he replied:--
"My dear sir, didn't I say that I had made a long preliminary
investigation of this? You can scarcely hold my intelligence at so low
a figure as to think that I didn't know _that_ fact. That's why I'm
here--because I _do_ know it."
It may have been the effect of the return to the normal in his
step-nephew's tone, or it may have been merely Mr. Hurd's business
method, which expelled his next remark from sardonic lips.
"Then you need but one more fact to make your knowledge of the subject
complete, and that I will now give you. Not only does my company carry
no insurance, but it never intends or expects to. Is there anything
else this morning?"
Charlie smiled calmly, unmoved.
"Now we are ready to begin, sir. You have disbelieved in insurance so
strongly and so long that such a remark was exactly what I expected you
to make. In fact, I should have been not only surprised, but
positively embarrassed, had you not made it. Now, I repeat, we are
ready to talk business. And I have your promise to listen to my plan."
It did not occur to the magnate that he had made no such promise, until
Wilkinson was well launched; after that, he forgot about it.
"Did any one ever call to your attention, sir, the fact that the
statistics show that the fire losses on traction schedules in the
Eastern states exceed the insurance premiums on those schedules by
nearly thirty-five per cent?"
Mr. Hurd shook his head shortly.
"I did not know it."
Wilkinson did not know it either, but it could not be disproved, and
served excellently as a gambit.
"And I am not interested in other traction companies' fires," added his
uncle.
"No, of course not. But the law of average works in the end. Your
properties are subject to exactly the same conditions and hazards as
others, and in the end the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction
Company will incur more in losses than it would ever have to pay in
premiums. In the long run the average wins. So far you have been
surprisingly fortunate, and that is another reason why you should begin
now to insure. The law of average is perfectly inexorable, and every
year of low losses brings you nearer the big losses that are bound to
come. You've been gambling, and now is the time to play safe."
"Perhaps, my boy," Mr. Hurd replied with amusement, "you believe these
things that you quote so glibly. Perhaps not. Let us assume that you
do. Therefore let me ask you this: if the insurance companies pay more
losses than they get in premiums on traction schedules, why don't they
cut off this loss by ceasing to insure them? Hey?"
"Oh, lots of them do," Wilkinson returned easily. "A few of the others
may have had a streak of luck for a few years, just as you have had,
but the rest take it all in the day's work, think that the rates may go
up on account of the bad record of the class and then it would be an
advantage to have the business on their books, or else they try to make
it up on other better paying classes. And besides, they have the use
of the money which is paid in premiums during good years when losses
are light." Not for nothing had he listened to the painstaking
explanations of Cole, and whatever his eccentricities, Charlie had a
native shrewdness hardly second to that of old John M. himself.
Perhaps the older man was thinking of this when he next spoke.
"Then it has probably occurred to you that the Massachusetts Light,
Heat, and Traction Company can do the same thing--and does. I use the
interest and profits of my insurance fund which I have accumulated by
not paying premiums, to pay losses. How about that?"
"That would be all right if your properties were widely enough
distributed. But they're not. Some day you'll get a big loss, which
will wipe out your interest, profits, and fund all together for twenty
years. Your fund's all right for cars that burn on the road or for
small fires; but what if something big went? And the insurance money
would come in very nicely when you most needed it. You'd have trouble
enough on your hands without having to go out and raise money, too, if
your new Pemberton Street barn should burn up with half a million
dollars' worth of cars in it--which it is quite possible it may do at
almost any time."
"What! The new barn?" said the magnate, incredulously. "Why, my boy,
that barn is the latest thing in fireproof construction! There isn't a
stick of wood in that building from cellar to attic."
"And the cars, are they fireproof, too?"
John M. Hurd looked up sharply.
"No," he said slowly. "No, I don't suppose they are. . . . Still,
there's nothing to set the cars afire. They're safe enough in that
building. Nothing can happen to them there."
"The building itself is not located on a desert island in the middle of
the Atlantic Ocean," said his nephew, thoughtfully. "It _might_ be
exposed to a serious fire in some of the neighboring buildings--that
big paper-box factory, for example, across the alley to the south.
