"This way." Mr. Baxter led Johnson into a smaller room, opening upon the library, furnished with little else besides a flat-top walnut desk, a telephone, and a typewriter on a low table. Here Mr. Baxter sometimes attended to his correspondence, with the assistance of a stenographer sent from the office, when he did not feel like going downtown; and in here, when the mood was on him, he sometimes slipped to write bits of verse, a few of which he had published in magazines under a pseudonym.
Mr. Baxter closed the door, took the chair at the desk and waved Johnson to the stenographer's. "I have only a minute. What is it?"
For all his previous calls on Mr. Baxter, this refined presence made Johnson dumb with embarrassment. He would have been more at his ease had he had the comfort of fumbling his hat, but the purple personage had gingerly taken his battered derby from him at the door.
"Well?" said Mr. Baxter, a bit impatiently.
Johnson found his voice and rapidly told of Tom's discovery, as he had heard it from Tom twenty minutes before, and of the exposure that was going to be made that evening. At first Mr. Baxter seemed to start; the hand on the desk did certainly tighten. But that was all.
"Did Mr. Keating say, in this story he proposes to tell, whether we offered Mr. Foley money to sell out, or whether Mr. Foley demanded it?" he asked, when Johnson had ended.
"He didn't say. He didn't seem to know."
Mr. Baxter did not speak for a little while; then he said, with a quiet carelessness: "What you have told me is of no great importance, though it probably seems so to you. It might, however, have been of great value. So I want to say to you that I thoroughly appreciate the promptness with which you have brought me this intelligence. If I can still depend upon your faithfulness, and your secrecy——" Mr. Baxter paused.
"Always," said Johnson eagerly.
"And your secrecy—" this with a slight emphasis, the gray eyes looking right through Johnson; "you can count upon an early token of appreciation, in excess of what regularly comes to you."