That's a fool notion. The devil couldn't do business
if he didn't come across when you needed him.
"And there's another thing; the old-timers, when they went after
their god for a favor, always began by reciting what they'd done
for him . . . . That was sound dope! I tried it myself on the
way up to old Nute's apartment on Fifth Avenue.
"I went over a lot of things. And whenever I made a point, I
rapped it on the pavement with the ferule of my walking stick; as
one would say, `you owe me for that!'
"You see I was worked up about Tavor. When a man's carried a
dream over all the hell he'd pushed through he ought to have it
in the end."
Barclay paused and flicked the ashes from his cigarette.
"You know the swell apartments on Fifth Avenue; no name, only a
number; every floor a residence, only the elevators connecting
them. I found old Nute in the seventh; and I was bucked the
moment I got in.
"The door from the drawing room to the library was open. The
Harvard don was going out, the one Nute had employed to get up
his thesis for the Royal Society of London - I mentioned him a
while ago. And I heard his final remark, flung back at the door.
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