Day-clerk. Assistant cashier. Cashier. A sudden switch to another department, and chief storekeeper, then assistant restaurant and banquet manager, then restaurant and banquet manager--a sort of industrialized maître d'hôtel, with the rank of assistant manager. During this time, after hours, two years of evening school in the New York University School of Commerce, really learning accountancy. A journey to inspect all the Elphinstone hotels and restaurants, and the devising, then, and installation of their first scientific food-cost-system.
It increased food-profits in various units of the chain from five to thirty per cent. Napoleon was pleased, and called in Myron one March day in 1911, when Myron was thirty-one.
The office was unchanged, and the two men seemed to each other, since they had been together almost daily, unchanged in the six years since Myron had first faced the old boar at the Westward. But Elphinstone was grey-faced, and puffed whenever he moved, while Myron's thinner hair had a sleekness, his clothes had an ease, his forehead had lines of worry, that had been unknown in the rustic and earnest young man who had come to New York from Tippecanoe and Florida.
'You've done pretty well, Myron,' said Elphinstone. 'Other hotels are copying our food-costs dope. Well. So it goes. You are now in a new job.'
'Yes. 'Bus-boy again?'
'It wouldn't hurt you a bit! Not a bit! Like all my young men, you feel you could run the whole shebang now. Run the whole show. Well, maybe you could. Wish to God you would! I'm tired! I'm sixty-two. Forty-five years I've been in the hotel business. I suppose I've helped to make beds and furnish chow for maybe three hundred thousand different folks. And all I've got out of it is confirmation of my suspicion that all my waiters drink the heeltaps of cocktails when they remove 'em, and all my accountants think I'm an old fogey who can't add a column of figures--which is perfectly correct. But that isn't what I called you in to talk about, my boy. Your new job is chief purchasing-agent for the whole chain. I'll expect you to put in new systems. Fire any steward or housekeeper or chief engineer that doesn't toe the line about buying. Cut the costs, my boy, cut the costs, cut the horrid costs. Good morning. I'll dictate a memo about your duties, and authorization for you to disturb everybody that is singing at his work and just raise hell with him, raise hell, yes, lots of hell, good morning?'
Myron's chief worry, just now, aside from feeling more fagged than was normal, was that the better his food-cost-systems were, the more he made an enemy of Carlos Jaynes.
Carlos Jaynes had been the restaurant and banquet manager of the Westward, and was now the head of the Pan Dandy chain of Elphinstone restaurants. He was a cold, driving, handsome, disagreeable, uncomfortably competent man of thirty-five; one of the few college graduates, as yet, in the Elphinstone organization, and as ambitious as Queen Elizabeth, whom he resembled in everything save red hair and sex. He had criticized Myron's systems sharply and usefully. At first, Myron, the friendly, had been dismayed by the evident hatred of Carlos Jaynes; then it gave lively drama to his work to be not merely a serenely grinding machine but a human being in the midst of a feud, as the Elphinstone employees gathered behind Myron or Jaynes, and all of them looked to Mark Elphinstone and his royal power of life or death.
Myron was tired.
He was none the less tired in that, during this week when he was struggling to co-ordinate all his notions for the re-organization of purchasing, he had to get Ora out of trouble again.
Ora had, after the literary success but financial failure of Black Slumber and after a little ghostwriting and a little fiction-writing and the production of a Guide to Canada, which had cost him two whole weeks of travel, two more of research in the library, and three weeks of actual writing, been made editor of a fiction magazine named Cherry Pie, and had recently been discharged from the same for buying stories from himself under six other names. He went on a bender which was the talk of all Sixth Avenue, and Myron bought him out of jail, got him sobered and bathed and re-shaved, lent him another hundred, listened to his jeers--Ora aptly mentioned Horatio M. Alger--and found him a job with a theatrical press agent.
But dealing with Ora was picturesque compared with going on working. Myron believed that he was ripening for the 'flu, and in that irritable, feeble state, he recalled, rather surprised, that not in all his life since he was seven--over twenty-four years now--had he had a leisurely vacation.
Oh yes, he did like his profession; he did take pride in mastering it, in being one of the few hotel-men who were by new methods actually transforming it. But there had been so many details, so many years. Every new guest who arrived at any of the Elphinstone hotels on any new day was a new problem and there were so many hotels, so many guests, so many days, so many years, so many details . . .
He was cheered when Elphinstone's secretary whispered that he had a notion that the Old Man was, in his secretive mind, contemplating the raising of Myron to the position of vice-president of the whole chain, with a gambling chance that in another ten or twelve years he might actually be Elphinstone's successor, if Carlos Jaynes did not get in ahead of him.
That did excite him. And he told himself firmly that he was going on being excited. But it was not easy as he struggled with 'Standard of Towelling Specifications: test of weight per square yard, percentage of sizing, breaking strength, warp and filling, threads per inch, fibre', or 'Key Tag Specifications: size, weight, composition, mailability, legibility, remarks'.
So many details, so many years, in the warmed-over air of stale hotel offices and lobbies and halls and kitchens.
Mr. Jewett, this lady has left a pocket-book in the Palm Court and I want you . . .
I'm very sorry, sir; I would like to cash your cheque, but we have a rule that we must have identification before . . .
I want you to try out both sweet butter and salt butter on the same group of tables, and give me a detailed report on how . . .
If the room-service tables tend to rip the carpet seams, it would be economy to mount them on wheels not less than six inches in diameter . . .
(This must be the 'flu. His head ached so.)
Experience has not shown that cafeterias require fewer employees than lunch-rooms and the wasted space behind the bar-room would make . . .
Mr. Exington, I have been very patient, but if you don't have that woman out of your room in ten minutes, I'll come up with the house officer myself and . . .
Dear Madame, in reply to your much valued communication of the sixteenth inst., would say that we shall be very glad to reserve accommodations with bath--without bath--at our lowest rate--at a special rate--with bath--with southern exposure--near fire-escape--away from elevators--with private bath--at our lowest rate--glad to reserve, delighted to reserve, enchanted to reserve, beatified to reserve--you are the only customer who has ever wanted lower rates--we love to make lower rates--we prize your custom--with bath--without bath--at lowest rates . . .
Why no, Mr. Bobbable, I don't think I've ever heard that one before; it certainly is a mighty clever story; why no, indeed--our theatre-ticket office is closed for the night, but I'd be delighted to telephone myself and make reservations for seats--two in the orchestra?--with bath?--without bath?--all the seats have baths, six hundred and fifty seats, six hundred and fifty baths, unexampled cuisine, a bath and a half for a dollar and a half . . .
Yes, indeed, Mrs. Javelain, I'll speak to the engineer about your radiator clanking; I'm terribly sorry you were disturbed, and I do hope it won't occur . . .
At our very best rates. With bath, oh yes indeed, Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, Mr. Smith, Jun., the very best we can do . . .