The solid outlines of United Beef shimmered uncertainly before Mr. Waddington’s horrified eyes.
“Oil?” he gurgled.
“Yes, sir. Oil. What looks like turning out the biggest gusher in the southwest.”
“But—but—do you mean to say, then, that the shares are—are really worth something?”
“Only millions, that’s all. Merely millions. It’s a pity you didn’t buy some. This caviar,” said United Beef, champing meditatively, “is good. That’s what it is, Waddington—good. I think I’ll have another slice.”
It is difficult to arrest the progress of a millionaire who is starting off in the direction of caviar, but Mr. Waddington, with a frenzied clutch at the other’s coat-sleeve, succeeded in doing so for a brief instant.
“When did you hear this?”
“Just as I was starting out this morning?”
“Do you think anybody else knows about it?”
“Everybody downtown, I should say.”
“But, listen,” said Mr. Waddington urgently. “Say, listen!” He clung to the caviar-maddened man’s sleeve with a desperate grip. “What I am getting at is, I know a guy—nothing to do with business—who has a block of that stock. Do you think there’s any chance of him not having heard about this?”
“Quite likely. But, if you’re thinking of getting it off him, you’d better hurry. The story is probably in the evening papers by now.”
The words acted on Sigsbee H. Waddington like an electric shock. He released the other’s sleeve, and United Beef shot off towards the refreshment-table like a homing pigeon. Mr. Waddington felt in his hip-pocket to make sure that he still possessed the three hundred dollars which he had hoped that day to hand over to Fanny Welch, and bounded out of the room, out of the house, and out of the front gate; and, after bounding along the broad highway to the station, leaped into a train which might have been meeting him there by appointment. Never in his life before had Sigsbee H. Waddington caught a train so expeditiously: and the fact seemed to him a happy omen. He looked forward with a cheery confidence to the interview with that policeman fellow to whom he had—in a moment of mistaken generosity—parted with his precious stock. The policeman had seemed a simple sort of soul, just the sort of man with whom it is so nice to do business. Mr. Waddington began to rehearse the opening speeches of the interview.
“Say, listen,” he would say. “Say, listen, my dear. …”
He sat up in his seat with a jerk. He had completely forgotten the policeman’s name.
XII
Several hours later, when the stars had begun to peep out and the birds were rustling sleepily in the trees, a solitary figure might have been observed moving slowly up the drive towards the front door of the Waddington summer-residence at Hempstead, Long Island. It was Sigsbee H., returning from his travels.
He walked apprehensively, like a cat that expects a half-brick. Oh, sings the poet, to be home again, home again, home again: but Sigsbee H. Waddington could not bring himself to share that sunny viewpoint. With the opportunity for quiet reflection there had come to him the numbing realisation that beneath the roof before him trouble waited. On other occasions while serving his second sentence as a married man he had done things of which his wife had disapproved—and of which she had expressed her disapproval in a manner that was frank and unrestrained: but never before had he committed such a domestic crime as the one beneath the burden of which he was staggering now. He had actually absented himself from the wedding of his only child after having been specifically instructed to give her away at the altar: and if on a theme like this his wife did not extend herself in a fashion calculated to stagger Humanity—well, all Sigsbee H. could say was that past form meant nothing and could be ruled out as a guide completely.
He sighed drearily. He felt depressed and battered, in no mood to listen to home-truths about himself. All he wanted was to be alone on a sofa with his shoes off and something to drink at his elbow. For he had had a trying time in the great city.
Sigsbee H. Waddington, as has perhaps been sufficiently indicated in this narrative, was not a man who could think deeply without getting a headache: but even at the expense of an aching head he had been compelled to do some very deep thinking as he journeyed to New York in the train. From somewhere in the muddy depths of his subconsciousness it was imperative that he should bring to the surface the name of the policeman to whom he had sold that stock. He started the dredging operations immediately, and by the time the train had reached the Pennsylvania Station had succeeded in narrowing the search down to this extent—that he felt sure the man was called either Mulcahy or Garrity.
Now, a man who goes about New York looking for a policeman named Mulcahy has quite an afternoon’s work in hand. So has the man who seeks a Garrity. For one who pursues both there is not a dull moment. Flitting hither and thither about the city and questioning the various officers he encountered, Sigsbee H. Waddington soon began to cover ground. The policeman on point duty in Times Square said that there was a Mulcahy up near Grant’s Tomb and a choice of Garritys at Columbus Circle and Irving Place. The Grant’s Tomb Mulcahy, expressing regret that he could not himself supply the happy ending, recommended the Hundred-and-Twenty-Fifth Street Mulcahy or—alternately—the one down on Third Avenue and Sixteenth. The Garrity at Columbus Circle spoke highly of a Garrity near the Battery, and the Garrity at Irving Place seemed to think his cousin up in the Bronx might fill the long-felt want. By this time
