Emma McChesney and Co Part 3

"Will you let me bring her in to meet you, just to prove my point?"

"She must be as charming as you are." His Argentine betting proclivities rose. "Here; we shall make a wager!" He took a card from his pocket, scribbled on it, handed it to Emma McChesney. "You will please present that to my secretary, who will conduct you immediately to my office. We will pretend it is a friendly call. Your friend need not know. If I lose----"

"If you lose, you must promise to let her show you her sample line."

"But, dear madam, I do no buying."

"Then you must introduce her favorably to the department buyer of her sort of goods."

"But if I win?" persisted Senor Pages.

"If she isn't as charming as--as you say I am, you may make your own terms."

Senor Pages' fine eyes opened wide.

It was on the fourteenth day of their trip that they came into quaint Bahia. The stay there was short. Brazilian business methods are long. Emma McChesney took no chances with sample-trunks or cases. She packed her three leading samples into her own personal suitcase, eluded the other tourists, secured an interpreter, and prepared to brave Bahia. She returned just in time to catch the boat, flushed, tired, and orderless. Bahia would have none of her.

In three days they would reach Rio de Janeiro, the magnificent. They would have three days there. She told herself that Bahia didn't count, anyway--sleepy little half-breed town! But the arrow rankled. It had been the first to penetrate the armor of her business success. But she had learned things from that experience at Bahia. She had learned that the South American dislikes the North American because his Northern cousin patronizes him. She learned that the North American business firm is thought by the Southern business man to be tricky and dishonest, and that, because the Northerner has not learned how to pack a case of goods scientifically, as have the English, Germans, and French, the South American rages to pay cubic-feet rates on boxes that are three-quarters empty.

So it was with a heavy heart but a knowing head that she faced Rio de Janeiro. They had entered in the evening, the sunset splas.h.i.+ng the bay and the hills in the foreground and the Sugar-loaf Mountain with an unbelievable riot of crimson and gold and orange and blue. Suddenly the sun jerked down, as though pulled by a string, and the magic purple night came up as though pulled by another.

"Well, anyway, I've seen that," breathed Emma McChesney thankfully.

Next morning, she packed her three samples, as before, her heart heavy, her mind on Fat Ed Meyers coming up two weeks behind her. Three days in Rio! And already she had b.u.mped her impatient, quick-thinking, quick-acting North American business head up against the stone wall of South American leisureliness and prejudice. She meant no irreverence, no impiety as she prayed, meanwhile packing Nos. 79, 65, and 48 into her personal bag:

"O Lord, let Fat Ed Meyers have Bahia; but please, please help me to land Rio and Buenos Aires!"

Then, in smart tailored suit and hat, interpreter in tow, a prayer in her heart, and excitement blazing in cheeks and eyes, she made her way to the dock, through the customs, into a cab that was to take her to her arena, the broad Avenida.

Exactly two hours later, there dashed into the customs-house a well-dressed woman whose hat was very much over one ear. She was running as only a woman runs when she's made up her mind to get there.

She came hot-foot, helter-skelter, regardless of modishly crippling skirt, past officers, past customs officials, into the section where stood the one small sample-trunk that she had ordered down in case of emergency. The trunk had not gone through the customs. It had not even been opened. But Emma McChesney heeded not trifles like that.

Rio de Janeiro had fallen for Featherlooms. Those three samples, Nos.

79, 65, and 48, that boasted style, cut, and workmans.h.i.+p never before seen in Rio, had turned the trick. They were as a taste of blood to a hungry lion. Rio wanted more!

Emma McChesney was kneeling before her trunk, had whipped out her key, unlocked it, and was swiftly selecting the numbers wanted from the trays, her breath coming quickly, her deft fingers choosing unerringly, when an indignant voice said, in Portuguese, "It is forbidden!"

Emma McChesney did not glance around. Her head was buried in the depths of the trunk. But her quick ears had caught the word, "PROHIBA!"

"Speak English," she said, and went on unpacking.

"INGLES!" shouted the official. "No!" Then, with a superhuman effort, as Emma McChesney stood up, her arms laden with Featherloom samples of rainbow hues, "PARE! Ar-r-r-rest!"

Mrs. McChesney slammed down the trunk top, locked it, clutched her samples firmly, and faced the enraged official.

"Go 'way! I haven't time to be arrested this morning. This is my busy day. Call around this evening."

Whereupon she fled to her waiting cab, leaving behind her a Brazilian official stunned and raging by turns.

When she returned, happy, triumphant, order-laden, he was standing there, stunned no longer but raging still. Emma McChesney had forgotten all about him. The gold-braided official advanced, mustachios bristling. A volley of Portuguese burst from his long-pent lips. Emma McChesney glanced behind her. Her interpreter threw up helpless hands, replying with a still more terrifying burst of vowels.

Bewildered, a little frightened, Mrs. McChesney stood helplessly by.

The official laid a none too gentle hand on her shoulder. A little group of lesser officials stood, comic-opera fas.h.i.+on, in the background. And then Emma McChesney's New York training came to her aid. She ignored the voluble interpreter. She remained coolly unruffled by the fusillade of Portuguese. Quietly she opened her hand bag and plunged her fingers deep, deep therein. Her blue eyes gazed confidingly up into the Brazilian's snapping black ones, and as she withdrew her hand from the depths of her purse, there pa.s.sed from her white fingers to his brown ones that which is the Esperanto of the nations, the universal language understood from Broadway to Brazil.

