This beyond question was true. He was given to actions quite as strange as his thoughts. At one time he had paid a half-dollar for the privilege of taking Johnny to the top of his city’s highest tower. Once there, he had spread his hands wide as he exclaimed, “See, Johnny! Look at all that!”
It was indeed an awe-inspiring sight. Mile on mile of magnificent buildings. Towers rising to the clouds, all the wealth and glory of a great modern city was there, spread out beneath them.
“Johnny,” Drew had said, “there are people living down there who are ashamed of their own city. They don’t believe in its future.
“You can’t blame them too much.” His voice took on a note of sadness. “The badness of it is pretty terrible.
“But think, Johnny! Look! Look and think how many men of great wealth must have believed in this city and her future. Not one of those great towers could have risen a foot from the ground had not some man had faith in the city’s future.
“And, Johnny!” He had gripped the boy’s arm hard. “It’s my task and yours, every young man’s task, to prove to the world that the faith of those men was not misplaced.
“And we will!” He had clenched his hands tight. “We’ll make it the grandest, the greatest, the safest, most beautiful city the world has ever known!”
He had said that. And now he sat brooding beside the form of one who, like himself perhaps in his youth, had thrown himself against the slow revolving wheel of stone that is a great city’s appalling wickedness.
“And now see!” he murmured, half aloud.
“The lawyer who told me who he was said he was ‘just a shell!’” Johnny volunteered. “Do you think you can make anything of just a shell?”