The Efficiency Expert - Edgar Rice Burroughs

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of replies.

      By a simple system of reasoning he deduced that ten o’clock would be none too early to expect some returns from his ad, and therefore at ten promptly he presented himself at the Want Ad Department in the Tribune office.

      Comparing the number of the receipt which Jimmy handed him with the numbers upon a file of little pigeonholes, the clerk presently turned back toward the counter with a handful of letters.

      “Whew!” thought Jimmy. “I never would have guessed that I would receive a bunch like that so early in the morning.” But then, as he saw the clerk running through them one by one, he realized that they were not all for him, and as the young man ran through them Jimmy’s spirits dropped a notch with each letter that was passed over without being thrown out to him, until, when the last letter had passed beneath the scrutiny of the clerk, and the advertiser realized that he had received no replies, he was quite sure that there was some error.

      “Nothing,” said the clerk, shaking his head negatively.

      “Are you sure you looked in the right compartment?” asked Jimmy.

      “Sure,” replied the clerk. “There is nothing for you.”

      Jimmy pocketed his slip and walked from the office. “This town is slower than I thought it was,” he mused. “ ‘I guess they do need some live wires here to manage their business.”

      At noon he returned, only to be again disappointed, and then at two o’clock, and when he came in at four the same clerk looked up wearily and shook his head.

      “Nothing for you,” he said. “I distributed all the stuff myself since you were in last.”

      As Jimmy stood there almost dazed by surprise that during an entire day his ad had appeared in Chicago’s largest newspaper, and he had not received one reply, a man approached the counter, passed a slip similar to Jimmy’s to the clerk, and received fully a hundred letters in return. Jimmy was positive now that something was wrong.

      “Are you sure,” he asked the clerk, “that my replies haven’t been sidetracked somewhere? I have seen people taking letters away from here all day, and that bird there just walked off with a fistful.”

      The clerk grinned. “What you advertising for?” he asked.

      “A position,” replied Jimmy.

      “That’s the answer,” explained the clerk. “That fellow there was advertising for help.”

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      Once again Jimmy walked out onto Madison Street, and, turning to his right, dropped into a continuous vaudeville show in an attempt to coax his spirits back to somewhere near their normal high-water mark. Upon the next day he again haunted the newspaper office without reward, and again upon the third day with similar results. To say that Jimmy was dumfounded would be but a futile description of his mental state. It was simply beyond him to conceive that in one of the largest cities in the world, the center of a thriving district of fifty million souls, there was no business man with sufficient acumen to realize how badly he needed James Torrance, Jr., to conduct his business for him successfully.

      With the close of the fourth day, and no reply, Jimmy was thoroughly exasperated. The kindly clerk, who by this time had taken a personal interest in this steadiest of customers, suggested that Jimmy try applying for positions advertised in the Help Wanted column, and this he decided to do.

      There were only two concerns advertising for general managers in the issue which Jimmy scanned; one ad called for an experienced executive to assume the general management of an old established sash, door and blind factory; the other insisted upon a man with mail-order experience to take charge of the mail-order department of a large department store.

      Neither of these were precisely what Jimmy had hoped for, his preference really being for the general management of an automobile manufactory or possibly something in the airplane line. Sash, door and blind sounded extremely prosaic and uninteresting to Mr. Torrance. The mail-order proposition, while possibly more interesting, struck him as being too trifling and unimportant.

      “However,” he thought, “it will do no harm to have a talk with these people, and possibly I might even consider giving one of them a trial.”

      And so, calling a taxi, he drove out onto the west side where, in a dingy and squalid neighborhood, the taxi stopped in front of a grimy unpainted three-story brick building, from which a great deal of noise and dust were issuing. Jimmy found the office on the second floor, after ascending a narrow, dark, and dirty stairway. Jimmy’s experience of manufacturing plants was extremely limited, but he needed no experience as he entered the room to see that he was in a busy office of a busy plant. Everything about the office was plain and rather dingy, but there were a great many file clerks and typists and considerable bustling about.

      After stating his business to a young lady who sat behind a switchboard, upon the front of which was the word “Information,” and waiting while she communicated with an inner office over the telephone, he was directed in the direction of a glass partition at the opposite end of the room—a partition in which there were doors at intervals, and upon each door a name.

      He had been told that Mr. Brown would see him, and rapping upon the door bearing that name he was bid to enter, and a moment later found himself in the presence of a middle-aged man whose every gesture and movement was charged with suppressed nerve energy.

      As Jimmy entered the man was reading a letter. He finished it quickly, slapped it into a tray, and wheeled in his chair toward his caller.

      “Well?” he snapped, as Jimmy approached him.

      “I came in reply to your advertisement for a general manager,” announced Jimmy confidently.

      The man sized him up quickly from head to foot. His eyes narrowed and his brows contracted.

      “What experience you had? Who you been with, and how many years?” He snapped the questions at Jimmy with the rapidity of machine-gun fire.

      “I have the necessary ability,” replied Jimmy, “to manage your business.”

      “How many years have you had in the sash, door and blind business?” snapped Mr. Brown.

      “I have never had any experience in the sash, door and blind business,” replied Jimmy. “I didn’t come here to make sash, doors and blinds. I came here to manage your business.”

      Mr. Brown half rose from his chair. His eyes opened a little wider than normal. “What the—” he started; and then, “Well, of all the—” Once again he found it impossible to go on. “You came here to manage a sash, door and blind factory, and don’t know anything about the business! Well, of all—”

      “I assumed,” said Jimmy, “that what you wanted in a general manager was executive ability, and that’s what I have.”

      “What you have,” replied Mr. Brown, “is a hell of a crust. Now, run along, young fellow. I am a very busy man—and don’t forget to close the door after you as you go out.”

      Jimmy did not forget to close the door. As he walked the length of the interminable room between rows of desks, before which were seated young men and young women, all of whom Jimmy thought were staring at him, he could feel the deep crimson burning upward from his collar to the roots of his hair.

      Never before in his life had Jimmy’s self-esteem received such a tremendous jolt. He was still

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