k."

That's the way it went from eleven A.M. until two-thirty, and all the
lunch I indulged in was two bites of a cheese sandwich that Vincent
split with me. At two-thirty-five Old Hickory jams on his hat and
signals for me.

"Gather up those papers and come along," says he. "I think we're ready
now to talk to Gedney Nash."

I smothered a gasp. Was he nutty, or what? You know you don't drop in
offhand on a man like Gedney Nash, same as you would on a shrimp bank
president, or a corporation head. You hear a lot about him, of
course,--now givin' a million to charity, then bein' denounced as a
national highway robber,--but you don't see him. Anyway, I never knew of
anyone who did. He's the man behind, the one that pulls the strings.
Course, he's supposed to be at the head of International Utilities, but
he claims not to hold any office. And you know what happened when
Congress tried to get him before an investigatin' committee. All that
showed up was a squad of lawyers, who announced they was ready to
answer any questions they couldn't file an exception to, and three
doctors with affidavits to prove that Mr. Nash was about to expire from
as many incurable diseases. So Congress gave it up.

Yet here we was, pikin' downtown without any notice, expectin' to find
him as easy as if he was a traffic cop on a fixed post. Well, we didn't.
The minute we blows into the arcade and begins to ask for him, up slides
a smooth-talkin' buildin' detective who listens polite what I feed him
and suggests that if we wait a minute he'll call up the gen'ral offices.
Which he does and reports that they've no idea where Mr. Nash can be
found. Maybe he's gone to the mountains, or over to his Long Island
place, or abroad on a vacation.

"Tommyrot!" says Old Hickory. "Gedney Nash never took a vacation in his
life. I know he's in New York now."

The gentleman sleuth shrugs his shoulders and allows that if Mr. Ellins
ain't satisfied he might go up to Floor 11 and ask for himself. So up we
went. Ever in the Tractions Buildin'? Say, it's like bein' caught in a
fog down the bay,--all silence and myst'ry. I expect it's the
headquarters of a hundred or more diff'rent corporations, all tied up
some way or other with I. U. interests; but on the doors never the name
of one shows: just "Mr. So-and-So," "Mr. Whadye Callum," "Mr.
This-and-That." Clerks hurry by you with papers in their hands, walkin'
soft on rubber heels. They tap respectful on a door, it