There _might_, in fact,"--he paused--"there _might_ be a general fire
in that part of Boston."
"A conflagration, you mean? Nonsense! Boston is safe as a church."
"Probably safer than St. Stephen's, out in Cambridge, that burned to
the ground last week," returned his visitor, with a smile.
"To be sure," said Mr. Hurd, hastily. "But there'll never be a big,
sweeping fire in Boston."
"Why not? There was one once."
"Forty years ago. That's no criterion. Things are very different now.
This is a modern city we're talking about--half the buildings down town
are fireproof or nearly so. Modern cities don't burn the way older
ones did."
"Baltimore did, as you may recall; also San Francisco. And they were
modern--as modern as Boston. There _are_ people--not Bostonians, of
course--who would consider them more so."
"Come now, do you mean to tell me any one honestly believes there is
any danger of another really big fire here?" rejoined Mr. Hurd, almost
contemptuously; but under the surface Charlie believed that his
attitude of contempt was more or less assumed. He believed he had made
a distinct impression, and it was therefore almost with a gambler's
instinct that he brought forth his trump card.
"I tell you, sir," he said, with all the impressiveness he could
command, "that the best technical engineers--not alarmists, but men who
are careful students of such things--agree that the danger here is as
great as in any of the big cities of the United States. The
conflagration hazard in the congested district of Boston is not a thing
one can exactly calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate
its gravity."
Mr. Hurd regarded him with amazement.
"Would you mind repeating that?" he asked at length.
"Certainly not, since I know it to be true. I say that the
conflagration hazard in the congested district of Boston is not a thing
one can exactly calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate
its gravity."
The traction magnate walked slowly to the window, and looked out. On
the sunny pavements below him people were going back and forth on their
various concerns. Around the corner came the familiar delivery wagon
of a well-known dealer in wholesale groceries. Somehow the sight of
these common things restored to Mr. Hurd his ordinary tranquillity of
mind, which he now saw had been disturbed by the astonishing utterances
of his plausible young relation. He smiled rather grimly when he
thought of how near he had come to being impressed by what Charlie had
said. Of course, there could be nothing in it; certainly not, from
such a source. It was the old John M. Hurd who turned again to face
his visitor, who with but one card left to play awaited breathlessly
but with outward nonchalance the effect of his cherished speech.
"Well, I've enjoyed talking this over with you, Charlie," the older man
said with candor. "There's something in what you say, too. Perhaps
our insurance fund isn't as large as it ought to be. But I couldn't
consider carrying insurance for the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and
Traction Company. And why are you so interested in this, all of a
sudden, anyway?"
"Partly philanthropic and partly mercenary," said his nephew, easily.
"Philanthropic, because I would like to do something of real benefit to
the most distinguished member of my family--who least needs my
assistance; mercenary, because I need the money. I rather expect you
to let me have charge of the placing of this insurance, sir."
"Well, Charlie, I don't mind saying that you've made a better
impression than any of these other insurance men that occasionally get
into my office, and if I were going to take out insurance on the
traction properties, I believe I'd let you make your commission on it.
But I'm not. And now I must ask you to excuse me."
"Oh, I've not quite finished," returned Wilkinson. As he was in for it
now, he would see it through. "I think you're making a mistake, sir;
and there are still one or two aspects of the matter which you have not
considered."
"And what may they be?" inquired his uncle. "Please remember I'm a
busy man."
His visitor reflected briefly. He did not know whether to play his
last card slowly and carefully or to slam it face upward with enough
force to make the table rattle. He decided on the latter method; after
all, to succeed with John M. Hurd one did well to make him blink.
"There _is_ such an institution as the Stock Exchange," he said blandly.
Mr. Hurd looked at him.
"Massachusetts Traction has been considered a very substantial
security," Wilkinson went on, "so safe that its market value fluctuates
very little, and so well regarded that the banks generally accept its
stock as collateral at very nearly its market value. They accept it as
a matter of course because they know its dividends are fully earned and
paid regularly, and they have confidence in your management and don't
go into the details. Your company has no bonded indebtedness; the
bonds were all converted into stock years ago; if it was bonded, the
bondholders would compel you to insure, whether you wished to or not.
