The Driver (5 page)

Half an hour later, as he was going out, he said: “All right, Coxey. You’ll be here for some time.”

The last thing the president did that day was to have me in his office for a long, earnest conversation. He required a private secretary. Several candidates had failed. What he needed was not a stenographer or a filing clerk. That kind of service could be had from the back office. He needed someone who could assist in a larger way, especially someone who could write, as I could. He had looked me up. The recommendations were satisfactory. He knew the college from which I came and it was sound. In short, would I take the job at $200 a month.

“I must tell you,” he said, “there is no future in the railroad business, no career for a young man. A third of the railway mileage of the country is bankrupt. God only knows if even this railroad can stand up. But you will get some valuable experience, and if at any time you wish to go back to newspaper work I’ll undertake to get you a place in New York no worse than the one you leave.”

I protested that I knew almost nothing of economics and finance.

“All the better,” he said. “You have nothing unsound to get rid of. I’ll teach you by the short cuts. Two books, if you will read them hard, will give you the whole groundwork.”

I accepted.

ii

The next morning Mr. Valentine presented me to the company secretary, Jay C. Harbinger, and desired him to introduce me around the shop.

“This way,” said Harbinger, taking me in hand with an air of deep, impersonal courtesy. He stepped ahead at each door, opened it, held it, and bowed me through. His attitude of deference was subtly yet unmistakably exaggerated. He was a lean, tall, efficient man, full of sudden gestures, who hated his work and did it well, and sublimated the petty irritations of his position in the free expression of violent private judgments.

We stopped first in his office. It was a small room containing two very old desks with swivel chairs, an extra wooden chair at the end of each desk for visitors, a letter squeeze and hundreds of box letter files in tiers to the ceiling, with a step ladder for reaching the top rows. There was that smell of damp dust which lingers in a place after the floor has been sprinkled and swept.

“That’s the vice-president’s desk,” said Harbinger, indicating the other as he sat down at his own, his hands beneath him, and began to rock. “He’s never here,” he added, swinging once all around and facing me again. He evidently couldn’t be still. The linoleum was worn through under his restless feet. “What brings you into this business?” he asked.

“Accident,” I said.

“It gets you in but never out,” he said. “It got me in thirty years ago.... Are you interested in mechanical things?”

“Like what?” I asked.

Jerking open a drawer he brought forth a small object which I recognized as a dating device. He showed me how easily it could be set to stamp any date up to the year 2000. This was the tenth model. He had been working on it for years. It would be perfect now but for the stupidity of the modelmaker who had omitted an important detail. The next problem was how to get it on the market. He was waiting for estimates on the manufacture of the first 500. Perhaps it would be adopted in the offices of the Great Midwestern. That would help. The president had promised to consider it. As he talked he filled a sheet of paper with dates. Then he handed it to me. I concealed the fact that it did not impress me wonderfully as an invention; also the sympathetic twinge I felt. For one could see that he was counting on this absurd thing to
get him out.
It symbolized some secret weakness in his character. At the same moment I began to feel depressed with my job.

“Well,” he said, putting it back and slamming the drawer, “there’s nothing more to see here. This way, please.”

His official manner was resumed like a garment.

In the next room were two motionless men with their backs to each other, keeping a perfunctory, lowspirited tryst with an enormous iron safe.

“Our treasurer, John Harrier,” said Harbinger, introducing me to the first one,—a slight, shy man, almost bald, with a thick, close-growing mustache darker than his hair. He removed his glasses, wiped them, and sat looking at us without a word. There was no business before him, no sign of occupation whatever, and there seemed nothing to say.

“A very hearty lunch,” I remarked, hysterically, calling attention to a neat pile of pasteboard boxes on top of the desk. Each box was stamped in big red letters: “Fresh eggs. 1 doz.” He went on wiping his glasses in gloomy silence.

“Mr. Harrier lives in New Jersey and keeps a few chickens,” said Harbinger. “He lets us have eggs. If you keep house... are you married, though?”

