"To hell with the bank!" said Mr. George G. Goodchild for the first and only time in his Republican life.
"Unless you talk to us fully and politely," said the Globe man, "we propose to interview your directors and ask each and every one of them to tell us the name of your successor. If you raise your hand again I'll not only break in your face, but I'll sue you and thus secure vacation money and a raise in salary. The jury is with me. Come! Tell us why you won't let Mr. Rutgers marry Grace."
Here in his own office the president of a big Wall Street bank was threatened with obliterated features and the extraction of cash. The cause of it, H. R., was worse than a combination of socialism and smallpox; he was even worse than a President of the United States in an artificial bull market.
Mr. Goodchild walked up and down the room exactly thirteen times—one for each reporter—and then turned to the vice-president.
"Send for the police!" he commanded.
"Remember the newspapers," agonizedly whispered the vice-president.
The Globe man overheard him. "Present!" he said, and saluted. Then he took out a lead-pencil, seized a pad from the president's own desk, and said, kindly, "I'll take down all your reasons in shorthand, Mr. Goodchild!"
"Take yourself to hell!" shrieked the president.
"Après vous, mon cher Alphonse," retorted the Globe man, with exquisite courtesy. "Boys, you heard him. Verbatim!"
All the reporters wrote four words.