The secretary, who was sharp of eye and alert of manner, rose at once and followed, though it was not the custom of A. Slivowitz to summon him thus. His employer sank ponderously into his swivel chair and motioned to the secretary to shut the door and take a seat. Then for a minute or so he was silent, playing with his massive gold watch chain and studying the young man through puckered lids. But if the secretary was perturbed he did not show it.
“Mr. Sloane,” began Slivowitz, at length, in his heavy voice, “you been with the firm now how long—six or five months, ain’t it?”
“Nearly six,” the dapper young man confirmed briskly.
“You’re a smart feller, Mr. Sloane,” his employer continued, examining the huge diamond on his left hand. “Already you picked it up a lot about dyeing. A fine dyer you should make. Now, Mr. Sloane, I’m going to fire you.”
The secretary’s eyebrows went up a trifle, but otherwise he showed no great perturbation. Perhaps a certain elephantine playfulness in the big man’s tone reassured him.
“By me business is good,” Slivowitz went on, with a fat chuckle. “I’m a business man, Mr. Sloane, first and last, and nobody don’t never put nothing over by me.”
Knowing something of his employer’s business methods, Sloane could have amplified. What he said was: “Thanks to your royal purple, Mr. Slivowitz. You’ve about cornered the trade.”
“They can’t none of ’em touch it, that purple; posi-tive-ly,” agreed the dyer, with much satisfaction. “But”—and he became confidential—“between me and you strictly, this here now Domestic Dye Works, they got it a mauve what gives me a pain.”
He hitched his chair closer and laid a pudgy hand on Sloane’s knee. “I’m going to fire you,” he repeated, with a wink. “I want you should go by the Domestic Dye Works and get it a job. Find out about the formula for their mauve—you understand me—and come back mit it, and you get back your job and a hundred or seventy-five dollars.”
Sloane started. For a moment he stared at his employer, his face going red and pale again; then he rose to his feet.