“I did not mean to-day,” said Wesley Tiffles.  “Any time will do.  Well, I have engaged this brilliant but neglected creature to paint my panorama.  At first he refused—­as I expected.  He said that it would hurt his reputation.  I argued to him, that, the larger the picture, the more the reputation; and said that I would put his name on the bills in type second only to my own.  But he could not bring himself to see the matter as I did, and consented to paint it only on condition of profound secrecy.  Price, one hundred dollars.  You will therefore understand (Tiffles lowered his voice) that what I am saying to you is strictly confidential—­as, indeed, all is that I say about my panorama.  Secrecy alone gives value to these grand, original ideas.”

Wesley Tiffles was always unbosoming himself to the world, and informing each individual hearer that his disclosure was strictly confidential.

“I give you my word,” said Marcus.  He wondered where Tiffles raised the money to pay the artist, but did not like to ask him.

“Now I have caught you, you must come and see how we get along.  The work is going on at my room in the Bartholomew Buildings, only a few steps from here.” (According to Tiffles, the Bartholomew Buildings were only a few steps from anywhere, when he wanted to take anybody to them.) “Patching will object to bringing in a stranger; but I can pass you off as a capitalist, who thinks of taking an interest in the panorama.  Good joke, that!”

Marcus drew back a little at the joke; but Wesley Tiffles had proved so great a relief to his low spirits, that he determined to keep on taking him, and expressed his ardent desire to see the panorama.

The couple, arm in arm, sauntered into Broadway, and down that thoroughfare.  Tiffles nodded to a great many acquaintances, and Wilkeson to a very few.  People whom Tiffles did not know personally, he had short biographies of, and he entertained Marcus with an incessant string of anecdotes and memoranda of passers by.  The walk was leisurely and uninterrupted, with two exceptions, when Wesley Tiffles broke suddenly from his companion, rushed into the entry of a photographic establishment, and examined numerous square feet of show portraits with profound interest.  Marcus explained these impulsive movements on the supposition that Tiffles sought to escape from approaching duns.  He noticed that that individual, while observing people who streamed by him on either side, kept one eye, as it were, about a block and a half ahead.  In some parts of the world, Marcus might have objected to walking publicly with a man of such an eccentric demeanor.  But he was well aware that, in New York, a citizen’s reputation is not in the least degree affected by the company that he keeps.

They soon arrived at the Bartholomew Buildings—­a rickety five-story edifice, which had been altered from a hotel to a nest of private offices.  The basement was a restaurant, the first floor a dry goods store, and thence to the roof there was a small Babel of trades and professions known and unknown.  No census taker had ever booked all the businesses and all the names under that comprehensive roof.