The door marked "MRS. MCCHESNEY" was closed. T. A. Buck, president of the Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, coming gaily down the hall, stopped before it, dismayed, as one who, with a spicy bit of news at his tongue's end, is met with rebuff before the first syllable is voiced. That closed door meant: "Busy. Keep out."
"She'll be reading a letter," T. A. Buck told himself grimly. Then he turned the knob and entered his partner's office.
Mrs. Emma McChesney was reading a letter. More than that, she was poring over it so that, at the interruption, she glanced up in a maddeningly half-cocked manner which conveyed the impression that, while her physical eye beheld the intruder, her mental eye was still on the letter.
"I knew it," said T. A. Buck morosely.
Emma McChesney put down the letter and smiled.
"Sit down—now that you're in. And if you expect me to say, 'Knew what?' you're doomed to disappointment."
T. A. Buck remained standing, both gloved hands clasping his walking stick on which he leaned.
"Every time I come into this office, you're reading the latest scrawl from your son. One would think Jock's letters were deathless masterpieces. I believe you read them at half-hour intervals all week, and on Sunday get 'em all out and play solitaire with them."
Emma McChesney's smile widened frankly to a grin.
"You make me feel like a cash-girl who's been caught flirting with the elevator starter. Have I been neglecting business?"
"Business? No; you've been neglecting me!"
"Now, T. A., you've just come from the tailor's, and I suppose it didn't fit in the back."
"It isn't that," interrupted Buck, "and you know it. Look here! That day Jock went away and we came back to the office, and you said——"
"I know I said it, T. A., but don't remind me of it. That wasn't a fair test. I had just seen Jock leave me to take his own place in the world. You know that my day began and ended with him. He was my reason for everything. When I saw him off for Chicago that day, and knew he was going there to stay, it seemed a million miles from New York. I was blue and lonely and heart-sick. If the office-boy had thrown a kind word to me I'd have broken down and wept on his shoulder."
Buck, still standing, looked down between narrowed lids at his business partner.
"Emma McChesney," he said steadily, "do you mean that?"
Mrs. McChesney, the straightforward, looked up, looked down, fiddled with the letter in her hand.
"Well—practically yes—that is—I thought, now that you're going to the mountains for a month, it might give me a chance to think—to——"
"And d'you know what I'll do meanwhile, out of revenge on the sex? I've just ordered three suits of white flannel, and I shall break every feminine heart in the camp, regardless— Oh, say, that's what I came in to tell you! Guess whom I saw at the tailor's?"
"Well, Mr. Bones, whom did you, and so forth?"
"Fat Ed Meyers. I just glimpsed him in one of the fitting-rooms. And they were draping him in white."
Emma McChesney sat up with a jerk.
"Are you sure?"
"Sure? There's only one figure like that. He had the thing on and was surveying himself in the mirror—or as much of himself as could be seen in one ordinary mirror. In that white suit, with his red face above it, he looked like those pictures you see labeled, 'Sunrise on Snow-covered Mountain.'"
"Did he see——"
"He dodged when he saw me. Actually! At least, he seems to have the decency to be ashamed of the deal he gave us when he left us flat in the thick of his Middle Western trip and went back to the Sans-Silk Skirt Company. I wanted him to know I had seen him. As I passed, I said, 'You'll mow 'em down in those clothes, Meyers.'" Buck sat down in his leisurely fashion, and laughed his low, pleasant laugh. "Can't you see him, Emma, at the seashore?"
But something in Emma McChesney's eyes, and something in her set, unsmiling face, told him that she was not seeing seashores. She was staring straight at him, straight through him, miles beyond him. There was about her that tense, electric, breathless air of complete detachment, which always enveloped her when her lightning mind was leaping ahead to a goal unguessed by the slower thinking.
"What's your tailor's name?"
"Name? Trotter. Why?"
Emma McChesney had the telephone operator before he could finish.
"Get me Trotter, the tailor, T-r-o-double-t-e-r. Say I want to speak to the tailor who fits Mr. Ed Meyers, of the Sans-Silk Skirt Company."
T. A. Buck leaned forward, mouth open, eyes wide. "Well, what in the name of——"
"I'll let you know in a minute. Maybe I'm wrong. It's just one of my hunches. But for ten years I sold Featherlooms through the same territory that Ed Meyers was covering for the Sans-Silk Skirt people. It didn't take me ten years to learn that Fat Ed hadn't the decency to be ashamed of any deal he turned, no matter how raw. And let me tell you, T. A.: If he dodged when he saw you it wasn't because he was ashamed of having played us low-down. He was contemplating playing lower-down. Of course, I may be——"
She picked up the receiver in answer to the bell. Then, sweetly, her calm eyes smiling into Buck's puzzled ones:
"Hello! Is this Mr. Meyers' tailor? I'm to ask if you are sure that the grade he selected is the proper weight for the tropics. What? Oh, you say you assured him it was the weight of flannel you always advise for South America. And you said they'd be ready when? Next week? Thank you."
