The young man who had just come was perfectly tailored and self-confident of bearing, and as vigorous of bodily strength as a wrestler in training. The time that had passed over him since he had left Snowdon’s company for wider and more independent fields had wrought changes in him, and in so far as the observer could estimate values from the externals of life, every 69 development had been upward toward improvement. Yet, between the man’s impressive surface and his soul lay an acquired coat of cynicism and a shell of cultivated selfishness.
John Spurrier, who had renounced the gaming table, was more passionately and coldly than ever the plunger, dedicated to the single religion of ambition. He had failed to remove the blot of the court-martial from his name, and, denied the soldier’s ethical place, he had become a sort of moss-trooper of finance.
Backed only by his personal qualifications, he had won his way into a circle of active wealth, and though he seemed no more a stranger there than a duckling in a pool, he himself knew that another simile would more truly describe his status.
He was like an exhibition skater whose eye-filling feats are watched with admiration and bated breath. His evolutions and dizzy pirouettings were performed with an adroit ease and grace, but he could feel the swaying of the thin ice under him and could never forget that only the swift smoothness of his flight stood between himself and disaster.
He must live on a lavish scale or lose step with the fast-moving procession. He must maintain appearances in keeping with his associations—or drop downscale to meaner opportunities and paltrier prizes. The wealth which would establish him firmly seemed always just a shade farther away than the reach of his outstretched grasp.
“We were just talking about Trabue, Spurrier,” his host enlightened him as he looked across the rim of his lifted glass, with eyes hardening at the mention of that name.
Spurrier did not ask what had been said about Trabue, but he guessed that it savored of anathema. For Trabue, whose name rarely appeared in the public announcements of American Oil and Gas, was none the less the white-hot power and genius of that organization—its unheralded chief of staff. Just as A. O. and G. dominated the world of finance, so he dominated A. O. and G.
Harrison laughed. “I’m not a vindictive man,” he declared in humorous self-defense, “but I want his scalp as Salome wanted the head of John the Baptist.”
The newly arrived guest smiled quietly.