CHAPTER FOUR
"We're going to double our money in that silver stock—we're going to triple it, if this goes through! And then I guess we'll show this old town a thing or two about spending."
"Wonderful how the wire helps business out," essayed my friend, meditatively.
"It is," I assented, for I had just heard the hyena-cage operator rap out a brisk Morse "O. K." to me across the crowded rotunda. What was more, he had succeeded in throwing a touch of humour, of quietly hilarious comprehension, into his metallic dots and dashes. The man at my side was venturing some still further ruminative and impersonal remarks about the mystery of the wire.
"Hanged if I could ever understand how telegraphing is done," I observed, quite as meditatively. And I saw his face brighten at that casual admission. It was only a minute and guarded change, but it was there. And it continued to rest there, I thought, as we made our way out of the crowded hotel rotunda, and stepped into a cab and went rattling down Broadway, swinging sharply 'round into one of the lower side-streets toward Sixth Avenue. Then we alighted and went down a narrow little stairway into a gas-lit hall, and from there into a subterranean eating-room with a row of tables
133
