CHAPTERIV
Mr. petre, settled in that country inn, felt for the first time in those days a relief from tension. He began to realize how intolerable that tension had been, and a plan vaguely formed itself in his mind to bury himself altogether; perhaps even to go off abroad, take another name, and be free of worries which were growing intolerable, and of a problem that could not be solved. It was even a comfort to him to believe, as he had come to believe, that he could never recover himself, his name, or his past. Some deeply-rooted but no longer conscious habit of mind made him take for granted that his livelihood would necessarily be provided. It was well for him that he had not to put that illusion to the test!
He enjoyed a deep night’s rest, and by the next morning had already determined to look up a train for Southampton and the hours of the boats, when the morning paper, which waited upon his table, turned his mind suddenly into another channel. For on the last page, where he had casually opened it, he saw a violent headline: “Blazing Touaregs,” and read the astonishing series of prices soaring up, in the course of the day before, the morrow of his leaving town: 2⅝-⅞, 3, 3½, 3, 3⅛, 3, 3¼, 3¾, 3½. He read the comment of the City Editor—the comment of a man ignorant, puzzled, and pretending in his style omniscience. Some one had got early news of a new French surrender; a new pocket of the deposits had been found—it was said. It was better to await confirmation. The sudden rise seemed hardly justified—and so on. The City Editor was groping. Yet what had happened was simple enough. First had come a few little heaves. Every one in that luncheon-room—except the banker—had given their orders. Even the kind old Cabinet Minister, who, driving away with his niece, the banker’s wife, had with difficulty grasped what was toward, was dragged in. For that excellent woman had bawled at him as they spun away from Mrs. Cyril’s door, “Uncle Tom, buy Touaregs!”—and Uncle Tom, with his gentle, futile smile had said, “Eh, what?” The lady had repeated in a scream, “Buy Touaregs!” and the word “buy” had penetrated the passage of that senile ear. A younger gleam had illumined the statesman’s eye; he had said almost briskly, “Eh, what? Buy what?” His niece sinking back pettishly on the cushion had muttered, “Silly old ass!” Then, remembering a common interest, she had braced herself to a supreme effort and roared, “TOUAREGS!” and seeing ineptitude spreading once more over her uncle’s finely inherited features, had taken a little gold pencil and a diary from her bag, had scribbled in shaky letters to the bumping of the machine, “TOUAREGS”—torn off the page, and thrust it into his hand. He nodded. At last he understood. And she dropped him at his door just in time to get the order through.
Charlie Terrard had done better. Better than the banker’s wife, better than the kindly old Cabinet Minister, better than the two ex-Lord Chancellors, better than Mrs. Cyril herself; better even than Marjorie Kayle; better, far better, than the solid banker himself, who as he trudged manfully back to his office had turned the thing over in his mind and had determined with sound business sense that when a man like John K. Petre said publicly that he was buying it meant quite certainly that he was unloading. Therefore had that banker shrewdly refrained from touching the affair and thereby missed a pile.
The stock, still sticking, had taken its first lift in that last hour of Wednesday, and next morning the public came tumbling in. Touaregs went soaring up at once like a happy soul released from the bonds of flesh. They grew strong and winged, they stormed heaven. The week-end passed in a fever. With the first bids of Monday they were shooting out of sight. Four and one-eighth to one-fourth at the opening, four and one-half, four and three-fourths—my word,Five! Five and aquarter? Six ... could they have touched Six? Yes,—and passed it.
Charlie Terrard before that Monday’s business closed was alarmed. They got quite out of hand; at any moment there might be trouble. He blamed himself for not selling; but the fever had touched even him, and he waited another night. With Tuesday the curve was still slightly on the rise, though now and then wobbly. Rather late, on a falling market, Charlie Terrard sold. What he himself made I have never discovered; it was very pretty. But for Mr. John K. Petre’s account there was a clear profit of £73,729, 16s. 3d. Then came the very full reaction, with which these pages have nothing to do; and in many a lonely parsonage, in many a quiet country cottage of the purest Drury Lane, gentlemen and ladies who had bought at anything between 5 and 6¼ were hastening to cut losses in time—and by their eagerness and multitude hastening those losses—as Touaregs dropped down again to something near their true, their original, their humbler level.
