Part 5

The sisters gasped, and Dorothy gave a little cry.

“Here! what do you mean?” she said breathlessly. “Have you pinched this money from Ticknett? You’d better be careful. He’s coming here. We’ll have you arrested.”

The listless woman shook her head.

“No, no,” she said in her toneless voice. “Don’t you believe that. He won’t come here.”

“Why won’t he come here?” rasped Dorothy, with a note of challenge.

The strange visitor stood staring vacantly at the fire. She seemed not to have heard. Her lips were trembling. Suddenly she answered in the same dull, lifeless manner:

“Because he’s lying on my bed with a bullet through his heart.”

“IN THE WAY OF BUSINESS”

“IN THE WAY OF BUSINESS”

As the large, thick-set man with the red face, the bushy mustache, and the very square chin swung round on his swivel chair, at the great roll-top desk with its elaborate arrangements of telephones, receivers, and electric buttons, he conveyed to the little mild-eyed man waiting on a chair by the door the sense of infinite power.

And surely it must be a position requiring singular gifts and remarkable capacity. For was this not Dollbones, the house famous throughout the civilized world for supplying trimmings, gimp, embroidery, buttons, and other accessories to nearly every retail furnisher in England and the colonies? and was not this Mr. Godfrey Hylam, the London manager? To hold such a position a man must have not only brains, and an infinite capacity for work and driving power, but he must have character, a genius for judging people and making quick decisions.

“Almost like a general,” thought the mild-eyed man by the door. He had waited fifty minutes in the outer office for his interview, and on being at length shown in, had been told to “sit down a minute.” This minute had been protracted into thirty-five minutes, but it was very interesting to watch the great man grappling with the myriad affairs that came whispering through the wires, and giving sharp instructions to the two flurried clerks who sat in the same office, or dictating to the young lady stenographer who sat furtively on a small chair by his side scribbling into a book with a fountain-pen.

“She looks ill and worried,” thought the little man. He was indulging in a dreamy speculation on the girl’s home life, when he was suddenly pulled up by the percussion of Mr. Hylam’s voice. He realized that the great man was speaking to him. He was saying:

“Let’s see, what’s your name?”

“Thomas Pinwell, sir,” he answered, and stood up.

“_What_ name?” repeated the big man.

“Pinwell--Thomas Pinwell,” he said in a rather louder voice.

Mr. Hylam looked irritably among some papers and sighed. He then continued dictating a letter to the stenographer. When that was finished he got up, and went out of the room. He was absent about ten minutes, and then came hurrying in with some more papers. He called out as he walked:

“Jackson, have you got that statement from Jorrocks, Musgrove & Bellwither?”

One of the clerks jumped up and said:

“I’ll find it, sir.”

The clerk took some time to do this, and in the meanwhile Mr. Hylam dictated another report to the young lady. Then the clerk brought the statement, and he and Mr. Hylam discussed it at some length. He gave the clerk some further instructions, which were twice interrupted by the telephone bell. When this was finished, Mr. Hylam again caught sight of the little man by the door. He looked at him with surprise, and said:

“Let’s see, what’s your name?”

“Pinwell--Thomas Pinwell, sir,” he answered patiently.

Mr. Hylam again sighed and fingered a lot of papers in pigeon-holes. At that moment there was a knock, and a boy in buttons entered and said:

“There’s Mr. Curtis, of Curtis, Tonks & Curtis, called.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Hylam. “Yes. All right. Er--ask him to come in. I want to see him.” He turned to the telephone, and asked some one to put him on to some one else, and while waiting with the receiver to his ear, his eye once more caught sight of the little man by the door. He called out to him:

“Oh!--er--just wait outside a minute, Mr.--er--Hullo! is that you, Thomson?”

