Читать книгу The Curious Quest - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 6

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"So you're after the job, eh?" Mr. Masters asked, tilting his office chair back to a dangerous angle and eyeing his visitor keenly. "Dash my buttons! I thought you were a customer when you came in."

Mr. Ernest Bliss also leaned back in his chair, which, by-the-by, he had taken uninvited. He was still wearing the exceedingly well-cut blue serge suit in which he had started out upon his pilgrimage. The trousers were, however, mud-splashed, and his boots already showed signs of wear. His expensive malacca cane reposed across his knees. He was slowly withdrawing his reindeer gloves from his fingers.

"Sorry if I disappointed you," he observed. "I have called in answer to your advertisement. I wish to sell—er—the Alpha Cooking Stoves, I believe you call them."

Mr. Masters looked his visitor up and down and failed to recognise the type.

"Want to sell our stoves," he murmured dubiously.

"I read your advertisement in The Daily Telegraph in the public library this morning," Bliss continued. "You say that you want a man, young, able, and pushing. I possess all three of these qualities."

"Ever been on the road?" Mr. Masters enquired. The young man hesitated. The technicality of the question for a moment defeated him. He temporised. "What I may lack in experience," he ventured, "I certainly make up in the quality you call push, and in sheer undoubted ability."

The young lady who was typing in a corner of the room looked up at these words and surveyed him curiously. A broad grin spread itself over the round, good-natured features of the stove manufacturer.

"A trifle modest, eh?" he remarked.

"Not now," Bliss replied. "I started that way when I began to look for a job a fortnight ago. At present I am trying to realise my own worth. It seems to be the only way to impress it upon other people."

Mr. Masters' expression changed. A prodigious frown spread over his features. This time, not the flicker of a smile escaped him. He was a very formidable person indeed.

"Don't believe you ever sold a soap dish in your life," he growled.

"Who has," his visitor asked blandly. "What have soap dishes to do with the subject of our conversation? You, I take it, are the manufacturer of the Alpha Cooking Stove. I am the man whom Providence has selected for you to sell that particular article at, I think you said, two pounds a week salary, all out of pocket expenses and five per cent. commission on sales."

Mr. Masters brought his chair forward with a bang. "Steady, young fellow. I haven't engaged you yet," he interrupted.

"But you will," Bliss declared confidently. "I'm sure you will, and I should be awfully obliged if you would hurry up and settle it. I want to begin work." Mr. Masters stared at this somewhat unusual applicant. He was a large man, with broad features and a ruddy complexion. He had the anxious look and the wandering eyes of an inventor. It seemed to be his continual aim in life to be regarded as a man of forbidding appearance, an aspiration with which his own kind heart was continually contending.

"Well, I'm blowed!" he exclaimed vigorously. "Here, Miss Clayton."

The young lady, a plainly dressed, brown-haired girl of quiet but attractive appearance, ceased her performance upon a typewriter and turned round.

"Yes, Mr. Masters?"

"Just bring me the applications for the job, will you?" he ordered. "You'll find them all on top of the safe."

The young lady promptly disappeared. Bliss pulled up his trousers a little higher, displaying an alluring vision of Bond Street socks.

"Waste of time going through those, rather, isn't," it he suggested pleasantly. "There are always crowds of people out of a job who answer any advertisement. Now I," he added slowly and emphatically, "have never before been out of a job in my life."

Mr. Masters, although he made an effort to conceal the fact, was visibly impressed.

"You've been jolly lucky, then," he declared. "Jolly lucky, young man. I couldn't have said the same at your age. Never out of a job, eh?"

"Not once," Bliss assured him.

The young lady, who had just returned with a pile of letters in her hand, looked him up and down. There was a vague disfavour in her eyes.

"Have you ever had one?" she asked sarcastically.

Bliss was speechless. The suddenness of the attack had unnerved him. Mr. Masters, however, saved the situation.