“No,” I said.

The treasurer put on his glasses and was turning his shoulder to us when I extended my hand. He shook it with unexpected friendliness.

The other man was Fred Minus, the auditor, a very obese and sociable person of the sensitive type, alert and naïve in his reactions.

“Nice fellows, those, when you know them a bit,” said Harbinger as we closed the door behind us and stood for a moment surveying a very large room which might be called the innermost premises of a railroad’s executive organization. There were perhaps twenty clerks standing or sitting on stools at high desks, not counting the cashier and two assistants in a wire cage, which contained also a safe. The bare floor was worn in pathways. Everything had an air of hallowed age and honorable use, even the people, all save one, a magnificent person who rose and came to meet us. He was introduced as Ivy Handbow, the chief clerk. He was under thirtyfive, full of rosy health, with an unmarried look, whose only vice, at a guess, was clothes. He wore them with natural art, believing in them, and although he was conscious of their effect one could not help liking him because he insisted upon it so pleasantly.

At the furthermost corner of the room was the transfer department. That is the place where the company’s share certificates, after having changed hands on the Stock Exchange, come to be transferred from the names of the old to the names of the new owners. Five clerks were working here at high pressure. To my remark that it seemed the busiest spot,—I had almost said the only busy spot,—in the whole organization, Harbinger replied: “Our stock has recently been very active. With a large list of stockholders—we have more than ten thousand—there is a constant come and go, old stockholders selling out and new ones taking their places. Then all of a sudden, for why nobody knows, the sellers become numerous and in their anxiety to find buyers they unfortunately attract speculators who run in between seller and buyer, create a great uproar, and take advantage of both. That is what has been happening in the last few days. This is the result. Our transfer office is swamped.”

He began to show me the routine. We took at random a certificate for one thousand shares that had just come in and followed it through several hands to the clerk whose task was to cancel it and make out another certificate in the new owner’s name. At this point Harbinger saw something that caused him to stop, forget what he was saying and utter a grunt of surprise. I could not help seeing that what had caught his attention was the name that unwound itself from the transfer clerk’s pen. Harbinger regarded it thoughtfully until it disappeared from view, overlaid by others; and when he became again aware of me it was to say: “Well, we’ve been to the end of the shop. There’s nothing more to see.”

The name that had arrested his attention was Henry M. Galt.

iii

At lunch time Harbinger asked me to go out with him. On our way we overtook the treasurer and auditor, who joined us without words. We were a strange party of four,—tall discontent, bald gloom, lonely obesity and middling innocence. Two and two we walked down Broadway to the top of Wall Street, turned into it and almost immediately turned out of it again into New Street, a narrow little thoroughfare which serves the Stock Exchange as a back alley. The air was distressed with that frightful, destructive b-oo-o-o-o-ing which attends falling prices. It seemed to issue not only from the windows and doors of the great red building but from all its crevices and through the pores of the bricks.

“They are whaling us in there to-day,” said Harbinger over his shoulder.

“Nine,” said John Harrier. It was the first word I had heard him utter, and it surprised me that the sound was definite and positive.

“Are you talking about Great Midwestern Railroad stock?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Harbinger, “John says it sold at nine this morning. That is the lowest price in all the company’s history. Every few days there’s a rumor on the Stock Exchange that we are busted, as so many other railroads are, and then the speculators, as I told you, create so much uproar and confusion that no legitimate buyer can find a legitimate seller, but all must do business with the speculator, who plays upon their emotions in the primitive manner by means of terrifying sounds and horrible grimaces. Hear him! He has also a strange power of simulation. He adds to the fears of the seller when the seller is already fearful, and to the anxieties of the buyer when the buyer is already impatient, making one to part with his stock for less than it’s worth and the other to pay for it more than he should.”

Eating was at Robins’. The advantage of being four was that we could occupy either a whole table against the wall opposite the bar or one of the stalls at the end. As there was neither stall nor table free we leaned against the bar and waited. We appeared to be well known. Three waiters called to Harbinger by name and signalled in pantomime over the heads of the persons in possession how soon this place or that would be surrendered. While we stood there many other customers passed us and disappeared down three steps into a larger room beyond. “Nobody ever goes down there,” said Harbinger, seeing that I noticed the drift of traffic. “It’s gloomy and the food isn’t so good.” The food all came from one kitchen, as you could see; but as for its being more cheerful here than in the lower room that was obviously true because of the brilliantly lighted bar. And cheerfulness was something our party could stand a great deal of, I was thinking. Harbinger had left himself in a temper and was now silent. The other two were lumpish. Presently we got a stall and sat there in torpid seclusion. The enormous surrounding clatter of chairs, feet, doors, chinaware and voices touched us not at all. We were as remote as if we existed in another dimension. Lunch was procured without one unnecessary vocal sound. Not only was there no conversation among us; there was no feeling or intuition of thought taking place. I was obliged to believe either that I was a dead weight upon them or that it was their habit to make an odious rite of lunch. In one case I couldn’t help it; in the other I shouldn’t have been asked. In either case a little civility might have saved the taste of the food. When there is no possibility of making matters worse than they are one becomes reckless.

“Who is Henry M. Galt?” I asked suddenly, addressing the question to the three of them collectively. I expected it to produce some effect, possibly a strange effect; yet I was surprised at their reactions to the sound of the name. It was as if I had spilled a family taboo. Unconsciously gestures of anxiety went around the table. For several minutes no one spoke, apparently because no one could think just what to say.

“He’s a speculator,” said Harbinger. “Have you met him?—but of course you have.”

“The kind of speculator who comes between buyer and seller and harries the market, as you were telling?” I asked.

“He has several characters,” said Harbinger. “He is a member of the Stock Exchange, professional speculator, floor trader, broker, broker’s broker, private counsellor, tipster, gray bird of mystery. An offensive, insulting man. He spends a good deal of time in our office.”

“Why does he do that?”

“He transacts the company’s business on the Stock Exchange, which isn’t much. I believe he does something in that way also for the president who, as you know, is a man of large affairs.”

“He seems to have a good deal of influence with the president,” I said. There was no answer. Harbinger looked uncomfortable.

“But there’s one thing to be said for him,” I continued. “He believes in the Great Midwestern Railroad. He is buying its shares.”

Harbinger alone understood what I meant. “It’s true,” he said, speaking to the other two. “Stock is being transferred to his name.” It was the secretary’s business to know this. Harrier and Minus were at first incredulous and then thoughtful. “But you cannot know for sure,” Harbinger added. “That kind of man never does the same thing with both hands at once. He may be buying the stock in his own name for purposes of record and selling it anonymously at the same time.”

While listening to Harbinger I had been watching John Harrier, and now I addressed him pointedly.

“What do you think of this Henry Galt?”

His reply was prompt and unexpected, delivered with no trace of emotion.

“He knows more about the G. M. railroad than its own president knows.”

“John! I never heard you say that before,” said Harbinger.

Harrier said it again, exactly as before. And there the subject stuck, head on.

We returned by the way we had come, passing the rear of the Stock Exchange again. At the members’ entrance people to the number of thirty or forty were standing in a hollow group with the air of meaning to be entertained by something that was about to happen. We stopped.

“What is it?” I asked.

Harbinger pushed me through the rind to the hollow center of the crowd and pointed downward at some blades of grass growing against the curbstone. The sight caused nothing to click in my brain. For an instant I thought it might be a personal hoax. It couldn’t be that, however, with so many people participating. I was beginning to feel silly when the crowd cheered respectfully and parted at one side to admit a man with a sprinkling pot. He watered those blades of grass in an absent, philosophical manner, apparently deaf to the ironic words of praise and encouragement hurled at him by the spectators, and retired with dignity. I watched him disappear through an opposite doorway. The crowd instantly vanished. The four of us stood alone in the middle of New Street.