Chapter 9

MASTER AND MAN

When Waller, the small, dark, discreet factotum to Fosdick, came to Armstrong's office to ask him to go to Mr. Fosdick "as soon as you conveniently can," Armstrong knew something unusual was astir.

Fosdick rarely interfered in the insurance department of the O.A.D. Like all his fellow financiers bearing the courtesy title of "captains of industry," he addressed himself entirely to so manipulating the sums gathered in by his subordinates that he could retain as much of them and their usufruct as his prudence, compromising with his greediness, permitted. In the insurance department he as a rule merely noted totals�results. If he had suggestion or criticism to make, he went to Armstrong. That fitted in with the fiction that he was no more in the O.A.D. than an influential director, that the Atlantic and Southwestern Trunk Line was his chief occupation.

Armstrong descended to the third floor�occupied by the A.S.W.T.L. which was supposed to have no connection with the purely philanthropic O.A.D., "sustainer of old age and defender of the widow and the orphan." He went directly through the suite of offices there to Fosdick's own den. Fosdick had four rooms. The outermost was for the reception of all visitors and the final disposition of such of them as the underlings there could attend to. Next came the office of the mysterious, gravely smiling Waller, with his large white teeth and pretty mustache and the folding picture frame containing photographs of wife and son and two daughters on his desk before him�what an air of the home hovering over and sanctifying the office diffused from that little panorama! Many callers supposed that Waller's office was Fosdick's, that Fosdick almost never came down there, that Waller was for all practical purposes Fosdick. The third room was for those who, having convinced the outer understrappers that they ought to be admitted as far as Waller, succeeded in convincing Waller that they must be personally inspected and heard by the great man himself. In this third room, there was no article of furniture but a carpet. Waller would usher his visitor in and leave him standing�standing, unless he chose to sit upon the floor; for there was no chair to sit upon, no desk or projection from the wall to lean against. Soon Fosdick would abruptly and hurriedly enter�the man of pressing affairs, pausing on his way from one supremely important matter to another. Fosdick calculated that this seatless private reception room saved him as much time as the two outer visitor-sifters together; for not a few of the men who had real business to bring before him were garrulous; and to be received standing, to be talked with standing, was a most effective encouragement to pointedness and brevity.

The fourth and innermost room was Fosdick's real office�luxurious, magnificent even; the rugs and the desk and chairs had cost the policy holders of the O.A.D. nearly a hundred thousand dollars; the pictures, the marble bust of Fosdick himself, the statuary, the bookcases and other furnishings had cost the shareholders of the A.S.W.T.L. almost as much more.

Armstrong found Fosdick talking with Morris, Joe Morris, who was one of his minor personal counsel, and was paid in part by a fixed annual retainer from the A.S.W.T.L., in part from the elastic and generously large legal fund of the O.A.D. As Armstrong entered, Fosdick said: "Well, Joe, that's all. You understand?"

"Perfectly," said Morris. And he bowed distantly to Armstrong, bowed obsequiously to his employer and departed.

"What's the matter between you and Joe Morris?" asked Fosdick, whose quick eyes had noted the not at all obvious constraint.

"We know each other only slightly," replied Armstrong. Then he added, "Mrs. Morris is a cousin of my former wife."

"Oh�beg pardon for intruding," said Fosdick carelessly. "Sit down, Horace," and he leaned back in his chair and gazed reflectively out into vacancy.

Armstrong seated himself and waited with the imperturbable, noncommittal expression which had become habitual with him ever since his discovery that he was Fosdick's prisoner, celled, sentenced, waiting to be led to the block at Fosdick's good pleasure.

At last Fosdick broke the silence. "You were right about that committee."

Apparently this did not interest Armstrong.

"That was a shrewd suspicion of yours," Fosdick went on. "And I ought to have heeded it. How did you happen to hit on it?"

Armstrong shrugged his shoulders.

"Just a guess, eh? I thought maybe you knew who was back of these fellows."

"Who is back of them?" asked Armstrong�a mere colorless, uninterested inquiry.

"Our friends of the Universal Life," replied Fosdick, assuming that Armstrong's question was an admission that he did not know. "They've plotted with some of the old Galloway crowd in our directory to throw me out and get control." Fosdick marched round and round the room, puffing furiously at his cigar. "They think they've bought the governor away from me," he presently resumed. "They think�and he thinks�he'll order the attorney-general to entertain the complaints of that damned committee." Here Fosdick paused and laughed�a harsh noise, a gleaming of discolored, jagged teeth through heavy fringe of mustache. "I've sent Morris up to Albany to see him. When he finds out I've got a certain canceled check with his name on the back of it, I guess�I rather guess�he'll get down on that big belly of his and come crawling back to me. I've sent Morris up there to show him the knout."

"Isn't that rather�raw?" said Armstrong, still stolid.

"Of course it's raw. But that's the way to deal with fellows like him�with most fellows, nowadays." And Fosdick resumed his march. Armstrong sat�stolid, waiting, matching the fingers of his big, ruddy hands.

"Well, what do you think?" demanded his master, pausing, a note of irritated command in his voice.

Armstrong shrugged his shoulders. A disinterested observer might have begun to suspect that he was leading Fosdick on; but Fosdick, bent upon the game, had no such suspicion.

"I want your opinion. That's why I sent for you," he cried impatiently.

"You've got your mind made up," said Armstrong. "I've nothing to say."

"Don't you think my move settles it?"

"No doubt, the governor'll squelch the investigation."

"Certainly he will! And that means the end of those fellows' attempt to make trouble for us through our own policy holders."

"Why?" said Armstrong.

"Don't you think so?" Fosdick dropped into his chair. "I'm not quite satisfied," he said. "Give me your views."

