He entered the vast marble vestibule of the Ararat Trust Building and walked toward the express elevator that was to carry him up to his office.  At the door of the elevator a man turned to him, and he recognized Elmer Moffatt, who put out his hand with an easy gesture.

Mr. Spragg did not ignore the gesture:  he did not even withhold his hand.  In his code the cut, as a conscious sign of disapproval, did not exist.  In the south, if you had a grudge against a man you tried to shoot him; in the west, you tried to do him in a mean turn in business; but in neither region was the cut among the social weapons of offense.  Mr. Spragg, therefore, seeing Moffatt in his path, extended a lifeless hand while he faced the young man scowlingly.  Moffatt met the hand and the scowl with equal coolness.

“Going up to your office?  I was on my way there.”

The elevator door rolled back, and Mr. Spragg, entering it, found his companion at his side.  They remained silent during the ascent to Mr. Spragg’s threshold; but there the latter turned to enquire ironically of Moffatt:  “Anything left to say?”

Moffatt smiled.  “Nothing left—­no; I’m carrying a whole new line of goods.”

Mr. Spragg pondered the reply; then he opened the door and suffered Moffatt to follow him in.  Behind an inner glazed enclosure, with its one window dimmed by a sooty perspective barred with chimneys, he seated himself at a dusty littered desk, and groped instinctively for the support of the scrap basket.  Moffatt, uninvited, dropped into the nearest chair, and Mr. Spragg said, after another silence:  “I’m pretty busy this morning.”

“I know you are:  that’s why I’m here,” Moffatt serenely answered.  He leaned back, crossing his legs, and twisting his small stiff moustache with a plump hand adorned by a cameo.

“Fact is,” he went on, “this is a coals-of-fire call.  You think I owe you a grudge, and I’m going to show you I’m not that kind.  I’m going to put you onto a good thing—­oh, not because I’m so fond of you; just because it happens to hit my sense of a joke.”

While Moffatt talked Mr. Spragg took up the pile of letters on his desk and sat shuffling them like a pack of cards.  He dealt them deliberately to two imaginary players; then he pushed them aside and drew out his watch.

“All right—­I carry one too,” said the young man easily.  “But you’ll find it’s time gained to hear what I’ve got to say.”

Mr. Spragg considered the vista of chimneys without speaking, and Moffatt continued:  “I don’t suppose you care to hear the story of my life, so I won’t refer you to the back numbers.  You used to say out in Apex that I spent too much time loafing round the bar of the Mealey House; that was one of the things you had against me.  Well, maybe I did—­but it taught me to talk, and to listen to the other fellows too.  Just at present I’m one of Harmon B. Driscoll’s private secretaries, and some of that Mealey House loafing has come in more useful than any job I ever put my hand to.  The old man happened to hear I knew something about the inside of the Eubaw deal, and took me on to have the information where he could get at it.  I’ve given him good talk for his money; but I’ve done some listening too.  Eubaw ain’t the only commodity the Driscolls deal in.”