Finding himself temporarily dismissed, Mr. Pinwell took up his hat and went into the outer office. There was a tall, elderly man with a fur-lined overcoat standing there, and he was immediately shown in. He remained with Mr. Hylam just one hour. At the end of that time, one of the directors called and went out to lunch with Mr. Hylam. A clerk gave Mr. Pinwell the tip that he had better call back about four o’clock. He said he would do so. He had had thirty years’ experience in the furnishing trade, and he knew that “business was business.” One had to be patient, to conform to its prescripts. A gentleman like Mr. Hylam lived under continual pressure. He was acting according to his conscience in the best interests of the firm. One had to take one’s chance with him. After all, it would be very nice to get the job. He had been out so long, and he was not so young as he used to be. He thought of his placid wife and the two children. They were indeed getting into a very penurious state. He understood that the salary would be thirty shillings per week, and a small royalty on the sales. Not a princely emolument but it would make all the difference. Besides, what might not the royalties amount to? If he worked hard and energetically he might make between two and three pounds per week--who knows? He went into an äerated bread shop and had a cup of tea and a piece of seed cake, and read the morning paper. He stayed there as long as he dare, and then went for a stroll round the streets. At four o’clock precisely he presented himself at the managerial office at Dollbones once more. Mr. Hylam had not returned. They expected him every minute. There were five other people waiting to see him. At half-past four Mr. Hylam came in, smoking a cigar. He was accompanied by another gentleman. They walked right through the waiting crowd and went into the inner office and shut the door. As a matter of fact, Mr. Pinwell did not see the manager at all that day. So great was the congestion of business in the trimming, gimp, embroidery, and button business that afternoon that he was advised by one of the least aggressive clerks, at about a quarter to six, to try his luck in the morning. It was a quarter-past three on the following afternoon that he eventually obtained his interview with Mr. Hylam, and it was from his point of view entirely satisfactory. Mr. Hylam said:

“Let’s see. You told me your name?”

“Yes, sir,” he answered. “Thomas Pinwell.”

Mr. Hylam seemed at last to find the papers he desired. He said:

“Er--just come here. Show me your references.”

Mr. Pinwell approached the great desk deferentially. On it was a chart of London with one section shaded red. Mr. Hylam read the references carefully and then asked one or two searching questions. At last he said:

“Well, now, look here. This is your section. Go to Mr. Green, and he will give you the cards and samples. Then go to Rodney in the Outer London department upstairs, and he will give you a list of several hundred furnishing houses with the names of the buyers and a few particulars. Everything else you must find out. The salary is thirty shillings a week and two per cent. on sales completed. Settlement monthly. Good-day, Mr.--er--”

He turned to the telephone, and Mr. Pinwell’s heart beat rapidly. He had really got a job again! As he walked to the door he had a vision of the expression of delight on his wife’s face as he told her the news. He visualized a certain day in a certain month when he would bring home a lot of sovereigns and buy the children things. Two per cent.! For every hundred pounds’ worth of orders, two golden sovereigns of his very own! It seemed too good to be true!

His wife indeed did share with him the comforting joys of this new vista of commercial prosperity. They occupied now two rooms in Camling Town, and Tom had been out so long there was no immediate prospect of a removal. But the rent was now secure and just the barest necessities of life, and everything depended on the two per cent. commission. He was to start on the following Monday, and the intervening days were filled with active preparations. There were shirts to mend, an overcoat to be stitched, a pair of boots to have the heels set up, and three new collars to be bought. These were vital things pertinent to the active propaganda of the bread-winner. Other things were urgent,--a new piece of oil-cloth for the bedroom, some underclothes for the girls, and several small debts--but all these things _could_ wait, at any rate a month or two, till the commissions started coming in. For Mrs. Pinwell herself there never seemed necessities. She always managed to look somehow respectable, and, as Mr. Pinwell once remarked to a neighbor, “My wife is a marvel, sir, with a string bag. She always believes in bringing the things home herself. She goes out into the High Street, Camling Town, on a Saturday night, and I assure you, sir, it’s surprising what she will bring back. She will make a shilling go further than many of them would half-a-crown. She is a remarkable woman. It surprises me how she manages to bargain, being so unassuming, so diffident, as it were, in the home.”

There was nothing, then, missing in the necessary equipment of Mr. Pinwell as he set out with his leather case of samples on the following Monday. It was a cold, bright day, and he enjoyed the exercise of walking. He was not by nature a pushful man and he found the business of calling on people whom he did not know somewhat irksome. Fortunately he was by temperament patient and understanding, and he made allowances when people were rude to him, or kept him waiting indefinitely and then gave him no orders. “It’s all in the way of business,” he thought as he shuffled out of the shop and sought the next street.