Away down in Hampshire Mr. Petre watched those figures with a vague, imperfect comprehension of their meaning; but he had at least a general impression that he was safe. Of when settling day might be, of what settling day might mean, he knew nothing; but he saw that something had happened which—unless Terrard was hopeless—made him secure. His first wild thought of flight left him altogether. He determined to return; and only when he had made that determination did it occur to him that if he had fled he would have come in a very few weeks to the end of his tether.
He made no haste to get back to London, though the hotel was again his goal. The freedom from haunting terrors of publicity and pursuit was grateful. He stopped at one place and another, drinking in the spring. And when he got back to the Splendide he was refreshed and strengthened to meet whatever might be awaiting him, though his nervousness returned as he got back into his room and looked for his correspondence.
There was only one letter, in the business envelope of Blake and Blake, upon his table; and within it a very few formal lines, and a check for £73,729, 16s. 3d.
The importance of any sum of money differs with the habits of the recipient. It is possible that Mr. Petre in the full knowledge of what and who he was would have found that sum sufficient, but nothing overwhelming. It is possible that it might have seemed to him an incredible fortune. If he were what all indications made him out to be, it was but one fairly successful minor transaction. If he were what a very vague, very confused, but permanent profound sense warned him that he was, it was a miracle, changing all his prospects.
But neither the one attitude nor the other was that of Mr. Petre as he spread out the check before him and stared rather stupidly at the figures. His preoccupation was not with the magnitude of the sum, nor with its comparative insignificance. His preoccupation was with a much simpler question—of what he should do with that little bit of pink paper. He knew, just as he knew the Strand, and the map of England, and Bradshaw and the rest of it—though he did not know himself—that there were such things as banks and banking accounts, and that pieces of paper of this kind went through that machine. But he stood like a child in the matter of how to begin.
Here again the simplest course would have been to have looked up Terrard in the book, met him and consulted him. But that would have been to give himself away, and to open that series of questions the starting of which he had come to dread as a man dreads an operation. He did what all men do when they are quite at a loss. He plunged. He put that check into an hotel envelope, put the envelope in his pocket, walked aimlessly through half a dozen turnings, and entered the doors of the first bank he saw. It was a branch, neither small nor great, doing business briskly in a quarter of large shops; one of a score of such branches in central London, nothing more.
The furniture was familiar to him, for banks are all upon a pattern; and the brass railings and the mahogany desks and the glass swing doors and the little army of clerks all scribbling in huge leather-bound books, gave him, he knew not why, an odd association of discomfort and dread: of irritation and humiliation: of worries. But the feeling was slight, a long and far-off thing stirring in the depths of his mind. He went straight up to a worthy young gentleman in round spectacles adorning a face like the full moon, who was rapidly counting slips with a dampened finger behind the railings. He simply pushed over the check.
Spectacles adorning“... Spectacles adorning a face like the full moon.”
“... Spectacles adorning a face like the full moon.”
The worthy young gentleman in round spectacles, mild, moonlike, but precise, turned it over, shot a glance at the back, pushed it back to the newcomer and said:
“Isn’t endorsed.”
Mr. Petre looked at him with a vacant look of perplexed inquiry.
“Are you the payee?” said the humble associate of international finance, with just as much impatience as he ever allowed himself. But Mr. Petre boggled at the word “payee.”
“Are you the person to whom the check is made out?”
He understood that! “Yes,” said Mr. Petre.
“Do you want to pay it in?”
“I—I suppose so,” said Mr. Petre.
How great is England! The young man went off with no more concern than if he were carrying a postage stamp. He was absent about five minutes, during which time Mr. Petre stood gently drumming his fingers upon the counter and wondering what would happen next.
No one had overheard the conversation except a porter in gorgeous uniform, and he saw nothing extraordinary in it. He was used to eccentrics of all kinds, to millionaires in tatters and to frauds and to plain fools; they passed before him in an unceasing stream.
The moonlike youth returned.
“Do you wish to open an account?” he said.
“Open?” said Mr. Petre.
“Do you wish this check,” said the selenian patiently, “to be put to your credit? Do you wish to draw against it ... when it has been cleared?”
“Credit” was clear enough. “Draw” was ambiguous. “Cleared” was quite meaningless.
“I want it to go in here,” said Mr. Petre simply.
His friend (or opponent) on the other side of the counter sighed and once more disappeared. He was not absent so long this time, and when he returned there was clearly apparent, in spite of his immense reserve, something of awe in his manner, and a great deal of new courtesy.
“Mr. Petre,” he said, in a respectful, very low voice, “the manager would like to see you.”
