As he sat in Harrah’s outer office on a high-backed settee of teak-wood ornate with dragons and Chinese devils, with his feet on a rug which would have gone a long way toward installing a power-plant, looking at pictures of Jake Kilrain in pugilistic garb and pose, the racing yacht Shamrock under full sail, and Heatherbloom taking a record smashing jump, the spider-legged office boy came from inside endeavoring to hide some pleasurable excitement under a semblance of dignity and office reticence.
“Mr. Harrah has been detained and won’t be here for perhaps an hour.”
“I’ll wait,” Bruce replied laconically.
The office boy lingered. He fancied Bruce because of his size and his hat and a resemblance that he thought he saw between him and his favorite western hero of the movies; besides, he was bursting with a proud secret. He hunched his shoulders and looked cautiously behind toward the inner offices. Between his palms he whispered:
“He’s been arrested.”
It delighted him that Bruce’s eyes widened.
“Third time in a month—speedin’ in Jersey—his new machine is 80 horse-power—! A farmer put tacks in the road and tried to kill him wit’ a pitchfork. Say! my boss et him. I bet he’ll get fined the limit.” His red necktie swelled palpably and he swaggered proudly. “Pooh! he don’t care. My boss, he—”
“Willie!”
“Yes ma’am.” The stenographer’s call interrupted further confidences from Willie and he scuttled away, leaving Bruce with the impression that the boy’s admiration for his boss was not unmixed with apprehension.
The hour had gone when the door opened and a huge, fiery-bearded, dynamic sort of person went swinging past Bruce without a glance and on to the inner offices. The office boy’s husky “That’s him!” was not needed to tell him that J. Winfield Harrah had arrived. The air suddenly seemed charged electrically. The stenographer speeded up and dapper young clerks and accountants bent to their work with a zeal and assiduity which merited immediate promotion, while “Willie,” Bruce noticed, came from a brief session in the private office with the dazed look of one who has just been through an experience.