He would talk to the men and find out all he could about them, and when he could stand it no more he would come out of this hole of filth and suffering, and there, twenty feet above it, he would see the giant hackles of Manhattan shining coldly in the cruel brightness of the winter night. The Woolworth Building was not fifty yards away, and, a little farther down were the silvery spires and needles of Wall Street, great fortresses of stone and steel that housed enormous hanks. The blind injustice of this contrast seemed the most brutal part of the whole experience, for there, all round him in the cold moonlight, only a few blocks away from this abyss of human wretchedness and misery, blazed the pinnacle of power where a large portion of the entire world’s wealth was locked in mighty vaults.
They were now dosing up the restaurant. The tired waitresses were racking the chairs upon the tables, completing the last formalities of their hard day’s work in preparation for departure. At the cash register the proprietor was totting up the figures of the day’s take, and one of the male waiters hovered watchfully near the table, in a manner politely indicating that while he was not in a hurry he would be glad if the last customer would pay his bill and leave.
George called for his check and gave the man some money. He took it and in a moment returned with the change. He pocketed his tip and said: “Thank you, sir.” Then as George said good night and started to get up and leave, the waiter hesitated and hung round uncertainly as if there was something he wanted to say but scarcely knew whether he ought to say it or not.
George looked at him inquiringly, and then, in a rather embarrassed tone, the waiter said:
“Mr. Webber…there’s…something I’d like to talk over with you sometime…I—I’d like to get your advice about something—that is, if you have time,” he added hastily and almost apologetically.
George regarded the waiter with another inquiring look,-in which the man evidently read encouragement, for now he went on quickly, in a manner of almost beseeching entreaty:
“It’s—it’s about a story.”
The familiar phrase awakened countless weary echoes in Webber’s memory. It also resolved that hard and honest patience with which any man who ever sweated to write a living line and to earn his bread by the hard, uncertain labour of his pen will listen, as an act of duty and understanding, to any other man who says he has a tale to tell. His mind and will wearily composed themselves, his face set in a strained smile of mechanical anticipation, and the poor waiter, thus encouraged, went on eagerly:
“It’s—it’s a story a guy told me several years ago. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The guy was a foreigner,” said the waiter impressively, as if this fact was enough to guarantee the rare colour and fascinating interest of what he was about to reveal. “He was an Armenian,” said the waiter very earnestly. “Sure! He came from over there!” He nodded his head emphatically. “And this story that he told me was an Armenian story,” said the waiter with solemn emphasis, and then paused to let this impressive fact sink in. “It was a story that he knew about—he told it to me—and I’m the only other guy that knows about it,” said the waiter, and paused again, looking at his patron with a very bright and feverish eye.
George continued to smile with wan encouragement, and in a moment the waiter, after an obvious struggle with his soul, a conflict between his desire to keep his secret and to tell it, too, went on:
“Gee! You’re a writer, Mr. Webber, and you know about these things. I’m just a dumb guy working in a restaurant—but if I could put it into words—if I could get a guy like you who knows how it’s done to tell the story for me—why—why”—he struggled with himself, then burst out enthusiastically—“there’d be a fortune in it for the both of us!”
George felt his heart sink still lower. It was turning out just as he knew it would. But he still continued to smile pallidly. He cleared his throat in an undecided fashion, but then said nothing. And the waiter, taking silence for consent, now pressed on impetuously: