CHAPTER XIV CATCHING UP WITH GERALD "It seemed so absurdly simple at first too," says J. Bayard Steele, tappin' one of his pearl-gray spats with his walkin' stick. "But now--well, the more I see of this Gerald Webb, the less I understand." "Then you're comin' on," says I. "In time you'll get wise to the fact that everybody's that way,--no two alike and every last one of us neither all this nor all that, but constructed complicated, with a surprise package done up in each one." "Ah! Some of your homespun philosophy, eh?" says J. Bayard. "Interesting perhaps, but inaccurate--quite! The fellow is not at all difficult to read: it's what we ought to do for him that is puzzling." Which gives you a line, I expect, on this little debate of ours. Yep! Gerald is No. 8 on Pyramid Gordon's list. He'd been a private secretary for Mr. Gordon at one time or another; but he'd been handed his passports kind of abrupt one mornin', and had been set adrift in a cold world without warnin'. "In fact," goes on Steele, "I am told that Gordon actually kicked him out of his office; in rather a public manner too." "Huh!" says I. "I expect he deserved it, then." "Not at all," says Steele. "I've looked that point up. It was over a letter which Gordon himself had dictated to Webb not forty-eight hours before; you know, one of his hot-headed, arrogant, go-to-blazes retorts, during the thick of a fight. But this happened to be in reply to an ultimatum from the Reamur-Brooks Syndicate, and by next morning he'd discovered that he was in no position to talk that way to them. Well, as you know, Pyramid Gordon wasn't the man to eat his own words." "No," says I, "that wa'n't his fav'rite diet. So he made Gerald the goat, eh?" "Precisely!" says Steele. "Called him in before the indignant delegation, headed by old Reamur himself, and demanded of poor Webb what he meant by sending out such a letter. The youngster was so flustered that he could only stammer a confused denial. He started sniveling. Then Gordon collared him and booted him into the corridor. That should have closed the incident, but a few moments later back comes Webb, blubbering like a whipped schoolboy, and perfectly wild with rage. He was armed with a mop that he'd snatched from an astonished scrubwoman, and he stormed in whimpering that he was going to kill Gordon. Absurd, of course. A mop isn't a deadly weapon. Some of the clerks promptly rushed in and held Webb until an officer could be called. Then Pyramid laughed it off and refused to prosecute. But the story got into the papers, you may remember; and while more or less fun was poked at Gordon, young Webb came in for a good share. And naturally his career as a private secretary ended right there." "Yes," says I. "If I was takin' on a secretary myself, I wouldn't pick one that was subject to fits of mop wieldin'. What happened to him after that? How low did he fall?"