'Well, you're a millionaire - "one of the best", I believe. One often sees articles on and interviews with millionaires, which describe their private railroad cars, their steam yachts on the Hudson, their marble stables, and so on, and so on. Do you happen to have those things?'
'I have a private car on the New York Central, and I have a two thousand ton schooner-yacht - though it isn't on the Hudson. It happens just now to be on East River. And I am bound to admit that the stables of my uptown place are fitted with marble.'
Racksole laughed.
'Ah!' said Hazell. 'Now I can believe that I am lunching with a millionaire.
It's strange how facts like those - unimportant in themselves -appeal to the imagination. You seem to me a real millionaire now.
You've given me some personal information; I'll give you some in return. I earn three hundred a year, and perhaps sixty pounds a year extra for overtime. I live by myself in two rooms in Muscovy Court. I've as much money as I need, and I always do exactly what I like outside office. As regards the office, I do as little work as Ican, on principle - it's a fight between us and the Commissioners who shall get the best. They try to do us down, and we try to do them down - it's pretty even on the whole. All's fair in war, you know, and there ain't no ten commandments in a Government office.'
Racksole laughed. 'Can you get off this afternoon?' he asked.
'Certainly,' said Hazell; 'I'll get one of my pals to sign on for me, and then I shall be free.'
'Well,' said Racksole, 'I should like you to come down with me to the Grand Babylon. Then we can talk over my little affair at length. And may we go on your boat? I want to meet your crew.'
'That will be all right,' Hazell remarked. 'My two men are the idlest, most soul-less chaps you ever saw. They eat too much, and they have an enormous appetite for beer; but they know the river, and they know their business, and they will do anything within the fair game if they are paid for it, and aren't asked to hurry.'
That night, just after dark, Theodore Racksole embarked with his new friend George Hazell in one of the black-painted Customs wherries, manned by a crew of two men - both the later freemen of the river, a distinction which carries with it certain privileges unfamiliar to the mere landsman. It was a cloudy and oppressive evening, not a star showing to illumine the slow tide, now just past its flood. The vast forms of steamers at anchor - chiefly those of the General Steam Navigation and the Aberdeen Line - heaved themselves high out of the water, straining sluggishly at their mooring buoys. On either side the naked walls of warehouses rose like grey precipices from the stream, holding forth quaint arms of steam-cranes. To the west the Tower Bridge spanned the river with its formidable arch, and above that its suspended footpath - a hundred and fifty feet from earth.
