“The Guardian, eh? You’re the last man in town I’d have looked up. But now that I’ve met you, I’ll just mention that Washington thinks pretty well of The Guardian. Keep it up, my boy. And now, where would I be likely to find a bold and dashing patriot, by name, Emil Bausch?”
Jeremy gave the directions. James Tilley thanked him. “Nobody ever recognizes me,” he observed, “or notices me, or remembers me. I’m such a common article. That’s all that makes me valuable. So kindly forget all this. And good-bye.”
Five minutes later he was sitting in Emil Bausch’s private office explaining to that perturbed gentleman certain supposedly very private matters in connection with a chemical project in one phase of which Bausch had acted for a certain otherwise unidentified “Mr. Stern.” Bausch was loftily contemptuous, though nervous.
“The other details,” said the caller pleasantly, “are entered in Ledger M, under the cipher of X-32, formerly kept at 60 Wall Street.”
Bausch gulped twice and said he had never heard of it.
“Fortunate for you,” returned the other. “Take my advice and don’t hear of it. Don’t have any part in it. Don’t do business with people who have. Trouble lies that way.”
Thereafter Mr. Bausch repaired to the Deutscher Club where he had several more beers than was his wont, and subsequently delivered himself of touching appreciations of free speech and the privileges of American citizenship. He wound up, after dinner, by declaring to a puzzled assemblage that he knew his rights and was n’t afraid of anybody, even if he did come from Washington and wear a tin shield.
Meantime a supremely ordinary appearing person contrived to get himself admitted to the President’s room of the Fenchester Trust Company, and introduced himself to Robert Wanser, who found his bearing, mild though it was, distinctly antipathetic. In a voice so quiet as to give the effect of being meek, the intruder ventured to advise Mr. Wanser to shun the Deutscher Club.
“Go to the devil!” retorted Mr. Wanser, whose nerves had been recently frazzled by local as well as national events.
“I’m giving you the opposite advice,” returned the other equably. “Keep away from the Deutscher Club.”