She hung up the receiver. The pupils of her eyes were dilated. Her cheeks were very pink as always under excitement. She stood up, her breath coming rather quickly.
"Hurray for the hunch! It holds. Fat Ed Meyers is going down to South America for the Sans-Silk Company. It's what I've been planning to do for the last six months. You remember I spoke of it. You pooh-poohed the idea. It means hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Sans-Silk people if they get it. But they won't get it."
T. A. Buck stood up suddenly.
"Look here, Emma! If you're——"
"I certainly am. Nothing can stop me. The skirt business has been—well, you know what it's been for the last two years. The South American boats sail twice a month. Fat Ed Meyers' clothes are promised for next week. That means he isn't sailing until week after next. But the next boat sails in three days." She picked up a piece of paper from her desk and tossed it into Buck's hand. "That's the letter I was reading when you came in. No; don't read it. Let me tell you instead."
Buck threw cane, hat, gloves, and letter on the broad desk, thrust his hands into his pockets, and prepared for argument. But he got only as far as: "But I won't allow it! You couldn't get away in three days, at any rate. And at the end of two weeks you'll have come to your senses, and besides——"
"T. A., I don't mean to be rude. But here are your hat and stick and gloves. It's going to take me just forty-eight hours to mobilize."
"But, Emma, even if you do get in ahead of Meyers, it's an insane idea. A woman can't go down there alone. It isn't safe. It's bad enough for a man to tackle it. Besides, we're holding our own."
"That's just it. When a doctor issues a bulletin to the effect that the patient is holding his own, you may have noticed that the relatives always begin to gather."
"It's a bubble, this South American idea. Oshkosh and Southport and Altoona money has always been good enough for us. If we can keep that trade, we ought to be thankful."
Emma McChesney pushed her hair back from her forehead with one gesture and patted it into place with another. Those two gestures, to one who knew her, meant loss of composure for one instant, followed by the quick regaining of it the next.
"Let's not argue about it now. Suppose we wait until to-morrow—when it's too late. I am thankful for the trade we've got. But I don't want to be narrow about it. My thanking capacity is such that I can stretch it out to cover some things we haven't got yet. I've been reading up on South America."
"Reading!" put in Buck hotly. "What actual first-hand information can you get about a country from books?"
"Well, then, I haven't only been reading. I've been talking to everyone I could lay my hands on who has been down there and who knows. Those South American women love dress—especially the Argentines. And do you know what they've been wearing? Petticoats made in England! You know what that means. An English woman chooses a petticoat like she does a husband—for life. It isn't only a garment. It's a shelter. It's built like a tent. If once I can introduce the T. A. Buck Featherloom petticoat and knickerbocker into sunny South America, they'll use those English and German petticoats for linoleum floor-coverings. Heaven knows they'll fit the floor better than the human form!"
But Buck was unsmiling. The muscles of his jaw were tense.
"I won't let you go. Understand that! I won't allow it!"
"Tut, tut, T. A.! What is this? Cave-man stuff?"
"Emma, I tell you it's dangerous. It isn't worth the risk, no matter what it brings us."
Emma McChesney struck an attitude, hand on heart. "'Heaven will protect the working girrul,'" she sang.
Buck grabbed his hat.
"I'm going to wire Jock."
"All right! That'll save me fifty cents. Do you know what he'll wire back? 'Go to it. Get the tango on its native tairn'—or words to that effect."
"Emma, use a little logic and common sense!"
There was a note in Buck's voice that brought a quick response from Mrs. McChesney. She dropped her little air of gayety. The pain in his voice, and the hurt in his eyes, and the pleading in his whole attitude banished the smile from her face. It had not been much of a smile, anyway. T. A. knew her genuine smiles well enough to recognize a counterfeit at sight. And Emma McChesney knew that he knew. She came over and laid a hand lightly on his arm.
"T. A., I don't know anything about logic. It is a hot-house plant. But common sense is a field flower, and I've gathered whole bunches of it in my years of business experience. I'm not going down to South America for a lark. I'm going because the time is ripe to go. I'm going because the future of our business needs it. I'm going because it's a job to be handled by the most experienced salesman on our staff. And I'm just that. I say it because it's true. Your father, T. A., used to see things straighter and farther than any business man I ever knew. Since his death made me a partner in this firm, I find myself, when I'm troubled or puzzled, trying to see a situation as he'd see it if he were alive. It's like having an expert stand back of you in a game of cards, showing you the next move. That's the way I'm playing this hand. And I think we're going to take most of the tricks away from Fat Ed Meyers."
