He glanced up at Bean, contracted his brows to a black menace and emitted a final detonation.

“’S all for ’s aft’noon!”

He bit savagely into his unlighted cigar and began to rifle through a new sheaf of documents.  Bean deftly effaced himself, with a parting glare at the unlighted cigar.  It was a feature of Breede that no reporter ever neglected to mention, but Bean thought you might as well chew tobacco and be done with it.  Moreover, the cigars were not such as one would have expected to find between the lips of a man whose present wealth was estimated at a round hundred million.  Bulger, in the outer office, had given up trying to smoke them.  He declared them to be the very worst that could be had for any money.

Before beginning the transcription of his notes, Bean had to learn the latest telephone news from the ball-ground.  During the last half-hour he had inwardly raged more than usual at Breede for being kept from this information.  Bulger always managed to get it on time, beginning with the third inning, even when he took dictation from Breede’s confidential secretary, or from Tully, the chief clerk.

Bean looked inquiringly at Bulger now.  Bulger nodded and presently strolled from his own desk to Bean’s, where he left a slip of paper bearing the words, “Cubs, 3; Giants, 2; 1st 1/2 4th.”

Bean had envied Bulger from the first for this man-of-the-world ease.  In actual person not superior to Bean, he had a temperament of daring.  In every detail he was an advanced dresser, specializing in flamboyant cravats.  He would have been Bean’s model if Bean had been less a coward.  Bulger was nearly all that Bean wished to be.  He condescended to his tasks with an air of elegant and detached leisure that raised them to the dignity of sports.  He had quite the air of a wealthy amateur with a passion for typewriting.

He had once done Breede’s personal work, but had been banished to the outer office after Bean’s first try-out.  Breede had found some mysterious objection to him.  Perhaps it was because Bulger would always look up with pleased sagacity, as if he were helping to compose Breede’s letters.  It may have been simple envy in Breede for his advanced dressing.  Bulger had felt no unkindness toward Bean for thus supplanting him in a desirable post.  But he did confide to his successor that if he, Bulger, ever found Breede under his heel, Breede could expect no mercy.  Bulger would grind him—­just like that!

Bean dramatized this as he wrote his letters; Breede pleasantly disintegrating under the iron heel of Bulger:  Breede “The Great Reorganizer,” as he was said to be known “in the Street,” old “steel and velvet,” meeting a just fate!  So nearly mechanical was his typewriting that he spoiled one sheet of paper by transcribing two lines of shorthand not meant to be a part of the letter.  Only by chance did a certain traffic manager of lines west of Chicago escape reading a briefly worded opinion of the clothes he wore that would have puzzled and might have pained him, for Breede, such had come to be his confidence in Bean, always signed his letters without reading them over.  Bean gasped and wisely dismissed the drama of Bulger’s revenge from his mind.