I smothered a gasp. Was he nutty, or what? You know you don't drop in offhand on a man like Gedney Nash, same as you would on a shrimp bank president, or a corporation head. You hear a lot about him, of course,—now givin' a million to charity, then bein' denounced as a national highway robber,—but you don't see him. Anyway, I never knew of anyone who did. He's the man behind, the one that pulls the strings. Course, he's supposed to be at the head of International Utilities, but he claims not to hold any office. And you know what happened when Congress tried to get him before an investigatin' committee. All that showed up was a squad of lawyers, who announced they was ready to answer any questions they couldn't file an exception to, and three doctors with affidavits to prove that Mr. Nash was about to expire from as many incurable diseases. So Congress gave it up.
Yet here we was, pikin' downtown without any notice, expectin' to find him as easy as if he was a traffic cop on a fixed post. Well, we didn't. The minute we blows into the arcade and begins to ask for him, up slides a smooth-talkin' buildin' detective who listens polite what I feed him and suggests that if we wait a minute he'll call up the gen'ral offices. Which he does and reports that they've no idea where Mr. Nash can be found. Maybe he's gone to the mountains, or over to his Long Island place, or abroad on a vacation.
"Tommyrot!" says Old Hickory. "Gedney Nash never took a vacation in his life. I know he's in New York now."
The gentleman sleuth shrugs his shoulders and allows that if Mr. Ellins ain't satisfied he might go up to Floor 11 and ask for himself. So up we went. Ever in the Tractions Buildin'? Say, it's like bein' caught in a fog down the bay,—all silence and myst'ry. I expect it's the headquarters of a hundred or more diff'rent corporations, all tied up some way or other with I. U. interests; but on the doors never the name of one shows: just "Mr. So-and-So," "Mr. Whadye Callum," "Mr. This-and-That." Clerks hurry by you with papers in their hands, walkin' soft on rubber heels. They tap respectful on a door, it opens silent, they disappear. When they meet in the corridors they pass without hailin', without even a look. You feel that there's something doin' around you, something big and important. But the gears don't give out any hum. It's like a game of blind man's bluff played in the dark.
And the sharp-eyed, gray-haired gent we talked to through the brass gratin' acted like he'd never heard the name Gedney Nash before. When Old Hickory cuts loose with the tabasco remarks at him he only smiles patient and insists that if he can locate Mr. Nash, which he doubts, he'll do his best to arrange an interview. It may take a day, or a week, or a month, but——
"Bah!" snorts Old Hickory, turnin' on his heel, and he cusses eloquent all the way down and out to the taxi.
"Seems to me I've heard how Mr. Nash uses a private elevator," I suggests.
"Quite like him," says Old Hickory. "Think you could find it?"
"I could make a stab," says I.
But at that I knew I was kiddin' myself. Why not? Ain't there been times when whole bunches of live-wire reporters, not to mention relays of court deputies, have raked New York with a fine-tooth comb, lookin' for Gedney Nash, without even gettin' so much as a glimpse of his limousine rollin' round a corner.