CHAPTER V
A COLLECTOR OF FACTS
When Jerry came in “off the road” Saturday, he found a note from Eaton asking him to call at his office that evening. To comply with this request, Jerry was obliged to forego the delights of a dance at the Little Ripple Club to which he had looked forward with the liveliest anticipations all the week. But Eaton was not, in Amidon’s estimation, a person to whom one telephoned regrets with impunity, and at eight o’clock he knocked at Eaton’s door on the fifteenth floor of the White River Trust Building and was admitted by the lawyer in person.
Eaton’s office always exerted a curious spell on Jerry’s imagination. This was attributable in some measure to the presence of cabinets filled with models of patentable and unpatentable devices—queer contrivances with each its story of some inventor’s success or failure. The most perfect order was everywhere apparent. Books from the ample library were never strewn about in the manner of most law offices, and Eaton’s flat-top desk in the last room of the suite was usually clear; or if papers were permitted to lie upon it, they were piled evenly and weighted with a smooth stone that was never visible unless in use. The file-cases (of the newest and most approved type) contained not only letters, legal papers, and receipts, but, known to no one but the girl who cared for them, newspaper clippings and typewritten memoranda on a thousand and one subjects that bore no apparent relation to the practice of law.
Facts were Eaton’s passion; with facts, one might, he believed, conquer the world; indeed, he was capable of demonstrating that all the battles in history were lost or won by the facts carried into the contest by the respective commanders. He had so often disturbed the office of the Commissioner of Patents with his facts that the public servants in charge of that department were little disposed to risk a brush with him on points that involved facts, facts that seemed, in his use of them, to glitter like the lenses of his eyeglasses.
He seated himself in his office chair—a leathern affair with a high back—and bade Amidon shed his coat and be comfortable.
“Smoke?” he suggested, opening a drawer containing cigars and cigarettes. Jerry hated ready-made cigarettes, but he was afraid to produce the “makings” before Eaton, who had once complained that the odor of the tobacco he affected was suggestive of burning jimson weed. Eaton produced a glass ash-tray, and filled a pipe with the deliberation he brought to every act.
“Business is bad, I suppose, as usual,” he remarked leadingly.
“Rotten! The shark that runs the credits has cut off one or two of my easiest marks; but I managed to end last month with a ten-per-cent advance over last year’s business, and that helps some.”
“You have spoken well, Amidon. I suppose you were received with joyous acclaim by the boss, and urged to accept a raise in wages?”
“Stop kidding me! I’m sensitive about my wages. They still pretend they’re just trying me out—not sure I’ll make good and that sort of piffle!”