The gate-keeper, incredibly myopic, peered at him through such thick lenses that his eyes looked unpleasantly unnatural.
“Vhat ees yoor peezness, pleaze?”
“Tell Mr. Herzog that I come on a very important matter.”
“Ach!” The middle-aged man shrugged his shoulders with a sort of regretful despair, and then shook his head. Everybody that came there always came on very important matters—including book agents and pedlars disguised as gentlemen.
“I’ve come direct from Mr. Richard Dawson, president of the Metropolitan National Bank, to see Mr. Herzog. Tell him that—”
“Pleaze sit down,” he opened the gate and pointed to a chair. Grinnell obeyed and the man left. Presently he returned.
“Mr. Herzog vill see you, sir,” and Grinnell was ushered into the office of the head of the firm, for Mr. Wolff had been dead many years, and his son-in-law and partner reigned in his stead—a far greater king of finance.
He was a little man, white-haired and patriarchially whiskered. His features were of a pronounced Jewish type. His eyes were alert but kindly—kindly rather than merely good-natured. The accumulated wisdom of five thousand years was in this Hebrew banker’s business soul; and with it that respect for the higher Law that has made Israel endure as a nation through the marching centuries while other races have risen, flourished, and disappeared, blended into the composite types of to-day.
“Good-afternoon, sir. Mr. Dawson sent you?” asked Mr. Herzog, with a strong German accent. He knew English thoroughly, like a scholar—a German scholar.
“He didn’t send me. I—”