It was Christmas Eve,—and though this fact has already been stated before, it cannot for the purposes of the present veracious chronicle of events be too strongly insisted upon. It was the Eve of the Angels,—and no devils were supposed to be anywhere about. For, as our Shakespeare tells us:—
“Ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long,
And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time!”
Perhaps the great McNason, if he had not been so occupied with himself and his own affairs, might have thought of these lines when, on leaving his head office in the city, he travelled with the swiftness of the wind through a storm of sleet and snow to his palatial private abode some twenty miles out of town, rushing along at full speed in a superb motor-car sumptuously furnished with a rain-proof covering, rugs, foot-warmers, and all the luxurious paraphernalia wherewith a multi-millionaire may shield his valuable joints from the cold. For he professed, did McNason, to have Shakespearean proclivities, and had been heard to declare publicly that he preferred the Bard of Avon to the Bible. That was the way he put things,—with all the agreeable free-and-easy indifference to religion and to other folks religious sentiments which so frequently embellishes the character of the multi-millionaire. As a matter of fact he knew nothing about either the Immortal Plays or Holy Writ. They were sealed books to his limited comprehension. The divine teachings of Scripture, and the broadly beneficent and tender philosophy of Shakespeare were alike beyond him. He understood Ledger Literature in its every branch,—every smallest point concerning L.S.D. was familiar to him,—and such “quotations” from books as he could make, were intimately connected with the Stock Market. But for all romance he had a fine contempt, and for poetry and poetic sentiment a saturnine derision. More than anything perhaps, he hated and scorned any idea of things “supernatural.” He attended church very regularly on Sundays,—oh yes!—that was a particular item of “conscience and respectability” with him. But as everything he heard there had to do with “supernatural” matters, it is safe to presume that he was a hypocrite in going to listen to what he did not believe. However, in this he was not exceptional,—there are many like him. “Respectability” may be permitted to play the humbug when it is a millionaire, and drives to its country seat in a motor-car costing two thousand guineas, especially on Christmas Eve, which—despite colossal fortune-makers—remains indissolubly associated in the human mind with Poverty and a Manger. And it was with all the glow and splendour of humbug shining lustrously about him that the world-renowned McNason stepped out of his sumptuous vehicle as it stopped at his own door, and entered his stately baronial hall, where four powdered and liveried flunkeys stood waiting deferentially to receive him. Taking scarcely any notice of these gorgeous personages, who were in his sight no more than flower-pots, umbrella stands, or other portions of ordinary household furniture, he addressed himself to a fifth retainer, severely attired in black, who, by a set of cords and tassels on his left shoulder and the effective simplicity of his costume as compared with the liveries of the other menials, implied to all whom it might concern that he was the commanding officer or major-domo of the royal McNason household.