MR. EUSTACE VEAL was a manufacturer of cuspidors. His beautiful factory was one of the finest of its kind, equipped with complete automatic sprinklers, wire-glass windows, cafeteria on the top floor, pensions for superannuated employees, rosewood directors' dining room, mottoes from Orison Swett Marden on the weekly pay envelopes, and a clever young man in tortoise-shell spectacles hired at eighty dollars a week to write the house-organ (which was called El Cuspidorado). Mr. Veal lived in the exclusive and clean-shaven suburb of Mandrake Park, where he had built a stucco mansion with Venetian blinds, a croquet lawn with a revolving spray on it on hot days, and a mansard butler. Here Mrs. Veal and the two Veal girls, Dora and Petunia, led the blameless life of the embonpoint classes. The electric lights in the bedrooms were turned on promptly at ten o'clock every night, except on the sixteen winter evenings when the Veals occupied their box at the opera. During “Rigoletto” or “Pagliacci” the uncomplaining Mr. Veal would sit in silence with his head against the thick red velvet curtain at the back of the box, thinking up new ways to get an order for ten thousand nickel-plated seamless number 13's from the Pullman Company.
Mr. Veal, hampered as he was by the restrictions of success, was still full of the enjoyment of life. He had written a little brochure on “The Cuspidor: Its Use and Abuse Since the Times of the Pharaohs,” which was very well spoken of in the trade. A morocco-bound copy lay on the console table in Mrs. Veal's salon. It was he who invented the papier-maché spittoon, and the collapsible paper “companion” for travelling salesmen. It was he who had presented a solid silver spittoon de luxe to the King of Siam when that worthy visited the United States. And it was his idea, too, to name the beautiful shining brass model, especially recommended for hotel lobbies, El Cuspidorado. This was a stroke of imaginative genius, and several rival manufacturers wept because they had not thought of it first.
The spittoon magnate's habits were regular and sane. He rose by alarm clock at seven. He bathed, shaved, brushed his teeth with the vertical motion recommended by the toothbrush advertisers, breakfasted on cereal and cream and poached eggs, with one cup of strong coffee; walked leisurely to the station, bought a paper, and caught the 8.13 train. He avoided the other men who wanted him to sit with them, took the fifth chair on the left-hand side of the smoking car, and just as the train started he lit his first cigar. His commutation ticket was always ready for the conductor to punch. He never kept others waiting, just as he hated to be kept waiting himself. After his ticket had been punched and put back into an alligator-hide pocketbook, he opened the paper and studied it faithfully until the train got to the terminal.
At the factory Mr. Veal's routine was equally well-ordered and uniform. At nine o'clock he reached his private office, greeted his secretary, and ran over the morning mail, which had been opened and lay on his desk. Then he went through his dictation, which was carefully (even if not grammatically) accomplished. The sales reports for the preceding day were brought to him. Then he discussed any matters requiring attention with his department heads, calling them in one by one. At a quarter after twelve he walked up to the Manufacturers' Club for lunch, after which he played one game of pool.
He was back at the office by half-past two, and gave his passionate and devoted attention to the salivary needs of the nation until five o'clock. He caught the 5.23 train back to Mandrake Park, sitting on the right-hand side of the smoker where the setting sun would not dazzle on his newspaper.
But one day, about the time of the March equinox, when young ladies put furry pussywillows on their typewriter desks, and bank tellers crack the shells of spring jokes through the brass railings, Mr. Veal's behaviour was so peculiar as to cause anxiety among his associates.
He had ridden on the train as usual, without showing any abnormal symptoms. But when he was next observed, walking down Vincent Street, there was a red spot on his cheekbones and his expression was savage. He entered a haberdasher's shop and asked to see some neckties. When the clerk put out a tray of silk scarves in rich, sober colours, such as are commonly worn by successful and middle-aged merchants, Mr. Veal swore and dashed them aside.
“Good Lord!” he cried, “I'm not going to a funeral! Things like that are worn by Civil War veterans. What do you think I am, seventy years old? Give me something with some snap to it!”
And he chose a lemon-tinted cravat with vorticist patterns of brown and purple. He tore off the dark gray tie he had on and substituted the gaudy new one.
At the next corner he passed a shoe-shop. He hesitated a moment at the plate-glass window, then he entered and glared at the brisk young puppet who came forward with a smirk. He displayed his elastic-sided boots of the floorwalker type (which he had worn for years on account of his corns) and asked to have them removed. When they were off his feet he threw them to the other end of the long, narrow room. “I want some russet shoes with cloth tops,” he said. “And some silk socks to match, the kind the men wear in the magazine ads.”
When he left the shop, his feet might have been taken for those of Charley Chaplin, or of an assistant advertising manager of a department store.
 
 
 
 
Mr. Veal reached his office nearly two hours late, and one of his office boys was instantly discharged for asking him whom he wanted to see. Indeed, in a new suit of violent black-and-white checks, and with a crush hat of velvety substance, he was almost unrecognizable. As he passed through the filing department a hush fell over the young ladies there. His secretary, looking nervously from her corner outside the private office, felt a tingling scherzo run up and down the keyboard of her spine. Never before had she seen Mr. Veal wear flowers in his buttonhole, and as he swung the door of his office behind him, she sniffed the vibrating air. In the rich wake of cigar-fragrance always exhaled by her employer her sharp nostrils detected a new tang—the sweet scent of mignonette. Heavens! Was Mr. Veal using perfume?
Miss Stafford was an acute young woman. She had long been waiting the adroit moment to push her employer for a raise, whic............