A wild dread pierced like a lance through Mr. Petre’s inmost soul. He had an impulse to dash through the doors—but he was no longer young, and he feared pursuit; so he said “Yes,” in a voice which he prevented from trembling by an assumption of boldness, and just at that moment a very charming, quietly dressed, ironical, smiling man in the thirties, spare, and with a high voice, came up welcoming him and saying:
“Oh, Mr. Petre? Mr. Petre, I presume? I wonder whether you could be so kind—whether you could spare a moment! The manager would really be very much honored....”
Mr. Petre followed him mechanically through a door, down a deeply carpeted passage on the walls of which were three engravings of the Mother Bank in the City of London; one dated 1815, one 1852, and the last 1930; they displayed a progressive decay in the architectural sense of bankers. The charming man pushed open a further door with grace, with decision, with reverence, and Mr. Petre found himself in the presence of a very fine old English gentleman, solid, rubicund, who stood up solemnly at his entry and welcomed him with a sensible apology for taking up his time. His high forehead witnessed to a lifetime of profound thought, his white beard to careful grooming.
His forehead“His forehead witnessed to a lifetime of profound thought, his white beard to careful grooming.”
“His forehead witnessed to a lifetime of profound thought, his white beard to careful grooming.”
“It is very good of you indeed, Mr. Petre; very good of you, I am sure. Pray take this chair.” And he put a piece of sacred furniture, preserved from the beginnings of the Mother House, in front of the excellent coal fire which burned in an Adams fireplace, preserved from the beginnings of the Mother Bank. It was of marble; a sacrificial frieze supported upon Doric columns. Above it stood a clock, preserved from the beginnings of the Mother Bank, gilt, and supported by a figure of Time with a scythe and an hour-glass, signed “Letellier, de Paris; au Palais Royal,” in thin, careful script; the whole under a glass case.
The two men sat down, and the manager opened genially.
“Well, Mr. Petre, we had no idea you were in London.”
“No,” answered Mr. Petre, after a pause; then quite idiotically. “I mean yes.” He was on the point of adding the day of his arrival, when the terror of inquisition leaped up before him, and he was silent.
“We are greatly honored, Mr. Petre,” said the manager, thrusting the tips of his fingers together and separating them once or twice in habitual fashion. “Ah, by the way....” he rang a bell. “Have you given your signature, Mr. Petre?”
What responsibility was this? But Mr. Petre did as he was bid; he rose, wrote on a slip of paper which the attendant put before him, “John K. Petre” in a bold hand. It was the second time he had inscribed that fatal name. It was his now and on record. He was in for it. But anyhow, what did it matter? There was no harm done. He was sure of the Petre, and John K. was what they had recognized at the hotel. It was as John K. that he was known there. An odd combination “John K.” He must remember to avoid the mere initials, J. K. He must keep to the “John.” Mentally he performed the operation half a dozen times, and the signature “John K. Petre” rose before his inward eye, certain and fixed.
So did it rise, you may well believe, before the inward eye of that happy manager. It rose before his inward eye surrounded by an aureole of heavenly light: letters to be counted among the stars. There was a pause.
“They are preparing your book, Mr. Petre,” said his host, at length. “K ... is?”
By a happy providence Mr. Petre, on the point of answering, pulled up. He might—such is the particularity of men when they begin to use their imagination—have made a conversation by surmise. He might have guessed Kenneth or Kaspar, and Lord knows what would have happened then! for there was no John Kenneth or John Kaspar in the empyrean of high finance. But the playful Dæmon who had been given his destinies for a pastime shielded him from such a blunder. He remained obstinately dumb. The manager respected his reticence. He sent out a brief note, and in the depths of that vast mansion of gold a serf engrossed in fine black letters upon a parchment cover, bold and triumphant, “JOHN K. PETRE.” Nothing more. And what bank, let alone what obscure branch bank, could want more?
“And what kind of check book shall I send for, Mr. Petre?” said the manager kindly, as though he were offering a choice of viands.
Once more the playful immortal shielded his favorite son.
For Mr. Petre had not the least idea what he should reply, nor whether he was being asked to make a choice between various colors, or various shapes, or sundry magic names. And he would have stumbled and blundered in his reply, had not the other immediately continued: “Shall we say fifty crossed to order? It is much the more convenient form for us, is it not?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre, with dignity and emphasis. “Fifty crossed to order.” Then he fell silent again.
