>>>  YOU ARE VIEWING A 200 LINE SAMPLE OF EBOOK# E05355  <<<

TITLE: A WASTED DAY
AUTHOR: RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
EBOOK: E05355 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

A WASTED DAY

When its turn came, the private secretary, somewhat apologetically,
laid the letter in front of the Wisest Man in Wall Street.

"From Mrs. Austin, probation officer, Court of General Sessions,"
he explained.  "Wants a letter about Spear.  He's been convicted of
theft.  Comes up for sentence Tuesday."

"Spear?" repeated Arnold Thorndike.

"Young fellow, stenographer, used to do your letters last summer
going in and out on the train."

The great man nodded.  "I remember.  What about him?"

The habitual gloom of the private secretary was lightened by a
grin.

"Went on the loose; had with him about five hundred dollars
belonging to the firm; he's with Isaacs & Sons now, shoe people on
Sixth Avenue.  Met a woman, and woke up without the money.  The
next morning he offered to make good, but Isaacs called in a
policeman.  When they looked into it, they found the boy had been
drunk.  They tried to withdraw the charge, but he'd been committed.
Now, the probation officer is trying to get the judge to suspend
sentence.  A letter from you, sir, would--"

It was evident the mind of the great man was elsewhere.  Young men
who, drunk or sober, spent the firm's money on women who
disappeared before sunrise did not appeal to him.  Another letter
submitted that morning had come from his art agent in Europe.  In
Florence he had discovered the Correggio he had been sent to find.
It was undoubtedly genuine, and he asked to be instructed by cable.
The price was forty thousand dollars.  With one eye closed, and the
other keenly regarding the inkstand, Mr. Thorndike decided to pay
the price; and with the facility of long practice dismissed the
Correggio, and snapped his mind back to the present.

"Spear had a letter from us when he left, didn't he?" he asked.
"What he has developed into, SINCE he left us--" he shrugged his
shoulders.  The secretary withdrew the letter, and slipped another
in its place.

"Homer Firth, the landscape man," he chanted, "wants permission to
use blue flint on the new road, with turf gutters, and to plant
silver firs each side.  Says it will run to about five thousand
dollars a mile."

"No!" protested the great man firmly, "blue flint makes a country
place look like a cemetery.  Mine looks too much like a cemetery
now.  Landscape gardeners!" he exclaimed impatiently.  "Their only
idea is to insult nature.  The place was better the day I bought
it, when it was running wild; you could pick flowers all the way to
the gates."  Pleased that it should have recurred to him, the great
man smiled.  "Why, Spear," he exclaimed, "always took in a bunch of
them for his mother.  Don't you remember, we used to see him before
breakfast wandering around the grounds picking flowers?"  Mr.
Thorndike nodded briskly.  "I like his taking flowers to his
mother."

"He SAID it was to his mother," suggested the secretary gloomily.

"Well, he picked the flowers, anyway," laughed Mr. Thorndike.  "He
didn't pick our pockets.  And he had the run of the house in those
days.  As far as we know," he dictated, "he was satisfactory.
Don't say more than that."

The secretary scribbled a mark with his pencil.  "And the landscape
man?"

"Tell him," commanded Thorndike, "I want a wood road, suitable to a
farm; and to let the trees grow where God planted them."

As his car slid downtown on Tuesday morning the mind of Arnold
Thorndike was occupied with such details of daily routine as the
purchase of a railroad, the Japanese loan, the new wing to his art
gallery, and an attack that morning, in his own newspaper, upon his
pet trust.  But his busy mind was not too occupied to return the
salutes of the traffic policemen who cleared the way for him.  Or,
by some genius of memory, to recall the fact that it was on this
morning young Spear was to be sentenced for theft.  It was a
charming morning.  The spring was at full tide, and the air was
sweet and clean.  Mr. Thorndike considered whimsically that to send
a man to jail with the memory of such a morning clinging to him was
adding a year to his sentence.  He regretted he had not given the
probation officer a stronger letter.  He remembered the young man
now, and favorably.  A shy, silent youth, deft in work, and at
other times conscious and embarrassed.  But that, on the part of a
stenographer, in the presence of the Wisest Man in Wall Street, was
not unnatural.  On occasions, Mr. Thorndike had put even royalty--
frayed, impecunious royalty, on the lookout for a loan--at its
ease.

The hood of the car was down, and the taste of the air, warmed by
the sun, was grateful.  It was at this time, a year before, that
young Spear picked the spring flowers to take to his mother.  A
year from now where would young Spear be?

