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In human affairs cause and effect often behave not like the inseparable twins science says they are but like two harebrains never even acquainted. Young Howard Cattlet’s acting as an usher at a classmate’s wedding settled his destiny not by means of a marvelous bridesmaid but because he was unable to borrow an usher’s uniform and had to have one made.

Thus, just out of college in the deep midst of the Depression, he had a home, parents, two sisters, one brother, a “cutaway” and some other clothes; but no income. Seeking his fortune, he began to commute between his native Hackertown, New Jersey, and the city of New York, where he strove patiently to join the diminished army of the employed. Systematic, he began an orderly geographical combing of northern Manhattan in mid-June, and was dishearteningly down as far as Seventeenth Street by the end of the month. Anything but an electric, eye-to-eye, make-it-happen young man, he was large, slow-spoken, good-looking somewhat solemnly; and a solemn sort of thoroughness was a sturdy element in his character. Nothing less could have led him to include in his list an advertisement for an Art Dealer’s Assistant.

On the morning of the first of July, he crossed over from West Seventeenth Street (where his offer to become a Night Watchman had been declined) and walked valiantly to the address of the Art Dealer on the eastern stretch of that same thoroughfare. Arrived at the shop, he found it to be upon the ground floor, and paused to learn what he could from its rather dusty exterior. There was a recessed half-glass door and a single display window; not a large one, yet imposing, even a little pompous, because of the gilt lettering it bore.

RUMBINGALLERIES

CHEFSD’ŒUVRESPEINTURESSCULPTURES

OLDMASTERSOBJETSD’ARTPERIODFURNITURE

Inside the window were two candelabra—black bronze Venuses or Muses, or somebody, upholding gilt flowers from which rose the candles—and between the candelabra, upon a mound of green velvet, was a venerable murky landscape painting from which young Howard Cattlet got only the impression that he wouldn’t like to own it. Already discouraged, he nevertheless doggedly stuck to his routine, opened the half-glass door and went in.

Within the oblong room he was aware of dark old-looking paintings upon brown walls, of old sofas in faded colors, of stools, tables and commodes in unfamiliar shapes; and beyond this daunting foreground he saw at the shadowy other end of the room two people—a fair-haired young woman at a desk and a thin, baggy-kneed man who spoke to her urgently.

She interrupted him. Her clear, light voice was but too audible to the young man near the door.

“Professor Ensill, your experience with the Amwilton Museum and on the Institute’s art faculty would be valuable of course; but there isn’t the slightest use for you to wait till Mr. Rumbin comes in. I mustn’t hold out any false hopes to you, Professor Ensill. I’m sorry.”

Professor Ensill’s shoulders drooped. “Well, I’ll keep on with that damn Orcas,” Howard Cattlet heard him say. “I’d hoped for almost any kind of change—but all right.” He turned from the desk, and, on his way out, set drearily a soiled grey felt hat upon his scholarly head. Before the door closed behind him, young Howard decided to depart also. He was in motion toward the street when the young woman at the desk rose, came forward and spoke to him.

“May I show you something?”

“No,” he said. “No, I believe not.”

“No? Perhaps you came in answer to Mr. Rumbin’s advertisement?”

“I—yes, I believe I—”

“Then why don’t you—”

“Thank you,” Howard said. “I wouldn’t do.”

To his astonishment she said thoughtfully, “I don’t know,” and for a strange moment the scrutiny he had from her intelligent grey eyes was appreciative. “I think I’ll take your name.”

He gave it, wistfully adding his address, then again moved toward the door; but she still detained him. “Wait here.”

She went to a door at the rear of the shop, opened it, called “Mr. Rumbin!” and returned to her desk. A wide silhouette appeared in the doorway; she said, “Mr. Howard Cattlet, Hackertown, New Jersey,” and applied herself to a typewriter.

Mr. Rumbin came forward, a middle-aged active fat man with a glowing eye. His features, not uncomely, were flexibly expressive, like an actor’s, and just now, oddly, seemed anxious to be ingratiating. “Hackertown?” he said to the solemn applicant. “Mr. Howard Cappits, you know Mr. and Mrs. Waldemar Hetzel that built the macknificent country residence looks like maybe a chateau outside Hackertown, anyways costs half a million dollars?”