Perhaps the banks have forgotten that you are not forced to carry
insurance, and are taking it for granted that you are exercising
ordinary prudence along this line and insuring just the same.
Suppose--only suppose--the intelligence should become diffused among
certain gentlemen of State Street that you are likely to lose three
quarters of a million dollars by fire if your new Pemberton Street car
barn should go and the power house adjoining it be seriously damaged,
and to meet such a loss you had an insurance fund of thirty thousand
dollars. Do you suppose your stock would be quite so popular as
collateral as it is now?"
He paused for a reply, but none came.
"Of course none of the directors of the company ever borrow money on
that stock. . . . Need I say more, sir?"
It was evident that there was no need. If there were any of the
directors who did _not_ borrow money on the stock, Mr. Hurd could not
think of them offhand. Once more he walked to the window, and this
time he looked long and thoughtfully out over the level roofs.
"Your point is not badly taken. And in one thing you are probably
right--State Street, if left to itself, would never raise the
question," he said, half to himself. But Wilkinson's reply was ready
and obvious.
"There are so many thoughtless people," he said softly. "One never can
tell when such news might leak out."
His uncle surveyed him sternly. But Charlie's cryptic gaze met his
uncle's, undisturbed.
"Some one _might_ tell," he gently observed, and said no more.
It was some time before Mr. Hurd raised a thoughtful yet somewhat
amused face to that of his caller.
"I'll consider the matter," he said tersely.
"I thank you, sir," replied Charles, with graceful humility, which he
dared assume since his case seemed won. And a moment later South
Framingham's one time pride watched his exit through the grille gate
into the descending elevator.
As Wilkinson started blithely across the Common, he caught sight of a
familiar figure advancing along one of the diagonal paths. He
quickened his already jocund step to meet Miss Maitland at the
intersection of their ways.
"Whither away so briskly this hungry noon?" he inquired with
enthusiasm. "If it were not for the fact that I am in search of some
one to ask me to luncheon, I would ask you to come and lunch with me."
"Then if I were really quite hungry, which I am after an hour in this
autumn air, I should decline your gallant invitation with regret, and
say that I am on my way to lunch with Uncle Silas at the Club."
Charlie was on the point of telling her his news--but changed his
intent. After all, his were incubator chickens at best, and perhaps it
would be wiser to postpone a public enumeration of them. So he merely
replied, "I trust you will have a pleasant luncheon."
"The same to you, and many of them--consecutively," replied the girl,
with a laugh.
"Now, that's what I call a friendly speech," rejoined her escort, and
the two went their separate ways.
At the club whose billiard players have the almost unique privilege
between masse shots of regarding at close range the tombstones of an
aristocratic cemetery, Helen and her uncle were comfortably lingering
over their demi-tasses before Mr. Osgood's guest gave speech to the
thoughts within her.
"You are a dear to give me this luncheon," she began.
The old gentleman bowed a courtly head.
"I have been envied, I think, by all my more youthful fellow members
here," he said. "And that is very pleasant, even when one might be
supposed to have passed the age of vanity."
"Thank you, Uncle Silas. No one of your fellow members could have said
a nicer thing than that." She fingered her coffee cup. "But I had a
reason for inviting myself--practically--to lunch with you. I want to
ask your advice."
"I'm afraid I should be inclined in advance to let you do exactly as
you liked, my child," said the other, with a smile. "But what is it?
I hope it's not trouble of any sort."
"No--it's not trouble, exactly," his niece responded. "It's more
like--well, like dissatisfaction. I am awfully tired of being a
perfectly useless person, with no definite end and aim. You don't
suppose it's because I see every day the girls coming down to work, on
the Massachusetts Avenue cars, do you? I went a little while ago to my
doctor's because I thought perhaps there was something the matter with
me, and he suggested a change of air, but I think he mixed up the cause
with the effect. Perhaps I do need a change, but it's a change of
interests and a change of what I see and hear and talk about."
"Commonly termed a vacation," said Mr. Osgood.
"Yes, a vacation--that's it. Not a vacation from _doing_ anything,
because I've done nothing, but a vacation from the atmosphere I've been
living in."
