The House of Mystery | Page 6

a wasting, in the case of Robert H.
Norcross, was a considerable matter. The Sunday newspapers--when in
doubt--always played the income of Robert H. Norcross by periods of
months, weeks, days, hours and minutes. Every minute of his time,
their reliable statisticians computed, was worth a trifle less than
forty-seven dollars. Regardless of the waste of time, he continued to
gaze until the watch on his desk had ticked off five minutes, or two
hundred and thirty-five dollars.
The thing which had caught and held his attention was a point in the
churchyard of old Trinity near to the south door.
The Street had been remarking, for a year, that Norcross was growing
old. The change did not show in his operations. His grip on the market
was as firm as ever, his judgment as sure, his imagination as daring, his
habit of keeping his own counsel as settled. Within that year, he had
consummated the series of operations by which the L.D. and M., final
independent road needed by his system, had "come in"; within that year,
he had closed the last finger of his grip on a whole principality of our
domain. Every laborer in that area would thenceforth do a part of his

day's delving, every merchant a part of his day's bargaining, for Robert
H. Norcross. Thenceforth--until some other robber baron should wrest
it from his hands--Norcross would make laws and unmake legislatures,
dictate judgments and overrule appointments--give the high justice
while courts and assemblies trifled with the middle and the low.
Certainly the history of that year in American finance indicated no
flagging in the powers of Robert H. Norcross.
The change which the Street had marked lay in his face--it had taken on
the subtle imprint of a first frosty day. He had never looked the power
that he was. Short and slight of build, his head was rather small even
for his size, and his features were insignificant--all except the mouth,
whose wide firmness he covered by a drooping mustache, and the eyes,
which betrayed always an inner fire. The trained observer of faces
noticed this, however; every curve of his facial muscles, every plane of
the inner bone-structure, was set by nature definitely and properly in its
place to make a powerful and perfectly coördinated whole. In this facial
manifestation of mental powers, he was like one of those little athletes
who, carrying nothing superfluous, show the power, force and
endurance which is in them by no masses of overlying muscles, but
only by a masterful symmetry.
Now, in a year, the change had come over his face--the jump as abrupt
as that by which a young girl grows up--the transition from middle age
to old age. It was not so much that his full, iron-gray hair and mustache
had bleached and silvered. It was more that the cheeks were falling
from middle-aged masses to old-age creases, more that the skin was
drawing up, most that the inner energy which had vitalized his walk
and gestures was his no longer.
In the mind, too--though no one perceived that, he least of all--had
come a change. Here and there, a cell had disintegrated and collapsed.
They were not the cells which vitalized his business sense. They lay
deeper down; it was as though their very disuse for thirty years had
weakened them. In such a cell his consciousness dwelt while he gazed
on Trinity Churchyard, and especially upon that modest shaft of granite,
three graves from the south entrance. And the watch on his desk clicked

off the valuable seconds, and the electric clock on the wall jumped to
mark the passing minutes. "Click-click" from the desk--seventy-eight
cents--"Click-click"--one dollar and fifty-seven cents--"Clack" from the
wall--forty-seven dollars.
Presently, when watch and clock had chronicled four hundred and
seventy dollars of wasted time, he leaned back, looked for a moment on
the brazen September heavens above, and sighed. He might then have
turned back to his desk and the table of gross earnings, but for his
secretary.
"Mr. Bulger outside, sir," said the secretary.
"All right!" responded Mr. Norcross. In him, those two words spoke
enthusiasm; usually, a gesture or a nod was enough to bar or admit a
visitor to the royal presence. Hard behind the secretary, entered with a
bound and a breeze, Mr. Arthur Bulger. He was a tall man about
forty-five if you studied him carefully, no more than thirty-five if you
studied him casually. Not only his strong shoulders, his firm set on his
feet, his well-conditioned skin, showed the ex-athlete who has kept up
his athletics into middle age, but also that very breeze and bound of a
man whose blood runs quick and orderly through its channels. His face,
a little pudgy, took illumination from a pair of lively eyes.