Page:Wilson - Bunker bean.djvu/270

244 "also mus' be stipulated that case of div'dend bein' passed"

The desk telephone again rang, this time more emphatically. Bean was chilled by a premonition that the flapper meant to pull off that funny stunt which was to cause him quite deliciously to die laughing.

Breede grasped the receiver again impatiently.

"Busy, tell you! No time nonsense! What! What. W-H-A-T!!!"

He listened another moment, then lessening his tone-production but losing nothing of intensity, he ripped out:

"Gur—reat Godfrey!"

His eyes, narrowed as he listened, now widened upon Bean who stared determinedly at the cuffs.

"You know what she says?"

"Yes," said Bean doggedly.

Then his eyes met Breede's and gave them blaze for blaze. The Great Reorganizer knew it not, but he no longer looked at Bunker Bean. Instead, he was trying to shrivel with his glare a veritable king of old Egypt who had enjoyed the power of life and death over his remotest subject. Bean did not shrivel. Breede glared his deadliest only a moment. He felt the sway of the great Ram-tah without identifying it. He divined that mere glaring would not shrivel this presumptuous atom. In truth, Bean outglared him. Breede leaned again to the telephone, listening. Bean lowered his eyes to the cuffs. He sneered at