Fidelia/Chapter 7
DAVE went to Chicago and spent an enlightening afternoon, as an afternoon following the forming of a first partnership is likely to be; for now he had his money up with Snelgrove; there was no getting it back; and his partner acquainted him cheerily and familiarly with certain little difficulties which had not been mentioned before.
Mr. Snelgrove was an optimistic gentleman and profound from personal experience in the automobile "game," as he always called it. He had been in the game "practically since the first whistle blew," or since nineteen three, when he gave up a bicycle agency and repair shop on the south side "to put out the crack car of the day."
He liked to relate both his triumphs and disasters impartially.
"Just snatched small change at first. If a man sold a dozen two thousand dollar 'jobs,' they put his picture in the paper those days. Then the public began riding and the big money began to run. I got my big sales-room down on Michigan Avenue, one of the first on the row, and in nineteen nine wired my factory the biggest order the Western Union ever took out of Chicago for cars in our price class. In nineteen ten I just exactly doubled that order, sent my check with the order to pay deposit on the shipment which was to come altogether in a trainload lot from Detroit. Put the picture of that order and the check and picture of the train pullin' out of Detroit, all in the papers. That was new, then; and good! Boy, we got 'em talking. Well, the trainload got under way; I'd sent for it, you understand; ordered it, paid a deposit. It was billed to me; all mine.
"And I never suspected anything."
At this point in his narrative, Mr. Snelgrove invariably paused dramatically.
"I can't say we never got warning, though," he admitted with a sense of fairness. "The morning that trainload arrived and was laying in the freight yard, the wind was from the southwest and several people commented what a queer odor there was in the air. But o' course, the stock yards are down in that direction; Chicago's used to feelin' charitable toward a southwest wind. It did seem that the yards was going extra strong that morning but nobody thought much about it. Then we went down and began unloading. Boy, it was my trainload of cars! Rotten was no word to describe that model.
"Seems the factory had got a new engineer who'd given 'em an accumulation of economical second thoughts, at the last moment of manufacturing, which they'd wished onto the model without taking the trouble to whisper anything about it to the agents. The factory thought they was fine. But, boy, when you tried 'em! Well, there they stood; take 'em or leave 'em. Like a fool, out of loyalty to the factory, I took 'em. Well, I practically had to; I had nearly half of 'em sold with the buyers phoning in every day bawling for deliveries. And so they went out."
At this point again, Mr. Snelgrove paused, feelingly.
"Each one with my personal guarantee. I used to tie a special calling card around the radiator cap reading, 'Consider my name embossed below the manufacturer's on this car. I personally stand back of it. Irving Eugene Snelgrove.' Gosh, how personal I used to be. And how free with printed matter. I remember when I was scheming up those words, I called to my cashier: 'Say, Jim, what'll those cards cost?' 'Oh, 'bout 'leven dollars,' he yelled back. Fifty thousand and eleven would be closer to it when, 'bout two months later, the factory went broke with half the cars on my hands and the rest coming back to me as fast as they could get tows to pull 'em in.
"I changed my middle name from Eugene to Experience that summer. Well, boy, that's all right; all over now; nothing but the benefit of it left. Nothing like going broke—good and absolutely broke once—to make a sound business man. We'll get dividends on that experience to my dying day."
Snelgrove looked about forty-five but probably was older. He was a wiry, energetic philosopher with jet black hair which he dyed wherever it showed a streak of gray. Apparently—Snelgrove never was definite about his youth—he had started to shift for himself at an early date and in a most mixed company; for middle-aged, down and out ex-prize fighters, retired and obese jockeys, base-ball players who were great in their day and now had been dropped even from "the bushes," called on Irving E. regularly, made a more or less overt "touch" and always got something, ungrudgingly and also unvirtuously given.
Dave liked Snelgrove for his optimism, for the way he had come up by his own energy and for his loyalty to his old friends. Also, Snelgrove's given word was inviolate. Dave had doubted this, at first.
He had met Mr. Snelgrove in a "used car" sale in which Snelgrove had a secondhand Rolls Royce and Dave had a cash buyer. Snelgrove had a chance to misrepresent a value and Dave thought he had done so and Dave was consequently impressed when he found Snelgrove was right.
Dave knew nothing about his domestic arrangements, not even for certain whether he was married. Women telephoned often. He lived in a hotel on the south side but slept, about half the nights, at a Turkish bath, having a passion for cleanliness and personal service. He indulged in daily shaves and facial massages and frequent manicures; but he was strict with himself at the table. He ate sparingly, keeping himself hard and lean and either smoked or chewed at a cigar incessantly.
He always started a talk of any importance by rolling a good cigar across his desk to Dave; he never remembered that Dave did not smoke.
"Boy, Hamilton and me had another talk to-day on the long distance," he said casually to Dave this afternoon, after rolling the cigar across. "He's decided our price is wrong. We got to give quality, all kinds of quality, the way the demand is going now. We got to raise our price two hundred dollars on the touring; the rest proportional."
"But we've announced the price," Dave objected. "We've taken some orders already. We can't hold people to a new price."
"Sure," agreed Snelgrove readily. "But we're slipping every buyer two hundred dollars more of quality. They can't expect to get that free. Just see'em and get'em to come up two hundred. You can do it. It'll pay you for the time; we get eighty dollars extra per car."
"Then," said David, "we're giving them a hundred and twenty dollars more value at most and trying to get two hundred."
"Sure," Snelgrove agreed. "That's all right. Nobody'll suppose you're going around to sell him for your health, will he?"
But David stood his ground. "This firm will fill the orders I've taken, and we've accepted, at the old price or not at all."
"It'll kill half your commission," Snelgrove warned.
"All right," said David and went out on his round of calls on new prospects. To them, he had to quote the new price, of course, and he found it hard to arouse interest in the new model. He telephoned to Alice at six o'clock, as he always did when he was in town, and he took a good deal of satisfaction in talking with her. He did not think of Fidelia Netley until he started to call Alice and remembered that she and he had had trouble in the morning.
Returning to the fraternity house at nine o'clock, he studied until nearly midnight when, after Lan had gone to bed and the rest of the house was quiet, he leaned back in his chair, no longer able to concentrate his thoughts on his reading.
At such moments, his mind usually went to Alice; he would close his eyes and see her. To-night he tried to direct his thoughts to her but they would not go.
What he kept seeing was a shaft of the sun with a girl glorious upon the edge of it; what he felt was the lilt of her step beside him. Clearly he saw the line of her profile with her pretty, provoking nose which shortened so fascinatingly when she smiled.
He got up and suddenly realized he was not so tired; it was as if, in those moments, he had rested a long time.
The clock in old University tower boomed the twelve of midnight. Unconsciously he reckoned, "In eight hours I'll see her again." Then he came to himself.
"What's the matter with me? That was the trouble between Alice and me. I know it. She did."