He settles back heavy in his chair and sets them cut granite jaws of his solid. He don't look so much like an invalid, after all. There's good color in his cheeks, and behind the droopy lids you could see the fighting light in his eyes. He glances once more at the letter.
"Hello!" says he. "I thought their main offices were in Chicago. This is from Broadway, International Utilities Building. Perhaps you can tell me what they're doing down there?"
"Subsidiary of I. U.," says I. "Been listed that way all summer."
"Then," says Old Hickory, smilin' grim, "we have to do once more with no less a personage than Gedney Nash. Well, so be it. He and I have fought out other differences. We'll try again. And if I'm a back number, I'll soon know it. Now get me a list of our outside security holdings."
That was his first order; but, say, inside of half an hour he had everybody in the shop, from little Vincent up to the head of the bond department, doin' flipflops and pinwheels. Didn't take 'em long to find out that he was back on the job, either.
"Breezy with that now!" I'd tell 'em. "This is a rush order for the old man. Sure he's in there. Can't you smell the sulphur?"
In the midst of it comes a hundred-word code message from Dalton, our traffic superintendent, sayin' how he'd been notified to remove his wharf spurs within twenty-four hours and askin' panicky what he should do about it.
"Tell him to hold his tracks with loaded ore trains, and keep his shirt on," growls Old Hickory over his shoulder. "And 'phone Peabody, Frost & Co. to send up their railroad securities expert on the double quick."
That's the way it went from eleven a.m. until two-thirty, and all the lunch I indulged in was two bites of a cheese sandwich that Vincent split with me. At two-thirty-five Old Hickory jams on his hat and signals for me.
"Gather up those papers and come along," says he. "I think we're ready now to talk to Gedney Nash."