"You mean the artistic atmosphere?" her uncle asked. "You are a little
tired of--"
"I'm more than a little--I'm horribly tired of imitations and poses and
make-believes. I want to see things and people who really live, who
don't exist by the light of crimson-shaded globes and spend their days
dreaming about impressions and arrangements and tones and shadows."
Helen wound up this diminutive tirade with quite a little flourish, and
Mr. Osgood looked thoughtfully across the table at her.
"Why don't you run down to New York?" he suggested. "I'm sure your
Aunt Mary Wardrop would be delighted to have you come for a visit."
"Yes. I thought of that. I should like to go there, and I had almost
decided to. But can't you suggest something for me to _do_? Aunt
Mary's principal occupation is abusing the _nouveaux riches_, and one
merely has to agree with her, which is not at all difficult. If I had
anything to _do_ here, I'd rather stay than go. Of course New York is
quite a change from Boston--there can be no doubt about that.
But--don't you see what I mean, Uncle Silas?"
"I think I do--somewhat, my dear. You are a little restless, and you
think that because the things you do are small they are less real.
That is not so--small things can be made very interesting if one does
them with enthusiasm. Take my own business, for example. It is
possibly just a 'business' to you, like any other, but that is because
you have not seen it from the inside. To me it is absolutely vital. I
don't know of another business so interesting."
"Really!" the girl answered. "I thought it was just getting people to
buy insurance policies, very much as you would have gotten them to buy
sugar if you had been in the grocery business. If it's so interesting,
why couldn't I come down to your office and learn about it? I'm sure I
could be of some use--I'm quite quick at figures."
"I fear you'd be disappointed," said Mr. Osgood. "I'm afraid I must
admit that adding up columns of figures is very much the same in one
business as in another. And as I said, to find the real interest you
should see a business from the inside. My office is not the
inside--it's only part way in. The real inside, the center of the web,
is the home office of some big company. I'm only a local agent, you
understand; you would only see one phase of the business in my office.
But if you went to New York, I could arrange that you might visit the
home office of one of the New York companies, if you would like."
"I think I would," said Miss Maitland.
"Then I will give you a letter to Mr. James Wintermuth, one of my
oldest and closest friends and the head of the Guardian Fire Insurance
Company of New York. And some morning, if you find time hanging heavy
on your hands, you can go down to William Street. And if you don't
arrive before ten o'clock, I think Mr. Wintermuth will be pleased to
show you something real--and something which has not a purple shadow in
its possession."
"Then you really think it would be a good thing for me to go to New
York?" his niece asked.
"Decidedly. I'd write your aunt to-day, if I were you. Now that she
has your portrait, she would probably like a chance to compare it with
the original."
"On the contrary, she may think, that having so recent a copy, the
original would be superfluous."
"I fancy I'd risk it," her uncle returned, with a smile, as they rose
from the table.
And so it was arranged. Helen's mother entered her expected protest,
and was promptly overruled. Trunks were packed and letters were
written; among them one by Silas Osgood to James Wintermuth. And at
length, as September was drawing to a close, Miss Maitland boarded the
Knickerbocker Limited one day, and the town of her nativity was
speedily left behind her.
On the very afternoon of her departure the office of the Massachusetts
Light, Heat, and Traction Company was the scene of an unusual, and, to
most of the participants, a disquieting conference. The shimmering
face of the big, dark, mahogany table reflected many a perplexed
expression, and its substantial supports found their impeccable varnish
menaced by a number of restless and uneasy boots. The directors of the
company, assembled for their monthly meeting, found that, instead of
the customary conventionality of procedure, a thing strangely
impertinent and unexpected demanded their surprised attention.
Ordinarily these meetings were simple in the extreme, being merely
ratifications of what the President had done and approvals of what he
said he purposed to do. To the somewhat bored group of representative
financial figureheads around the table Mr. Hurd would read a sheet of
figures telling how many million miles the company had carried one
passenger during the previous month--such reports are always reduced to
absurdities--and would inform them of such plans as he chose to intrust
to their confidence, and would then suggest the declaration of the
usual dividend. To this the directors would unanimously assent. Then
they punctiliously received each man his golden eagle, and a motion to
adjourn closed the ceremony.