T. A. Buck's eyes traveled from Emma McChesney's earnest, glowing face to the hand that rested on his arm. He reached over and gently covered that hand with his own.
"I suppose you must be right, little woman. You always are. Dad was the founder of this business. It was the pride of his life. That word 'founder' has two meanings. I never want to be responsible for its second meaning in connection with this concern."
"You never will be, T. A."
"Not with you at the helm." He smiled rather sadly. "I'm a good, ordinary, common seaman. But you've got imagination, and foresight, and nerve, and daring, and that's the stuff that admirals are made of."
"Bless you, T. A.! I knew you'd see the thing as I do after the first shock was over. It has always been nip and tuck between the Sans-Silk Company and us. You gave me the hint that showed me their plans. Now help me follow it up."
Buck picked up his hat, squared his shoulders and fumbled with his gloves like a bashful schoolboy.
"You—you couldn't kill two birds with one stone on this trip, could you, Mrs. Mack?"
Mrs. McChesney, back at her desk again, threw him an inquiring glance over her shoulder.
"You might make it a combination honeymoon and Featherloom expedition."
"T. A. Buck!" exclaimed Emma McChesney. Then, as Buck dodged for the door: "Just for that, I'm going to break this to you. You know that I intended to handle the Middle Western territory for one trip, or until we could get a man to take Fat Ed Meyers' place."
"Well?" said Buck apprehensively.
"I leave in three days. Goodness knows how long I'll be gone! A business deal down there is a ceremony. And—you won't need any white-flannel clothes in Rock Island, Illinois."
Buck, aghast, faced her from the doorway.
"You mean, I——"
"Just that," smiled Emma McChesney pleasantly. And pressed the button that summoned the stenographer.
In the next forty-eight hours, Mrs. McChesney performed a series of mental and physical calisthenics that would have landed an ordinary woman in a sanatorium. She cleaned up with the thoroughness and dispatch of a housewife who, before going to the seashore, forgets not instructions to the iceman, the milkman, the janitor, and the maid. She surveyed her territory, behind and before, as a general studies troops and countryside before going into battle; she foresaw factory emergencies, dictated office policies, made sure of staff organization like the business woman she was. Out in the stock-room, under her supervision, there was scientifically packed into sample-trunks and cases a line of Featherloom skirts and knickers calculated to dazzle Brazil and entrance Argentina. And into her own personal trunk there went a wardrobe, each article of which was a garment with a purpose. Emma McChesney knew the value of a smartly tailored suit in a business argument.
T. A. Buck canceled his order at the tailor's, made up his own line for the Middle West, and prepared to storm that prosperous and important territory for the first time in his business career.
The South American boat sailed Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning found the two partners deep in one of those condensed, last-minute discussions. Mrs. McChesney opened a desk drawer, took out a leather-covered pocket notebook, and handed it to Buck. A tiny smile quivered about her lips. Buck took it, mystified.
"Your last diary?"
"Something much more important. I call it 'The Salesman's Who's Who.' Read it as you ought your Bible."
"But what?" Buck turned the pages wonderingly. He glanced at a paragraph, frowned, read it aloud, slowly.
"Des Moines, Iowa, Klein & Company. Miss Ella Sweeney, skirt buyer. Old girl. Skittish. Wants to be entertained. Take her to dinner and the theater."
He looked up, dazed. "Good Lord, what is this? A joke?"
"Wait until you see Ella; you won't think it's a joke. She'll buy only your smoothest numbers, ask sixty days' dating, and expect you to entertain her as you would your rich aunt."
Buck returned to the little book dazedly. He flipped another leaf—another. Then he read in a stunned sort of voice:
"Sam Bloom, Paris Emporium, Duluth. See Sadie."
He closed the book. "Say, see here, Emma, do you mean to——"
"Sam is the manager," interrupted Mrs. McChesney pleasantly, "and he thinks he does the buying, but the brains of that business is a little girl named Sadie Harris. She's a wonder. Five years from now, if she doesn't marry Sam, she'll be one of those ten-thousand-a-year foreign buyers. Play your samples up to Sammy, but quote your prices down to Sadie. Read the next one, T. A."
Buck read on, his tone lifeless:
"Miss Sharp. Berg Brothers, Omaha. Strictly business. Known among the trade as the human cactus. Canceled a ten-thousand-dollar order once because the grateful salesman called her 'girlie.' Stick to skirts."
Buck slapped the book smartly against the palm of his hand.
