"Mr. Malone's secretary on the 'phone," announced the young man. "Mr. Malone wants to know if you can come at once to his office."
"Tell Mr. Malone"—Burton snapped his words out irritably—"that if he wants to find me I will be here in my own office for just thirty minutes."
The employee hesitated in momentary embarrassment, then he added:
"Of course, you know that I mean J. J. Malone himself, sir?"
Burton laughed. "In the world of finance, Carl, I didn't know there was more than one Malone."
Also, reflected the secretary as he closed the door behind him, there was in the world of finance only one who would care to ignore a summons from that source.
A few minutes afterward the door opened again, opened to frame the bulky figure of a man who had swept by those who sought to announce his coming. The heavy brows of J. J. Malone were contracted over smoldering gray eyes which many men feared and all but a few obeyed. At his elbow followed the slight wiry figure of a companion with nervous eyes, and a cigar which was always chewed and never lighted. This man had come, as Ham had come, from the hardness of some barren farm and had obdurately hammered his path by the sheer insistence of his brain into the inner circle of an oligarchy. These two greatest of America's money barons ignored the gesture with which the younger Warwick invited them to be seated. In the brief silence that followed upon their entrance was the portent of a brewing tempest. At last Malone said crisply:
"I sent for you, Mr. Burton. Most men come to me when I send for them."
"In several respects I differ from most men." The reply was too quiet to ring flippant. It was merely the assurance of invincible self-faith, and for an instant the man who had not in years been compelled to soften the iron grip of his mastery gazed his astonishment.
Then Malone burst into an oriflamme of anger. He was a whirlwind of fury before whose raging any small or timid man must have shriveled. The eyes that shone out under the heavy lashes as he paced the place, with clenched hands, were batteries raining shrapnel of wrath.