The Achievements of Luther Trant by Edwin Balmer

The first real blizzard of the winter had burst upon New York from the Atlantic. For seventy-two hours-as Rentland, file clerk in the Broadway offices of the American Commodities Company, saw from the record he was making for President Welter-no ship of any of the dozen expected from foreign ports had been able to make the Company's docks in Brooklyn, or, indeed, had been reported at Sandy Hook. And for the last five days, during which the weather bureau's storm signals had stayed steadily set, no steamer of the six which had finished unloading at the docks the week before had dared to try for the open sea except one, the _Elizabethan Age_, which had cleared the Narrows on Monday night.

On land the storm was scarcely less disastrous to the business of the great importing company. Since Tuesday morning Rentland's reports of the car and train-load consignments which had left the warehouses daily had been a monotonous page of trains stalled. But until that Friday morning, Welter-the big, bull-necked, thick-lipped master of men and money-had borne all the accumulated trouble of the week with serenity, almost with contempt. Only when the file clerk added to his report the minor item that the 3,000-ton steamer, _Elizabethan Age_, which had cleared on Monday night, had been driven into Boston, something suddenly seemed to "break" in the inner office. Rentland heard the president's secretary telephone to Brooklyn for Rowan, the dock superintendent; he heard Welter's heavy steps going to and fro in the private office, his hoarse voice raised angrily; and soon afterwards Rowan blustered in. Rentland could no longer overhear the voices. He went back to his own private office and called the station master at the Grand Central Station on the telephone.