[adapted]

by
Richard Connell

“Pretty thirsty this morning, eh, Mr. Addicks?” asked Cowdin, the head buyer. The “Mister” was said with a long, hissing “s” and was clearly not meant to show respect.

Cowdin, as he talked, rested his two big hairy hands on Croly Addicks’ desk, and this let him lean forward and push the well-shaved part of his blue-black jaw to just a few inches from Croly Addicks’ face.

“Too bad, Mr. Addicks, too bad,” said Cowdin in a high, sharp voice. “Do you understand, Mr. Addicks, that every time you go up to the water cooler you waste fifteen seconds of the company’s time? I could use a stronger word than ‘waste,’ but I will not hurt your soft feelings. Do you think you can wait to drink until you eat your lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria, or shall I have a pipe with ice water put to your desk, Mr. Addicks?”

Croly Addicks pulled his round face as far away as he could from the thin face of the head buyer and said quietly, “Had smoked fish for breakfast.”

A couple of the secretaries laughed quietly. Croly’s ears turned red and his hands played nervously with his tie with blue and white dots. Cowdin looked at him with a mean look for half a second, then turned on his rubber heel and walked back to his big desk in the corner of the room.

Croly Addicks, inside full of hot anger, on the outside only upset and scared, shuffled among the piles of bills and forms on his desk, and tried very hard to focus on his job as assistant to the assistant buying agent of the Pierian Piano Company, a very big company spread out in many places that said proudly, with only a little exaggeration, “We bring music to a million homes.” He hated Cowdin at all times, and especially when he called him “Mr. Addicks.” That “Mister” hurt more than a slap on a sunburned shoulder. What made the hate almost too hard to bear was Croly’s realization that it was powerless.

“Gosh,” said the blond typist from the corner of her mouth, like prisoners do, “Old Grizzly is picking on the chinless wonder again. I don’t see how Croly stands it. I wouldn’t if I was him.”

“Aw, what do you expect of Chinless?” said the dark-haired typist with dislike as she made noise with the paper to hide that she was breaking the office rules against talking. “A man with a small chin was made to be picked on.”

At noon Croly went out to his lunch, not to the big hotel, as Cowdin had suggested, but to a crowded basement full of the loud noise of knives, forks, spoons, and dishes, and the smell and sizzle of frying liver. The name of this place was the Help Yourself Buffet. Its regular customers, mostly clerks like Croly, said “buffet” to rhyme with “rough it,” which was incorrect but right.

The place was, as its customers never got tired of telling one another as they tried with trained eye and hand to grab the biggest sandwiches, a diner where you paid what you thought was right. In fact, your conscience had a string tied to it by managers who did not trust people.

The system is simple. There are piles of food everywhere, with big price tags. The hungry customer takes and eats what he wants. He then passes down a walkway and tells, as well as he can in math and honesty, how much his meal has cost — usually, for reasons no one knows, forty-five cents. The report is made to a small robot boy, with a bored look and a loud, metallic voice. He hands the customer a ticket marked 45 and at the same time screams in a siren-like and surprised voice, “Fawty-fi’.”

Then the customer goes down the line and pays the cashier at the exit. The reason for the boy’s loud cry is to tell the watcher, who walks among the foods, a derby hat tilted over one eye and an uneaten sandwich in his hand, so that people who are not honest will not lie and say their total is forty-five when actually they have eaten ninety cents’ worth.

On this day, when Croly Addicks had finished his simple lunch, the checker was waiting near the exit. Several strong-looking young men passed him, and boldly said totals of twenty cents, when it was clear that men with their strength would not be happy with a lunch costing less than seventy-five; but the checker, seeing their thick necks and ready-to-fight look, let them pass. But when Croly came to the desk and said forty-five the checker stopped him at once. Experience had taught the checker the kind of man you can stop without fear of harsh words or angry blows.

“Excuse me a minute, friend,” said the watcher. “Haven’t you made a small mistake?”

“Me?” said Croly, his voice shaking. He was surprised and he looked guilty, as only an innocent person can look.

“Yes, you,” said the watcher, frowning at the unclear shape of Croly’s face.

“No,” Croly said quickly. “Forty-five’s correct.” He tried to move toward the cashier, but the guard’s big body blocked the way out.

“Aren’t you the guy I saw eating two pieces of strawberry shortcake with cream?” asked the watcher seriously.

Croly hoped that it was not easy to see that his upper lip was shaking; his hands went up to his spotted tie and played with it. He had paused over the strawberry shortcake, wanting it very much; but he had decided he didn’t have enough money for it.

“Didn’t have shortcake,” he said in a rough voice.

“Oh, no!” replied the watcher in a mean, joking way, turning to the circle of interested faces that had now gathered around. “I guess that white stuff on your upper lip isn’t whipped cream?”

“It’s milk,” said Croly. “All I had was milk and oatmeal crackers and apple pie. Honest.”

The spotter snorted with doubt.

“Some guy,” he said loudly, “ate two orders of strawberry shortcake and a hamburger steak, and it wasn’t me. So come on, young man, you owe the restaurant ninety cents, so stop arguing.”