"Do you mean to tell me that you made this book out for me? Do you mean to say that I have to cram on this like a kid studying for exams? That I'll have to cater to the personality of the person I'm selling to? Why—it's—it's——"
Emma McChesney nodded calmly.
"I don't know how this trip of yours is going to affect the firm's business, T. A. But it's going to be a liberal education for you. You'll find that you'll need that little book a good many times before you're through. And while you're following its advice, do this: forget that your name is Buck, except for business purposes; forget that your family has always lived in a brownstone mausoleum in Seventy-second street; forget that you like your chops done just so, and your wine at such-and-such a temperature; get close to your trade. They're an awfully human lot, those Middle Western buyers. Don't chuck them under the chin, but smile on 'em. And you've got a lovely smile, T. A."
Buck looked up from the little leather book. And, as he gazed at Emma McChesney, the smile appeared and justified its praise.
"I'll have this to comfort me, anyway, Emma. I'll know that while I'm smirking on the sprightly Miss Sweeney, your face will be undergoing various agonizing twists in the effort to make American prices understood by an Argentine who can't speak anything but Spanish."
"Maybe I am short on Spanish, but I'm long on Featherlooms. I may not know a senora from a chili con carne, but I know Featherlooms from the waistband to the hem." She leaned forward, dimpling like fourteen instead of forty. "And you've noticed—haven't you, T. A.?—that I've got an expressive countenance."
Buck leaned forward, too. His smile was almost gone.
"I've noticed a lot of things, Emma McChesney. And if you persist in deviling me for one more minute, I'm going to mention a few."
Emma McChesney surveyed her cleared desk, locked the top drawer with a snap, and stood up.
"If you do I'll miss my boat. Just time to make Brooklyn. Suppose you write 'em."
That Ed Meyers might know nothing of her sudden plans, she had kept the trip secret. Besides Buck and the office staff, her son Jock was the only one who knew. But she found her cabin stocked like a prima donna's on a farewell tour. There were boxes of flowers, a package of books, baskets of fruit, piles of magazines, even a neat little sheaf of telegrams, one from the faithful bookkeeper, one from the workroom foreman, two from salesmen long in the firm's employ, two from Jock in Chicago. She read them, her face glowing. He and Buck had vied with each other in supplying her with luxuries that would make pleasanter the twenty-three days of her voyage.
She looked about the snug cabin, her eyes suddenly misty. Buck poked his head in at the door.
"Come on up on deck, Emma; I've only a few minutes left."
She snatched a pink rose from the box, and together they went on deck.
"Just ten minutes," said Buck. He was looking down at her. "Remember, Emma, nothing that concerns the firm's business, however big, is half as important as the things that concern you personally, however small. I realize what this trip will mean to us, if it pans, and if you can beat Meyers to it. But if anything should happen to you, why——"
"Nothing's going to happen, T. A., except that I'll probably come home with my complexion ruined. I'll feel a great deal more at home talking pidgin-English to Senor Alvarez in Buenos Aires than you will talking Featherlooms to Miss Skirt-Buyer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. But remember this, T. A.: When you get to know—really to know—the Sadie Harrises and the Sammy Blochs and the Ella Sweeneys of this world, you've learned just about all there is to know about human beings. Quick—the gangplank! Goodby, T. A."
The dock reached, he gazed up at her as she leaned far over the railing. He made a megaphone of his hands.
"I feel like an old maid who's staying home with her knitting," he called.
The boat began to move. Emma McChesney passed a quick hand over her eyes.
"Don't drop any stitches, T. A." With unerring aim she flung the big pink rose straight at him.
She went about arranging her affairs on the boat like the business woman that she was. First she made her cabin shipshape. She placed nearest at hand the books on South America, and the Spanish-American pocket interpreter. She located her deck chair, and her seat in the dining-room. Then, quietly, unobtrusively, and guided by those years spent in meeting men and women face to face in business, she took thorough, conscientious mental stock of those others who were to be her fellow travelers for twenty-three days.
For the most part, the first-class passengers were men. There were American business men—salesmen, some of them, promoters others, or representatives of big syndicates shrewd, alert, well dressed, smooth shaven. Emma McChesney knew that she would gain valuable information from many of them before the trip was over. She sighed a little regretfully as she thought of those smoking-room talks—those intimate, tobacco-mellowed business talks from which she would be barred by her sex.
There were two engineers, one British, one American, both very intelligent-looking, both inclined to taciturnity, as is often the case in men of their profession. They walked a good deal, and smoked nut-brown, evil-smelling pipes, and stared unblinkingly across the water.
There were Argentines—whole families of them—Brazilians, too. The fat, bejeweled Brazilian men eyed Emma McChesney with open approval, even talked to her, leering objectionably. Emma McChesney refused to be annoyed. Her ten years on the road served her in good stead now.
