“It isn’t that I dislike him,” he retorted, beginning to lose his temper a bit. “The thing of it is I don’t know how to treat him. He has no authority here that one can understand, get hold of, or openly respect. Yet there are times when you might think he owned the whole lot of us.” “How did this come about?” “Gradually,” he said. “Or, ... at least ... it was only about a year ago that he began to have the run of the place. Before that we knew him merely as a broker who made a specialty of dealing in Great Midwestern securities. From dealing so much in our securities he came to have a personal curiosity about the property. That’s what he said. So he began to pry into things, wanting information about this and that, some of it very private, and when we asked the president about it he said, ‘Oh, give him anything but the safe.’ Lately he’s been spending so much time around here that I wonder how he makes a living. He knows too much about the company. You heard John Harrier. He knows as much about our mortgages, indentures, leases and records as I know, and that’s my end of the business. He’s made me look up facts I never heard of before. He’s been all over the road, looking at it with a microscope. I do believe he knows generally more about the Great Midwestern than any other person living. Why? Tell me why?” “He and the president are old friends, did you say?” He paused for effect and said: “Henry Galt has only one friend in the world. That’s himself. Ask anybody who knows him in Wall Street. He’s been around here twenty years.” “Maybe it’s his extensive knowledge of the property that gives him his influence with the president,” I suggested. Harbinger came forward with a lurch, rested his elbows on his desk, hung his chin over his double fist and stared at me close up. “Maybe!” he said. “Well, what do you think?” I asked. He was aching to tell me what all of this had been leading up to, and yet the saying of it was inhibited. “I’m not a superstitious man,” he said, speaking with effort. “There’s a natural reason for everything if you know what it is.... It’s very strange.” “What’s strange?” “He knows both what is and what isn’t.” “Galt does?” He nodded and at the same time implored me by gesture not to let my voice rise. “May be anywhere around ... in the next room,” he said, hardly above a whisper. “Yes. He knows things that haven’t happened. If there’s such a gift as pre-vision he has it.” “If that were true,” I objected, “he would have all the money in the world.” “Just the same it’s true,” said Harbinger, rising and reaching for his coat. He looked at me a little askance, doubtless with misgivings as to the propriety of having talked so much. CHAPTER III GALT i