Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/55

 But just then Mr. Boland, behind a tombstone-like expanse of white shirt-front, loomed tall, immaculate, benign, and assumed a host's possession of his guest.

"Know 'em all, don't you?" he inquired, contemplating the roomful with a sort of paternal pride. Henry bestowed a general bow and smiled. In part, this was an inner smile due to the discovery that when Old Two Blades said "family dinner-party" he meant his business family—the heads of his subsidiary corporations and their wives—for these appeared to make up the guest-list.

Yes; Harrington knew them all. There, for instance, was Scanlon, heavy-shouldered, heavy-jawed and tenacious—a coarse, ill-schooled man, out of whom Henry had taken a fall or two in court. There was Quackenbaugh, head of the manufacturing end, who, thin and wiry, gave an impression of astuteness and also of tenacity. And there were the others, Pierce and Manning and Rudolph, and so on.

After such casual presentation the first mark of distinct favor came when Old Two Blades wilfully winnowed Henry out of the crush and showed him over the house—Humboldt House, Henry had understood that it was called—which was rather pretentious, of course; but then, the house was pretentious. During the ten minutes thus consumed his host was revealed to him as an amiable soul, utterly without swank, who asked Henry homely questions—where he was born, who his parents were and what; and kept up this flow of kindly but keenly penetrative interrogation until dinner was announced.

Harrington, observing that Clayton was not present at this intimate family dinner, felt an absurd glow