“The world,” he said.
CHAPTER V
EDWARD E. ALLISON TAKES A VACATION
Edward E. Allison walked into the offices of the Municipal Transportation Company at nine o’clock, and set his basket of opened and carefully annotated letters out of the mathematical centre of his desk; then he touched a button, and a thin young man, whose brow, at twenty, wore the traces of preternatural age, walked briskly in.
“Has Mr. Greggory arrived?”
The intensely earnest young man glanced at the clock.
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
“Take him these letters, and ask him if he will be kind enough to step here.”
“Yes, sir,” and the concentrated young man departed with the basket, feeling that he had quite capably borne his weight of responsibility.
Allison, looking particularly fresh and buoyant this morning, utilised his waiting time to the last fraction of a second. He put in a telephone call, and took from the drawer of his desk a packet of neatly docketed papers, an index memorandum book, a portfolio of sketches, and three cigars, the latter of which he put in his cigar case; then, his desk being empty, except for a clean memorandum pad and pencil, he closed it and locked it. The telephone girl reported his number on the wire, and, the number proving to be that of a florist, he ordered some violets sent to Gail Sargent.
Greggory walked in, a fat man with no trace of nonsense about him.