But most absorbing of all to Emma McChesney, watching quietly over her book or magazine, was a tall, erect, white-bearded Argentine who, with his family, occupied chairs near hers. His name had struck her with the sound of familiarity when she read it on the passenger list. She had asked the deck-steward to point out the name's owner. "Pages," she repeated to herself, worriedly, "Pages? P——" Suddenly she knew. Pages y Hernandez, the owner of the great Buenos Aires shop—a shop finer than those of Paris. And this was Pages! All the Featherloom instinct in Emma McChesney came to the surface and stayed there, seething.
That was the morning of the second day out. By afternoon, she had bribed and maneuvered so that her deck chair was next that of the Pages-family flock of chairs. Senor Pages reminded her of one of those dashing, white-haired, distinguished-looking men whose likeness graces the cover of a box of your favorite cigars.
General Something-or-other-ending-in-z he should have been, with a revolutionary background. He dressed somberly in black, like most of the other Argentine men on board. There was Senora Pages, very fat, very indolent, very blank, much given to pink satin and diamonds at dinner. Senorita Pages, over-powdered, overfrizzed, marvelously gowned, with overplumpness just a few years away, sat quietly by Senora Pages' side, but her darting, flashing, restless eyes were never still. The son (Emma heard them call him Pepe) was barely eighteen, she thought, but quite a man of the world, with his cigarettes, his drinks, his bold eyes. She looked at his sallow, pimpled skin, his lean, brown hands, his lack-luster eyes, and she thought of Jock and was happy.
Mrs. McChesney knew that she might visit the magnificent Buenos Aires shop of Pages y Hernandez day after day for months without ever obtaining a glimpse of either Pages or Hernandez. And here was Senor Pages, so near that she could reach out and touch him from her deck chair. Here was opportunity! A caller who had never been obliged to knock twice at Emma McChesney's door.
Her methods were so simple that she herself smiled at them. She donned her choicest suit of white serge that she had been saving for shore wear. Its skirt had been cut by the very newest trick. Its coat was the kind to make you go home and get out your own white serge and gaze at it with loathing. Senorita Pages' eyes leaped to that suit as iron leaps to the magnet. Emma McChesney, passing her deck chair, detached the eyes with a neat smile. Why hadn't she spent six months neglecting Skirts for Spanish? she asked herself, groaning. As she approached her own deck chair again she risked a bright, "Good morning." Her heart bounded, stood still, bounded again, as from the lips of the assembled Pages there issued a combined, courteous, perfectly good American, "Good morning!"
"You speak English!" Emma McChesney's tone expressed flattery and surprise.
Pages pere made answer.
"Ah, yes, it is necessary. There are many English in Argentina."
A sigh—a fluttering, tremulous sigh of perfect peace and happiness—welled up from Emma McChesney's heart and escaped through her smiling lips.
By noon, Senorita Pages had tried on the fascinating coat and secured the address of its builder. By afternoon, Emma McChesney was showing the newest embroidery stitch to the slow but docile Senora Pages. Next morning she was playing shuffleboard with the elegant, indolent Pepe, and talking North American football and baseball to him. She had not been Jock McChesney's mother all those years for nothing. She could discuss sports with the best of them. Young Pages was avidly interested. Outdoor sports had become the recent fashion among the rich young Argentines.
The problem of papa Pages was not so easy. Emma McChesney approached her subject warily, skirting the bypaths of politics, war, climate, customs—to business. Business!
"But a lady as charming as you can understand nothing of business," said Senor Pages. "Business is for your militant sisters."
"But we American women do understand business. Many—many charming American women are in business."
Senor Pages turned his fine eyes upon her. She had talked most interestingly, this pretty American woman.
"Perhaps—but pardon me if I think not. A woman cannot be really charming and also capable in business."
Emma McChesney dimpled becomingly.
"But I know a woman who is as—well, as charming as you say I am. Still, she is known as a capable, successful business woman. She'll be in Buenos Aires when I am."
Senor Pages shook an unbelieving head. Emma McChesney leaned forward.
"Will you let me bring her in to meet you, just to prove my point?"
"She must be as charming as you are." His Argentine betting proclivities rose. "Here; we shall make a wager!" He took a card from his pocket, scribbled on it, handed it to Emma McChesney. "You will please present that to my secretary, who will conduct you immediately to my office. We will pretend it is a friendly call. Your friend need not know. If I lose——"
"If you lose, you must promise to let her show you her sample line."
"But, dear madam, I do no buying."
"Then you must introduce her favorably to the department buyer of her sort of goods."
