Flowers for Mr. Fischer

I

MR. FISCHER loved to dictate. He frequently paused for little manœuvres of the mouth, as though smacking his lips over each delicious word.

‘Date this yesterday, Miss Martin. Now! Called and offered the subject the facilities of our bank.’

Mr. Fischer would not have admitted how much he enjoyed this transfer of thought to his secretary’s notebook. He would have insisted it was to increase her speed that he talked just a trifle faster than lumpy, spectacled Miss Martin could write. He would have denied it was soothing to distill ‘Hezout!‘ into ‘Very cordial reception by Mr. Brown’s secretary.’

And he would never have acknowledged that this hour of authority was an ivory tower high above these humiliating truths: Mr. Fischer was fortyfive, titleless, and earning an income well within the limits of the shorter tax form.

For the last two of these facts Mr. Fischer would have claimed no more responsibility than for the first. During the past few years the pattern of his thoughts had become grooved in his mind, a network of grievances. He was not fairly paid. He was not recognized as a man of ability. His college degree, intelligence, and superior background were ignored. Circumstances, the depression, the officers, of course,— not he, — were at fault. And at least Mr. Fischer could assure himself he had never stooped to play politics.

A page laid a half sheet of onionskin on his desk. Mr. Fischer said to Miss Martin, ‘That will be all for the present,’ and pulled the small slippery piece of paper toward him. It was a memorandum from Mr. Frey, Vice President.

To Mr. Fischer, New Business Department:

To-day ran into Captain Steele, President-Treasurer, American Cotton Company, commission agents, who states their business is very inactive and they have at present large sums in their various banks. The writer, having been friendly years ago with Captain Steele’s father and having been soliciting this account for some time, asked why he did not favor us with some of their surplus funds and he said he had often considered favoring us and this seemed an opportune time and told the writer he would call at an early date and favor us with an account.

Will keep you advised.

Mr. Fischer rang for the page and requested the file of the American Cotton Company. He had not known Mr. Frey was soliciting the account. He himself had been calling on Captain Steele for two years.

‘Thank you.’ He accepted the folder and leafed through it without finding any record of Mr. Frey’s calls. His own memoranda were in the newbusiness section, at least a dozen, at regular three-month intervals. Perhaps — he bit his underlip — perhaps he should go right up there this morning. He had worked hard on this account. There must be no question of losing out on the credit. First he had better speak to Mr. Frey.

Mr. Frey, stout, elderly, his head set stemless on his shoulders, was manicuring under cover of an open drawer.

‘Well?’ he inquired, laying aside his penknife.

Mr. Fischer squirmed into a comfortable position and said, ‘I see you called on Captain Steele.’

‘I ran into him over at the Rathskeller. He’s going to give us a nice account.’

‘Did you know,’ Mr. Fischer hesitated, ‘I had been calling on him for the last two years?’

‘You did n’t do no harm, did you?’

‘Certainly not!’ said Mr. Fischer, quickly.

‘Well then,’ said Mr. Frey curiously, ‘what’s troubling you?’

Mr. Fischer plucked at his vest buttons. ‘I thought it might be a good idea,’ he said finally, ‘for me to stop in and see the Captain.’

‘What good’ll that do?’

‘Just to remind him.’

‘He’s promised us.’

‘What I mean is, he may think just because he’s made a promise that’s all there is to it. In other words — ‘ Mr. Fischer paused, fishing in his mind.

Mr. Frey smiled without opening his mouth and, rocking gently, said, ‘I’ll take Captain Steele’s word any day.’ He nodded his head and repeated, ‘Yes, sir, I’d take his word any day.’

‘But if I went up to see him,’Mr. Fischer leaned forward, ‘and took the papers, the cards and resolution, he might do something for us right away.’ He winked confidentially. ‘Does no harm to check up on these fellows, you know.’

Mr. Frey said tartly, ‘You’ll not check up on him! He’s too busy a man to see every traveling salesman that happens up the pike. Now you stay away from him.’ He added, ‘How many times’ve you actually got to see Captain Steele in these two years you say you been calling on him?’

‘He’s usually out,’ said Mr. Fischer with dignity, ‘ but his secretary always sees me. She’s a very bright girl and —’

‘’Course she is! That’s the reason you never get to see the Captain. She’s smart, that girl.’

