VIII
"Hello, Jackie!"
Such familiarity of address on the part of Wright's head draughtsman had long annoyed Hart, but this morning, instead of nodding curtly, he replied briskly—
"Hello, Cookie!"
The draughtsman winked at his neighbor and thrust out an elbow at a derisive angle, as he bent himself over the linen plan he was carefully inking in. The man next to him snickered, and the stenographer just outside the door smiled. An office joke was in the air.
"Mr. Hart looks as though somethin' good had happened to him," the stenographer remarked in a mincing tone. "Perhaps some more of his folks have died and remembered him in their wills."
But Cook dismissed the subject by calling out to one of the men, "Say, Ed, come over here and tell me what you were trying to do with this old hencoop."
He might take privileges with the august F. Jackson Hart, whose foreign training had rather oppressed the office force at times, but he would not allow Gracie Bellows, the stenographer, to "mix" in his joke.
Cook was a spare, black-haired little man, with beady brown eyes, like a squirrel's. He was a pure product of Wright's Chicago office, having worked his way from a boy's position to the practical headship of the force. Although he permitted himself his little fling at Hart, he was really the young architect's warmest admirer, approving even those magnificent palaces of the French Renaissance type which the Beaux Arts man put forth during the first months of his connection with the firm.
The little draughtsman, who was as sharp as one of his own India ink lines, could see that Hart had something on his mind this morning, and he was curious, in all friendliness, to find out what it was. But Jackson did not emerge from his little box of an office for several hours. Then he sauntered by Cook's table, pausing to look out of the window while he abstractedly lighted a cigarette. Presently the stenographer came up to him and said:—
"Mr. Graves is out there and wants to see you particular, Mr. Hart. Shall I show him into your office?"
"Ask him to wait," the young architect ordered.
After he had smoked and stared for a few moments longer he turned to Cook.
"What did we specify those I-beams for the Canostota? Were they forty-twos or sixties?"
Without raising his hand from the minute lines of the linen sheet, the draughtsman grunted:—
"Don't remember just what. Weren't forty-twos. Nothing less than sixties ever got out of this office, I guess. May be eighties. What's the matter?"
"Um," the architect reflected, knocking his cigarette against the table. "It makes a difference in the sizes what make they are, doesn't it?"
"It don't make any difference about the weights!" And the draughtsman turned to his linen sheet with a shrug of the shoulders that said, "You ought to know that much by this time!"
The architect continued to stare out of the murky window.
"When is Harmon coming back?"
"Ed lives out his way, and he says it's a long-term typhoid. You can't tell when he'll be back."
"Has the old man wired anything new about his plans?"
"You'll have to ask Miss Bellows. I haven't heard anything."
"He said he'd be here next Wednesday or Thursday at the latest, didn't he?"
The draughtsman stared hard at Hart, wondering what was in the man's mind. But he made no answer to the last remark, and presently the architect sauntered to the next window.
As Jackson well knew, Graves was waiting to close that arrangement which he had proposed for building an apartment house. The architect had intended to look up the Canostota specifications before he went further with Graves, but he had been distracted by other matters, and had thought nothing more about the troublesome I-beams until this morning.
Jackson Hart was not given to undue speculation over matters of conduct. He had a serviceable code of business morals, which hitherto had met all the demands of his experience. He called this code "professional etiquette." In this case he was not clear how the code should be applied. The Canostota was not his affair. It was only by the merest accident that he had been sent there that day to supervise the electricians, and had seen that drill-hole, which had led him to question the thickness of the I-beams, and he might very well have been mistaken about them. If there were anything wrong with them, at any rate, it was Wright's business to see that the contractor was properly watched when the steel work was being run through the mill. And he did not feel any special sense of obligation toward his employer, who had never displayed any great confidence in him.
He wanted the contractor's commission now more than ever, with his engagement to Helen freshly pricking him to look for bread and butter; wanted it all the more because any thought of fighting his uncle's will had gone when Helen had accepted him. It was now clearly his business to provide for his future as vigorously as he could. …
When he rang for the stenographer and told her to show Graves into his office, he had made up his mind. Closing his door, he turned and looked into the contractor's heavy face with an air of alert determination. He was about to play his own game for the first time, and he felt the man's excitement of it!
The two remained shut up in the architect's cubby-hole for over an hour. When Cook had returned from the restaurant in the basement where he lunched, and the other men had taken their hats and coats from the lockers, Hart stepped out of his office and walked across the room to Cook's table. He spread before the draughtsman a fresh sepia sketch, the water scarcely dried on it. It was the front elevation for a house, such a one as is described impressively in the newspapers as "Mr. So-and-So's handsome country residence."
"Now, that's what I call a peach!" Cook whistled through his closed teeth, squinting at the sketch admiringly. "Nothing like that residence has come out of this office for a good long time. The old man don't favor houses as a rule. They're too fussy. Is this for some magnate?"
"This isn't done for the firm," Jackson answered quickly.
"Oh!" Cook received the news with evident disappointment. "Just a fancy sketch?"
"Not for a minute! This is my own business. It's for a Mrs. Phillips—her country house at Forest Park."
Cook looked again at the elevation of the large house with admiring eyes. If he had ever penetrated beyond the confines of Cook County in the state of Illinois, he might have wondered less at Hart's creation. But he was not familiar with the Loire châteaux, even in photographs, for Wright's tastes happened to be early English.
"So you're going to shake us?" Cook asked regretfully.
"Just as soon as I can have a word with Mr. Wright. This isn't the only job I have on hand."
"Is that so? Well, you're in luck, sure enough."
"Don't you want to come in?" Hart asked abruptly. "I shall want a good practical man. How would you like to run the new office?"
Cook's
