iv
Nothing happened to betray the secret of the house that rose in Fifth Avenue opposite Valentine’s. The real estate news reporters all went wild in their guesses as to its ownership. Galt never interfered about details; but if the chart of construction progress which he kept on his desk showed the slightest deviation from ideal he must know at once what was going wrong. There was a strike of workmen. He said to give them what they wanted and indemnified the contractors accordingly. Once it was a matter of transportation. Three car loads of precious hewn stone got lost in transit. The records of the railroad that had them last showed they had been handed on. The receiving road had no record of having received them. They had vanished altogether. At last they were found in Jersey City. A yard crew had been using them for three weeks as a make-weight to govern the level of one of those old-fashioned pontoons across which trains were shunted from the mainland tracks to car barges in the river. They happened to be just the right weight for the purpose. After that every railroad with a ferry transfer that the Great Midwestern had anything to say about installed a new kind of pontoon, raised and lowered by a simple hydraulic principle.
As the time drew near Galt swelled with mystery. He could not help dropping now and then at dinner a hint of something that might be coming to pass. He addressed it always to Natalie, for the benefit of the others. He looked at her solemnly one evening and contorted a nursery rhyme:
Who got ’em in?
Little Johnnie Quinn
Who got’ em out?
Big John Stout.
“Old silly,” said Natalie. “You’ve got it wrong. It goes—”
“Now let me alone,” he said. “I’ve got it the way I want it. What do you know about it? Poor little outcast! No place to go. Nobody to take her in.”
He leaned over to pet her consolingly.
“Stop it!” she said, attacking him. They scuffled. Some dishes were overturned. She caught a napkin under his chin and tied it over the top of his head.
“All right,” he mumbled. “You’ll be sorry. You wait and see.”
She held his nose and made him say the rhyme the right way, repeating it after her, under penalty of being made to take a spoonful of gooseberry jam which he hated.