"Don't talk nonsense, Jim, I'll live as long as you."
"And yet you turn pale when I speak of death."
Bivens suddenly drew his watch and spoke with quick nervous energy:
"I must call those reporters and get rid of them as soon as possible."
He gave the order, and in a few moments walked back into the room followed by the newspaper men, a half-dozen young fellows with clean-cut, eager faces.
Not one of them showed a pencil or a note-book, but not a feature of the startling exhibition escaped their intelligence. Every eye flashed with piercing light, every nerve quivered with sensitive impressions. Every sight, sound and smell wrote its story on their imagination—the odour of the flowers on Bivens's desk in the little sitting room, the picture of his wife beside them, the smell of the leather on the walls, the touch of their hands on the silent symbols of power lying in yellow heaps—all found souls that throbbed and lived and spoke in their vivid sensational reports.
They looked at Bivens with peculiar awe. Stuart noted with a smile that not one of them spoke loudly in the presence of ninety millions of dollars. All whispered except a blasé youngster from The Evening Post. He dared to articulate his words in modulated tones. He seemed to regard himself as a sort of assistant high priest at this extraordinary function. The other fellows unconsciously paid the tribute of whispered awe to the great god all true New Yorkers worship.
When Bivens led them out at last and returned to the room, he was in high spirits.
"Now, Jim," he began hastily, "if you have said all the bad things you can possibly think about me, we'll get down to business and I'll present the big proposition you can't resist. As I told you a while ago, I've just begun to make money. Come into the next room while my men remove the evil from our midst."
He smiled lovingly at his treasures as if in apology for his momentary levity.