To-day had come an astonishing innovation in procedure. Instead of
suavely instructing them what they should vote to do, Mr. Hurd was
behaving in a most oddly uncharacteristic fashion. He was asking their
advice. This amounted to a _bouleversement suprême_ of the usual order
of things, and it was no wonder that there was disquietude among his
hearers.
"It has been represented to me," he had tersely said, "that if a large
fire should involve our Pemberton Street barn and power house,
notwithstanding the presumably fireproof construction of those
buildings, we should quite likely incur a much larger loss than we
would find it convenient to pay at a time when additional financing
might be somewhat embarrassing. I am therefore laying before you
gentlemen the question of doing what we have never previously done, and
carrying fire insurance on our properties. I prefer not to advise you,
and suggest an open discussion of the matter."
Mr. Hurd sat down; his directors surveyed one another and the situation
with concern. Could the old man be losing his grip, or was this merely
a transient eccentricity? In the debate which followed the President
took no part; only once, in answer to a question by Mr. Jonas Green,
much the most penurious man at the table, as to what had brought the
question up at the present time, Mr. Green being an enthusiastic
exponent of the doctrine of _laissez faire_ when any additional
expenditure was proposed, Mr. Hurd made reply:--
"It is represented to me that if it became public knowledge that we
carry no insurance, banking and financial institutions generally may
come to feel that our conservatism is open to criticism and that they
are rating our stock somewhat too highly as collateral. It is
intimated that some of us might conceivably be annoyed by requests to
substitute in part other collateral or somewhat reduce loans secured by
Massachusetts Traction stock."
"But so far as the banks are concerned, we're in exactly the same
position we've always been. How is the fact we don't insure going to
become public knowledge now any more than in the past?" persisted Mr.
Green.
"It is suggested that news spreads--if not of its own volatility, at
least with only the most trifling assistance. And that, I take it,"
concluded Mr. Hurd, "will be supplied."
Mr. Green's face grew almost purple.
"Why!" he exclaimed, "that's--that's pretty close to blackmail!"
The President's lips half concealed the merest trace of a smile.
"Possibly," he assented. "But I am inclined to think it is business."
The controversy continued. And Mr. Hurd, listening, found himself more
and more moved to austere amusement by the effect of Charlie's suave
proposal. When he had placed the matter before the directorate, it was
because he himself had not made up his mind on the question of its
desirability. He had slowly come to feel that his personal prejudice
against carrying insurance should not be made forcibly to apply to the
policy of a corporation, in which many others were interested, and he
felt that he would prefer to shift the responsibility on this point to
the gentlemen who presumably were paid for deciding just such things.
And as he listened, he found growing upon him the hope that Charlie's
plan would be adopted. This hope, unexpressed, was so utterly out of
keeping with what he had supposed to be his convictions that he
strangled it without a qualm. It was, he supposed, dead, when he sat
up at the further request of Mr. Jonas Green to answer a few additional
queries.
"Tell me," said Mr. Green, "do you honestly believe there's a particle
of danger of a big fire in this city? Pooh!" He dismissed the subject
almost contemptuously.
Some odd chord of recollection stirred in Mr. Hurd. Almost
unconsciously he responded:--
"The best technical engineers--not alarmists, but men who are careful
students of such things--agree that the conflagration hazard in the
congested district of Boston is not a thing one can exactly calculate,
but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity."
The sounding syllables passed from his lips with a faint, far echo
which he found vaguely but unidentifiably familiar. But into the group
around the long table the utterance fell with cryptic, crucial
solemnity. Only Mr. Green, stubbornly contentious to the last, and
thinking anxiously of both horns of the dilemma at once, found voice or
will to reply.
"You don't say so!" he said feebly.
"I do," Mr. Hurd coolly rejoined. "And now, gentlemen, the motion is
in order: Shall the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company
insure its properties against loss by fire?"
And when the motion was put, there was no dissenting voice.
Of this somewhat unprecedented meeting the close at least was normal.
But Mr. Jonas Green grasped his ten dollar gold piece more firmly than
ever as he passed through the doorway.