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The period of this story is the Pre-Atomic Age. The world had not yet become terrorised by its tiniest particles, and the power of the atom was still an entertaining, unproved, Wellsian theory. But scientists, working secretly and hopefully, knew they were on the verge of a revolutionary discovery which would either smash the world or save it to be smashed a little later on, and a worrying fellow called Hitler was about to provide them with their excuse for hurrying on with the job. Meanwhile other less potent forces had exploded the horse-bus, the silent film, the quiet evening at home, and the inevitability of the marriage service.

More to the point of our tale, no socialistic government had yet clasped to its bosom the myth of economic security. If you did not work, or were not sufficiently clever or privileged to make others work for you, your future was a very uncertain thing. It was in this atmosphere of uncertainty that the staff of Spare Parts Limited sat one Friday morning discussing their absent employer, but we may begin by discussing the members of the staff, who were shortly due themselves for a somewhat startling transformation.

They were six in number. The feminine element was supplied by Madeleine Trent, dark, slim, attractive, and despite her good looks a very efficient secretary. Before answering the advertisement of Edward P. Bloggs, who had not engaged her on account of her efficiency, she had held positions in three small hotels and one large stores, but she had not held any of the positions for very long, partly on account of the troubles of beauty and partly on account of an unsettled disposition. Ever since her parents had died and her childhood home had been broken up, she had been trying to find out what she wanted, and at the age of twenty-three she was still searching. She never quite understood why she had accepted the secretarial job in Spare Parts Limited, still less why she had agreed to invest her small savings of £90 in the business. Had she believed Mr. Bloggs when he had assured her that, in addition to her generous salary, she could double her capital in six months? “I am giving all my chief employees an opportunity to participate in the profits,” he had said, “because, for one thing, I believe as a moral principle that profits should be shared, and for another, it is only when a staff has such an interest that it—ah—works with full enthusiasm and—ah—gives of its best.” It all sounded rather grand, and it doubled one’s status as well as one’s capital. In six months her £90 would be £180. In a year it would be £360. In three years she would be able to sign a cheque for four figures and go round the world. She had accepted the job.

As she had left the rather dingy little room where the interview had taken place, a room in which the only actual sign of anything doubling was dust, she had bumped into a young man standing on the pavement outside. “Sorry!” they both sang out, and then laughed. It was the sound of Madeleine’s laughter and the memory of her smile that had ended Jerry Haines’s hesitation and had sent him up the narrow staircase Madeleine had just descended to interview the man who had engaged her. A few moments previously, Jerry had been wondering whether he were a fool. It did not occur to him that now he was confirming his folly.

Edward P. Bloggs received him graciously, his large rather flabby cheeks expanding into welcoming curves. They never remained expanded for long at a time, going suddenly flat again like pricked balloons. They were back in their punctured, deflated state when, greetings over, Mr. Bloggs got down to business.

“You look the sort of man I want,” he said bluntly. “Young, alert, keen, intelligent. I’m a judge, Mr. Haines, I’m a judge. I can spot the brain behind the forehead just as I can smell money behind a business proposition. I claim no credit. I’m just made that way. But there may be a snag in this from your angle, so let’s dispose of it at once, or part on it at once. I’m looking for an assistant manager who will have a financial stake in the business. You know why? Wrong! I don’t need the capital. But it’s my moral principle that profits should be shared—that is, of course, by the more responsible members of the staff. It is only when such members have such an interest that they—ah—work with full enthusiasm and—ah—give of their best.”

Then Mr. Bloggs had explained how any capital invested in Spare Parts Limited would double itself in six months. By a stroke of ill luck, Jerry Haines had just been left £250 by his one and only aunt. He was not going to risk this, however, until he knew a little more about the situation.

“By the way, I bumped into a young lady who was just leaving as I came in,” he said, casually, “was she after a job here, like myself?”

Mr. Bloggs had not been wholly wrong when he had described himself as a judge. He saw his chance, handed to him on a platter, and he leapt at it. His elastic cheeks became momentarily inflated with bulging curves. But they were flat again, and his own voice was casual, as he answered:

“Eh? Oh, Miss Trent. Yes, she will be my—ah—our secretary. Yes, yes, she will be with us. But you must not join us, Mr. Haines, if you feel unhappy or in the least doubtful. I never urge anything. No. It’s a moral principle.”

