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.
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