‘But—’

‘Fiddlesticks.’ He turned to his secretary. ‘Call the chiropodist, Miss Camoys.’ He wrinkled his nose and sniffed. ‘Stop fussing. Say I’ll be there at one. Ever have any trouble with your feet, Fischer? This fellow’s a wizard. I tell you, m’ boy, when you leave him your feet are working like wheels.’

‘Thanks,’ said Mr. Fischer, rising stiffly, ‘mine are perfectly satisfactory.’

He returned to his desk. ‘ Who turned off this fan?’

‘ I’m not going to sit under any electric fan and catch pneumonia,’ his secretary protested. ‘It’s enough to—’

‘I’m going out now,’Mr. Fischer said, not listening. ‘Be back at the usual time.’

II

In the locker room, Mr. Fischer removed his coat, brushed little snowflakes of dandruff from the collar, and, wetting his pocket comb, parted and smoothed his hair, which surrounded his small baldness as woods about a lake. He went through these slight ceremonies rather pettishly. Did Mr. Frey consider himself the new-business man? Did he actually believe he could prevent Mr. Fischer from calling where he chose? Being alone, he carefully examined his round pale face and scratched cautiously at a tiny bulge over his drooping mouth — zinc ointment. He slipped on his coat and, taking his hat, walked out into the lobby.

He paused as he passed his desk, where Miss Martin and two other girls were discreetly comparing hose. ‘Only seventy-nine cents,’ he heard in an ecstatic whisper. ‘Oh, and so sheer! Where ?’ Wholesale, near Philadelphia.’ They scattered like chickens as he approached. Mr. Fischer glanced quickly at Mr. Frey, who was telephoning, holding the French mouthpiece gingerly from him, then hurriedly opened his centre drawer and withdrew two folded resolutions and signature cards. He placed these in his inner pocket and left the bank, pulling on his gray gloves.

He walked to the comer opposite City Hall and turned up Broadway, with its pompous dowdy buildings and lurching trolleys. A pleasant day — they were few enough. In the summer the tar melted at the crossings and clung to his shoes. In the winter the wind galloped up from the Hudson and sent him scurrying for his hat. But this was spring. A pushcart piled with cinder-specked jonquils — ‘Daffs 5ȼ read the sign — stood at the curb. Was it true they came from the undertakers? He supposed not.

Pipey, the tobacconist’s advertising pony, with the huge meerschaum strapped to his back, loitered near the sidewalk, his keeper close by to ward off sugar donors. He worried constantly over Pipey’s catching diabetes. Mr. Fischer considered it great sport to slip sweets to the little pony when the keeper was n’t looking, and he reminded himself to have a lump of sugar for Pipey on his return.

As a rule, Mr. Fischer had his morning’s calls carefully mapped out. But to-day, he apologized to himself, he had been too ruffled to form plans. He could turn back to Barclay Street, and see some of the church bookstores. But what was the use until offerings picked up? That young attorney who had rented a safe-deposit box yesterday might be a prospect, though he doubted it. Lawyers were busy now, but it was all work and no pay.

Or, he could call on Captain Steele. Mr. Fischer presented himself with this suggestion quite casually, as if it had popped into his mind by the merest accident. He was in the neighborhood, with time on his hands. Why should n’t he call?

At Pearl Street he turned toward the river.

The American Cotton Company occupied a sprawling five-story brownstone, generously carved with Victorian whimsy. Mr. Fischer stepped out into the street, around a loading truck, mounted the hollowed stoop, and entered through the double doors. A small wooden cage bounced him to the offices on the third floor.

The private offices of the officials, formed by partitioning off the space about the windows, were at the front of the floor-length room. Mr. Fischer picked his way through scratched pine desks, billing machines with long trains of white paper, chattering girls with celluloid cuffs, and paused at a door, half ajar, marked ‘President.’

A young woman with long eyebrows that met across her forehead, who wore a hand-knitted suit, sat at the desk, before her a checkbook and a neat stack of bills. She looked up, quickly tapped her cheek, and, after a second’s hesitation, said, ‘Oh, Mr. Fischer! Good morning. I suppose Mr. Frey asked you to come up.’

Mr. Fischer, who had removed his hat, bowed slightly and said, ‘Good morning, Miss Anderson.’

She rose, deftly scooping the bills beneath the book, and said, ‘Come in, won’t you? Sit down. I suppose Mr. Frey has told you Captain is going to give you an account.’

‘Yes, he mentioned it,’ said Mr. Fischer, smiling.

‘Captain is very glad to do it,’ said Miss Anderson. ‘His father and Mr. Frey were friends for years.’ She laughed. ‘I think they used to do Niblo’s Gardens together in the old days.’

‘ From what I ’ve heard of Niblo and his Gardens, that was a real basis for friendship.’

They both laughed.

‘But what’s necessary, Mr. Fischer?’ she asked. ‘I suppose there are papers to be signed. Must Captain go down to the bank?’

Mr. Fischer considered. ‘No, that won’t be necessary. I ’ll leave the blank papers and you can mail them in with the check.’

‘Perhaps we could fill them out while you wait. Then you could look them over and make sure they’re all right. ’

‘I’d be glad to,’ said Mr. Fischer, ‘but I’ll have to have a resolution authorizing the signatures.’

‘This will be a good time, then; I think everybody’s in.’

She took the papers, glanced over them rapidly, then, nodding, opened the door to the next office. ‘I ’ll be out in a minute. ’

Mr. Fischer sat down, sliding the chair out of the sun. He brushed the dust from his hat, laid it on the telephone stand, and picked the morning paper from the basket. He wondered if Miss Anderson would give him the check. Very nice if she did. But why could n’t Captain Steele come out and speak to him? It would n’t cost him anything. He crumpled his lips peevishly, shook out the newspaper and glanced through it, reading as the headlines caught his fancy.

‘I think you’ll find these in order,’ said Miss Anderson, coming out of the inner office. She handed him the signed papers and a check.

Mr. Fischer examined them carefully, and made the entry in the passbook — $25,000.

‘ We ’re going to use this as a surplusfunds account,’ she explained. ‘There ’ll be no checks against it, and only a few deposits.’

‘ I ’ll send you a checkbook anyway,’ Mr. Fischer promised. ‘Will you tell Captain Steele how much we appreciate this, and if he wants to borrow any money, tell him to be sure and let me know.’

‘If he did, he would n’t be opening this account,’ she said, smiling, ‘but I’ll give him your message.’

III

Mr. Fischer, after several polite goodbyes, again made his way through the clutter of clerks and machines and left the building, much pleased. Mr. Frey, of course, would probably strike an unreasonable attitude, but nevertheless it was a very nice piece of business. He congratulated himself. He must have a milkshake on his success. In the drugstore he ordered and sipped his drink quickly, filching a lump of sugar for Pipey, whom he spied outside. He paid his check and left, walking out to the curb.

‘Beautiful morning,’ he remarked to the watchful keeper, who jerked his head gloomily.

‘And how is Pipey to-day?’ Mr. Fischer asked, patting the little pony’s back.

‘Not very good. He gets so much sugar I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

‘Oh, that won’t hurt him.’

Mr. Fischer edged his hand innocently toward Pipey’s head, patting as he went along.

‘I have a friend who’s a milkman,’ the keeper went on. ‘What a time he has! He’s right on a school street.’

He rested his elbows on the pipe bowl and stared morosely across Broadway. Mr. Fischer slid his hand quickly over Pipey’s head and slipped the lump into his mouth.

‘But at least he can tell ’em to stop,’ the keeper continued with a vicious look at Mr. Fischer’s back. ‘Now with me, the boss won’t let me say a word. Everybody’s a pipe prospect, he says!’

‘Oh, I would n’t let it bother me,’ said Mr. Fischer good-humoredly. He nodded good-bye and turned off Broadway to the bank.

At his desk once more, Mr. Fischer pounced upon the slight accumulation of the morning, the blurred carbon announcement of an A. I. B. banquet and a circular on German reichsmarks. The one he placed beneath a paperweight for reply when Miss Martin returned from her lunch, the other he checked without reading and tossed into the file basket. Then from his drawer he took a pad of forms headed ‘New Account Sheet’ and in his careful cramped writing, laborious as drawing, he wrote at the top, ‘ American Cotton Company,’ following it with the address, the amount of the check, and the clearinghouse number of the bank on which it was drawn. At the space marked ‘Introduced by,’ Mr. Fischer paused and, sucking in his lower lip, bit it with a silky s-s sound.

‘Why did n’t you tell me you were going up there?’