Jerry Haines did not feel at all unhappy, or in the least doubtful. While final details were being arranged, he was doubling £250 in his mind till it became £4000. Then he chopped off £1500 for a house in the country, and £20 for a pram ...

But just before he left, a tiny qualm of conscience did cause him to confess:

“By the way—you’ve not asked, but perhaps I ought to mention it—I’ve had absolutely no experience of business.”

Mr. Bloggs just saved himself from responding, “No need to tell me that, my boy!” Instead, with cheeks swelled almost to bursting point, he exclaimed, “Don’t worry about that—you’ve got something else! But—ah—just as a matter of curiosity—what have you experience of?”

“Well, really, I’m an actor,” replied Jerry, adding with the charming ingenuousness that sometimes got him undeserved engagements, “but not a frightfully good one.”

Edward P. Bloggs grinned. “I’m a bit of an actor myself,” he said, and then pushed his new assistant manager out rather hastily.

William Fingleton, clerk, could not plead lack of experience. His hair was prematurely grey with it, his flat, spectacled eyes were dull with it. At the age of twenty-one, yielding to the requests of neighbours and the urgings of a depressing knowledge borne out by his own ears, he had sold his violin and entered the service of Brown, Holding & Temperence. He had faithfully added up figures for them for thirty years, and had attended the funerals of all three. They had died, rather neatly, in the order mentioned on the firm’s note-paper, and within a sufficiently short time of each other to allow one silk hat to do for the lot. The demise of Temperence had preceded the demise of the business, and for the first time in his uneventful life William Fingleton, at the age of fifty-one, found himself out of a job. Which, he told himself gloomily, was exactly eleven years too old.

It was not to Fingleton’s discredit, but rather to the discredit of Brown, Holding & Temperence, that during these thirty years with the firm their clerk had only been able to save £127 5s. 8d. The total would have been a little higher if, at the age of twenty-nine, he had not commented on a lovely evening to a rather pale-faced girl feeding the ducks in Regent’s Park. This unusual audacity led to further meetings in the park, at first allegedly accidental, then admittedly deliberate. They were both lonely creatures. In six months they were married. In another six she died, leaving a strange memory that grew fainter and fainter as he added up his figures till it seemed at last to belong, not to him, but to some almost-forgotten person of whom he had once heard. Like that young chap who had once hoped to become a second Kreisler. Yet, despite the faintness and unrealness of the memory, William Fingleton always felt in an incoherent way that his one year of courtship and marriage was the only period in which he had really justified his existence. It was quite worth the loss to his standing capital at the age of fifty-one.

Unlike Madeleine and Jerry, he did not join the staff of Spare Parts Limited through answering Mr. Bloggs’s attractive advertisement. Bloggs had had some dealings with his old firm shortly before its demise—dealings, we may be sure, which did nothing to sustain the expiring spark of life—and he had already met the patient, hard-working clerk. He had even had a heart-to-heart talk with him. Fingleton had not been out of work a week when he received a sympathetic note, asking him to call. The interview was short, startling, and to the point. Fingleton remembered every word of it.

“Sit down, Fingleton,” Mr. Bloggs had said. “I am going to make a proposition to you, and I am making it to you because I am a judge of character and I have judged yours. I understand you were with your last employers for some thirty years?”

“Thirty years and four months,” replied Fingleton.

“Thirty years and four months,” nodded Mr. Bloggs. “And—from our little conversation when I last saw you, I gathered you—ah—did not amass a fortune in all that time?”

“No, sir,” blinked Fingleton.

“Now I don’t expect you were able to set aside more than, say, fifty pounds a year? That would be—ah—fifteen hundred.”

Fingleton became slightly pink at the surprising suggestion.

“Very much less than that, sir,” he murmured.

“Come, come! Less? Did you say less? Bless my soul, it’s scandalous, the way some good men are treated! Surely, after your long service, you were given a little interest in the firm?” And when Fingleton shook his head, Mr. Bloggs exclaimed, “Then what on earth have you been able to save? If that isn’t an impertinent question?”

“Er—one hundred and twenty-seven pounds, sir,” replied Fingleton, leaving out the five-and-eightpence.

