Consequently I began to wonder how I should go about getting it. Mitchell was so obviously opposed to me that I knew it would be useless to appeal to him. McCullagh might give it to me, but how appeal to him? I thought of asking him direct, but that would be going over Mitchell’s head, and he would never forgive me for that, I was sure. I debated for a day or two, and then decided, since my principal relations had been with Mr. McCullagh, that I would go to him direct. Why not? He had been very kind to me, had sent for me. Let Mitchell be angry if he would. If I made good he could not hurt me.
I began to lay my plans or rather to screw up my courage to the point where I could force myself to go and see Mr. McCullagh. He was such a chill and distant figure. At the same time I felt that this man who was the object of so much reverence was one of the loneliest persons imaginable. He was not married. Day after day he came to this office alone, sat alone, ate alone, went home alone, for he had no friends apparently to whom he would condescend to unbend. This touched me. He was too big, too lonely.
This realization drew me sympathetically toward him and made me imagine, if you please, that he ought to like me. Was I not his protégé? Had he not brought me here? Instinctively I felt that I was one who could appreciate him, one whom he might secretly like. The only trouble was that he was old and famous, whereas I was a mere boy, but he would understand that too.
The day after I had made up my mind I began to loiter about the long corridor which led to his office, in the hope of encountering him accidentally. I had often noticed him shouldering his way along the marble wainscoting of this hall, his little Napoleonic frame cloaked in a conventional overcoat, his broad, strong, intellectual face crowned by a wide-brimmed derby hat which he wore low over his eyes. Invariably he was smoking a short fat cigar, and always looked very solemn, even forbidding. However, having made up my mind, I lay in wait for him one morning, determined to see him, and walking restlessly to the empty telegraph room which lay at the other end of the hall from his office and then back, but keeping as close as I could to one door or another in order to be able to disappear quietly in case my courage failed me. Yet so determined was I to see him that I had come down early, before any of the others, in order that he should not slip in ahead of me and so rob me of this seemingly accidental encounter.