CHAPTER III

OLD JOHN BURNIT'S ANCIENT ENEMY POINTS OUT THE WAY TO GRANDEUR

Mr. Johnson had no hair in the very center of his head, but, when he was more than usually vexed, he ran his fingers through what was left upon both sides of the center and impatiently pushed it up toward a common point. His hair was in that identical condition when he knocked at the door of Bobby's office and poked in his head to announce Mr.

Silas Trimmer.

"Trimmer," mused Bobby. "Oh, yes; he is the John Burnit Store's chief compet.i.tor; concern backs up against ours, fronting on Market Street.

Show him in, Johnson."

Jack Starlett, who had dropped in to loaf a bit, rose to go.

"Sit down," insisted Bobby. "I'm conducting this thing all open and aboveboard. You know, I think I shall like business."

"They tell me it's the greatest game out," commented Starlett, and just then Mr. Trimmer entered.

He was a little, wiry man as to legs and arms, but fearfully rotund as to paunch, and he had a yellow leather face and black eyes which, though gleaming like beads, seemed to have a muddy cast. Bobby rose to greet him with a cordiality in no degree abashed by this appearance.

"And what can we do for you, Mr. Trimmer?" he asked after the usual inanities of greeting had been exchanged.

"Take lunch with me," invited Mr. Trimmer, endeavoring to beam, his heavy, down-drooping gray mustache remaining immovable in front of the deeply-chiseled smile that started far above the corners of his nose and curved around a display of yellow teeth. "I have just learned that you have taken over the business, and I wish as quickly as possible to form with the son the same cordial relations which for years I enjoyed with the father."

Bobby looked him contemplatively in the eye, but had no experience upon which to base a picture of his father and Mr. Trimmer enjoying perpetually cordial relations with a knife down each boot leg.

"Very sorry, Mr. Trimmer, but I am engaged for lunch."

"Dinner, then--at the Traders' Club," insisted Mr. Trimmer, who never for any one moment had remained entirely still, either his foot or his hand moving, or some portion of his body twitching almost incessantly.

Inwardly Bobby frowned, for, so far, he had found no points about his caller to arouse his personal enthusiasm; and yet it suddenly occurred to him that here was doubtless business, and that it ought to have attention. His father, under similar circ.u.mstances, would find out what the man was after. He cast a hesitating glance at his friend.

"Don't mind me, Bobby," said Starlett briskly. "You know I shall be compelled to take dinner with the folks to-night."

"At about what time, Mr. Trimmer?" Bobby asked.

"Oh, suit yourself. Any time," responded that gentleman eagerly. "Say half-past six."

"The Traders'," mused Bobby. "I think the governor put me up there four or five years ago."

"I seconded you," the other informed him; "and I had the pleasure of voting for you just the other day, on the vacancy made by your father.

You're a full-fledged member now."

"Fine!" said Bobby. "Business suit or----"

"Anything you like." With again that circular smile behind his immovable mustache, Mr. Trimmer backed out of the room, and Bobby, dropping into a chair, turned perplexed eyes upon his friend.

"What do you suppose he wants?" he inquired.

"Your eye-teeth," returned Jack bluntly. "He looks like a mucker to me."

"Oh, I don't know," returned Bobby, a trifle uneasily. "You see, Jack, he isn't exactly our sort, and maybe we can't get just the right angle in judging him. He's been nailed down to business all his life, you know, and a fellow in that line don't have a chance, as I take it, to cultivate all the little--well, say artificial graces."

"Your father wasn't like him. He was as near a thoroughbred as I ever saw, Bobby, and he was nailed down, as you put it, all _his_ life."

"Oh, you couldn't expect them all to be like the governor," responded Bobby instantly, shocked at the idea. "But this chap may be no end of a good sort in his style. No doubt at all he merely came over in a friendly way to bid me a sort of welcome into the fraternity of business men," and Bobby felt quite a little thrill of pride in that novel idea. "By George! Wait a minute," he exclaimed as still another brilliant thought struck him, and going into the other room he said to Johnson: "Please give me the letter addressed: 'To My Son Robert, Upon the Occasion of Mr. Trimmer's First Call.'"

For the first time in days a grin irradiated Johnson's face.

"Nothing here, sir," he replied.

"Let me go through that file."

"Strictly against orders, sir," said Johnson.

