He would forgive everything so long as in the end something happened—something in which there was a girl, whether or not she was the girl. What most irritated him was the indefiniteness of the mystery so far. The spice of danger; the tragical possibilities; the lure of adventure; the call of the unusual; the attraction of the unknown and therefore of the interesting—were no longer quite enough. The glimpse of a face—of a living face—and a hand to shake, a waist to clasp and lips to kiss—these things he now desired.
His irritability over his failure to develop an adventure in Boston grew keener until it became anger. He would have it out once for all with the mysterious man at 777 Fifth Avenue.
He went down-stairs, paid his bill, and took the midnight train for New York.
VII
Some men are so picturesque that they do not need publicity agents, and so intelligent that they wish to be let alone by the public prints. E. H. Merriwether was one. He employed the ablest experts for his corporations and they got more than their share of publicity; but for himself—nothing. Possibly he realized that ungratified curiosity is a valuable asset; and, of course, he knew that in a democracy the less a man raises his head above the level of the mass the better it will be for his comfort.
He took pains to make it plain that he cared only for his work, because that proved he had no thoughts for mere money-making; and, since he was not interested in money-making, he could not be primarily concerned with despoiling the public—which, in turn, clearly proved he was not dangerous. And, of course, the more he kept himself out of the papers the more the papers wanted to see him in their hospitable columns. Everything he did or thought was, therefore, news. Anecdotes about him were so hard to get that the brightest minds in the profession manufactured a few. They had to be very good anecdotes—and they were.
To the metropolitan reporters, however, E. H. Merriwether was known to be mute, dumb, silent, constitutionally incapable of speech, and, besides, devoid of vocal cords. His office was always free from reporters, because they had learned to save themselves time by the simple expedient of writing their interviews with him in their own offices, after this fashion:
Mr. Merriwether refused to discuss the matter. Neither confirmation nor denial could be obtained at his office.
The financial editors of the newspapers fared no better. He was never too busy to see them; but all news about his work came from his bankers.
On the same day that Tom went to Boston, a young man went to the Merriwether offices in the Transcontinental Trust Company Building. A stout, rather high railing fenced off the bookkeepers' room from the general and unwelcome public.