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His Stock In Trade
by
His opportunity to test his new-born theory came on the following morning when an irritable female voice over at the Santa Fe asked the price on twenty kegs of rivets.
“Good morning, Santa Fe-male,” he answered, cheerily.
There was a moment of amazed silence, then the young lady snapped: “‘Good morning’? What is this, the Weather Bureau? I want Comer & Mathison.”
“Gee! Can’t a fellow display a little courtesy in business?” Mitchell inquired. “I’d rather be nice to you than not.”
“All right, Mr. Comer,” the voice replied, sarcastically. “Make a nice price on those rivets–and cut out the kidding.”
“Listen; my name’s not Comer; it’s Mitchell. I’m not kidding, either. I want you to ask for me whenever you call up. Every little bit helps, you know.”
“Oh, I see. You want the carriage man to call your number. All right, Mitch. If you’re out at lunch with Mr. Carnegie the next time I want a dozen number ten sheets I’ll have you paged at the Union League Club.”
If the speaker liked this kind of blank verse, she had called up the right supply house, for Mitchell came back with:
“Say, if I ever get your number, I’ll do the calling, Miss Santa Fe.”
“W-what?” came the startled reply.
“I mean what I say. I’d love to call–“
“Is that so? Well, I do all the calling for our, family, and I’m going to call you right now. What’s the price of those rivets?”
“Two sixty-five.”
“Too high! Good-by.”
“Wait a minute.” Mitchell checked the lady before she could “plug out” on him. “Now that you’ve got those rivets out of your system, may I get personal for an instant?”
“Just about an instant.”
“I could listen to you all day.”
“Oops, Horace; he loves me!” mocked the lady’s voice.
“See here, I’m a regular person–with references. I’ve been talking to you every day for six months, so I feel that we’re acquainted. Some pleasant evening, when your crew of hammock gladiators palls on you, let me come around and show you the difference.”
“What difference?”
“I’ll show you what a real porch-climber is like.”
“Indeed! I’ll think it over.”
Ten minutes later Miss Santa Fe called up again.
“Hello! I want Mitchell, the junior partner.”
“This is Mitchell.”
“Did you say those rivets were two-fifty?”
“Should they be?”
“They should.”
“They are.”
“Ship them to Trinidad.”
“That’s bully of you, Miss Santa Claus. I want to–” But the wire was dead.
Mitchell grinned. Personality did count after all, and he had proved that it could be projected over a copper wire.
An hour later when Miss Northwestern called him for a price on stay-bolt iron she did not ring off for fifteen minutes, and at the end of that time she promised to take the first opportunity of having another chat. In a similar manner, once the ice had been broken at the C. & E.I., Mitchell learned that the purchasing agent was at West Baden on his vacation; that he had stomach trouble and was cranky; that the speaker loved music, particularly Chaminade and George Cohan, although Beethoven had written some good stuff; that she’d been to Grand Haven on Sunday with her cousin, who sold hats out of Cleveland and was a prince with his money, but drank; and that the price on corrugated iron might be raised ten cents without doing any damage.
On the following afternoon Murphy, the Railroad Sales Manager, stopped on his way past Mitchell’s desk to inquire:
“Say, have you been sending orchids to Miss Dunlap over at the Santa Fe? I was in there this morning, and she wanted to know all about you.”
“Did you boost me?” Louis inquired. “It won’t hurt your sales to plug my game.”
“She said you and she are ‘buddies’ over the wire. What did she mean?”
“Oh, wire pals, that’s all. What kind of a looker is she, Mr. Murphy?”
The Sales Manager shrugged his shoulders. “She looks as if she was good to her mother.” Then he sauntered away.
Mitchell, in the days that followed, proceeded to become acquainted with the Big Four, and in a short time was so close to the Lackawanna that he called her Phoebe Snow. The St. Paul asked for him three times in one afternoon, and the Rock Island, chancing to ring up while he was busy, threatened to hang crepe on the round-house if he were not summoned immediately to enter an order for a manhole crab.