"But if I win?" persisted Senor Pages.
"If she isn't as charming as—as you say I am, you may make your own terms."
Senor Pages' fine eyes opened wide.
It was on the fourteenth day of their trip that they came into quaint Bahia. The stay there was short. Brazilian business methods are long. Emma McChesney took no chances with sample-trunks or cases. She packed her three leading samples into her own personal suitcase, eluded the other tourists, secured an interpreter, and prepared to brave Bahia. She returned just in time to catch the boat, flushed, tired, and orderless. Bahia would have none of her.
In three days they would reach Rio de Janeiro, the magnificent. They would have three days there. She told herself that Bahia didn't count, anyway—sleepy little half-breed town! But the arrow rankled. It had been the first to penetrate the armor of her business success. But she had learned things from that experience at Bahia. She had learned that the South American dislikes the North American because his Northern cousin patronizes him. She learned that the North American business firm is thought by the Southern business man to be tricky and dishonest, and that, because the Northerner has not learned how to pack a case of goods scientifically, as have the English, Germans, and French, the South American rages to pay cubic-feet rates on boxes that are three-quarters empty.
So it was with a heavy heart but a knowing head that she faced Rio de Janeiro. They had entered in the evening, the sunset splashing the bay and the hills in the foreground and the Sugar-loaf Mountain with an unbelievable riot of crimson and gold and orange and blue. Suddenly the sun jerked down, as though pulled by a string, and the magic purple night came up as though pulled by another.
"Well, anyway, I've seen that," breathed Emma McChesney thankfully.
Next morning, she packed her three samples, as before, her heart heavy, her mind on Fat Ed Meyers coming up two weeks behind her. Three days in Rio! And already she had bumped her impatient, quick-thinking, quick-acting North American business head up against the stone wall of South American leisureliness and prejudice. She meant no irreverence, no impiety as she prayed, meanwhile packing Nos. 79, 65, and 48 into her personal bag:
"O Lord, let Fat Ed Meyers have Bahia; but please, please help me to land Rio and Buenos Aires!"
Then, in smart tailored suit and hat, interpreter in tow, a prayer in her heart, and excitement blazing in cheeks and eyes, she made her way to the dock, through the customs, into a cab that was to take her to her arena, the broad Avenida.
Exactly two hours later, there dashed into the customs-house a well-dressed woman whose hat was very much over one ear. She was running as only a woman runs when she's made up her mind to get there. She came hot-foot, helter-skelter, regardless of modishly crippling skirt, past officers, past customs officials, into the section where stood the one small sample-trunk that she had ordered down in case of emergency. The trunk had not gone through the customs. It had not even been opened. But Emma McChesney heeded not trifles like that. Rio de Janeiro had fallen for Featherlooms. Those three samples, Nos. 79, 65, and 48, that boasted style, cut, and workmanship never before seen in Rio, had turned the trick. They were as a taste of blood to a hungry lion. Rio wanted more!
Emma McChesney was kneeling before her trunk, had whipped out her key, unlocked it, and was swiftly selecting the numbers wanted from the trays, her breath coming quickly, her deft fingers choosing unerringly, when an indignant voice said, in Portuguese, "It is forbidden!"
Emma McChesney did not glance around. Her head was buried in the depths of the trunk. But her quick ears had caught the word, "PROHIBA!"
"Speak English," she said, and went on unpacking.
"INGLES!" shouted the official. "No!" Then, with a superhuman effort, as Emma McChesney stood up, her arms laden with Featherloom samples of rainbow hues, "PARE! Ar-r-r-rest!"
Mrs. McChesney slammed down the trunk top, locked it, clutched her samples firmly, and faced the enraged official.
"Go 'way! I haven't time to be arrested this morning. This is my busy day. Call around this evening."
Whereupon she fled to her waiting cab, leaving behind her a Brazilian official stunned and raging by turns.
When she returned, happy, triumphant, order-laden, he was standing there, stunned no longer but raging still. Emma McChesney had forgotten all about him. The gold-braided official advanced, mustachios bristling. A volley of Portuguese burst from his long-pent lips. Emma McChesney glanced behind her. Her interpreter threw up helpless hands, replying with a still more terrifying burst of vowels. Bewildered, a little frightened, Mrs. McChesney stood helplessly by. The official laid a none too gentle hand on her shoulder. A little group of lesser officials stood, comic-opera fashion, in the background. And then Emma McChesney's New York training came to her aid. She ignored the voluble interpreter. She remained coolly unruffled by the fusillade of Portuguese. Quietly she opened her hand bag and plunged her fingers deep, deep therein. Her blue eyes gazed confidingly up into the Brazilian's snapping black ones, and as she withdrew her hand from the depths of her purse, there passed from her white fingers to his brown ones that which is the Esperanto of the nations, the universal language understood from Broadway to Brazil. The hand on her shoulder relaxed and fell away.
