And he limned on his mental canvas that great man, spellbound, enthralled, as he, Horace Nimms, dazzled him with an array of figures, beginning: "Now, let"s see, Mr. Hammer. Last year the Western works at Purity City, Iowa, made 9,576,491 cakes of Pink Petal Toilet and 6,571,233 cakes of Lily White Laundry at a manufacturing cost of 3.25571 cents a cake, unboxed; now the selling cost a cake was"--and so on. The interview always ended with vigorous hand-shakings on the part of Mr.
Hammer and more salary for Mr. Nimms. But actually the interview never took place.
It wasn"t that Horace didn"t have confidence in his system. He did. But he didn"t have an equal amount in Horace Nimms. So he worked on in his little cage and enjoyed a fair measure of contentment there, because to him it was a temple of figures, a shrine of subtraction, an altar of addition. Figures swarmed in his head as naturally as bees swarm about a locust tree. He could tell you off-hand how many cakes of Grade-B soap the Southern Works at Spotless, Louisiana, made in the month of May, 1914. He simply devoured statistics. When the door of the cage clanged shut in the morning he felt soothed, at home; he immersed his own small worries in a bath of digits and decimal points. He ate of the lotus leaves of mathematics. He could forget, while juggling with millions of cakes of soap and thousands of dollars, that his rent was due next week; that Polly, his wife, needed a new dress; and that on forty a week one must live largely on beef liver and hope.
He sometimes thought, while Subwaying to his office, that if he could only get the ear of Oren Hammer some day and tell him about that cost-accounting system he might get his salary raised to forty-five. But President Hammer, whose office was on the floor above the cage, was as remote from Horace as the Pleiades. To get to see him one had to run a gantlet of superior, inquisitive secretaries. Besides Mr. Hammer was reputed to be the busiest man in New York City.
"I wash the faces of forty million people every morning," was the way he put it himself.
But the chief reason why Horace Nimms did not approach Mr. Hammer was that Horace held him in genuine awe. The president was so big, so masterful, so decisive. His invariable cutaway intimidated Horace; the magnificence of his top hat dazzled the little cashier and benumbed his faculties of speech. Once in a while Horace rode down in the same elevator with him and--un.o.bserved--admired his firm profile, the concentration of his brow and the jutting jaw that some one had once said was worth fifty thousand a year in itself, merely as a symbol of determination. Horace would sooner have slapped General Pershing on the back or asked President Wilson to dinner in Flatbush than have addressed Oren Hammer. An uncommendable att.i.tude? Yes. But after all those years behind bars, perhaps subconsciously his spirit had become a little caged.
One cool September morning Horace entered the cage humming "Annie Rooney." Coming over in the Subway he had straightened out a little quirk in his cost-accounting system that would save the company one-ninety-fifth of a cent a cake. He took off his worn serge coat, was momentarily concerned at the prospect of having to make it last another season and then with a hitch on his lavender sleeve garters he slipped into his alpaca office coat and added up a few numbers on the adding machine for the sheer joy of it.
He had not been sitting on his high stool long when he became aware that a man, a stranger, was regarding him fixedly through the steel screen.
The man had calmly placed a chair just outside the cage and was examining the little cashier with the scrutinizing eye of an ornithologist studying a newly discovered species of emu.
Horace was a bit disconcerted. He knew his accounts were in order and accurate to the last penny. He had nothing to fear on that score.
Nevertheless, he didn"t like the way the man stared at him.
"If he has something to say to me," thought Horace, "why does he say it with glowers?"
He would have asked the starer what the devil he was looking at, but Horace was incapable of incivility. He began nervously to total up a column of figures and was not a little upset to find that under the cold gaze he had made his first mistake in addition since the spring of "98.
He cast a furtive glance or two through the steel netting at the stranger outside, who continued to focus a pair of prominent blue eyes on the self-conscious cashier. Horace couldn"t have explained why those particular eyes rattled him; some mysterious power--black art perhaps.
The staring man was quite bald, and his head, shaped like a pineapple cheese, had been polished until it seemed almost to glitter in the September sun. The eyes, light blue and bulgy, reminded Horace of poached eggs left out in the cold for a week. They had also a certain fishy quality; impa.s.sive, yet hungry, like a shark"s. Without being actually fat, the mysterious starer had the appearance of being plump and soft; perhaps it was the way he clasped two small, perfectly manicured hands over a perceptible rotundity at his middle, an unexpected protuberance, as if he were attempting to conceal a honeydew melon under his vest.
Horace Nimms did his best to concentrate on the little columns of figures he was so fond of drilling and parading, but his glance strayed, almost against his will, to the bald-headed man with the fishy blue eyes, who continued to fasten on Horace the glance a python aims at a rabbit before he bolts him.
At length, after half an hour, Horace could stand it no longer. He addressed the stranger politely.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked Horace with his avuncular smile.
The starer, without once taking his eyes off Horace, rose, advanced to the little window and thrust through it an oversized card.
"You may go on with your work," he said, "just as if you were not under observation. I am here under Mr. Hammer"s orders."
His voice was peculiar--a nasal purr.