“Of course, Mr. Petre,” continued the great man, with a touch of nervousness strange in such a voice and so well poised a mouth, “we shall be happy to do anything you may require during your stay in London. Any transaction or—ah—I won’t sayadvice,”—and here he smiled with dignity—“but any—well—anything you may require.”
“Yes, certainly,” said Mr. Petre. “Certainly. By all means.” He could hardly say less.
The pause lengthened. Mr. Petre rose. His host rose with him. “A thousand thanks,” he said, “Mr. Petre. We shall only be too pleased. Too pleased.” He nodded, made the slightest possible inclination of his head, and Mr. Petre bowed and was gone. He was conducted back with great ceremony through the deeply-carpeted corridor, past the three engravings of the Mother Bank in 1815, 1852 and Present Day; and as he would have gone hurriedly out past the counter, was gently detained while his courteous, his even obsequious, guardian handed him an oblong check book, which he thrust hurriedly into his pocket as he disappeared.
So ended the first episode in a great career.
When Mr. Petre got back to his room in the hotel he first of all bolted the door—he could hardly have told you why; it was through an odd feeling that he was about to do something that would make him ridiculous if he were caught at it. Then he pulled out the check book from his pocket and looked at it closely and curiously inside and out. He sat down at the table and opened the check book, holding it down flat with either hand and gazing at the first form and its counterfoil.
As he did so a perfect familiarity returned, though no personal memory whatsoever: only that same odd feeling of ill ease which had suddenly struck him when he came into the bank, and which was renewed in him at the aspect of this banking thing. Whatever he had been, banks or banking had in some way bothered him. He sighed, and then more cheerfully considered that after all even this dim sensation was a kind of clew. He mused. Perhaps he had been—perhaps he was—a very great banker somewhere or other, but a banker who had got into trouble: what kind of trouble? The question cast him down again. Then his spirits rose as he recalled the way he had been treated. Whoever he was, the trouble either was not very great or had not yet come out. It suddenly struck him as he thus pondered over the simplicity of the affair that he had been a fool not to cast out feelers. A few very discreet allusions, a few apparently innocent questions cautiously framed, might have led him to know more. He would rather, far rather, have died (such was the odd effect of his misfortune) than let a human being guess it even in the most distant fashion. But if he led them on...? He would think about it.... He would frame a few phrases and be ready to bring them out at the right moment. Then he turned to the open check book again.
Yes, it was perfectly familiar. That was where you signed, and those little blank spaces beyond the perforations on the left were the counterfoils where you marked how much you had signed for, and there was the place for a date; but he was worried for a moment as to whether the figures came above the writing or below it; then the image of the check he had just paid in came to his mind. Of course, that was what had brought it all back to him. He felt confident. He could go ahead, so far as that little detail of his new life was concerned, and there was an ample balance. He wrote down the main sum, £73,729 16s. 3d. on the inside of the cover. Then he turned to his desk and considered the questions he should frame, the leading questions which might gradually get men without their knowing it to tell him who he was.
He put down a little list of what he already knew. He had been in the States, he had been there some little time at least, and perhaps for a lifetime. If he was an American citizen, at any rate he knew London well. Perhaps if he went back to the States he would discover there what he was; it might all return to him in the familiar sounds and sights and smells. But it was a big effort to make for finding out something that might be discovered much more easily or that might return to him at any moment. He had in the States befriended a certain Mr. Cyril, now dead. A Mr. Leonard Cyril. Plenty of people must have known this Mr. Cyril, for by his widow the man was rich and her acquaintance nobby. If he went about it quite carefully, in some company where his name was not known, he might hear what kind of man this Mr. Petre was who had thus befriended Mr. Leonard Cyril, a man so wealthy that his very widow rolled in it—to judge by her house and guests. Then there was the other main clew, he had been in a train arriving at a certain hour at Paddington. Now that he had collected his wits it would be a simple matter to find out where that train had started from. Yes, there were quite a number of clews. It ought not to take long. He turned to the Bradshaw. A train from Cardiff came into Paddington at one. He did not know that his own train, the boat train from Plymouth, had been half an hour late. He noted that Cardiff train and its stops. He had come from Cardiff or beyond, or joined at Swindon. It wasn’t much of a help but it limited the field.
Then his mind passed again to those questions he had to frame. But it must be done with tact. He saw himself again in Mrs. Cyril’s house trying to shepherd her words into his fold. He might begin in a tone of gentle and respectful condolence: “When I met Mr. Cyril....” and then hope that she would interrupt with, “Ah, yes! How good you were to him in New York”—or Topeka, or wherever the damned place was. But then again, she might meet him with a counter question, and say, “Oh, do tell me, please, how Miriam is?” Then he would get it between wind and water, and if he had shuddered a moment ago, now he trembled. It was not so easy as it looked.
