Symes dreaded the reply, yet he tried to bolster his courage with the argument which had seemed so potent at the time he used it, namely, that they were all in too deep to refuse aid at this crisis. Symes imagined that he could almost see himself growing old in the hours of suspense which followed the sending of the telegram.
Symes's hand shook noticeably when he took the yellow sheet from the operator who delivered it in person. The message read:
Turned down cold. Something wrong. Letter follows.
Mudge
Symes's towering figure seemed to crumple in the office chair.
Abe Tutts to whom he owed $2500 for hay and grain waved a genial hand as he passed the door.
"How goes it?" he called.
"Great!" and the boastful reply sickened him.
Great—when he was ruined!
It was the sentence "Something wrong" which gave Symes that weak feeling in his knees. To what did Mudge refer, to the stock and bondholders or to the project and himself? Must he go about for the four days which must intervene before a letter could reach him with that sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, that curious limpness of his spine?