"This committee has made a lot of public charges against the management of the O.A.D. It may be that when you try to smother the investigation, the demand will simply break out worse than ever."

"Pooh!" scoffed Fosdick. "That isn't worth talking about. I was thinking only of what other moves that gang could make. The public amounts to nothing. The rank and file of our policy holders is content. What have these fellows charged? Why, that we've spent all kinds of money in all kinds of ways to build up the company. Now, what does the average investor say�not in public but to himself�when the management of his company is attacked along that line? Why, he says to himself, 'Better let well enough alone. Maybe those fellows don't give me all my share; but they do give me a good return for my money, as much as most shareholders in most companies get.' No, my dear Horace, even a rotten management needn't be afraid of its public so long as it gives the returns its public expects. Trouble comes only when the public gets less than it expected."

Armstrong did not withhold from this shrewdness the tribute of an admiring look. "Still," he persisted, "the public seems bent on an investigation."

"Mere clamor, and no backing from the press except those newspapers that it ain't worth while to stop with a chunk of advertising. All the reputable press is with us, is denouncing those blackmailers for throwing mud at men of spotless reputation." Fosdick swelled his chest. "The press, the public, know us, believe in us. Our directory reads like a roll call of the best citizens in the land. And the poor results from that last big tear-up are still fresh in everybody's mind. Nobody wants another."

A pause, then Armstrong: "Still, it might be better to have an investigation."

"What!" exclaimed Fosdick.

"You say we've nothing to conceal. Why not show the public so?"

"Of course we haven't got anything to conceal," cried Fosdick defiantly. "At least, I haven't."

"Why not have an investigation, then?"

That reiterated word "investigation" acted on the old financier like the touch of a red-hot iron. "Because I don't want it!" he shouted. "Damn it, man, ain't I above suspicion? Haven't I spent my life in serving the public? Shall I degrade myself by noticing these lying, slandering scoundrels? Shall I let 'em open up my private business to the mob that would misunderstand? Shall I let them roll me in the gutter? No�sir�ree!"

"Then, you are against a policy of aggression? You intend simply to sit back and content yourself with ignoring attacks."

Fosdick subsided, scowling.

"Suppose you allowed an investigation��"

"I don't want to hear that word again!" said Fosdick between his teeth.

Armstrong slowly rose. "Any further business?" he asked curtly.

"Sit down, Horace. Don't get touchy. Damn it, I want your advice."

"I haven't any to offer."

"What'd you do if you were in my place?"

This was as weak as it sounded. In human societies concentrations of power are always accidental, in the sense that they do not result from deliberation; thus, the men who happen to be in a position to seize and wield the power are often ill-equipped to use it intelligently. Fosdick had but one of the two qualities necessary to greatness�he could attack. But he could not defend. So long as his career was dependent for success upon aggression, he went steadily ahead. It is not so difficult as some would have us believe to seize the belongings of people who do not know their own rights and possessions, and live in the habitual careless, unthinking human fashion. But now that his accumulations were for the first time attracting the attention of robbers as rich and as unscrupulous as himself, he was in a parlous state. And, without admitting it to himself, he was prey to uneasiness verging on terror. Our modern great thieves are true to the characteristics of the thief class�they have courage only when all the odds are in their favor; let them but doubt their absolute security, and they lose their insolent courage and fall to quaking and to seeing visions of poverty and prison.

"What would you do?" Fosdick repeated.

"What do your lawyers say?"

Fosdick sneered. "What do they always say? They echo me. I have to tell them what to do�and, by God, I often have to show 'em how to do it." The fact was that Fosdick, like almost all the admired "captains of industry," was a mere helpless appetite with only the courage of an insane and wholly unscrupulous hunger; but for the lawyers, he would not have been able to gratify it. In modern industrialism the lawyer is the honeybird that leads the strong but stupid bear to the forest hive�and the honeybird gets as a reward only what the bear permits. "Give me your best judgment, Horace," pursued Fosdick.

"In your place, I'd fight," said Armstrong.

"How?"

"I'd order the governor to appoint an investigating committee, made up of reliable men. I'd appoint one of my lawyers as attorney to it�some chap who wasn't supposed to be my lawyer. I'd let it investigate me, make it give me a reasonably, plausibly clean bill of health. Then, I'd set it on the other fellows, have it tear 'em to pieces, make 'em too busy with home repairs to have time to stick their noses over my back fence."

Fosdick listened, appreciated, and hated Armstrong for having thought of that which was so obvious once it was stated and yet had never occurred to him.

"Of course," said Armstrong carelessly, "there are risks in that course. But I don't believe you can stop an investigation altogether. It's choice among evils."

"Well, we'll see," said Fosdick. "There's no occasion for hurry. This situation isn't as bad as you seem to think."

It had always been part of his basic policy to minimize the value of his lieutenants�it kept them modest; it moderated their demands for bigger pay and larger participation in profits; it enabled him to feel that he was "the whole show" and to preen himself upon his liberality in giving so much to men actually worth so little. He was finding it difficult to apply this policy to Armstrong. For, the Westerner was of the sort of man who not only makes it a point to be more necessary to those he deals with than they are to him, but also makes it a point to force them to see and to admit it. Armstrong's quiet insistence upon his own value only roused Fosdick to greater efforts to convince him, and himself, that Armstrong was a mere cog in the machine. He sent him away with a touch of superciliousness. But�no sooner was he alone than he rang up Morris.

"Come over at once," he ordered. "I've changed my mind. I've got another message for you to take up there with you."

It would have exasperated him to see Armstrong as he returned to his own offices. The Westerner had lost all in a moment that air of stolidity under which he had been for several months masking his anxiety. He moved along whistling softly; he joked with the elevator boy; he shut himself in his private office, lit a cigar and lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, his expression that of a man whose thoughts are delightful company.