He stared.  “Handle the business?  You heard what I said, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I heard,” she said, wearily, and she went on with her orange.

He did not say anything further, but the next morning a telephone message put to rout his resolve to return Hilmer’s insurance forms in person.

“I’ve got to go up Market Street to see a man about some workmen’s compensation,” he explained to Helen.  “You’d better put on your hat and take those things to Hilmer yourself.”

She did not answer...

He returned at three o’clock.  Helen was very busy pounding away at the typewriter.

“Well, what’s all the rush?” he asked.

“I’m getting out the forms on Hilmer’s shipping plant,” she returned, nonchalantly.

“What do you mean?...  Didn’t you...”

“No ... he’s decided to let us handle the business.”

“Why ... on what grounds?”

She waved a bit of carbon paper in the air.  “How should I know?  I didn’t ask him!”

Her contemptuous indifference irritated him.  “You ought to have waited until I got back...  You’ve probably got everything mixed up...  It takes experience to map out a big schedule like that.”

“Hilmer showed me what to do,” she retorted, calmly.

“Then he’s been over here?”

“Yes ... all morning.”

He narrowed his eyes.  She went on with her typewriting.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” escaped him.

His wife replied with a tripping laugh.

At that moment Brauer came in.  “I hear you’ve got the Hilmer line,” he broke out, excitedly.  “They say Kendrick is wild...  How much did you have to split?”

“Nothing,” Starratt said, coldly.

“Nothing?” Brauer’s gaze swept from Starratt to Helen and back again.  “How did you land it, then?”

Helen stood up, thrusting a pencil into her hair.

“I landed it, Mr. Brauer,” she said, sweetly, tossing her husband a commiserating smile.

Brauer’s thin lips parted unpleasantly.  “I told you at the start,
Starratt, that a good stenographer would work wonders.”

Fred forced a sickly laugh.  He wished that Helen Starratt had stayed at home where she belonged.

It had been a long time since the insurance world on California Street had been given such a chance for gossip as the shifting of the Hilmer insurance provided.  Naturally, business changes took place every day, but it was unusual to have such a rank beginner at the brokerage game put over so neat a trick.  Speculation was rife.  Some said that Hilmer was backing the entire Starratt venture, that he, in fact, was Starratt & Co., with Fred merely a salaried man, allowing his name to be used.  Others conceded a partnership arrangement.  But Kendrick announced in a loud tone up and down the street: 

“Partnership nothing!  I know Hilmer.  He’s got too many irons in the fire now.  He wouldn’t be annoyed with the insurance game.  This fellow Starratt is rebating—­that’s what he is!”