“I’ll do what I can through the ‘Star’ to help,” said Caine. “Just as I did for the Porter-Hyde Park merger and the Humason Mine charter. What’s the use of owning a newspaper if one can’t boost one’s friends?”
“An’ one’s own Steeloid stock at the same time?” supplemented Conover. “We understand each other all right, I guess. Steeloid’s goin’ to take a rise, after Monday. An’ it’s goin’ to keep right on risin’ for the next six months.”
“Conover,” protested Caine, “as a highwayman—or financier, to put it more politely—you are a genius. But as a man, you leave a ghastly amount to be desired. Have you a superstitious fear of the word ‘Thanks’? I offer to put the columns of the ‘Star’ at your disposal. Common decency at least should call for a word of gratitude. Or, if not for the Steeloid matter, at least for my championing you to-day at the Club. Surely that wasn’t in the interest of your wonderful Steeloid stock.”
Conover plodded ahead glumly for some moments. Then he observed, as though turning to a pleasanter subject:
“In the part of that Napoleon book I read it told how the old-line, patent-leather ’ristocrats of France fell over each other to do things that would make a hit with the big ‘hold-up man’. Wasn’t it real gen’rous of ’em? But then, maybe Napoleon had a cute little way of sayin’ ‘Thanks,’ oftener’n I do.”
CHAPTER V
AN INTERLUDE
“Why folks should drink tea when they’re not thirsty, an’ gobble sweet crackers when they’re not hungry,” observed Conover, impersonally, as he balanced his cup and saucer on one thick palm and stared at the tea as though it might turn and rend him, “is somethin’ I never could make out. As far as I can learn, s’ciety is made up of doin’ things you don’t want to at times you don’t need to.”
“There is nothing in afternoon tea,” quoted Desirée,
“To appeal to a person like me.
There’s too little to eat,