Simeon Tetlow's Shadow. Jennette Lee

other glanced again, sharply, at his face. “Go ahead.” His hand was reaching for the hat.

      “I shall have to hand in my resignation, sir.” The young man said it slowly, as if repeating something he had learned by heart.

      The hand on the hat drew back. “What ’s that?” He laughed curtly and shot a look of suspicion at the impassive face. “More money?”

      The face flushed. “No, sir.” He hesitated a little. “My mother is sick.”

      “Umph!” The man’s face cleared. “You don’t need to resign for that.” He did not ask what was the matter with the mother. He had not known that John had a mother. She seemed to be springing into existence very inconveniently. “Get a nurse,” he said.

      “She has had a nurse. But she needs me, I think.” He did not offer more details.

      The older man shrugged his shoulders a little—a quick shrug. He pushed forward a chair with his foot. “Sit down. Your father dead?” quickly.

      “No, sir. But—father is—father.” He said it with a little smile. “She’s never had anybody but me,” he went on quickly. “She’s been sick ever since I was a little thing, and I’ve taken care of her. It frets her to have a woman around. She does n’t wash the dishes clean, and her cooking is n’t really very good.” He was smiling a little as he said it.

      The man shot a quick look at him. “You ’re going home to wash dishes?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Um-m.” The fingers played a little tune on the desk. “I ’ll raise you twenty-five a month. Get a better nurse.”

      The boy shook his head. “I ’m afraid it would n’t do.” He was hesitating. “I think she misses me.”

      “Umph! Very likely!” The man glanced at him over quick spectacles. “What ’s the matter with her? Sit down.” He touched the chair again with his foot.

      The young man sat down. “We don’t know what it is. She cannot walk—cannot stand—a good deal of the time—and sometimes she suffers. But it is a kind of nervousness that is hardest to bear. She cannot lie quiet. Something seems to drive her.”

      The man nodded. His fingers opened and closed. “What else?” he said brusquely.

      “That ’s all—except that it quiets her to have me around. I can get work in Bridgewater and do the housework nights and mornings.”

      The man was scowling at him intently.

      “It ’s what I ’ve always done, till I came here,” he said quickly.

      “Washed dishes and cooked and made beds?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “It’s no work for a man.”

      “I know.” The dull face smiled a little. “The boys always called me ’Sissie Johnny.’ ”

      “Umph! I ’m glad they did! …’Sissie Johnny’!” He smiled grimly and took a card from the desk before him, holding it a minute in his fingers, snapping it back and forth. “Has she ever seen a specialist?”

      The young man shook his head. “No, sir.” The man wrote a few words on the card and blotted it quickly. “Take her to see Dr. Blake. He is the best nerve specialist in five hundred miles. If she is n’t well enough to go to him, have him come to her. I ’ll pay the bill.” He thrust himself into his hat and coat and got himself out of the room, shrugging nervously.

      The young man stood with the card in his hand, looking at it, a little smile on his lips. Then he went about, turning out all the bulbs but one and putting away papers and arranging the room for the night.

      It was a small, rough room—hardly more than a corner cut off from the top floor by board partitions. The rest of the floor, outside, was used only for storage. Simeon Tetlow had achieved here what he wanted—complete solitude. There was, on the first floor, a magnificent apartment with lordly mahogany chairs, a baize-covered table and oil paintings, where twice a year he met his directors; and on the floor above it was a spacious room bearing on its panel the bronze token, “President’s Office.” It was occupied at present by three young lady typewriters who clacked their machines and arranged their hair and adjusted the shades on the plate-glass windows to suit their convenience, while in the little room at the top of the building the president of the corporation hunched himself over a four-dollar desk and scowled at the dim light that came through the half-sized windows. For three days after it was finished, Simeon Tetlow occupied the spacious room below designed for the president of the corporation. Then he gathered together his few belongings and fled to the top. His gigantic brain could only work when free from distraction. The mere sense that some one might rap, even on the outer door of the stately office, paralyzed him, and his nervous frame, once set a-jangle, trembled, and palpitated for hours. The mere forbidding of intrusion was not sufficient. Some well-meaning idiot, laden with news of importance, would break over the command, and hours of careful thought would be whirled aloft in the smoke of Simeon’s wrath. He fled to the loft, dropping, as it were, a trapdoor behind him. No one was to follow—unless summoned. No literary man was ever more jealous of solitude. But no mere literary man could think a railroad into existence or quench a wheat crop with a nod. If Simeon Tetlow’s body had matched his brain, there would have been no limit to his power. As it was, he remained a mighty general without an army, a head without hands and feet. The details of life frustrated him at every point. He could meet his directors, serene in the knowledge that the road was prospering beyond all bounds. He could carry to them the facts and figures and proofs of prosperity—in his head. But the papers that recorded these facts, the proofs in black and white, were never forthcoming at the right moment. They took to themselves wings—of paper; they flitted and skulked and hid; they lay on the top of the pile before him and grinned at him, their very faces changed to a diabolic scorn that he should not know them.

      This was the Simeon Tetlow of three years ago. Then there entered, one morning, in response to his summons for a call-boy, a short, square youth with a dull face. Simeon did not note him as he came in. He forgot that he had called for a boy. His mind was busy with projects of import. When it came back, with a start, he recognized that some one had been with him, for ten minutes or more, who had not worried and irritated him by merely being alive. He shot a keen glance at the dull face. The light of the eyes was turned to him, waiting to serve him.

      After that Simeon summoned the boy again and again, on one pretext or another. He made excuses to see him. He advanced him from post to post.

      At last, about a year ago, he nodded at a desk that had been installed, overnight, across the room: “You are to work there and your pay will be raised a hundred.”

      The boy took possession of the desk with as little stir as if he had received some casual order. He did not ask what his work was to be, and Simeon Tetlow did not tell him. The big brain had found hands and feet—almost, it might seem, lungs and a few other useful, vital organs—and it used them, as it had used the nervous, shaking body before—relentlessly. For the first time in his life Simeon found his papers ready to his hand. He attended his first directors’ meeting, sitting at the head of the green baize table, like a man in a dream. The right paper slipped to his finger-tips and lingered there; the figures formed themselves in seemly ranks and marched up and down the green baize parade in orderly file. The effect upon the directors was, at first, a little startling. They had become wonted to Simeon hurried, gasping, and impatient—and to dividends. They were almost afraid of these cold facts and figures. They looked at them cautiously, through gold-rimmed glasses, received their dividends—and took heart.

      Each day some new comfort found its way to Simeon’s desk. The morning that the box of elastic bands appeared there was a holocaust of joy among the papers. He used nearly the whole box the first day. He had never owned an elastic band before. He was president of the great corporation, but it had not occurred to him that he had a right to elastic bands. He slid them up and down his nervous