At Mr. Frey’s mild question, Mr. Fischer concentrated even more intently upon the half-filled new-account sheet. Mr. Frey rose, and with his eyes slanted toward his feet, an old habit when in motion, stepped across the platform. Resting his hands on the arm supports, he slid easily into the chair at Mr. Fischer’s desk.

‘I say, why did n’t you tell me you were going up there?’ He gripped his nose between thumb and forefinger, shaking his head, and looked squarely at Mr. Fischer.

Mumbling that it was stuffy, Mr. Fischer reached up and turned on the electric fan, then said, ‘How’d you know I was there?’

‘Captain phoned me.’ Mr. Frey closed his lips firmly.

‘Oh.’

‘If you’d told me I’d have gone, too. Then you could have met the Captain.’ He tugged at his nose. ‘How’d you happen to go up?’ He asked the question with a sort of bewildered curiosity.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mr. Fischer, looking down at his hands. ‘I was in the neighborhood and I thought I’d drop in.’

‘Well, I wish you’d stayed away,’ said Mr. Frey. He added kindly, ‘ That’s no way to do business, m ’ boy. You can’t go running after people as if they were pushcart peddlers and would n’t be there the next day. Give ’em time!’

Mr. Fischer said obstinately, ‘I don’t know about that. A promise comes easy. They say they’ll do something and then they forget. This way we’re sure.’

‘The other way we were sure, too,’ said Mr. Frey gently.

‘That may be so,’ said Mr. Fischer, ‘but I’m working for the bank and I can’t afford to take chances.’

‘I know Captain would have been down here within the week. And if he had n’t been we could have phoned him.’

Mr, Fischer said doggedly, ‘When I ’ve been soliciting an account for two years, I’m not going to take any chances.’

Mr. Frey opened his mouth and exhaled huskily. ‘You waited two years. You could have waited a week.’ He pulled himself out of the chair and walked haltingly to the window. In the frank northern light his jaunty striped shirt, his pin-dot tie and buff tweeds, accented the unhealthy saffron of his skin and the shriveling of his chubby figure. ‘ Yes,’ he repeated, ‘you could have waited a week.’

He stood there, twisting his head to see the sky, mumbling that his feet hurt, it was going to rain. Mr. Fischer watched him with the patronizing sympathy of a younger man, hoping that he would forget now about the Captain, congratulating himself upon winning their little skirmish. A nice piece of business. He was really quite happy about it.

Mr. Frey turned and, with his meandering gait, circled Mr. Fischer’s desk. He stood facing him, switching on and off the bulb which lighted the little bronze sign, ‘New Accounts.’

‘ Remind me sometime,’ he said with unusual garrulousness, ‘to tell you a favorite story of mine, the story of two hunters, in Africa. I think you might find it interesting.’

‘ Oh, yes, I would — now, in fact,’ said Mr. Fischer, who hoarded wit in a pocket notebook.

‘ It’s a very simple story,’ Mr. Frey went on in his high, cawing tones. ‘One day one of the hunters tracked down a lion. His only weapon was a stick, with which he tapped the lion. The lion fell dead.’

Believing it time to laugh, Mr. Frey opened his mouth and made thin forced sounds of amusement.

‘That’s all there is to the story, really,’ Mr. Frey said apologetically, ‘except that standing behind the hunter was his friend, with a gun.’

Although puzzled, Mr. Fischer again laughed appreciatively, and Mr. Frey, giving the little sign a final emphatic twitch, turned and walked slowly from the platform toward the locker room, his gnarled old feet in their bright tan shoes carrying him closer and closer to the homely peace of the chiropodist’s.

Mr. Fischer shifted the new-account sheet and opposite the words ‘ Introduced by’ wrote his own initials. He rang for the page, asking her to deliver the deposit ticket and check to the rack, and he made a pencil memo on his calendar: ‘Checks — A. C. Co.’ The cards and resolution he placed in his lowest drawer, and to the slight pile of pending dictation beneath the paperweight he added the new-account sheet.

As he performed these details, Mr. Fischer’s mind, only briefly diverted by the excitement of his new account, slipped into its accustomed pattern. Around and around spun his thoughts, the thoughts of this morning, yesterday, and last year. He deserved a title. He was underpaid. He was overworked. He was unrecognized. He was a victim of the depression. He had fooled the pony’s keeper.

Around and around, like a toy train under a Christmas tree, whirred Mr. Fischer’s little thoughts.