It was characteristic of the great man to act quickly, so quickly
that his friends declared he was a slave to impulse.  It was these
same impulses, leading so invariably to success, that made his
enemies call him the Wisest Man.  He leaned forward and touched the
chauffeur's shoulder.  "Stop at the Court of General Sessions," he
commanded.  What he proposed to do would take but a few minutes.  A
word, a personal word from him to the district attorney, or the
judge, would be enough.  He recalled that a Sunday Special had once
calculated that the working time of Arnold Thorndike brought him in
two hundred dollars a minute.  At that rate, keeping Spear out of
prison would cost a thousand dollars.

Out of the sunshine Mr. Thorndike stepped into the gloom of an
echoing rotunda, shut in on every side, hung by balconies, lit,
many stories overhead, by a dirty skylight.  The place was damp,
the air acrid with the smell of stale tobacco juice, and foul with
the presence of many unwashed humans.  A policeman, chewing
stolidly, nodded toward an elevator shaft, and other policemen
nodded him further on to the office of the district attorney.
There Arnold Thorndike breathed more freely.  He was again among
his own people.  He could not help but appreciate the dramatic
qualities of the situation; that the richest man in Wall Street
should appear in person to plead for a humble and weaker brother.
He knew he could not escape recognition, his face was too well
known, but, he trusted, for the sake of Spear, the reporters would
make no display of his visit.  With a deprecatory laugh, he
explained why he had come.  But the outburst of approbation he had
anticipated did not follow.

The district attorney ran his finger briskly down a printed card.
"Henry Spear," he exclaimed, "that's your man.  Part Three, Judge
Fallon.  Andrews is in that court."  He walked to the door of his
private office.  "Andrews!" he called.

He introduced an alert, broad-shouldered young man of years of much
indiscretion and with a charming and inconsequent manner.

"Mr. Thorndike is interested in Henry Spear, coming up for sentence
in Part Three this morning.  Wants to speak for him.  Take him over
with you."

The district attorney shook hands quickly, and retreated to his
private office.  Mr. Andrews took out a cigarette and, as he
crossed the floor, lit it.

"Come with me," he commanded.  Somewhat puzzled, slightly annoyed,
but enjoying withal the novelty of the environment and the curtness
of his reception, Mr. Thorndike followed.  He decided that, in his
ignorance, he had wasted his own time and that of the prosecuting
attorney.  He should at once have sent in his card to the judge.
As he understood it, Mr. Andrews was now conducting him to that
dignitary, and, in a moment, he would be free to return to his own
affairs, which were the affairs of two continents.  But Mr. Andrews
led him to an office, bare and small, and offered him a chair, and
handed him a morning newspaper.  There were people waiting in the
room; strange people, only like those Mr. Thorndike had seen on
ferry-boats.  They leaned forward toward young Mr. Andrews,
fawning, their eyes wide with apprehension.

Mr. Thorndike refused the newspaper.  "I thought I was going to see
the judge," he suggested.

"Court doesn't open for a few minutes yet," said the assistant
district attorney.  "Judge is always late, anyway."

Mr. Thorndike suppressed an exclamation.  He wanted to protest, but
his clear mind showed him that there was nothing against which,
with reason, he could protest.  He could not complain because these
people were not apparently aware of the sacrifice he was making.
He had come among them to perform a kindly act.  He recognized that
he must not stultify it by a show of irritation.  He had
precipitated himself into a game of which he did not know the
rules.  That was all.  Next time he would know better.  Next time
he would send a clerk.  But he was not without a sense of humor,
and the situation as it now was forced upon him struck him as
amusing.  He laughed good-naturedly and reached for the desk
telephone.

"May I use this?" he asked.  He spoke to the Wall Street office.
He explained he would be a few minutes late.  He directed what
should be done if the market opened in a certain way.  He gave
rapid orders on many different matters, asked to have read to him a
cablegram he expected from Petersburg, and one from Vienna.

"They answer each other," was his final instruction.  "It looks
like peace."

Mr. Andrews with genial patience had remained silent.  Now he
turned upon his visitors.  A Levantine, burly, unshaven, and
soiled, towered truculently above him.  Young Mr. Andrews with his
swivel chair tilted back, his hands clasped behind his head, his
cigarette hanging from his lips, regarded the man dispassionately.

"You gotta hell of a nerve to come to see me," he commented
cheerfully.  To Mr. Thorndike, the form of greeting was novel.  So
greatly did it differ from the procedure of his own office, that he
listened with interest.


<<<  END OF SAMPLE... (THE FULL EBOOK HAS 29900 TOTAL CHARACTERS)  >>>