I


FROM HIM THAT HATH NOT

Receiver at ear, Spaulding, of Messrs. Atwater & Spaulding, importers
of motoring garments and accessories, listened to the switchboard
operator's announcement with grave attention, acknowledging it with a
toneless: "All right. Send him in." Then hooking up the desk telephone
he swung round in his chair to face the door of his private office, and
in a brief ensuing interval painstakingly ironed out of his face and
attitude every indication of the frame of mind in which he awaited his
caller. It was, as a matter of fact, anything but a pleasant one: he
had a distasteful duty to perform; but that was the last thing he
designed to become evident. Like most good business men he nursed a pet
superstition or two, and of the number of these the first was that he
must in all his dealings present an inscrutable front, like a
poker-player's: captains of industry were uniformly like that,
Spaulding understood; if they entertained emotions it was strictly in
private. Accordingly he armoured himself with a magnificent
imperturbability which at times almost deceived its wearer.

Occasionally it deceived others: notably now it bewildered Duncan as he
entered on the echo of Spaulding's "Come!" He had apprehended the
visage of a thunderstorm, with a rattle of brusque complaints: he
encountered Spaulding as he had always seemed: a little, urbane figure
with a blank face, the blanker for glasses whose lenses seemed always
to catch the light and, glaring, mask the eyes behind them; a