“Hetzel? No, I—”

“Then you couldn’t intaduce ’em to me,” Mr. Rumbin said regretfully, a foreign accent of elusive origin becoming a little more noticeable in his speech. “Hanover Galleries sold ’em a Claude for hundut seventy-two t’ousand dollars. It’s nice money; it’s a crime.” He sighed; then smiled almost affectionately. “Where was you before?” he asked.

“Before? Where was I?” However, comprehending that the question sought for his previous business experience, the young man explained that he hadn’t any; but mentioned a possible qualification. In his Junior year he had attended a course of lectures on the Fundamentals of Aesthetics and had passed the examination. He hadn’t passed it prominently, he thought right to add; but still he had passed.

Mr. Rumbin, though looking at him attentively, listened with indifference; and, when the applicant produced a written approval of his morals from the Rector of St. Mark’s, Hackertown, gave it but an absent glance and returned it.

“Listen,” Mr. Rumbin said. “You got a cutaway suit?”

“A what?” Howard said. “Yes, I have. I’ve only had it on once.”

“You got a useful face, too,” Mr. Rumbin observed, frank in meditation. “You don’t show nothing on it. Like you ain’t got no feelings. Like maybe you got high educated brains, too, or not; nobody would be surprised which.” Suddenly he smiled beamingly, glanced back toward the girl at the typewriter. “Putty good. Oddawise Georchie wouldn’t kept you for me to look at. I take you.”

“What? You say—”

“On prohibition,” Mr. Rumbin added quickly. “On prohibition the first couple weeks. After that, if I commence liking you, it’s permanent. Twelve dollars a week. Make it fourteen.”

“Fourteen?” Dazed, Howard seemed to perceive that his wedding garment, supplemented slightly by his face, was perhaps launching him upon a career. “Fourteen? When would you—when do I—when—”

“When you commence, Mr. Howard Cappits? To-day, now; it’s got to be some time, ain’t it?” Mr. Rumbin became confidential. “Fourteen a week payable mont’ly not in adwance. It’s awful good; it’s splendid. You got everything to learn there is. Besides the cutaway, you got to have some overalls.”

“Overalls?”

“Howard,” Mr. Rumbin said, “part of the work from beings my assistant, it’s maybe some like a janitor. Sometimes you’ll be using the floor-mop; you get to wash the windows, too, and I’m going to teach you how to dust objets d’art—it’s puttikler. To-day, though, immediately I got to teach you something elst quick. Come to the stock room; I show you.” Then, followed dumbly, the astounding man walked to the rear of the shop, but paused for a moment near the desk. “I intaduce you to Georchie; but don’t you call her Georchie—her name’s my sec’tary Miss Georchina Horne. When I ain’t here she’s the same as me. Got me, Howard?”

Miss Georgina Horne gave Howard a nod that didn’t interrupt her typing. Howard murmured, and then said more distinctly, “Yes, sir.”

“ ‘Sir’,” Mr. Rumbin repeated, pleased again. “ ‘Sir’, that’s nice. Calling me ‘sir’ natchal I won’t got to keep hollering at you for not doing it like that Bennie-feller I had last mont’.” He spoke to Miss Horne. “He’s got the cutaway, Georchie. At the elevenst hour you picked one with. It’s like a Providence!”

He passed through the doorway that had admitted him only a few decisive minutes previously, and the owner of the cutaway went with him into a cluttered and confusing room. A few wide shelves occupied two of the walls; and, upon these shelves, framed pictures stood, not leaning against one another but separated by fixed uprights of wood. Against the third wall other pictures leaned, too large for the shelves; the middle part of the floor was crowded with old chairs and sofas, and close to the fourth wall stood cabinets, chests, console tables, commodes and an iron safe.

Mr. Rumbin put a fond, fat hand upon a panel of one of the cabinets. “Locked,” he said. “Some day if I commence liking you, I show you. Ivories, porcelains, little Renaissance bronzes maybe. Ha!” He patted the black metal door of the safe. “Treasures! Some day maybe.” The glow of his eyes became a glisten. “Maybe a couple pieces Limoges enamel. Maybe even one Byzantine enamel on gold—Saint Luke, size of a playing-card, Elevenst Century maybe. Maybe a couple little Got’ic Crozier Heads, so-called. Maybe a Fourteent’ Century Pyx. Who I sell ’em to?” Abruptly he became somber. “Where’s a real collector not dead that ain’t lost his money or elst some pig dealer ain’t already got him?” He sighed; then brightened and said briskly, “We commence! You got to learn a program. We start it with the Follower of Domenikos Theotocopoulos.”