On deck once more, she encountered the suave Senor Pages. He stood at the rail surveying Rio's shores with that lip-curling contempt of the Argentine for everything Brazilian. He regarded Emma McChesney's radiant face.
"You are pleased with this—this Indian Rio?"
Mrs. McChesney paused to gaze with him at the receding shores.
"Like it! I'm afraid I haven't seen it. From here it looks like Coney. But it buys like Seattle. Like it! Well, I should say I do!"
"Ah, senora," exclaimed Pages, distressed, "wait! In six days you will behold Buenos Aires. Your New York, Londres, Paris—bah! You shall drive with my wife and daughter through Palermo. You shall see jewels, motors, toilettes as never before. And you will visit my establishment?" He raised an emphatic forefinger. "But surely!"
Emma McChesney regarded him solemnly.
"I promise to do that. You may rely on me."
Six days later they swept up the muddy and majestic Plata, whose color should have won it the name of River of Gold instead of River of Silver. From the boat's upper deck, Emma McChesney beheld a sky line which was so like the sky line of her own New York that it gave her a shock. She was due for still another shock when, an hour later, she found herself in a maelstrom of motors, cabs, street cars, newsboys, skyscrapers, pedestrians, policemen, subway stations. Where was the South American languor? Where the Argentine inertia? The rush and roar of it, the bustle and the bang of it made the twenty-three-day voyage seem a myth.
"I'm going to shut my eyes," she told herself, "and then open them quickly. If that little brown traffic-policeman turns out to be a big, red-faced traffic-policeman, then I'm right, and this IS Broadway and Forty-second."
Shock number three came upon her entrance at the Grande Hotel. It had been Emma McChesney's boast that her ten years on the road had familiarized her with every type, grade, style, shape, cut, and mold of hotel clerk. She knew him from the Knickerbocker to the Eagle House at Waterloo, Iowa. At the moment she entered the Grande Hotel, she knew she had overlooked one. Accustomed though she was to the sartorial splendors of the man behind the desk, she might easily have mistaken this one for the president of the republic. In his glittering uniform, he looked a pass between the supreme chancellor of the K.P.'s in full regalia and a prince of India during the Durbar. He was regal. He was overwhelming. He would have made the most splendid specimen of North American hotel clerk look like a scullery boy. Mrs. McChesney spent two whole days in Buenos Aires before she discovered that she could paralyze this personage with a peso. A peso is forty-three cents.
Her experience at Bahia and at Rio de Janeiro had taught her things. So for two days, haunted, as she was, by visions of Fat Ed Meyers coming up close behind her, she possessed her soul in patience and waited. On the great firm of Pages y Hernandez rested the success of this expedition. When she thought of her little trick on Senor Pages, her blithe spirits sank. Suppose, after all, that this powerful South American should resent her little Yankee joke!
Her trunks went through the customs. She secured an interpreter. She arranged her samples with loving care. Style, cut, workmanship—she ran over their strong points in her mind. She looked at them as a mother's eyes rest fondly on the shining faces, the well-brushed hair, the clean pinafores of her brood. And her heart swelled with pride. They lay on their tables, the artful knickerbockers, the gleaming petticoats, the pink and blue pajamas, the bifurcated skirts. Emma McChesney ran one hand lightly over the navy blue satin folds of a sample.
"Pages or no Pages, you're a credit to your mother," she said, whimsically.
Up in her room once more, she selected her smartest tailor costume, her most modish hat, the freshest of gloves and blouses.
She chose the hours between four and six, when wheel traffic was suspended in the Calle Florida and throughout the shopping-district, the narrow streets of which are congested to the point of suffocation at other times.
As she swung down the street they turned to gaze after her—these Argentines. The fat senoras turned, and the smartly costumed, sallow senoritas, and the men—all of them. They spoke to her, these last, but she had expected that, and marched on with her free, swinging stride, her chin high, her color very bright. Into the great shop of Pages y Hernandez at last, up to the private offices, her breath coming a little quickly, into the presence of the shiny secretary—shiny teeth, shiny hair, shiny skin, shiny nails. He gazed upon Emma McChesney, the shine gleaming brighter. He took in his slim, brown fingers the card on which Senor Pages had scribbled that day on board ship. The shine became dazzling. He bowed low and backed his way into the office of Senor Pages.
A successful man is most impressive when in those surroundings which have been built up by his success. On shipboard, Senor Pages had been a genial, charming, distinguished fellow passenger. In his luxurious business office he still was genial, charming, but his environment seemed to lend him a certain austerity.
