“Manners, this is Mr. Spurrier. Will you tell Mr. Harrison I’m on the wire?”
“Hello, Spurrier,” boomed a deep voice after an interval. “We’re dining out this evening and we go to the opera afterward, but I want a word with you to-night. In fact, I want you to start for Russia on Wednesday. Drop into our box, and drive home with me for a few minutes afterward.”
Russia on Wednesday! Spurrier’s unoccupied hand clenched in irritation, but his voice was as unruffled as if he had been asked to make ready for a journey to Hoboken. He knew enough of Harrison’s methods to ask no questions. If they could have been answered over the phone Harrison could have found many men to send to Russia. It was because they were for his ear alone that he had been called to New York.
That evening he listened to “Otello” with thoughts that wandered from the voices of the singers. They refused even to be chained by the novelty of a slender tenor as a new Russian star held the spotlight. He was studying the almost too regular beauty of Vivian Harrison’s profile as she sat serene and self-confident with the horseshoe of the Metropolitan beyond her.
At midnight Spurrier sat with Harrison in his study and listened to a crisp summarizing of the Russian scheme. It proved to be a project boldly conceived on a broad scale and requiring an ambassador dependable enough and resourceful enough to decide large matters as they arose, without cabling for instructions.
In turn Spurrier talked of his own past doings, and through their cigar smoke the seeming idleness of those weeks assayed a wealth of exact information 103 and stood revealed as the incubation period of a large conception. Keenly formulated plans emerged from his recitals so simply and convincingly that the greater financier leaned forward and let his cigar die.
Then Harrison rose and paced the room.
“You know something about me, Spurrier,” he began. “When I came East they laughed at me—if they deigned to notice me at all. They said: ‘Here comes a bushleaguer who thinks he’s good enough for the big game. It’s one more lamb to the shearing shed.’ That’s the East, Spurrier! That’s cocksure New York! They sneer at a Western-bred horse—or a Western-trained prize fighter—and when the newcomer licks the best they’ve got they straightway let out a holler that they taught him all he knows. Why, New York would die of lassitude and anæmia if it wasn’t for blood infusions from the provinces!”
Spurrier gazed interestedly at the tall figure of the man with the sandy red mustache, and the snapping eyes, who for all his impeccability of evening dress, might have taken a shovel or pick from a section hand and taught him how to level a road bed. Harrison laughed shortly.
“They haven’t inhaled me so far. I brought only a million with me to this town, and I’ve got—well, I’ve got plenty, but I can’t call it a day quite yet. There’s one buccaneer to be settled with first! He’s got to go to the mat with me and come up bloody enough to admit that he’s been in a ruction. He chooses to pretend that I’m nonexistent, and I won’t stand being ignored! I want to leave my mark on that man, and with God’s help—and yours—I’m going to do it!”