“See that old money-bags over there in the corner,” said the Major.  “He’s a man you want to fix in your mind—­old Henry S. Grimes.  Have you heard of him?”

“Vaguely,” said the other.

“He’s Laura Hegan’s uncle.  She’ll have his money also some day—­but Lord, how he does hold on to it meantime!  It’s quite tragic, if you come to know him—­he’s frightened at his own shadow.  He goes in for slum tenements, and I guess he evicts more people in a month than you could crowd into this building!”

Montague looked at the solitary figure at the table, a man with a wizened-up little face like a weasel’s, and a big napkin tied around his neck.  “That’s so as to save his shirt-front for to-morrow,” the Major explained.  “He’s really only about sixty, but you’d think he was eighty.  Three times every day he sits here and eats a bowl of graham crackers and milk, and then goes out and sits rigid in an arm-chair for an hour.  That’s the regimen his doctors have put him on—­angels and ministers of grace defend us!”

The old gentleman paused, and a chuckle shook his scarlet jowls.  “Only think!” he said—­“they tried to do that to me!  But no, sir—­when Bob Venable has to eat graham crackers and milk, he’ll put in arsenic instead of sugar!  That’s the way with many a one of these rich fellows, though—­you picture him living in Capuan luxury, when, as a matter of fact, he’s a man with a torpid liver and a weak stomach, who is put to bed at ten o’clock with a hot-water bag and a flannel night-cap!”

The two had got up and were strolling toward the smoking-room; when suddenly at one side a door opened, and a group of men came out.  At the head of them was an extraordinary figure, a big powerful body with a grim face.  “Hello!” said the Major.  “All the big bugs are here to-night.  There must be a governors’ meeting.”

“Who is that?” asked his companion; and he answered, “That?  Why, that’s Dan Waterman.”

Dan Waterman!  Montague stared harder than ever, and now he identified the face with the pictures he had seen.  Waterman, the Colossus of finance, the Croesus of copper and gold!  How many trusts had Waterman organized!  And how many puns had been made upon that name of his!

“Who are the other men?” Montague asked.

“Oh, they’re just little millionaires,” was the reply.

The “little millionaires” were following as a kind of body-guard; one of them, who was short and pudgy, was half running, to keep up with Waterman’s heavy stride.  When they came to the coat-room, they crowded the attendants away, and one helped the great man on with his coat, and another held his hat, and another his stick, and two others tried to talk to him.  And Waterman stolidly buttoned his coat, and then seized his hat and stick, and without a word to anyone, bolted through the door.

It was one of the funniest sights that Montague had ever seen in his life, and he laughed all the way into the smoking-room.  And, when Major Venable had settled himself in a big chair and bitten off the end of a cigar and lighted it, what floodgates of reminiscence were opened!