At the end of the first week he explained to his wife:

“You see, my dear, there’s a lot of spade-work to be done yet. I’m afraid Flinders, who had the round before me, must have neglected it disgracefully. It all requires working up again. One has to get to _know_ people, the right people, of course. They seem prejudiced against one like, at first.”

“Was that Mr. Flinders who used to--” began Mrs. Pinwell in a whisper.

“Yes, my dear, I’m afraid he drank. It was a very distressing story, very distressing indeed. They say he drank himself to death. A very clever salesman too--very clever! They tell me he worked this district up splendidly, and then gradually let it go to pieces.”

“Dear, dear! I can’t think how people do such things?” murmured Mrs. Pinwell.

“It was a great recommendation in my case,” continued her husband, “that I was a teetotaler. Mr. Hylam made a great point of that. He asked me several times, and read the letter of Judkins & Co. vouching for my honesty and sobriety for a period of twenty-two years. He seemed very pleased about that.”

At the end of the first month the orders that Mr. Pinwell had secured for Dollbones were of a negligible character. He felt discouraged--as though conscious of there being something fundamentally wrong in his method of doing business--but his wife cheered him by expressing her view that it would probably take _months_ before his initial spade-work would take effect.

He started on his rounds a little earlier after that, and stayed a little later. He became more persistent and more patient. He went back again and again to see people who seemed inaccessible. He tried to be a little more assertive and plausible in his solicitations, but at the end of the second month there was little improvement in his returns, and his commissions amounted to scarcely enough to pay for the new oil-cloth in the sitting-room.

The optimism of Mrs. Pinwell was in no way affected by this failure, but a more alarming note was struck by Mr. Rodney of the “Outer London Department.” He told Mr. Pinwell that Mr. Hylam was _not at all satisfied_ with his work so far, and he would have to show greater energy and enterprise during the ensuing month, or the firm would be impelled to try a new traveler for that district, one who could show better results.

Mr. Pinwell was very alarmed. The idea of being “out” again kept him awake at night. It was a very serious thing. He put in longer hours still, and hurried more rapidly between his calls. He increased his stock of samples till they amounted to a very considerable weight. He made desperate appeals for orders, ringing the changes on various ways of expressing himself. But at the end of the next week there was still no improvement on the pages of his order-book. There was one firm in particular who caused him considerable heart-burning--Messrs. Carron and Musswell. These were quite the biggest people in the neighborhood, and had five different branches, each doing a prosperous business. Mr. Pinwell for the life of him could not find out how to get into the good graces of this firm. No one seemed to know who bought for them, and he was referred from one person to another, and sent dashing from one branch to another, all to no purpose.

He had one friend who had a small retail business of his own, a Baptist named Senner, who gave him small orders occasionally. He went into Mr. Senner’s shop one Friday, and feeling thoroughly tired and discouraged, he poured out his tale of woe to Mr. Senner. Mr. Senner was a large doleful man, to whom the sorrows of others were as balm. He listened to Mr. Pinwell’s misfortunes in sympathetic silence, breathing heavily. At the end of the peroration his son entered the shop. He was a white-faced, dissipated-looking young man who wore lavender ties and brushed his hair back. One might have imagined that he would have been a source of disappointment to Mr. Senner, but quite the contrary was the case. The son had a genius for concealing his vices from his father, and his father had a great opinion of the boy’s intelligence and character. He certainly had a faculty of securing orders for his father’s business.

On this occasion Mr. Senner turned to his son and said:

“Harry, who buys for Carron & Musswell?”

The son looked at Mr. Pinwell and fidgeted with his nails. Then he grinned weakly and said:

“Oh, you want to get hold of Clappe.”

Mr. Pinwell came forward and said:

“Oh, indeed! I’m really very much obliged to you. It’s very kind! Mr. Clappe, you say? Dear me! yes. Thank you very much. I’ll go and ask for Mr. Clappe.” And he shook the young man’s hand.

