Bojo nodded silently on entering.

"You saw?" said Hauk with a jerk of his head.

"Yes. Horrible!"

Flaspoller broke out: "Not a cent in the world. G.o.d knows how much the firm will have to make good. Thirty-five, forty, forty-five thousand, maybe more. Oh, we're stuck all right."

"Do you mean to say," said Bojo slowly, "that he left nothing--no property?"

"Oh, a house perhaps--mortgaged, of course; and then do we know what else he owes? No. A h.e.l.l of a hole we've got in with your Pittsburgh & New Orleans."

"That's not quite fair," said Bojo quietly. "I did give you a tip on Indiana Smelter and you made money on that. I never said anything about Pittsburgh & New Orleans. I distinctly refused to. You drew your own conclusions."

"That's a good joke," said Flaspoller with a contemptuous laugh.

"What do you mean?" said Bojo, flushing angrily.

"Well, I'll tell you what I mean," said Flaspoller, discretion to the winds. "When you come into a firm that has treated you generously as we have, put up your salary without waiting to be asked, and you bring in orders, confidential orders, to sell five hundred shares to-day, a thousand to-morrow, like you sell yourself, and your friends sell too--if you let your firm go on selling and don't know what's up, you're either one big jacka.s.s or a--"

"Or a what?" said Bojo, advancing.

Something in the menacing eye caused the little broker to halt abruptly with a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders.

"I wouldn't go too far, Flaspoller," said Bojo coldly. "If this was a mistake, I paid for it too, as you know. You know what I dropped."

"I know nothing," said Flaspoller, recovering his courage with his anger, and planting himself defiantly in the young fellow's path. "I know only what you lost--here, and I know too what _we_ lose."

"Good heavens, do you mean to insinuate that I did anything _crooked_?"

said Bojo loudly, yet at the bottom ill at ease.

"Shut up now," said Hauk, as Flaspoller started on another angry tirade.

"Look here, Mr. Crocker, there's no use wasting words. The milk's spilt.

Well, what then?"

"I'm sorry, of course," said Bojo, frowning.

"Of course you understand after what's happened," said Hauk quietly, "it would be impossible for us to make use of your services any more."

Much as he himself had contemplated breaking off relations, it gave him quite a shock to hear that he was being dismissed. He caught his breath, looked from one to another and said:

"Quite right. There I agree with you. I shall be very glad to leave your office to-day."

He went to his desk in a towering rage, went through his papers blindly, and rose shortly to go out where he could get hold of himself and decide on a course of action. The fact was that for the first time he had a feeling of guilt. He again a.s.sured himself that he was perfectly innocent, that there was nothing in his whole course which could be objected to. Yet how many would have believed him if they knew that this very morning he had deposited a check for a quarter of a million? What would Hauk and Flaspoller have said at the bare announcement?

He wandered into familiar groups, tarrying a moment and then pa.s.sing on, parrying the questions that were showered on him by those who knew the intimacy of his relations with the successful manipulator. In all their conversations Drake appeared like a demiG.o.d. Men went back to the famous corners of Commodore Vanderbilt for a comparison with the skill and boldness of the late manipulator. It was freely said that there was no other man in Wall Street who would have dared so openly to defy the great powers of the day and force them to terms.

In this chorus of admiration there was no note of censure. He had played the game as they played it. No one held him responsible for the tragedy of Forshay and the unwritten losses of those who had been caught.

Yet Bojo was not convinced. He knew that he had not been able to meet the partners openly; that despite all the injustice of their att.i.tude, he had withheld the knowledge of his ultimate winnings, and that he had withheld it because he would have been at a loss to explain it. More potent than the stoic indifference of Wall Street was the memory of the chance acquaintance, wrecked by the accident of this meeting; of Forshay, calmly matching quarters with him before the opening of the market, calculating the fatal point beyond which a rise meant to him the end. And as he examined it from this intimate outlook, he wondered more and more how free from responsibility and cruelty, from the echoes of agony, could be any fortune of ten millions made over night, because of others who had been led recklessly to gamble beyond their means.

Forshay recalled DeLancy, and he shuddered at the thought of how close the line of disaster had pa.s.sed to him. Again and again he remembered with distaste the look in DeLancy's face when at the end he had persuaded him to take the check. What sat most heavily upon his conscience was that now, with the ranging of events in clearer perspective, he began to compare his own att.i.tude with Drake's, with DeLancy's weak submission to his explanation. If DeLancy had taken money that Marsh had indignantly rejected, what had he himself done?

At twelve, making a sudden resolve, he went up to the offices. The partners were still there, brooding over the rout, favoring him with dark looks at his interruption.

"Mr. Hauk, will you give me the total of Mr. Forshay's indebtedness to your firm?"

Flaspoller wheeled with an insolent dismissal on his lips, but Hauk forestalled him. "What business is that of yours?"

"You stated that his losses might amount to forty or forty-five thousand. Is that correct?"

"That's our affair!"

"You don't understand," said Bojo quietly, "but I think it will be to your interest to listen to me. Do I understand that you intend to exercise your claim on whatever property may still be left to Mr.

Forshay's widow?"

"What nonsense is he talking?" said Flaspoller, turning to his partner in amazement.

"I thought so," said Bojo, taking his answer from their att.i.tude. "I repeat, kindly give me the exact figures, in detail, of the total indebtedness of Mr. Forshay to your firm."

"I suppose you want to pay it, eh?" said Flaspoller contemptuously.

"Exactly."

"What!"

The reply came almost in a shout. Hauk, keener than his partner, perceiving from the exalted calm of the young man that the matter was serious, caught Flaspoller by the arm and shot him into a chair.

"You sit down and be quiet." He approached Bojo, studying him keenly.

"You want to pay up for Forshay--am I right?"

"You are.

"When?"

"Now."

Hauk himself was not proof against the shock the announcement brought.

He sat down, stupidly rubbing his hand across his forehead, glancing suspiciously at Bojo. Finally he recovered himself sufficiently to say:

"For what reason do you want to do this?"

"That is my business," said Bojo, "and besides you would not understand in the least."

"Well, well," said Flaspoller, recovering his eagerness with his cupidity.

"You're not going to refuse, are you?"

"That's very n.o.ble, very generous," said Hauk slowly. "We were a little hasty, Mr. Crocker. We've lost a good deal of money. We sometimes say things a little more than we mean at such times. You mustn't think too much of that. We are very much upset--we thought the world of Mr.

Forshay--"