"That reminds me, sir," said Owen, smoothly, "that the International
Express Company has delivered a large crate addressed to you from
Cairo, Egypt. I presume it is the mummy you bought on your last trip.
Where shall I place it?"
Mr. Marvin's eye coursed around the walls of the handsome library, which had been his office since the doctor had forbidden him to visit his automobile works and steel-stamping mills.
"Take out that bust of Pallas Athene," he ordered, "and stand the mummy up in its place."
Owen nodded, poised his pencil and prompted:
"You were just dictating about the new piston rings."
Mr. Marvin drew his hand across his eyes and looked out the window. Within the range of his vision was one of the most charming sights in the world—a handsome youth and a pretty girl, arrayed in white flannels, playing tennis.
"Never mind the letters. Tell Harry and Pauline I wish to see them."
Alone, the old man opened a drawer and took a dose of medicine, then he unfolded Dr. Stevens's letter and read its final paragraph, which prescribed a change of climate, together with complete and permanent rest or "I will not answer for the consequences."
There was little doubt that no primer mover in a great industry was better able to leave its helm than Standford Marvin. His lieutenants were able, efficient and contented. The factories would go of their own momentum for a year or two at least, then his son, Harry, just out of college, should be able, perhaps, to help. His lieutenants had proved Marvin's unerring instinct in judging character. Not one single case came to the old employer's mind of a man who had failed to turn out exactly as he expected. Yet the most trusted man of all, Raymond Owen, the secretary, was disloyal and dishonest.
This one exception was easily enough explained. When Owen came to Marvin's attention, fifteen years before, he was a fine, honest, faithful man. It was born and bred in him to be straight. During the first five' or six years in the Marvin household the older man took pains to keep watch on this quiet, tactful youth until he knew all his ways and even his habits of thought. There was no doubt that Owen was as upright and clean as the old man himself.