A brilliant thought leaped into his brain. And as it leaped his guardian Dæmon laughed.
He rang the bell, he unbolted the door. He asked if they had in the hotel any American books of reference. They had a New York telephone book, and a very strange, short, fat volume in which were the names of the American great who still survived in this sad world to the end of November, 1952. For there was a brutal note on the title-page, “The Editor cannot guarantee that none of the names mentioned in this annual, which went through the press at the end of November last, may not since have died.” There was no John K. Petre. He was ashamed to ask for more books of this library. He went down to the ground floor and consulted the London Directory. There was no John K. Petre. He made a note that he would look, as a last and desperate chance, at the New York Directory, and would guarantee it to say if he had ever lived in New York. They had one—of two years before. There was no John K. Petre.
Then another ruse suggested itself to him. He would with infinite pains secure the services of a man—perhaps there were those who did it for a living—of some man who would find out for him all about Mr. John K. Petre.
He went down by the great stairs turning over in his mind the strange dearth of John K. Petres in the printed lists. Clearly an enormous John K. Petre did, somewhere, dominate the world; but where? He formed the plan of consulting his one friend at the Registration counter.
He made his effort. He went to the clerk standing at the great book of registry, and asked him in a low voice (after looking about to make sure that no one could hear) whether he might be told the name of some agency or person who could look up a small obscure private point for him while he was in London. It was confidential. The clerk, who made an honest penny, among many dozen other honest pennies, by recommending the right people, wrote out at once upon his own card a name and an address: “Jos. Daniels, 27 Birkham Street, Soho.”
“Mr. Petre,” he said, with his usual respect, which seemed so exaggerated to the unfortunate man to whom it was addressed, “if you will just go and give that personally, I think you will get all you want. There is no proper office, and no name put up. Mr. Daniels is too careful for that. He has worked wonders, to my knowledge. Never mind the look of the house. Don’t write. He has no telephone, either. Just go there; and when you find him in, give him this card of mine.”
And thus was the clerk assured of his commission.
Mr. Petre was not quite sure that he had done right. Even one human being knowing but one step of his research was a peril; but he had no other choice, or rather, it was safer than addressing himself to some public firm. He set off at once for Birkham Street. He found the house, or rather, the door; a grimy door next to a little foreign restaurant. He rang. He was let in by a slatternly woman who seemed to have caught something of her master’s air, for she certainly looked as if she knew too much.
He asked for Mr. Daniels, and was overjoyed to find that Mr. Daniels was in.
He found a little, dark-haired man, with keen eyes and a full mouth, and an expression as though the world amused him—which indeed it did; but as if also he were sparing in his words, which indeed he was.
There were, as Mr. Petre had been warned, no marks of an office, nothing to betray Mr. Daniels’ trade. It was a dingy room, stuffily furnished with a few old horsehair chairs, and Mr. Daniels as his visitor came in laid down a paper which he had been reading, rose and asked him, when he had looked at the card, and offered one of the horsehair chairs, of what service he might be.
“My dear sir,” said Mr. Petre earnestly, feeling that unless he began the matter at once he would never have the courage to begin it at all, “it is very simple. I am desired—I have been asked—at any rate I have occasion to find out ... what I can about a Mr. John K. Petre. You know the name?”
Mr. Daniels smiled sweetly.
“Oddly enough,” he said, “Idoknow the name. If you had asked me to find a man who did not know the name, you might have given me more difficulty.” His smile remained upon his full lips, and he held his head back somewhat, examining Mr. Petre in the fashion a humorous diplomat might use if he were asked by a casual stranger to talk upon secrets of State.
“You have never seen him?” said Mr. Petre.
It was a foolish question; for after all, if Mr. Daniels had already recognized his guest, Mr. Daniels would have greeted him, and perhaps he might even have remembered Mr. Daniels. But perhaps Mr. Danielshadseen him; perhaps Mr. Danielsdidknow him. Mr. Daniels had a mysterious smile upon him. The whole thing was very perplexing.
