"I'm getting out the forms on Hilmer's shipping plant," she returned, nonchalantly.

"What do you mean?... Didn't you..."

"No ... he's decided to let us handle the business."

"Why ... on what grounds?"

She waved a bit of carbon paper in the air. "How should I know? I didn't ask him!"

Her contemptuous indifference irritated him. "You ought to have waited until I got back... You've probably got everything mixed up... It takes experience to map out a big schedule like that."

"Hilmer showed me what to do," she retorted, calmly.

"Then he's been over here?"

"Yes ... all morning."

He narrowed his eyes. She went on with her typewriting.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!" escaped him.

His wife replied with a tripping laugh.

At that moment Brauer came in. "I hear you've got the Hilmer line," he broke out, excitedly. "They say Kendrick is wild... How much did you have to split?"

"Nothing," Starratt said, coldly.

"Nothing?" Brauer's gaze swept from Starratt to Helen and back again.

"How did you land it, then?"

Helen stood up, thrusting a pencil into her hair.

"I landed it, Mr. Brauer," she said, sweetly, tossing her husband a commiserating smile.

Brauer's thin lips parted unpleasantly. "I told you at the start, Starratt, that a good stenographer would work wonders."

Fred forced a sickly laugh. He wished that Helen Starratt had stayed at home where she belonged.

It had been a long time since the insurance world on California Street had been given such a chance for gossip as the shifting of the Hilmer insurance provided. Naturally, business changes took place every day, but it was unusual to have such a rank beginner at the brokerage game put over so neat a trick. Speculation was rife. Some said that Hilmer was backing the entire Starratt venture, that he, in fact, was Starratt & Co., with Fred merely a salaried man, allowing his name to be used. Others conceded a partnership arrangement. But Kendrick announced in a loud tone up and down the street:

"Partnership nothing! I know Hilmer. He's got too many irons in the fire now. He wouldn't be annoyed with the insurance game. This fellow Starratt is rebating--that's what he is!"

Of course the street laughed. Kendrick's indignation was quite too comic, considering his own reputation. To this argument, those who held to the proprietor and partnership theories replied:

"That may all be, but he wastes an awful lot of time in Starratt's office for a fellow who's so rushed with his other ventures."

It was at this point that a few people raised their eyebrows significantly as they said:

"Well, the old boy always did have a pretty keen eye for a skirt."

It was impossible for Fred Starratt to move anywhere without hearing fragments of all this gossip. During the noon hour particularly it filtered through the midday tattle of business, pleasure, and obscenity--at the Market, at Collins & Wheeland's, at Hjul's coffee house, at Grover's Lunchroom--everywhere that clerks forgathered to appease their hunger and indulge in idle speculations. Sometimes he got these things indirectly through chance slips in talks with his friends, again sc.r.a.ps of overheard conversation reached his ears.

Quite frequently a frank or a coa.r.s.e acquaintance, without embarra.s.sment or reserve, would tell him what had been said. He soon got over protesting. If he convinced anybody that he was getting Hilmer's business without financial concessions, he had to take the nasty alternative which the smirks of his audience betrayed... It would not have been so bad if he could have explained the situation to himself, but any attempt to solve the riddle moved in a vicious circle. He used to long for a simplicity that would make him accept Hilmer's favors on their face value. Why couldn't one believe in friendship and disinterestedness? Perhaps it would have been easier if he had lacked any knowledge of Hilmer's philosophy of life. Starratt couldn't remember anything in the recital of Hilmer's past performance or his present att.i.tude that dovetailed with benevolence... He retreated, baffled from these speculative tilts, to the refuge of a comforting conviction that fortunately no man was thoroughly consistent. Perhaps therein lay the secret of Hilmer's puzzling prodigality--because, boiled down to hard facts, it was apparent that Hilmer was making Starratt & Co. a present of several hundred dollars a year. Sometimes, in a wild flight of conjecture, he used to wonder how far his argument with Hilmer regarding the ethics of being a negative party to another man's dishonesty had been borne home? It seemed almost too fantastic to fancy that he could have put over his rather finely spun business morality in such a brief flash, if at all.

