His first day in New York left him with nothing more than a feeling of
foreboding and oppression. The expected exhilaration of returning to
the city of his birth did not materialize. So used to open spaces was
he, to distances and the circle of horizons, that he knew he no longer
belonged to the city with its Himalayan gorges and canons, whose
torrents were human beings and whose glaciers were the hearts of these.
A great loneliness bore down on him. For months he had been drawing
familiar pictures, and to find none of these was like coming home to an
empty house. The old life was indeed gone; there were no threads to
resume. A hotel stood where his club had been; the house in which he
had spent his youth was no more. He wanted to leave the city; and the
desire was with difficulty overcome.
Early the second morning he started down-town to the offices of the
Andes Construction Company. He was extraordinarily nervous. Cold
sweat continually moistened his palms. Change, change, everywhere
change; Trinity was like an old friend. When the taxicab driver threw
off the power and indicated with a jerk of his head a granite shaft
that soared up into the blue, Warrington asked:
"What place is this?"
"The Andes Building, sir. The construction company occupies the top
floor."
"Very good," replied Warrington, paying and discharging the man.
From a reliquary of the Dutch, an affair of red-brick, four stories
high, this monolith had sprung. With a sigh Warrington entered the
cavernous door-way and stepped into an "express-elevator." When the
car arrived at the twenty-second story, Warrington was alone. He
paused before the door of the vice-president. He recalled the "old
man," thin-lipped, blue-eyed, eruptive. It was all very strange, this
request to make the restitution in person. Well he would soon learn
why.
He drew the certified check from his wallet and scrutinized it
carefully. Twelve thousand, eight hundred dollars. He replaced it,
opened the door, and walked in. A boy met him at the railing and
briskly inquired his business.
"I wish to see Mr. Elmore."
"Your card."
Card? Warrington had not possessed such a thing in years. "I have no
cards with me. But I have an appointment with Mr. Elmore. Tell him
that Mr. Ellison is here."
The boy returned promptly and signified that Mr. Elmore was at liberty.
But it was not the "old man" who looked up from a busy man's desk. It
was the son: so far, the one familiar face Warrington had seen since
his arrival. There was no hand-shaking; there was nothing in evidence
on either side to invite it.
"Ah! Sit down, Paul. Let no one disturb me for an hour," the young
vice-president advised the boy. "And close the door as you go out."
Warrington sat down; the bridge-builder whirled his chair around and
stared at his visitor, not insolently, but with kindly curiosity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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