ffice; he
made no speeches; he had no obvious axe to grind. He seemed to count
politics his diversion, not his business, and emphasized this attitude
by a strict supervision of the huge commercial enterprise whose head he
was. He arrived in this company's offices punctually at ten o'clock,
and here he was readily accessible throughout the working day, a figure
as politically unprofessional as one could imagine. Yet politically he
was as absolute as a boss ever is. At once the most abused, hated,
dreaded, liked, and respected man in the state, fables without number
clustered round his elusive personality. One account would paint him a
church deacon, frock-coated, smug; another with cloven hoof. He was
said to be a Hedonist, a Marcus Aurelius; a glutton, an ascetic; a
satyr, a pattern of domestic virtue; an illiterate Philistine, a
collector of book plates and first editions. A legend, widely current,
ran that he played chief bacchanalian at dinners whose vaudeville
accompaniments were too gross for a bill of particulars; while another,
equally plausible, had it that he lunched daily on a red-cheeked apple
raised on the farm which had cradled his undistinguished infancy. He
was popularly known as Old Silky.

Shelby's card barely preceded him into the Boss's presence. It was not
a sumptuous throne-room; an austere chamber rather, one might without
exaggeration say a roomy cell, with puritanic chairs and khaki-colored
regiments of letter files. There were two concessions to a softer
scheme of life,--a lounge and a bowl of red chrysanthemums, both with
associations. On the lounge, which parenthetically had lesser though
not less interesting memories, a President-to-be had sat a suppliant,
while the bowl, always flower-heaped, recalled an hour when a
tempestuous petticoat, his protege, had swept straight from operatic
triumphs to shower roses at his feet. This ruddy bowl lit a broad, low
desk from which now advanced a gray-haired man of a certain shy
friendliness and modulated tones.

"This is right obliging of you," he said over the hand-clasp. "Don't
tell me you've already lunched?"

Shelby had, but dissembled, his tone dropping in unconscious imitation
of the leader's. Every apprehension forgotten, he yielded instantly to
the charm of his unassuming friendliness.

"Then you must honor me. Five minutes with these papers and I'll be
with you." He turned to a pile of type-written letters awaiting his
sign