“Thank you.” Rickard nodded at MacLean, who burst into the outer office.
“It’s the new general manager from Tucson—Rickard’s his name.” His whisper ran around the walls of the room where other arrivals were tilting their chairs. “The new general manager! Ogilvie woozled for nothing. You should have seen his face!”
“Did any one know that he was coming?” Silent, the tanned giant, spoke.
“That’s Marshall all over,” said Wooster, bright-eyed and wiry, removing his pipe. “He likes to move in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. (Used to sing that when I was a kid!) No announcement. Simply: ‘Enter Rickard!’”
“More like this,” said Silent. “Exit Hardin. Enter Ogilvie. Enter Rickard.”
“And exit Ogilvie,” cried MacLean.
“It’s a—damned shame,” burst out Wooster. No one asked him what he meant. Every man in the room was thinking of Hardin whose shadow this reclamation work was.
“What’s Rickard doing?” asked the infantile Hercules at the checker-board. The force called him Pete, which was a short cut to Frederick Augustus Bodefeldt.
“Taking Ogilvie’s measure,” this from MacLean.
“Then he’s doing something else by this time. That wouldn’t take him five minutes unless he’s a gull,” snapped Wooster, who hated Ogilvie as a rat does a snake.