“That’s what I meant to say. I roughed him around quite a bit—manhandled him in general. But all FOR HIS GOOD, you know.”
“For his good?” Eaton’s dazed brain tried to conceive the situation of a billionaire being mauled for his good, and gave it up in despair. If Steve Eaton worshipped anything, it was wealth. He was a born sycophant, and it was partly because his naive unstinted admiration had contributed to satisfy his chief’s vanity that the latter had made of him a confidant. Now he sat dumb before the lese-majeste of laying forcible hands upon the richest man in the world.
“But, of course, you’re only joking,” he finally decided.
“You haven’t been back twelve hours. Where COULD you have seen him?”
“Nevertheless I have met him and been properly introduced by his wife.”
“His wife?”
“Yes, I picked her out of a snow-drift.”
“Is this a riddle?”
“If it is, I don’t know the answer, Steve. But it is a true one, anyhow, not made to order merely to astonish you.”
“True that you picked Simon Harley’s wife out of a snow-drift and kicked him around?”