“I — I — ” began Croly, speaking in a confused, angry way; but it was clear that the crowd believed him guilty of the dirty trick; so he was afraid of the spotter’s blaming look, and said, “Oh, well, have it your own way. You got me wrong, but I guess you have to pick on little guys to keep your job.” He handed over ninety cents to the cashier.

“You will never see my face in this place again,” Croly said angrily in a low voice, looking over his shoulder.

“That won’t make me start crying, Chinless,” called the spotter in a mean way.

Croly tripped up the steps, his eyes wet, his heart beating fast. Chinless! The old insult. The old curse. It burned his soul.

In a bad mood he looked for a bench in Madison Square, sat down with his back bent, and thought about his problem. To-day, he felt, was the most important day of his life; it was his 30th birthday.

His mind went back, as you’ve seen it done in the movies, to a scene the night before, where he had had a main part.

“Emily,” he said to the most beautiful girl in the world, “will you marry me?”

Clearly Emily Mackie had expected something like that, and like a modern business girl had thought about the question in a calm and clear way.

“Croly,” she said quietly, “I like you. You are a true friend. You are kind and honest and you work hard. But oh, Croly dear, we couldn’t live on twenty-two dollars and fifty cents a week; now could we?”

That was Croly’s pay now after eleven years with the Pierian Piano Company, and he had to agree that Emily was right; they could not live on that money.

“But, my dear Emily,” he said, “tomorrow they will choose a new assistant buyer, and I may get the job. It pays fifty a week.”

“But are you sure you’ll get it?”

His face looked sad.

“N-no,” he said, “but I should get it. I know the job about ten times better than any of the others, and I’ve been there longest.”

“You thought they would give you a better job last year, you know,” she told him again.

“And so they should have,” he said, turning red. “If not for old Grizzly Cowdin! He thinks I couldn’t do well because I don’t have one of those jaws that stick out like his.”

“He’s a very mean man!” shouted Emily. “You know more about the piano business than he does.”

“I think I do,” said Croly, “but he doesn’t. And he’s the boss.”

“Oh, Croly, if you’d only stand up for yourself — ”

“I guess I never learned how,” said Croly sadly.

As he sat there on the park bench, bothered by too much thinking about himself, he had to admit that he was not the fighting type, the eager kind who goes after things that Cowdin spoke of often and with praise. He knew his job; he could say that about himself honestly, for he had spent many nights studying it; some day, he told himself, they’d be surprised, the big bosses and all of them, to find out how much he did know about the piano business. But would they ever find out?

Nobody, thought Croly, ever listened when he talked. There was nothing about him that made people believe him. It had always been like that since his very first day in school when the boys had made fun of him and had noticed that he looked very much like a haddock, and had called out, “Chinless, Chinless, stop tryin’ to swallow your face.”

Around his lack of a chin his character had grown; no one had ever taken him seriously, so of course he found it hard to take himself seriously. It was sure to happen that his character would become as chinless as his face.

His training under the control of the bossy Cowdin had not helped to make his young shyness less. Cowdin, with a jaw that stuck out like a stone block, had bullied Croly for years. More than once Croly had wanted very much to hit that blue-black point of chin right on with his fist, and he had even practiced on a used punching bag for this. But always he lost his courage at the important moment.

He let his anger out by working very hard at the business of his company. It made him feel a little better to think that even the big-jawed president, Mr. Flagstead, probably did not understand the business as a whole better than he did, Croly Addicks, without a chin, assistant to the assistant purchasing agent. But — and he groaned out loud at the thought — his light was hidden by his lack of a chin.

Someone had left a wrinkled morning copy of an evening newspaper on the bench, and Croly looked at it without much interest. From out of the pages stared the strong, sharp face of a young man with a very big jaw. Feeling jealous, Croly read the words under the picture, “The fighting face of Kid McNulty, the Chelsea Bearcat, who boxes Leonard.” With a sigh Croly threw the paper away.

He looked up at the Metropolitan Tower clock and decided he had just enough time for a cool glass of soda. He reached the soda fountain just before three other thirsty men. It was only fair he should have been served first. But the clerk, a proud young man who acted like a grand duke, after one quick hard look at the place where Croly’s chin should have been, ignored the quiet words, “Pineapple phosphate, please,” and turned to serve the others. He asked them kindly enough, “What’s yours?” But when he came to Croly he gave him an annoyed look and asked sharply, “Well, speak up, can’t you?” The cool drink turned to bitter acid as Croly drank it.

He ran to his office, trying to hold on to a small hope that Cowdin, even though he had been in a bad mood that morning, had given him the promotion. He reached his desk a minute late.

Cowdin walked past and said in a friendly but mean way, harder to take than a bad word, “Well, Mr. Addicks, you took too long over your lobster and quail, didn’t you?”

Under his desk Croly’s fists were held tight. He made no reply. To-morrow, probably, he’d have an office of his own, and be almost free from Cowdin’s mean teasing. At this thought he bent almost cheerfully over his pile of work.

A girl hurried by and pinned up a small notice on the bulletin board. Croly’s heart went up to a spot just below his throat and stayed there, for the girl was Cowdin’s secretary, and Croly knew what message that notice had. He knew it was against the strict office rules to look at the board during working hours, but he thought of Emily, and what the message meant to him, and he stood up and quickly crossed the room and read the notice.