Mr. Bloggs thumped his desk.

“By heaven, you shall increase that!” he cried. “You won’t have to wait thirty years this time! You shall join my firm at the same salary you were getting, but—BUT, Fingleton, you shall be more than an employee, you shall be a shareholder, as well! I’ve a financier here who wants to invest three thousand pounds in Spare Parts Limited, but I’ll tell him he can only have—let’s see—two thousand eight hundred and seventy-five poundsworth. That will leave one-twenty-five for you. Don’t thank me, don’t thank me. I believe in this sort of thing! You might almost call it a moral principle. Members of a staff—trustworthy members—should share in the profits, for it is only when they have such an interest that they—ah—work with full enthusiasm and—ah—give of their best.” He leapt to his feet and held out his hand. “Though you would give of your best, I am convinced, under any circumstances. No, no, no! Don’t thank me. Turn up next Monday, and we’ll fix up the details then.”

Fingleton staggered out of the office and had a cup of strong coffee at a shop at the corner. Before the coffee he had not been sure whether he would turn up next Monday. But after the coffee, he decided that he would. He also decided that he would retire on his fortune at sixty, and grow roses. He liked roses.... He might even buy a violin.

In an excellent humour, Edward P. Bloggs went to a theatre that night, and continued his good work with the commissionaire who got him a taxi. “Pity this show’s coming off,” he remarked. “How does that affect you?” “We’re closing for a bit,” answered the commissionaire, “and if I don’t lose my job I’ll lose my tips!” “Bad luck! Ever thought of a change?” “If it’s a change for the better!” “What’s your name?” “Smith.” “What’s your lunch hour?” “One o’clock, sir.” “Come and see me tomorrow between one and two, Smith.” And he added his business card to the tip.

Smith had done quite well on tips. Mr. Bloggs discovered, between one and two next day, that he had twenty pounds to play with....

The commissionaire, whose new duties were to give Mr. Bloggs’s enterprise a wholly fictitious atmosphere of importance, brought the staff up to four. The other two, completing the half-dozen, were drawn by the advertisement. Tim O’Hara beat other applicants for the position of traveller by requiring no salary. This seemed such an excellent qualification to Mr. Bloggs that surely it was a waste of time to discuss any other. O’Hara refused to let the matter rest there, however, and insisted in extolling his virtues as an outside man. “For if I’m to be of any use to ye, Mr. Bloggs,” he declared, “I must show ye my persuasive qualities, and maybe ye’ll be thinkin’ now that if I can sell an article like meself I’ll be afther sellin’ anything!”

“Well, you’ve sold yourself,” replied Mr. Bloggs, “so you can keep the rest of your breath for the firm’s business.”

“Ah, but wait a minute, wait a minute!” exclaimed O’Hara, “Did I tell ye now about me car?”

“Do you want to sell me that, too?” enquired Mr. Bloggs, with noticeably less enthusiasm.

“Ah, now, would I be playin’ ye a trick like that?” answered the Irishman, looking hurt. “ ’Tis the divil of a car. Me very name for it is Satan. But ye’ll not be requirin’ to get me a car, that’s what I’m tellin’ ye——” Mr. Bloggs had never had any intention of getting his traveller a car. “—and what it lacks in quality it makes up for in quantity, for ’tis larger than life and will take all the Spare Parts ye could pack into her. Faith, she needs a few herself!”

“You certainly know how to talk, Mr. O’Hara,” commented Bloggs.

“Would I earn the salary I’m not gettin’ if I were dumb?” retorted O’Hara.

“I’m not complaining,” smiled Bloggs, “though I’ll admit I’d rather have you for an outside than an inside man. Then it’s all settled?”

“All but one thing, Mr. Bloggs.”

“Oh! And that is?”

“Ye’ll give me a salary afther the first month, and, of course, I get me commission from the start.”

Mr. Bloggs smiled again. “I thought there was a catch in it,” he said. But he promised. Promises were his one form of lavishness.

The last, and least, member of the staff was the office boy. Seventeen boys of all ages, shapes and sizes applied, and because it was impossible to judge how any of them would turn out, Robert Tonsil was selected entirely on account of his name. It had amused Mr. Bloggs at the end of a tiring day.