“No,” said Mr. Daniels slowly. “No. I have never seen Mr. Petre. Nor has any one that I know of,” he added, gazing up blankly at the ceiling. “Nor,” he continued emphatically, after a pause, and looking Mr. Petre full in the eyes, “nor are you likely to come across any one who has; not easily!”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Petre. “Precisely.... Could you ... my dear Mr. Daniels”—and here he leaned forward—“I am prepared to pay well; to pay largely. You have but to name your figure. Now, do we understand each other? Can you not discover for me any of the leading facts with regard to....”
But Mr. Daniels interrupted him, putting his hand firmly down upon the table and still looking Mr. Petre in the face, only rather more sternly.
“I do not know who you are, sir,” he said. “You have not given me your name, and no doubt you have your own good reasons for not doing so. But I can tell you this—and it will save you a good deal of trouble. It is not worthmywhile—it is not worthanybody’swhile—to hunt that particular game. Do you understand?”
Mr. Petre understood about as much as if it had been Choctaw, but he looked wise, nodded, and said:
“Yes! yes! I understand.”
“It’s mere waste of time,” said Mr. Daniels, a little more kindly, and getting up as he spoke to show that there was nothing more doing. “If I cannot talk to you about it nobody can—and you may be certain that nobody will.”
There was a long silence between the two men. Mr. Petre broke it with a lie.
“Yes—I understand,” he said.
His guardian angel wept and his guardian Dæmon shook with laughter.
Then Mr. Petre went out in a mist of moral fog so thick that his moral hands were groping all round. He had feared something like madness in himself when his misfortune fell upon him. Now it looked as if the rest of the world were mad as well.
Meanwhile in the parlor of the bank the manager was speaking to the spare and courteous man who had introduced the great client.
“He’s an extraordinary fellow, Tommy; we’ve all heard of him. Now we’ve seen him at it—in the flesh.”
Tommy nodded and was amused. “It’s much stranger than a book,” he said.
“Yes,” answered the manager ponderously enough; and added the original words, “Life is stranger than fiction.”
“What astonishes me,” said Tommy, “is the way he comes up to sample. He went on exactly like a film; it was better than that, it was the exact echo of himself, wasn’t it? Or like a photograph?”
“He’s always done it,” said the manager, with the pompous assumption of knowledge drawn at fourth hand, and accurate enough. “I don’t know whether it is that he likes the mystery of it, or that he has got some mania for keeping everything to himself; but he did exactly the same thing in Paris, two years ago. He blew into Rogers’s, started an account, behaved like a lunatic—but quite gently—asked the most ridiculous questions, made a sudden haul in what nobody was thinking about, the Bordeaux Loan—he had heard something—left the whole pile on current account for three months, and then transferred it by cable. Without a word of writing or anything. They had had the use of the money all that time, and they’ve been living ever since with their mouths open praying he’ll blow in again.”
Tommy nodded, holding his chin in his hand.
“We shall not keep him,” he said; “but it will be useful while it lasts,” and the manager nodded in agreement. Then they both smiled and returned each to his task.
It has been said by a Great Victorian Bore that if you could take samples of the conversation going on in our great cities at any one moment you would think you were listening to parrots repeating themselves. He was right.
Not indeed at that exact moment, but less than three hours later, the clerk of the register of the Splendide, having gone off duty, met Mr. Daniels (as was his custom) in the bar of the “Beaver.” And Mr. Daniels’ first question was:
“Who was that old fellow you sent me to-day?”
The clerk drew a little closer, put his mouth close to Mr. Daniels’ ear, and murmured the name.
For once in his life Mr. Daniels showed real, honest, innocent surprise. His eyes opened widely, and then his expression changed to a mixture of vast amusement and vast admiration combined.
“By God!” he said, “he’s a genius!”
“We all know that,” answered Harrison drily.
“A genius!” shouted Mr. Daniels, ordering a second round on the strength of it. “A genius! He comes into my room like a lamb and asks me to find out about himself!”
“Testing you, he was,” said the clerk Harrison with profound psychology.
“That’s it,” answered Mr. Daniels wisely, wagging his head from side to side. “Testing me! And didn’t find me wanting! Ah! He knows Jos. Daniels by now! He’ll know who he came to.” And the clerk ordered a third round on the strength of that little triumph, which both of them had won. The mighty man now knew the accuracy of Harrison’s choice in private detectives, and would trust him now for ever: there ought to be something in it. The mighty man knew the fidelity of Daniels: and surely something would come Daniels’ way also. He would know that his privacy was safe in such hands.
That same evening, innocent of so much power, the original author of these movements slept, and forgot his troubles till the morning light.