The hand on her shoulder relaxed and fell away.

On deck once more, she encountered the suave Senor Pages. He stood at the rail surveying Rio's sh.o.r.es with that lip-curling contempt of the Argentine for everything Brazilian. He regarded Emma McChesney's radiant face.

"You are pleased with this--this Indian Rio?"

Mrs. McChesney paused to gaze with him at the receding sh.o.r.es.

"Like it! I'm afraid I haven't seen it. From here it looks like Coney. But it buys like Seattle. Like it! Well, I should say I do!"

"Ah, senora," exclaimed Pages, distressed, "wait! In six days you will behold Buenos Aires. Your New York, Londres, Paris--bah! You shall drive with my wife and daughter through Palermo. You shall see jewels, motors, toilettes as never before. And you will visit my establishment?" He raised an emphatic forefinger. "But surely!"

Emma McChesney regarded him solemnly.

"I promise to do that. You may rely on me."

Six days later they swept up the muddy and majestic Plata, whose color should have won it the name of River of Gold instead of River of Silver. From the boat's upper deck, Emma McChesney beheld a sky line which was so like the sky line of her own New York that it gave her a shock. She was due for still another shock when, an hour later, she found herself in a maelstrom of motors, cabs, street cars, newsboys, skysc.r.a.pers, pedestrians, policemen, subway stations. Where was the South American languor? Where the Argentine inertia? The rush and roar of it, the bustle and the bang of it made the twenty-three-day voyage seem a myth.

"I'm going to shut my eyes," she told herself, "and then open them quickly. If that little brown traffic-policeman turns out to be a big, red-faced traffic-policeman, then I'm right, and this IS Broadway and Forty-second."

Shock number three came upon her entrance at the Grande Hotel. It had been Emma McChesney's boast that her ten years on the road had familiarized her with every type, grade, style, shape, cut, and mold of hotel clerk. She knew him from the Knickerbocker to the Eagle House at Waterloo, Iowa. At the moment she entered the Grande Hotel, she knew she had overlooked one. Accustomed though she was to the sartorial splendors of the man behind the desk, she might easily have mistaken this one for the president of the republic. In his glittering uniform, he looked a pa.s.s between the supreme chancellor of the K.P.'s in full regalia and a prince of India during the Durbar. He was regal. He was overwhelming. He would have made the most splendid specimen of North American hotel clerk look like a scullery boy. Mrs. McChesney spent two whole days in Buenos Aires before she discovered that she could paralyze this personage with a peso. A peso is forty-three cents.

Her experience at Bahia and at Rio de Janeiro had taught her things.

So for two days, haunted, as she was, by visions of Fat Ed Meyers coming up close behind her, she possessed her soul in patience and waited. On the great firm of Pages y Hernandez rested the success of this expedition. When she thought of her little trick on Senor Pages, her blithe spirits sank. Suppose, after all, that this powerful South American should resent her little Yankee joke!

Her trunks went through the customs. She secured an interpreter. She arranged her samples with loving care. Style, cut, workmans.h.i.+p--she ran over their strong points in her mind. She looked at them as a mother's eyes rest fondly on the s.h.i.+ning faces, the well-brushed hair, the clean pinafores of her brood. And her heart swelled with pride.

They lay on their tables, the artful knickerbockers, the gleaming petticoats, the pink and blue pajamas, the bifurcated skirts. Emma McChesney ran one hand lightly over the navy blue satin folds of a sample.

"Pages or no Pages, you're a credit to your mother," she said, whimsically.

Up in her room once more, she selected her smartest tailor costume, her most modish hat, the freshest of gloves and blouses.

She chose the hours between four and six, when wheel traffic was suspended in the Calle Florida and throughout the shopping-district, the narrow streets of which are congested to the point of suffocation at other times.

As she swung down the street they turned to gaze after her--these Argentines. The fat senoras turned, and the smartly costumed, sallow senoritas, and the men--all of them. They spoke to her, these last, but she had expected that, and marched on with her free, swinging stride, her chin high, her color very bright. Into the great shop of Pages y Hernandez at last, up to the private offices, her breath coming a little quickly, into the presence of the s.h.i.+ny secretary--s.h.i.+ny teeth, s.h.i.+ny hair, s.h.i.+ny skin, s.h.i.+ny nails. He gazed upon Emma McChesney, the s.h.i.+ne gleaming brighter. He took in his slim, brown fingers the card on which Senor Pages had scribbled that day on board s.h.i.+p. The s.h.i.+ne became dazzling. He bowed low and backed his way into the office of Senor Pages.

A successful man is most impressive when in those surroundings which have been built up by his success. On s.h.i.+pboard, Senor Pages had been a genial, charming, distinguished fellow pa.s.senger. In his luxurious business office he still was genial, charming, but his environment seemed to lend him a certain austerity.

"Senora McChesney!"

("How awful that sounds!" Emma McChesney told herself.)

"We spoke of you but last night. And now you come to win the wager, yes?" He smiled, but shook his head.

"Yes," replied Emma McChesney. And tried to smile, too.

Senor Pages waved a hand toward the outer office.