“Yes.”
“Gee whizz! I’ve written you several letters. You remember my initials, R. H. B.?”
“Yes.”
“Can you talk? Say if you’d rather not.”
“No, no. It’s all right. Anyhow—I’d—sooner—try.”
“Does the boss know you’re here?”
“I guess not. I wrote him—to Denver; but he’s been engaged—otherwise.”
“Ra-ther! Getting wed. You’ve heard? I’m sure you’re as much surprised as any of us. You could have knocked me down with a feather when he told me why I was wired to come West by next train from New York. ‘I want you to take hold,’ he said. ‘I’m off to Europe for six months on my wedding trip.’ That was the day before yesterday, and here he’s gone already! I had a sort of notion, too, that our beloved employer would never take unto himself a wife, or, if he did, that the U. S. A. would hear about it.”
A hard smile illuminated the pallor of Power’s face. “Marten doesn’t hire a brass band when he has any startling proposition in mind,” he said.
Benson laughed. He was a cheerful, outspoken youngster—exactly the kind of private secretary the secretive millionaire might have been expected to avoid like the plague, if Marten had not chosen him deliberately because of those very qualities.