"Senora McChesney!"
("How awful that sounds!" Emma McChesney told herself.)
"We spoke of you but last night. And now you come to win the wager, yes?" He smiled, but shook his head.
"Yes," replied Emma McChesney. And tried to smile, too.
Senor Pages waved a hand toward the outer office.
"She is with you, this business friend who is also so charming?"
"Oh, yes," said Emma McChesney, "she's—she's with me." Then, as he made a motion toward the push-button, which would summon the secretary: "No, don't do that! Wait a minute!" From her bag she drew her business card, presented it. "Read that first."
Senor Pages read it. He looked up. Then he read it again. He gazed again at Emma McChesney. Emma McChesney looked straight at him and tried in vain to remember ever having heard of the South American's sense of humor. A moment passed. Her heart sank. Then Senor Pages threw back his fine head and laughed—laughed as the Latin laughs, emphasizing his mirth with many ejaculations and gestures.
"Ah, you Northerners! You are too quick for us. Come; I myself must see this garment which you honor by selling." His glance rested approvingly on Emma McChesney's trim, smart figure. "That which you sell, it must be quite right."
"I not only sell it," said Emma McChesney; "I wear it."
"That—how is it you Northerners say?—ah, yes—that settles it!"
Six weeks later, in his hotel room in Columbus, Ohio, T. A. Buck sat reading a letter forwarded from New York and postmarked Argentina. As he read he chuckled, grew serious, chuckled again and allowed his cigar to grow cold.
For the seventh time:
DEAR T. A.:
They've fallen for Featherlooms the way an Eskimo takes to gum-drops. My letter of credit is all shot to pieces, but it was worth it. They make you pay a separate license fee in each province, and South America is just one darn province after another. If they'd lump a peddler's license for $5,000 and tell you to go ahead, it would be cheaper.
I landed Pages y Hernandez by a trick. The best of it is the man I played it on saw the point and laughed with me. We North Americans brag too much about our sense of humor.
I thought ten years on the road had hardened me to the most fiendish efforts of a hotel chef. But the food at the Grande here makes a quarter-inch round steak with German fried look like Sherry's latest triumph. You know I'm not fussy. I'm the kind of woman who, given her choice of ice cream or cheese for dessert, will take cheese. Here, given my choice, I play safe and take neither. I've reached the point where I make a meal of radishes. They kill their beef in the morning and serve it for lunch. It looks and tastes like an Ethiop's ear. But I don't care, because I'm getting gorgeously thin.
If the radishes hold out I'll invade Central America and Panama. I've one eye on Valparaiso already. I know it sounds wild, but it means a future and a fortune for Featherlooms. I find I don't even have to talk skirts. They're self-sellers. But I have to talk honesty and packing.
How did you hit it off with Ella Sweeney? Haven't seen a sign of Fat Ed Meyers. I'm getting nervous. Do you think he may have exploded at the equator?
EMMA.
But kind fortune saw fit to add a last sweet drop to Emma McChesney's already brimming cup. As she reached the docks on the day of her departure, clad in cool, crisp white from hat to shoes, her quick eye spied a red-faced, rotund, familiar figure disembarking from the New York boat, just arrived. The fates, grinning, had planned this moment like a stage-manager. Fat Ed Meyers came heavily down the gangplank. His hat was off. He was mopping the top of his head with a large, damp handkerchief. His gaze swept over the busy landing-docks, darted hither and thither, alighted on Emma McChesney with a shock, and rested there. A distinct little shock went through that lady, too. But she waited at the foot of her boat's gangway until the unbelievably nimble Meyers reached her.
He was a fiery spectacle. His cheeks were distended, his eyes protuberant. He wasted no words. They understood each other, those two.
"Coming or going?"
"Going," replied Emma McChesney.
"Clean up this—this Bonez Areez, too?"
"Absolutely."
"Did, huh?"
Meyers stood a moment panting, his little eyes glaring into her calm ones.
"Well, I beat you in Bahia, anyway." he boasted.
Emma McChesney snapped her fingers blithely.
"Bah, for Bahia!" She took a step or two up the gangplank, and turned. "Good-by, Ed. And good luck. I can recommend the radishes, but pass up the beef. Dangerous."
Fat Ed Meyers, still staring, began to stutter unintelligibly, his lips moving while no words came. Emma McChesney held up a warning hand.
"Don't do that, Ed! Not in this climate! A man of your build, too! I'm surprised. Consider the feelings of your firm!"
Fat Ed Meyers glared up at the white-clad, smiling, gracious figure. His hands unclenched. The words came.
"Oh, if only you were a man for just ten minutes!" he moaned.
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