The words came from under that unacceptable moustache of Breede’s like a series of exhausts from a motorcycle.  Bean recorded them in his note-book.  His shorthand was a marvel of condensed neatness.  Breede had had trouble with stenographers; he was not easy to “take.”  He spoke swiftly, often indistinctly, and it maddened him to be asked to repeat.  Bean had never asked him to repeat, and he inserted the a’s and the’s and all the minor words that Breede could not pause to utter.  The letter continued: 

“—­mus’ have report at your earl’s’ convenience of earnings and expenses of Grand Valley branch for las’ four months with engineer’s est’mate of prob’le cost of repairs and maintenance for nex’ year—­”

Breede halted to consult a document.  Bean glanced up with his look of respectful waiting.  Then he glanced down at his notes and wrote two other lines of shorthand.  Breede might have supposed these to record the last sentence he had spoken, but one able to decipher the notes could have read:  “That is one rotten suit of clothes.  For God’s sake, why not get some decent shoes next time—­”

The letter was resumed.  It came to its end with a phrase that almost won the difficult respect of Bean.  Of a rumour that the C. & G.W. would build into certain coveted territory Breede exploded:  “I can imagine nothing of less consequence!” Bean rather liked the phrase and the way Breede emitted it.  That was a good thing to say to some one who might think you were afraid.  He treasured the words; fondled them with the point of his pencil.  He saw himself speaking them pithily to various persons with whom he might be in conflict.  There was a thing now that Gordon Dane might have hurled at his enemies a dozen times in his adventurous career.  Breede must have something in him—­but look at his shiny white cuffs with the metal clasps, on the desk at his elbow!

Bean had lately read of Breede in a newspaper that “Conservative judges estimate his present fortune at a round hundred million.”  Bean’s own stipend was thirty dollars a week, but he pitied Breede.  Bean could learn to make millions if he should happen to want them; but poor old Breede could never learn to look like anybody.

There you have Bunker Bean at a familiar, prosaic moment in an afternoon of his twenty-third year.  But his prosaic moments are numbered.  How few they are to be!  Already the door of Enchantment has swung to his scared touch.  The times will show a scar or two from Bean.  Bean the prodigious!  The choicely perfect toy of Destiny at frolic!  Bean the innocent—­the monstrous!

* * * * *

Those who long since gave Bean up as an insoluble problem were denied the advantages of an early association with him.  Only an acquaintance with his innermost soul of souls could permit any sane understanding of his works, and this it is our privilege, and our necessity, to make, if we are to comprehend with any sympathy that which was later termed his “madness.”  The examination shall be made quickly and with all decency.