Mrs. Berwyn, his secretary, would always say, “You’re crazy—not the boss. He’s just taken to doing his thinking looking out the window. Maybe some of you dumb journalists would improve your work by staring at something more than city-room walls.”
Coley was, one night, looking at the moon and its effect upon the spires and minarets of his homeland. A powdery light sifted over the region and picked out not just the loftiest buildings but lesser structures, objects that did not usually draw his daytime attention. Thus the tarred roof of the block-square produce market stood revealed across River Avenue. Out toward Rocky Glen, near the Country Club, he could see the glister of a greenhouse and guessed it was the Thomas Nursery. Slossen’s Run, a muddy tributary of the river, indistinguishable by day from a dusty road, now glinted to the west wherever the buildings left a space for it to show-a proper water course by night, however much the day defiled it. He saw, too, the distant spires of River City’s Roman Catholic Cathedral newly finished, up on the corner of Market and, appropriately, St. Paul.
He was thinking that there had been a time in America, not long before even by the brief calendar of human lives, when church spires had been the loftiest landmarks. Now, the steeples of commerce towered above, dwarfing and belittling man’s homage to God. It was not, Coley reflected, an accidental phenomenon. When men turned from inner values to those outside, to “getting and spending,” their tabernacles dwindled while trade places grew majestic.
He heard his door open and sighed, looking away from the moon-lacquered panorama.
“Mr. Conner’s here to see you,” his secretary said. “And it’s almost ten o’clock.”
“Conner?”
“Henry Conner.”
Borden smiled. “Oh. Hank. Tell him to come right in.”
“You haven’t had supper yet, Mr. Borden. Would you like…?”
“Later. Later.” He snapped on lights and sat down at his desk.