“Oh, I had fair success,” he replied, carelessly.
“Mr. Carter came in from the West day before yesterday,”said the porter, “and said he found trade mighty dull. He started out again last night.”
“Ah,” replied Carlos, “I hope he’ll have good luck. But I wish to see Mr. Duncan particularly. I wonder if there would be any objection to my waiting in his private office. My business is very urgent.”
“I guess you can wait there, sir,” replied the porter. “You’ll find last evening’s paper on the desk.”
“Thank you,” replied Carlos.
He passed through the store, and walked up a flight of steps to an elevated portion in the rear end. Here he opened a door, and entered a small, elegantly furnished apartment, which was the private sanctum of Mr. Duncan, the senior partner of the firm.
A brief retrospect is here necessary. Carlos had arrived from Europe but three days before the visit of himself and Leonard to Dalton. He had immediately called on his cousin, to whom he announced the death of his father, and confided the errand on which he was bent. Leonard had introduced him to Mr. Duncan, who had invited the cousins to his house.
For Leonard, in his capacity of foreign agent for the firm, enjoyed not only the business confidence of, but the warm personal friendship of his employers, and Mr. Duncan, being of a genial, social nature, delighted in nothing more than extending the hospitality of his house to his friends.
Mr. Mishler, the junior partner, was perhaps equally pleasant and sociable in his way, but he was unmarried, exceedingly industrious, and was constantly occupied with certain details of the business that were intrusted to his special supervision. Carlos had only met him once or twice casually.
Consequently he waited in Mr. Duncan’s private office, feeling that that gentleman was the only acquaintance in the great city to whom he could go in the present trouble. Indeed, there was no one else to whom he would feel at liberty to apply for any service whatever.