feel so, but that was a more honorable age. Davidson was in an awful funk when he left; I tried to draw him aside and offer him a good word or two, but he only shook his head and shuffled out. I let him go. Things would look different to him after a night’s sleep, and we could go looking for Brower together. Wilden was going out of town, and Baker had ‘social rounds’ to make. It would be a good way for Davidson to gain back a little self-respect, I thought.
“But when I went round to his apartment the next morning, I found him not yet up. I
might have awakened him, but he was a young fellow and 1 decided to let him sleep the morning away while I spaded up a few elementary facts.
“I called here first, and talked to Stevens’s — ” He turned toward Stevens and raised an eyebrow.
“Grandfather, sir,” Stevens said.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, sir, I’m sure.”
“I talked to Stevens’s grandfather. I spoke to him in the very spot where Stevens himself now stands, in fact. He said that Raymond Greer, a fellow I knew slightly, had spoken for
Brower. Greer was with the city trade commission, and I immediately went to his office in the Flatiron Building. I found him in, and he spoke to me immediately.
“When I told him what had happened the night before, his face became filled with a
confusion of pity, gloom, and fear. ‘Poor old Henry!’ he exclaimed. ‘I knew it was coming to this, but I never suspected it would arrive so quickly.’
” ‘What?’ I asked.
‘His breakdown,’ Greer said. ‘It stems from his year in Bombay, and 1 suppose no one but
Henry will ever know the whole story. But I’ll tell you what I can.’
‘ ‘The story that Greer unfolded to me in his office that day increased both my sympathy
and understanding. Henry Brower, it appeared, had been unluckily involved in a real tragedy.
And, as in all classic tragedies of the stage, it had stemmed from a fatal flaw — in Brower’s case, forgetfulness.
“As a member of the trade-commission group in Bombay, he had enjoyed the use of a
motorcar, a relative rarity there. Greer said that Brower took an almost childish pleasure in driving it through the narrow streets and byways of the city, scaring up chickens in great, gabbling flocks and making the women and men fall on their knees to their heathen gods. He
drove it everywhere, attracting great attention and huge crowds of ragged children that followed him about but always hung back when he offered them a ride in the marvelous device, which he
constantly did. The auto was a Model-A Ford with a truck body, and one of the earliest cars able to start not only by a crank but by the touch of a button. I ask you to remember that.
“One day Brower took the auto far across the city to visit one of the high poobahs of that place concerning possible consignments of jute rope. He attracted his usual notice as the Ford machine growled and backfired through the streets, sounding like an artillery barrage in progress
— and, of course, the children followed.
“Brower was to take dinner with the jute manufacturer, an affair of great ceremony and formality, and they were only halfway through the second course, seated on an open-air terrace above the teeming street below, when the familiar racketing, coughing roar of the car began below them, accompanied by screams and shrieks.
“One of the more adventurous boys — and the son of an obscure holy man — had crept
into the cab of the auto, convinced that whatever dragon there was under the iron hood could not be roused without the white man behind the wheel. And Brower, intent upon the coming
negotiations, had left the switch on and the spark retarded.
“One can imagine the boy growing more daring before the eyes of his peers as he touched the mirror, waggled the wheel, and made mock tooting noises. Each time he thumbed his nose at the dragon under the hood, the awe in the faces of the others must have grown.