Foley glared at Tom, looked at the letter, hesitated, then ripped open the envelope with a bony forefinger. The crowd looked on, hardly breathing, while he read. Chapter XXIX IN WHICH MR. BAXTER SHOWS HIMSELF A MAN OF RESOURCES It was just eight o'clock when Johnson gave three excited raps with the heavy iron knocker on the door of Mr. Baxter's house in Madison Avenue. A personage in purple evening clothes drew the door wide open, but on seeing the sartorial character of the caller he filled the doorway with his own immaculate figure. "Is Mr. Baxter at home?" asked Johnson eagerly. "He is just going out," the other condescended to reply. That should have been enough to dispose of this common fellow. But Johnson kept his place. "I want to see him, for just a minute. Tell him my name. He'll see me. It's Johnson." The personage considered a space, then disappeared to search for Mr. Baxter; first showing his discretion by closing the door--with Johnson outside of it. He quickly reappeared and led Johnson across a hall that was as large as Johnson's flat, up a broad stairway, and through a wide doorway into the library, where he left him, standing, to gain what he could from sight of the rows and rows of leather-backed volumes. Almost at once Mr. Baxter entered, dressed in a dinner coat. "You have something to tell me?" he asked quickly. "Yes." "This way." Mr. Baxter led Johnson into a smaller room, opening upon the library, furnished with little else besides a flat-top walnut desk, a telephone, and a typewriter on a low table. Here Mr. Baxter sometimes attended to his correspondence, with the assistance of a stenographer sent from the office, when he did not feel like going downtown; and in here, when the mood was on him, he sometimes slipped to write bits of verse, a few of which he had published in magazines under a pseudonym. Mr. Baxter closed the door, took the chair at the desk and waved Johnson to the stenographer's. "I have only a minute. What is it?" For all his previous calls on Mr. Baxter, this refined presence made Johnson dumb with embarrassment. He would have been more at his ease had he had the comfort of fumbling his hat, but the purple personage had gingerly taken his battered derby from him at the door. "Well?" said Mr. Baxter, a bit impatiently. Johnson found his voice and rapidly told of Tom's discovery, as he had heard it from Tom twenty minutes before, and of the exposure that was going to be made that evening. At first Mr. Baxter seemed to start; the hand on the desk did certainly tighten. But that was all. "Did Mr. Keating say, in this story he proposes to tell, whether we offered Mr. Foley money to sell out, or whether Mr. Foley demanded it?" he asked, when Johnson had ended. "He didn't say. He didn't seem to know."