He was referring to the private weekly statement of gross and net revenues compiled jointly by the secretary and treasurer and delivered by Harbinger’s own hand to the president. This exhibit was not for publication like the monthly statement; it was a special sounding for the information of the executive, or a kind of statistical cheese auger by means of which the trained sense could sample the state of business. The figures were supposed to be jealously guarded. On no account were they to go out of the office, save by direct order of the president. The crime of my predecessor had been to let them fall regularly into the hands of certain Stock Exchange speculators. Knowing all this, everybody knowing it, I wondered at Harbinger when late one evening he brought the statement to my desk, saying: “Here are the weekly figures. You take them. It’s better to keep them all in one place while the chief is away. I haven’t even a copy.” I was not surprised that he should be trying to rid himself of a distasteful responsibility. But the act of avoidance was in itself puerile. Suppose there was another leak. He could say that he had put the statement out of his keeping into mine; he could say he had not kept a copy; but could he expect anyone to believe he had erased them from his mind? It irritated me. I kept thinking about it that night. I concluded there was something I did not understand; and there was. As I was opening my desk the next morning Galt came in and without a word or sign of salutation addressed me summarily. “Harbinger says you have the earnings.” “The weekly earnings?” I asked. “The weekly earnings,” he repeated after me, trying to mimic my voice and manner. He would have been ridiculous except that he was angry, and anger was an emotion that seemed curiously to enlarge him. So here was the explanation of Harbinger’s behavior. He had expected Galt to ask him for the figures and he meant to be able to say that he didn’t have them. We regarded each other steadily. “Well?” I said. “You apparently don’t know that I get them,” he said, his anger beginning to rise against me. “No, I don’t know it,” I said. “Does Mr. Harbinger know?” This reference to Harbinger, which he understood to be sarcastic, completed his rage. “Do I get them?” he asked, bulging at me in a menacing manner. “Sorry,” I said. “There’s no hole for you in my instructions.” At that he began to pass in front of me, with long, stealthy steps, his shoulders crouched, his hands in his pockets, his head low and cocked right and then left as he turned and passed again, all the while looking at me fixedly with a preposterous, maleficent glare. The effect was so ludicrous that I laughed. And then for only so long as it takes to see a flashing thing there was a look in his eyes that made me shudder. Suddenly he went out, slamming the door so hard that I held my breath for the sound of falling glass.