had worked up to the
position of assistant chief clerk. Three years later the drinking
water of the New Jersey suburb where he resided terminated the earthly
career of the chief clerk, and Bartels became chief clerk, managing the
department as nearly as was humanly possible without speech of any
kind. And when, twenty years from the time the Guardian saw him first,
Otto Bartels found himself authorized to write Secretary after his
flowing signature, it was an appointment inevitable. He had simply
pushed his way out of the crowd by grace of his unremitting
thoroughness, his industry, which was really not especially creditable,
as nothing but work ever occurred to him, and a gratifying inability to
make errors of detail. He knew the name of every agent on the
company's list, when each one was expected to pay his balances, and how
much in premiums each annually reported. He never wrote letters, for
it was impossible for him to dictate to a stenographer; he rarely took
a vacation, for he had nowhere to go and nothing to do outside the
office; he never engaged in discernible social intercourse of any sort,
for he had never known how to begin. Such was the methodical man who
so efficiently kept the books and records of the Guardian. He knew and
cared nothing about underwriting, regarding the insurance operations of
the company as a possibly important but purely secondary consideration.
In Mr. Bartels's opinion the company's records were the company.

The underwriting department of the Guardian occupied, with the
officers' quarters, the upper two floors of the rather narrow building.
On the top floor were the East and the South, under the immediate
supervision of Smith, the General Agent, and the offices of Mr.
Wintermuth, Mr. O'Connor, and Mr. Bartels. The President occupied the
southeast corner and the two others the northeast end, while Smith's
desk was out in the open office, with the maps and files and survey
cases and his subordinates under his eye.

On the floor below Assistant-Secretary Wagstaff held forth; he was in
charge of the Western Department, which comprised the states from Ohio,
Kentucky, and Tennessee westward to the coast. Mr. Wagstaff was a
competent, careful, unimaginative, unambitious man who did his work
from day to day. He enters this story virtually not at all; be it
enough to say that he had a red mustache and a bald, bright head and
wore shoes with cloth tops. He took good care of his ter