The next day he rose early and was in his office by nine o'clock. He had
not been so prompt in months, and many of his employees came in late that
morning. But nobody seemed very much perturbed, for Roger was an easy
employer. Still, he sternly told himself, he had been letting things get
altogether too slack. He had been neglecting his business again. The work
had become so cut and dried, there was nothing creative left to do. It had
not been so in years gone by. Those years had fairly bristled with ideas
and hopes and schemes. But even those old memories were no longer here to
hearten him. They had all been swept away when Bruce had made him move out
of his office in a dark creaky edifice down close under Brooklyn Bridge,
and come up to this new building, this steel-ribbed caravansary for all
kinds of business ventures, this place of varnished woodwork, floods of
daylight, concrete floors, this building fireproof throughout. That
expressed it exactly, Roger thought. Nothing could take fire here, not even
a man's imagination, even though he did not feel old. Now and then in the
elevator, as some youngster with eager eyes pushed nervously against him,
Roger would frown and wonder, "What are you so excited about?"
But again the business was running down, and this time he must jerk it back
before it got beyond him. He set himself doggedly to the task, calling in
his assistants one by one, going through the work in those outer rooms,
where at tables long rows of busy young girls, with colored pencils,
scissors and paste, were demolishing enormous piles of newspapers and
magazines.
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