THE GRAY MAHATMA Meldrum Strange has "a way" with him.

You need all your tact to get him past the quarreling point; but once that point is left behind there isn't a finer business boss in the universe.

He likes to put his ringer on a desk-bell and feel somebody jump in Tibet or Wei-hei-wei or Honolulu.

That's Meldrum Strange.
When he sent me from San Francisco, where I was enjoying a vacation, to New York, where he was enjoying business, I took the first train.
"You've been a long time on the way," he remarked, as I walked into his office twenty minutes after the Chicago flyer reached Grand Central Station.

"Look at this!" he growled, shoving into my hand a clipping from a Western newspaper.
"What about it ?" I asked when I had finished reading.
"While you were wasting time on the West Coast this office has been busy," he snorted, looking more like General Grant than ever as he pulled out a cigar and started chewing it.