"Thank you. The real owner of the letters can do more—when I’m for sale."
Leighton bent forward and began to whisper.
"I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you politically," he began. "I’ll——"
"Well, then,"—Leighton, his face now white from fear of loss, appeared to capitulate-"give them back and I’ll use them the way you want them used."
It was final, and it drove Leighton back to his purple rage.
"I’ll ruin you!" he threatened. "And they’ll ruin you. Go ahead and resign. Resign? You can’t. You’re fired! Do you hear that? You’re fired! Now go and try to do something. You can’t do a thing but sell those letters to the people they were stolen from. If you try that, I’ll show you up, and if you try anything else with those people, they’ll bury you so deep nobody ever can dig down far enough to find you. Do you know who you’re up against when you buck that crowd? They won’t let you walk the same earth with them! Go on. You’ll be killed, and I’ll be damned glad of it. Fight them, will you? You might as well draw a gun on God Almighty! Now, then, get out of here. Get out, or I’ll have you kicked out!"
To his office on the twentieth floor of a Wall Street skyscraper—that office with the mahogany table at its center and the engraving of George Washington between two windows—the master came at his usual time on the morning of the day following the North Bridge wreck. He was dressed neatly, as always, in a suit of russet brown. Breathing visibly, but noiselessly, he passed the resting ticker and walked to one of the windows overlooking the labyrinth. His near-sighted, beady eyes peered toward the web of streets below, on the cross-threads of which the black dots that were hurrying men and women bobbed like struggling flies.
"Rollins," he said, "what’s in the——" He stopped. He had not looked up, yet he asked: "What’s the matter with you this morning?"
"Nothing," said Rollins. "I——" He coughed behind his hand. "I didn’t sleep well last night."
"Take more exercise," said his master. "What’s in the mail?"
"Thirty letters that need your personal attention, sir."
Nimbly the master ran them through his short and stumpy fingers, the tips of which were delicately rounded. He dictated his terse instructions. With the daily routine again in motion, Rollins recaught his employer’s calm.