"What do you think of that, my young sir?" he exclaimed triumphantly as he pointed to the stack of letters. "One hundred and twenty applications from commercial travellers of experience,—men who know their job and simply want the privilege of selling the Alpha Cooking Stove. Will you tell me exactly why you expect I am going to chuck all these in your favour? Eh?"

Bliss looked at his questioner steadfastly. Mr. Masters' bushy eyebrows were drawn together in what was meant to be a terrifying frown, but underneath his blue eyes were shining with furtive kindliness.

"Because this is my thirteenth application for a job, Mr. Masters, and thirteen is my lucky number. If you want another reason, here it is. I am done to the world, and if I don't get it, I shall either have to starve, or go back to—er—what I was doing before."

"And what might that be Mr. Masters demanded suspiciously.

"Nothing dishonest," Bliss declared, "but nothing very reputable. I want to raise myself, not sink back. You are a good-natured fellow, Mr. Masters; you don't want to see a man—"

The stove manufacturer struck the desk with his fist.

"Stop," he thundered.

Bliss obeyed promptly. Mr. Masters was frowning more ponderously than ever. The brown-haired typist too had ceased rattling the keys of her machine, and was looking up.

"Don't get giving yourself away, young man," Mr. Masters expostulated. "There are some things it is better to keep to yourself. Now answer me one question. Is this reference of yours from these lawyer chaps bona fide, or isn't it?"

"It is absolutely bona fide," Bliss declared fervently.

Mr. Masters moved towards the door.

"We'll go and have a look at the stove, anyway," he said. "A child could sell it, but you may as well look it over. Wait here one moment."

He passed hastily out into the warehouse to interview a loiterer who was gazing at the model of the stove. Bliss was left alone with the brown-haired typist.

"Do you think I'm going to get this job?" he asked her.

She raised her head for a moment and looked at him. He perceived then that he had underrated her attractions. She was tall and a little thin Her eyes were large and soft, her complexion clear, and her mouth showed character. Bliss recognised in her from that first moment some quality which placed her in another world from all the women with whom he had been used to associate.

"I am afraid you are," she replied.

"Afraid?" he repeated, a little staggered.

She nodded.

"'Afraid' is the word I used. Mr. Masters is far too kind-hearted. He can't say no to any one. That is why I added to the advertisement that all applications must be made in writing. You are the first one who has disregarded it."

"But tell me why you don't want me to have the job?" he begged. "I don't see why I shouldn't be able to sell stoves as well as anybody else."

She looked him over critically. There was the suspicion of a smile upon her lips which vaguely irritated him. Her eyes rested for a moment on his cane.

"Are you going to take that about with you," she asked.

He coloured a little.

"Of course not," he answered. "The fact is, I brought it out with me to take to the pawnshop, but when I started walking, I got so frightfully keen on coming here that I couldn't spare the time."

She turned back to her work.

"Well, it isn't my business," she sighed. "Sometimes I almost wish it were. Mr. Masters is a clever inventor, but he hasn't the least idea how to make money or organise things. If he had happened to hit upon a really first-class traveller who took an interest in the stove and knew how to place it on the market, it might have been our salvation, that's all."

Bliss rose slowly to his feet. He was conscious of a feeling of almost absurd disappointment. The memory of the past fortnight rose up like a nightmare before him.

"Very well, then," he decided a little doggedly, "I'll go."

He moved towards the door. She stopped him.

"Come back," she ordered. "That's very nice of you if you mean it, but it's too late. Mr. Masters is one of the most obstinate men in the world. That is why I said nothing. Now that he has made up his mind to engage you, you must be engaged."

"I'll go away if you say so," he persisted.

"No use! He would never rest until he had found you again."

"You wish me luck, anyhow," he begged.

Her lips relaxed a little.

"I wish you luck with your sales," she said. "We need orders badly."

"You shall have them," he promised.

"What's that? What's that?" Mr. Masters demanded, as he pushed his noisy way through the door.

"I have just been assuring this young lady," Bliss explained, "that if I get the job, I am going to bring you plenty of orders."

Mr. Masters patted him on the shoulder.

"Then get to work, young man," he said. "The job is yours."