“This fellow Graff you got working for you,
he leases me a house. I was in yesterday and
signs the lease, all O.K., and he was to get the owner’s
signature and mail me the lease last night. Well,
and he did. This morning I comes down to breakfast
and the girl says a fellow had come to the house right
after the early delivery and told her he wanted an
envelope that had been mailed by mistake, big long
envelope with ‘Babbitt-Thompson’ in the
corner of it. Sure enough, there it was, so she
lets him have it. And she describes the fellow
to me, and it was this Graff. So I ’phones
to him and he, the poor fool, he admits it! He
says after my lease was all signed he got a better
offer from another fellow and he wanted my lease back.
Now what you going to do about it?”
“Your name is—?”
“William Varney—W. K. Varney.”
“Oh, yes. That was the Garrison house.”
Babbitt sounded the buzzer. When Miss McGoun
came in, he demanded, “Graff gone out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Will you look through his desk and see if there
is a lease made out to Mr. Varney on the Garrison
house?” To Varney: “Can’t tell
you how sorry I am this happened. Needless to
say, I’ll fire Graff the minute he comes in.
And of course your lease stands. But there’s
one other thing I’d like to do. I’ll
tell the owner not to pay us the commission but apply
it to your rent. No! Straight! I want
to. To be frank, this thing shakes me up bad.
I suppose I’ve always been a Practical Business
Man. Probably I’ve told one or two fairy
stories in my time, when the occasion called for it—you
know: sometimes you have to lay things on thick,
to impress boneheads. But this is the first time
I’ve ever had to accuse one of my own employees
of anything more dishonest than pinching a few stamps.
Honest, it would hurt me if we profited by it.
So you’ll let me hand you the commission?
Good!”
He walked through the February city, where trucks
flung up a spattering of slush and the sky was dark
above dark brick cornices. He came back miserable.
He, who respected the law, had broken it by concealing
the Federal crime of interception of the mails.
But he could not see Graff go to jail and his wife
suffer. Worse, he had to discharge Graff and
this was a part of office routine which he feared.
He liked people so much, he so much wanted them to
like him that he could not bear insulting them.
Miss McGoun dashed in to whisper, with the excitement
of an approaching scene, “He’s here!”
“Mr. Graff? Ask him to come in.”
He tried to make himself heavy and calm in his chair,
and to keep his eyes expressionless. Graff stalked
in—a man of thirty-five, dapper, eye-glassed,
with a foppish mustache.
“Want me?” said Graff.
“Yes. Sit down.”