At first he had plunged in too speedily to his venture to formulate many ideals of business conduct, but as he had progressed he found his standards springing to life full grown.

He had been long enough in the insurance business to realize the estimate that average clients had of an insurance broker--they looked upon him as a struggling friend or a poor relation or an agreeable, persuasive grafter, whose only work consisted in talking them into indifferent acceptance of an insurance policy and then pestering them into a reluctant payment of the premium. Of course big business firms recognized a broker's expertness or lack of it, though, quite frequently, as in Hilmer's case, they were more snared by a share in the profits than by the claims of efficiency. But Starratt wanted to succeed merely on his merit. He wanted to teach people to say of him:

"I go to Fred Starratt because he's the keenest, the most reliable man in the field. And for no other reason."

In short, he wished to earn his commission, and not to share it. He wanted to prove to people that an insurance broker was neither a barbered mendicant nor a genial incompetent. Had he known that a conviction of his ability lay at the bottom of Hilmer's sudden change in business tactics he would have been content. As it was, in spite of the impetus this sudden push gave his career he had moments when he would have felt happier without such dubious patronage. As a matter of fact, Hilmer rather ignored him. He brought in his business usually during Fred's absence from the office, and Helen, under his guidance, had everything ready before her husband had time to suggest any line of action. Forms, apportionments, applications--there did not seem to be a detail that Hilmer had overlooked or Helen had failed to execute.

Starratt tried not to appear irritated. He didn't like to admit even to himself that he could be small enough to resent his wife's curious efficiency. But he wished she weren't there. One day he said to her, as inconsequentially as he could:

"I really think, my dear, that I ought to be planning to get a woman here in your place... Now that Hilmer's business is reasonably a.s.sured, I can afford it... It's too much to ask of you--keeping up your house and doing this, too."

"Well," she shrugged, "we can board if it gets too much for me."

"You know I detest boarding."

"I can hire help, then. Mrs. Finn would come in by the day. But, as a matter of fact, this isn't any more strenuous than my year of the Red Cross work. I managed then; I guess I can manage now."

"But I thought you didn't like business life."

"I'm not crazy about it ... but I want to get you started right.

Suppose you got a girl in here who didn't know how to manage Hilmer?"

He checked the retort that rose to his lips... He couldn't help getting the nasty inferences that people on the street threw at him unconsciously or maliciously, but he _could_ help voicing them or admitting them even to himself.

"Is ... is Hilmer so hard to manage?" he found himself inquiring.

Helen looked up sharply. "No harder than most men," she answered, slipping easily from the traces of his cross-examination.

His rancor outran his reserve. "I guess I'm vain," he threw out bitterly, "but I'd like to feel that I could land one piece of business without _anybody's_ help."

She laughed indulgently. "Why, Freddie, that isn't nice! You landed Hilmer at the start... Don't you remember that very first line? On his automobile?"

There was something insincere in her tone, in the lift of her eyes, in her cryptic smile. But he smothered such unworthy promptings. It was fresh proof of his own unreasonable conceit. He turned away from his wife in silence, but he was sure that his face betrayed his feelings.

Presently he felt her standing very close to him. He turned about sharply, almost in irritation. Her mouth was raised temptingly. He bent over and kissed her, but he withdrew as swiftly. Her lips left a bitter taste that he could not define.

CHAPTER VI

March pa.s.sed in a blur of wind and cold, penetrating rains. Except for the placing of the insurance on the Hilmer shipbuilding plant, business was dull. Fred began to make moves toward getting in money.

But it was heartbreaking work. The people who had yielded up their consent so smilingly to Fred for personal accident policies, or automobile insurance, pa.s.sed him furtively on the street or sent word out to him when he called at their offices that they were busy or broke or leaving town. He did not attempt to do much toward collecting the fire-insurance premiums. Most people with fire policies knew their rights and stood by them. The premiums on March business were not due until the end of May and it was useless to make the rounds much before the middle of that month.