"Indeed," responded Bobby quizzically; "I don't like to press the bet, Johnson, but really I'd like to know who has the say here."

"You have, sir, over everything except my private affairs; and that letter file is my private property and its contents my private trusteeship."

"I can still take my castor oil like a little man, if I have to,"

Bobby resignedly observed. "I remember that when I was a kiddy the governor once undertook to teach me mathematics, and he never would let me see the answers. More than ever it looks like it was up to Bobby," and whistling cheerfully he walked back into his private office.

Johnson turned to Applerod with a snarl.

"Mr. Applerod," said he, "you know that I almost never swear. I am now about to do so. Darn it! It's a shame that Trimmer calls here again on that old scheme about which he deviled this house for years, and we forbidden to give Mr. Robert a word of advice unless he asks for it."

"Why is it a shame?" demanded Applerod. "I always have thought that Trimmer's plan was a great one."

So, all unprepared, Bobby went forth that evening, to become acquainted with the great plan.

At the restless Traders' Club, where the precise corridors and columns and walls and ceilings of white marble were indicative of great formality, men with creases in their brows wore their derbies on the backs of their heads and ceaselessly talked shop. Mr. Trimmer, more creased of brow than any of them, was drifting from group to group with his eyes turned anxiously toward the door until Bobby came in.

Mr. Trimmer was most effusively glad to see the son of his old friend once again, and lost no time in seating him at a most secluded table, where, by the time the oysters came on, he was deep in a catalogue of the virtues of John Burnit; and Bobby, with a very real and a very deep affection for his father which seldom found expression in words, grew restive. One thing held him, aside from his obligations as a guest. He was convinced now that his host's kindness was in truth a mere graceful act of welcome, due largely to his father's standing, and the idea flattered him very much. He strove to look as businesslike as possible, and thought again and again upon his father; of how he had sat day after day in this stately dining-hall, honored and venerated among these men who were striving still for the ideal that he had attained. It was a good thought, and made for pride of the right sort. With the entree Mr. Trimmer ordered his favorite vintage champagne, and, as it boiled up like molten amber in the gla.s.ses, so st.u.r.dily that the center of the surface kept constantly a full quarter of an inch above the sides, he waited anxiously for Bobby to sample it. Even Bobby, long since disillusioned of such things and grown abstemious from healthy choice, after a critical taste sipped slowly again and again.

"That's ripping good wine," he acknowledged.

"There's only a little over two hundred bottles of it left in the world," Mr. Trimmer a.s.sured him, and then he waited for that first gla.s.s to exert its warming glow. He was a good waiter, was Silas Trimmer, and keenly sensitive to personal influences. He knew that Bobby had not been in entire harmony with him at any period of the evening, but after the roast came on--a most careful roast, indeed, prepared under a certain formula upon which Mr. Trimmer had painstakingly insisted--he saw that he had really found his way for a moment to Bobby's heart through the channel provided by Nature for attacks upon masculine sympathy, and at that moment he leaned forward with his circular smile, and observed:

"By the way, Mr. Burnit, I suppose your father often discussed with you the great plan we evolved for the Burnit-Trimmer Arcade?"

Bobby almost blushed at the confession he must make.

"I'm sorry to say that he didn't," he owned. "I never took the interest in such things that I ought, and so I missed a lot of confidences I'd like to have had now."

"Too bad," sympathized Mr. Trimmer, now quite sure of his ground, since he had found that Bobby was not posted. "It was a splendid plan we had. You know, your building and mine are precisely the same width and precisely in a line with each other, back to back, with only the alley separating us, the Trimmer establishment fronting on Market Street and the Burnit building on Grand. The alley is fully five feet below our two floor lines, and we could, I am quite sure, get permission to bridge it at a clearance of not to exceed twelve feet.

By raising the rear departments of your store and of mine a foot or so, and then building a flight of broad, easy steps up and down, we could almost conceal the presence of this bridge from the inside, and make one immense establishment running straight through from Grand to Market Streets. The floors above the first, of course, would bridge over absolutely level, and the combined stores would comprise by far the largest establishment in the city. Of course, the advantage of it from an advertising standpoint alone would be well worth while."

Bobby could instantly see the almost interminable length of store area thus presented, and it appealed to his sense of big things at once.

"What did father say about this?" he asked.