“He’s a horror!” she gasped. “How can you endure contact with him, Mr. Johnson?”
The stout man smiled quietly.
“ ‘Millions of ’um,’ ” he repeated, “and he’s right. With a million and a half unemployed on the streets, I can’t throw up a good job——”
“I’m sorry,” she said, impulsively putting her hand on his arm. “I didn’t know he was like that,” she went on more mildly. “He’s—terrible!”
“He’s a self-made man, and perhaps he would have been well advised to have got an artisan to do the job,” smiled Johnson, “but he’s not really bad. I wonder why he saw you?”
“Doesn’t he see people?”
He shook his head.
“Not unless it is absolutely necessary, and that only happens about twice a year. I don’t think there is anybody in this building that he’s ever spoken to—not even the managers.”
He took her down to the general office. Ray had not come back.
“The truth is,” confessed Johnson when she asked him, “that Ray hasn’t been to the office this morning. He sent word to say that he wasn’t feeling any too good, and I fixed it so that he has a day off.”