But you know how it is when a man's out; he's got to make a
flash; got to keep up his end."
He considered the others in the office. Most of them, he decided, would,
like Bulger, have been keeping their ends up. Of course, there was
Breede. But Napoleon at his best would never have tried to borrow money
of Breede, not even on the day of his coronation. Tully, the chief
clerk, was equally impossible. Tully's thick glasses magnified his eyes
so that they were terrible to look at. Tully would reach out a nerveless
hand and draw forth the quivering heart of his secret. Tully would know
right off that a man could have no respectable reason for borrowing five
dollars on Thursday.
There remained old Metzeger who worked silently all day over a set of
giant ledgers, interminably beautifying their pages with his meticulous
figures. True, Bean had once heard Bulger fail interestingly to borrow
five dollars of Metzeger until Saturday noon, but a flash of true
Napoleonic genius now enabled him to see precisely why Bulger had not
succeeded. Metzeger lived for numerals, for columned digits alone. He
carried thousands of them in his head and apparently little else. He
could tell to the fraction of a cent what Union Pacific had opened at on
any day you chose to name. He had a passion for odd amounts. A flat
million as a sum interested him far less than one like $107.69-3/4. He
could remember it longer.
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