“Sir?” The course in the Fundamentals of Aesthetics wasn’t helping Howard much; he didn’t know what Mr. Rumbin had been talking about or was talking about now. “Sir?”

“Domenikos Theotocopoulos, it’s El Greco’s right name,” Mr. Rumbin explained kindly, completing his listener’s incomprehension. “ ‘El Greco’, that only means ‘The Greek’, Domenikos Theotocopoulos beings a Greekish feller; so it’s like somebody can’t pronounce your own name and calls you ‘The Hackertowner’. El Greco beings he’s a painter with his own style, all peculiar, natchly he had Followers. Here, I show you.” He took a picture from a shelf, set it against a chair in the light, and asked, “How you like it?”

Howard hopelessly thought it was terrible. What he saw seemed the likeness of a gigantic sentimental bearded person with a minute head. Clad in a robe of twisted blue tin, he walked barefooted among either rocks or clouds of lead foil. Howard wondered if the job depended upon his liking such a picture; but he couldn’t lie flagrantly.

“I don’t, sir.”

“Right!” the surprising Rumbin said. “In odda worts, this fine splendid picture of mine, we wouldn’t say it’s a painting by El Greco himself nor by El Greco’s son and some oddas, because El Greco’s son you often can’t hardly tell from El Greco himself, only he’s more so; but this picture you maybe could. That’s why it comes first on the program. Got it?”

“Not—not yet, sir,” Howard admitted. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean by the program.”

“No? Sit down. I’ll—” Mr. Rumbin interrupted himself. “Not in that chair! It’s Régence needlepoint; it’s real. Here, we sit on this Louis Treize sofa; it ain’t.” Then, as they sat together upon the sofa, he spoke suavely. “I got just time to teach you the A P C of the alphabet. In art how you hendle a program it’s your heart and pants. Oddawise give up hoping you’ll ever get the ideel client.”

“Client, sir? You mean—”

“Client!” Mr. Rumbin said emphatically. “In art it ain’t customers, it’s clients. Listen intelligencely. What a dealer needs, it’s ideel clients. Ideel clients, the kind that won’t trust no odda dealer, there ain’t many. Some the piggest dealers ever was didn’t had but two. Me? Give me only one that’s ideel enough and I move up to Fifty-sevent’ Street! I got one coming this afternoon that might be; it’s a chance. Got it?”

“Well, I—I—”

“If she gets made into a picture collector, it’s all!” Mr. Rumbin became so confidential he spoke in little more than a whisper. “Six up to nine millions her husband the last seven years took in. Just found out she oughts to collect art. Some odda dealer’ll get her if I ain’t quick. You see, Howie?”

“I—more or less, sir. I—”

“Right!” Rumbin said. “Now we come to what’s a program. Howie, it’s uniwersal if you got a important article you want somebody to buy, only a bum would right away show him this article. If he likes skyscrapers and you want to sell him the Empire State Building, you wouldn’t say nothing about it until after you got him discouraged showing him t’ree-story buildings and a couple car-barns maybe. Then you spring the Empire State, just before you got him too tired out to be excited. That’s a program. It’s execkly what we do in the galleries this afternoon.”

“The Galleries?” Howard asked. “Where—”

“The Galleries it’s the whole place; but in puttikler it’s too a room from a door across the shop. When the client comes, I take her in the galleries; but you are waiting here. When you hear the buzzer, you pick up the Follower of Domenikos Theotocopoulos, bring it into the galleries, put it on a easel, stand looking at it just natchal till I tell you go beck and bring the next.”

“The next, sir?”

Mr. Rumbin jumped up, replaced the Follower of Domenikos Theotocopoulos upon its shelf. “Listen, I got a feeling it’s the most important day in my life! Here, one next to the odda, it’s fixed in order the program, these special fife pictures you bring in the galleries one at a time. After that you don’t do nothing at all, because it ain’t any of these fife is the one I got to sell her. That’s my great Clouet; and it I’m going to bring in myself. All you do is carry pictures. Got it?”

“Yes, sir, I—I think I—”

“Right!” Mr. Rumbin said abruptly. “Go put on the cutaway suit.”

“Sir? But it’s out at—”

“Hackertown, New Chersey,” Mr. Rumbin said. “Be beck execkly half past two o’clock in it.”

“I doubt if—” young Howard began; then he had an important second thought and said, “Yes, sir.”