The young man continued grinning in rather a superior manner, and at that moment Mr. Senner’s attention was attracted by a customer who entered the shop. Mr. Pinwell picked up his bags and went out. He had not gone more than a dozen yards when he became aware of Senner junior at his side. The young man still grinned, and he said:

“I say, you know, it’s no good your going to Carron & Musswell’s and asking for Clappe. You’ll never get hold of him in that way.”

“Really!” exclaimed Mr. Pinwell. “Now tell me, what would you suggest?”

The young man sniffed and looked up and down the street, and a curiously leery expression came over his face. Then he said:

“I expect I could fix it for you all right, Pinwell. You’d better come with me into the bar of the ‘Three Amazons’ after lunch. I’ll introduce you. Of course, you know, Mr. Pinwell,--er--you know, business is business. We always like to oblige our friends, and so on--”

He looked at Mr. Pinwell furtively and bit his nails. For the moment Mr. Pinwell could not catch the drift of these smiles and suggestions, but he had been in the upholstery line for twenty-seven years, and it suddenly dawned upon him that of course the young man was suggesting that if he introduced him, and business came out of it, he would expect a commission or a bonus. He was quite reasonable. He had a sort of ingrained repugnance to these things himself, but he knew that it was done in business. It was quite a usual thing. Some of the best firms--He took the young man’s hand and said:

“Er--of course--Mr. Senner, I shall be very pleased to accommodate you. It’s--er--only natural, only natural of course. Business is business. Where shall I meet you?”

The appointment was made for the corner of Mulberry Road at half-past two; and at that hour Mr. Pinwell arrived with two heavily laden bags. He walked by the side of the young man down the street, and then crossed over into the High Road. Right opposite them was a large gaudy public house called “The Three Amazons,” and they crossed over to it. A feeling of diffidence and shyness came over Mr. Pinwell. He had only entered a public house on about three occasions in his life, and then under some very stringent business demands, or else to get a bottle of brandy when his wife was very ill. Nevertheless he followed the young man through a passage and entered the saloon bar, in the corner of which he deposited his bags. The bar was fairly crowded with business men, but there was one figure that by its personality immediately arrested Mr. Pinwell’s attention. He was a very big man in a new shiny top-hat with a curl to it. He was leaning heavily against the center of the bar, and was surrounded by three or four other men who seemed to be hanging on his words. He had a large red face and small, dark, expressionless eyes. The skin seemed to be tight and moist, and to bind up his features in inelastic bags, except round the eyes, where it puckered up into dark yellowish layers of flesh. His hands were fat and stiff and blue like the hands of a gouty subject. His gray hair curled slightly under the brim of his hat, and his clothes were ponderously impressive from the silk reveres of his tail coat to the dark-brown spats that covered his square-toed boots. As they entered, this impressive individual looked in their direction and gave young Mr. Senner a faint nod, and then continued his conversation.

“That’s Clappe,” whispered Mr. Pinwell’s cicerone, and dusted the knees of his trousers. He then added:

“We’d better wait a bit.”

They stood there in the corner of the bar, and the young man produced a silver cigarette-case and offered its contents to Mr. Pinwell, an overt act of kindness which that gentleman appreciated but did not take advantage of. They waited there twenty minutes before an opportunity presented itself of making any approach to the great man. But in the meantime Mr. Pinwell watched the conversation with considerable interest. The four men stood very close together, smoking, and speaking in thick whispers. He was alarmed at moments by the way in which one would hold a glass of whisky-and-water at a perilous angle over the waistcoat of another, while fumbling with a cigarette in the unoccupied hand. He could not hear the conversation, but occasional sentences reached him: “It’s the cheapest line there is.” “Here! I tell you where you can get--” “D’you know what they paid last year?” “I ’ad ’im by the short ’airs that time.” “’E says to me--”

It occurred to Mr. Pinwell that there was something distressing about this scene, something repelling and distasteful, but he consoled himself with the reflection that after all business had to be conducted somehow. Money had to be made to pay for the streets and the lamp-posts, and the public baths and the battleships. “Business is not always pleasant,” he reflected, “but it has to be done.”

At the end of twenty minutes two of the men went away and left Mr. Clappe talking apathetically to the remaining man.

