Looking straight into Hannibal's eyes, without a muscle changing in
his impassive face, Mr. Fox said in the steady tone of command:

"Say to Miss Edith I will call again," and he passed out of the door
as if _he_ were master of the situation.

Hannibal rolled up his eyes till nothing but the whites were seen, and
muttered:

"Brass ain't no name for it."

Mr. Fox's action can soon be explained. Mr. Allen, while accustomed to
operate largely in Wall Street through his brokers, was also the head
of a cloth-importing firm. This in fact had been his regular and
legitimate business, but like so many others he had been drawn into
the vortex of speculation, and after many lucky hits had acquired that
overweening confidence that prepares the way for a fall. He came to
believe that he had only to put his hand to a thing to give it the
needful impulse to success. In his larger and more exciting operations
in Wall Street he had left the cloth business mainly to his junior
partners and dependants, they employing his capital. Mr. Fox was
merely a clerk in this establishment, and not in very high standing
either. He was also another unwholesome product of metropolitan life.
As office boy among the lawyers, as a hanger-on of the criminal
courts, he had scrambled into a certain kind of legal knowledge and
had gained a small pettifogging practice when an opening in Mr.
Allen's business led to his present connection. Mr. Allen felt that in
his varied and extended business he needed a man of Mr. Fox's stamp to
deal with the legal questions that came up, look after the intricacies