“I tell you, Carter,” he said the morning after the scene at the theater, “that was great. I call that doing something. How many people could you or I persuade to leave after the first act of ‘The Girdle of Venus’?”

Carter did not reply at once. He seemed to be brooding over matters. “You and I were present last night, and we were not persuaded to leave.”

“But twenty-eight hundred went away. I tell you, Carter, that’s unheard of. That’s power. You have to acknowledge power when you see it. I always do.”

Drake took a drink of brandy, lit a cigar, and picked up the morning paper, quoting sentences here and there that described the scene. He and Carter were having a late breakfast together. Mrs. Drake and her daughters had not yet come in.

“It’s great! Great!” Drake kept exclaiming. “I admire a man who can do great things. Don’t you?”

“Yes, if he does them fairly. But I call him a faker.”

“Faker! Who ever heard of a faker doing an impossible feat like that? Carter, you are prejudiced. Why, the whole city is coming to believe in him. The Times, Tribune, World, and Sun all agree that this is Jesus Christ.”

“Maybe you are becoming a convert,” Carter sneered.

“Hardly!” Drake laughed. “After hearing on Wall Street what I would have to do in order to be a disciple, I don’t know that I am ready to renounce all the good things of life, as they say Clay Ross has done. They say he is actually living in the East Side, making artificial flowers at a cent a wreath. Think of Clay Ross making artificial flower wreaths and eating garlic and spaghetti with a bunch of dirty dagoes on Moore Street! If that is what it means to be a disciple, excuse me. Yet, at the same time, I admire him immensely.”

“Who? Clay Ross?”

“No. He’s a fool. I mean the . . . Person. Since you feel hurt to have him spoken of as Jesus, I’ll use the word Person with a capital P.”

“I don’t care what you call him,” said Carter shortly. “All this gush in the newspapers will fade out after a little, and he will be labeled what he is, the prince of fakers.”

“You knew him when he was in Raymond, Carter. You must have found him out. Why don’t you expose him? As a newspaperman, you owe it to the profession.”

Carter turned red. “He wasn’t in Raymond more than two weeks. Not long enough to do anything.”

“Didn’t he quell a mob or something?”

“Just strong personal magnetism.”

“Power, I call it.” Drake chuckled. He seemed to enjoy Carter’s unreasoning dislike. “How does it happen none of you editor fellows can get a photograph of this Person?”

Carter was silent.