The caged cashier glanced at the card. It read:
S. WALMSLEY COWAN EFFICIENCY EXPERT EXTRAORDINARY AUTHOR OF "PEP, PERSONALITY, PERSONNEL,"
"HOW TO ENTHUSE EMPLOYEES"
Horace Nimms had a disquieting sensation. He had heard rumors of a man prowling about in the company, subjecting random employees to strange tests, firing some, moving others to different jobs, but he had always felt that twenty-one years of service and the steel bars of his cage protected him. And now here was the man, and he, Horace Nimms, was under observation. He had always a.s.sociated the phrase with reports of lunacy cases in the newspapers. Mr. Cowan returned to his seat near the cage and resumed his silent watch on its inmate. Horace tried to do his work, but he couldn"t remember when he had had such a poor day. The figures would come wrong and his hand would tremble a little no matter how hard he tried to forget the vigilant Mr. Cowan who sat watching him.
At the end of a trying day Horace dismounted from his high stool, hitched up his lavender sleeve garters and inserted himself into his worn blue serge coat. He would be glad to get back to Flatbush. Polly would have some fried beef liver and a bread pudding for supper, and they would discuss for the hundredth time just what the ground-floor plan of that cottage would be--if it ever was.
But Mr. Cowan was waiting for him.
"Step this way, will you--ple-e-ese," said the expert.
Horace never remembered when he had heard a word that retained so little of its original meaning as Mr. Cowan"s "ple-e-ese." Clearly it was tossed in as a sop to the hypersensitive. His "ple-e-ese" could have been translated as "you worm."
Horace, with a worried brow, followed Mr. Cowan into one of those goldfish-bowl offices affected by large companies with many executives and a limited amount of office s.p.a.ce. It contained only a plain table and two stiff chairs.
"Sit down," said Mr. Cowan, "ple-e-ese."
It is a difficult linguistic feat to purr and snap at the same time, but Mr. Cowan achieved it.
Horace sat down and Mr. Cowan sat opposite him, with his unwinking blue eyes but two feet from Horace"s mild brown ones and with no charitable steel screen between them.
"I am going to put you to the test," said Mr. Cowan.
Horace wildly thought of thumbscrews. He sat bolt upright while Mr.
Cowan whipped from his pocket a tape measure and, bending over, measured the breadth of Horace Nimms" brow. With an ominous clucking noise the expert set down the measurement on a chart in front of him. Then he carefully measured each of Horace"s ears. The measurements appeared to shock him. He wrote them down. He applied his tape to Horace"s nose and measured that organ. He surveyed Horace"s forehead from several different angles. He measured the circ.u.mference of Horace"s head. The result caused Mr. Cowan acute distress, for he set it down on his elaborate chart and glowered at it a full minute.
Then he transferred his attention and tape to Horace"s stubby hands. He measured them, counted the fingers, contemplated the thumb gravely and wrote several hundred words on the chart. Horace thought he recognized one of the words as "mechanical."
"Now," said Mr. Cowan solemnly, "we will test your mental reactions."
He said this more to himself than to Horace Nimms, on whose brow tiny pearls of perspiration were appearing. Mr. Cowan drew forth a stop watch and spread another chart on the table before him.
"Fill this out--ple-e-ese," he said, pushing the chart toward Horace.
"You have just five minutes to do it."
Horace Nimms, dismayed, almost dazed, seized the paper and started to work at it with feverish confusion. He boggled through a maze full of pitfalls for a tired, rattled man:
If George Washington discovered America, write the capital of Nebraska in this s.p.a.ce.........But if he was called the Father of His Country, how much is 49 7?........Now name three presidents of the United States in alphabetical order, including Jefferson, but do not do so if ice is warm.........If Adam was the first man, dot all the "i"s" in "eleemosynary" and write your last name backward.........Omit the next three questions with the exception of the last two: How much is 6 9 = 54?........What is the capital of Omaha?........How many "e"s" are there in the sentence, "Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?"........Put a cross over all the consonants in the foregoing sentence. Now fill in the missing words in the following sentences: "While picking........I was stung in the........by a........." "Don"t bite the........that feeds you."
How old are you? Multiply your age by the year you were born in. Erase your answer. If a pound of steel is heavier than a pound of oyster crackers, don"t write anything in this s.p.a.ce.........Otherwise write three words that rhyme with "icicle." Now write your name, and then cross out all the consonants.
Name three common garden vegetables.........
It seemed to Horace Nimms that he had floundered along for less than a minute when Mr. Cowan said briskly, "Time," and took the paper from Horace.
"Now the a.s.sociation test," said Mr. Cowan, drawing forth still another chart, very much as a magician draws forth a rabbit from a hat.
"I"ll say a word," he went on, seeming to grow progressively more affable as Horace grew more discomfited, "and you will say the word it suggests immediately after--ple-e-ese," he added as an afterthought.
Horace Nimms moistened his dry lips. Mr. Cowan pulled out his stop watch.
"Oyster?" said Mr. Cowan.
"S-stew!" quavered Horace.
"Flat?"
"Bush!"