Page:Oppenheim--The cinema murder.djvu/224

214 Honeybrook, the great New York raconteur, father of the club, touched Philip upon the shoulder.

"Hey, presto!" he whispered. "We who think so much of ourselves have become pigmies upon the face of the earth. There towers the representative of modern omnipotence. Those are the hands—grim, strong-looking hands, aren't they?—that grip the levers of modern American life. Rodin ought to do a statue of him as he stands there—art and letters growing smaller as he grows larger. We exist for him. He builds theatres for our plays, museums for our pictures, libraries for our books."

"Seems to me he is looking for one of us," Noel Bridges remarked.

"Some pose, isn't it!" a younger member of the party exclaimed reverently, as he lifted his tankard.

All these things were a matter of seconds, during which Sylvanus Power did indeed stand without moving, looking closely about the room. Then his eye at last lit upon the end of the table where Philip and his friends were seated. He approached them without a word. Noel Bridges ventured upon a greeting.

"Coming to join us, Mr. Power?" he asked.

Sylvanus Power, if he heard the question, ignored it. His eyes had rested upon Philip. He stood over the table now, looming before them, massive, in his way awe-inspiring.

"Ware," he said, "I've been looking for you."

Instinctively Philip rose to his feet. Tall though he was, he had to look up at the other man, and his slender body seemed in comparison like a willow