The aged servant opened a door on the left side of the hall and Gaspar Manuel entered a square apartment, which had evidently formed a part of a larger room. The walls were panneled with oak; a cheerful wood fire burned in the old-fashioned arch; an oaken table, without covering of any sort, stood in the center; and oaken benches were placed along the walls. Taking the old chair,—it stood by the table,—Gaspar Manuel, by the light of the wax candle on the table, discovered that the room was already occupied by some twenty or thirty persons, who sat upon the oak benches, as silent as though they had been carved there. Persons of all classes, ages, and with every variety of visage and almost every contrast of apparel. There was the sleek dandy of Broadway; there the narrow-faced vulture of Wall street; there some whose decayed attire reminded you either of poets out of favor with the Magazines, or of police officers out of office: one whose half Jesuit attire brought to mind a Puseyite clergyman; and one or two whose self-complacent visages reminded one of a third-rate lawyer, who had just received his first fee; in a word, types of the varied and contrasted life which creeps or throbs within the confines of the large city. Among the crowd, were several whose rotund corporations and evident disposition to shake hands with themselves, indicated the staid man of business, whose capital is firm in its foundation, and duly recognized in the solemn archives of the Bank. A man of gray hairs, clad in rags, sat in a corner by himself; there was a woman with a vail over her face; a boy with half developed form, and lip innocent of hair: it was, altogether, a singular gathering.
The dead silence which prevailed was most remarkable. Not a word was said. Not one of those persons seemed to be aware of the existence of the others. As motionless as the oak benches on which they sat, they were waiting to see Ezekiel Bogart, and this at the unusual hour of ten at night.
Who was Ezekiel Bogart? This was a question often asked, but which the denizens of Wall street found hard to answer. He was not a merchant, nor a banker, nor a lawyer, nor a gentleman of leisure, although in some respects he seemed a combination of all.
He occupied the old-fashioned dwelling; was seen at all sorts of places at all hours; and was visited by all sorts of people at seasons most unusual. Thus much at least was certain. But what he was precisely, what he exactly followed, what the sum of his wealth, and who were his relations,—these were questions shadowed in a great deal more mystery than the reasons which induce a Washington Minister of State to sanction a worn-out claim, of which he is at once the judge, lawyer and (under the rose) sole proprietor.
The transactions of Ezekiel Bogart were quite extensive: they involved much money and ramified through all the arteries of the great social world of New York. But the exact nature of these transactions? All was doubt,—no one could tell.
So much did the mystery of Mr. Bogart's career puzzle the knowing ones of Wall street, that one gentleman of the Green Board went quite crazy on the subject,—after the fourth bottle of champagne—and offered to bet Erie Rail-road stock against New Jersey copper stock, that no one could prove that Bogart had ever been born.
"Who is Ezekiel Bogart?"
No doubt every one of the persons here assembled, in the oak panneled room, can return some sort of answer to this question; but will not their answers contradict each other, and render Ezekiel more mythical than ever?
"Sir, this way," said the aged servant, opening the door and beckoning to Gaspar Manuel.
Gaspar followed the old man, and leaving the room, ascended the oaken staircase, whose banisters were fashioned of solid mahogany.