“Now’s our chance,” said Senner junior, and he walked across the bar. He seized on a lull in the conversation to step forward and touch Mr. Clappe on the arm.

“Er--excuse me, Mr. Clappe,” he said. “This is my friend Mr. Pinwell, of Dollbones.”

The big man glanced from Senner junior to Mr. Pinwell and gave that gentleman an almost imperceptible nod. He then sighed, breathed heavily, and took a long drink from the glass in front of him.

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Clappe,” said Pinwell nervously. “I’ve heard about you. I’m with Dollbones, you know, _the_ Dollbones. We have--er--several very good lines just now.”

The great Clappe fixed him with his lugubrious eyes and suddenly said in a thick voice:

“What’ll you drink?”

It is curious that Mr. Pinwell with all his experience should have been taken back by this hospitable request. He stammered and said:

“Oh! thank you very much, sir. I don’t think I’ll--at least, I’ll have--er--a lime-juice and soda.”

And then Mr. Clappe behaved in a very extraordinary way. An expression of utter dejection came over his face. He puffed his cheeks out and suddenly muttered, “Oh, my God!”

And then he rolled round and _deliberately turned his back on Mr. Pinwell and his friend_! It was a very trying moment. Mr. Pinwell was at his wit’s end how to act, and Senner junior did not help him in any way. On the contrary he seemed to be taking Mr. Clappe’s side. He gave a sort of snigger of disgust, and called across the bar in a jaunty voice:

“Johnny Walker and soda, please, Miss Parritt.”

Mr. Pinwell gaped ineffectually at the back of the great man, and hesitated whether to make any further advance. But he was relieved of the necessity of coming to a decision by the act of Mr. Clappe himself, who slowly drained the remnants of refreshment in his glass, and then walked heavily out of the bar, without looking round.

In the meantime young Senner had acquired his drink, and was feverishly tapping the end of a cigarette on the rail. He took a long drink and spluttered slightly, and then, turning on Mr. Pinwell, he said:

“What particular brand of blankety fool are you?”

“I beg your pardon?” exclaimed Mr. Pinwell, amazed.

“I tell you,” said the young man, “you’re a particular type of blankety fool. You’ve missed the chance of yer life! Don’t you know when a man like Clappe asks yer to have a drink yer a blankety fool not to? D’you know that man places thousands and thousands of pounds a year for Carron & Musswell? Thousands, I tell yer! It don’t matter to ’im where he places the orders. He puts it all out among ’is pals. You ’ad a chance of being a pal, and you’ve muffed it!”

“But--but--but--” spluttered Mr. Pinwell. “I really--I--had no idea. I said I would have a drink. It was only that I ordered a--er--non-alcoholic drink. I really can’t--”

“Psaugh!”

Young Mr. Senner swirled the whisky round in his glass and drank it at a gulp. Then he muttered:

“Gawd! Asking Clappe for a lime-juice and soda!”

Mr. Pinwell thought about this meditatively. He wondered whether he had been in the wrong. After all, people all had their notions of the way to conduct business. Business was a very big thing. It had “evolved”--that was the word!--evolved out of all sorts of complicated social conditions, supply and demand, and so on. A man perhaps who had been in the habit of taking alcoholic refreshment and expecting others to--it might perhaps be difficult for him to understand.

“Don’t you never drink?” suddenly exclaimed Mr. Senner.

“I--er--occasionally have a glass of stout,” murmured Mr. Pinwell. “Last Christmas my wife’s sister brought us a bottle of canary sac. I have no particular taste for--er--things of this sort--”

“Anyway,” said Mr. Senner, “you’re not under any bally pledge?”

“Oh, dear me, no!” exclaimed Mr. Pinwell.

“Well, then,” answered his youthful adviser. “I should advise you next time Clappe or any one like him asks you to have a drink, lap it up like a poodle and stand him a quick one in return.”

Mr. Pinwell surveyed his friend over the rim of his glasses, and thought for some minutes. Then he said:

“I’m afraid Mr. Clappe is not likely to ask me to have a drink again.”

But the young man of precocious experience answered:

“If you come in here to-morrer, I’ll bet yer he’ll have forgotten who you are.”