Fanshaw paled and pinched in his lips. "I'm a desperate man. I'm ruined. Leonora—"
Dumont shook his head, the veins swelling in his forehead and neck. The last strand of his self-restraint snapped. "Leave her out of this! She has no claim on me NOW—and YOU never had."
Fanshaw stared at him, then sprang to his feet, all in a blaze. "You scoundrel!" he shouted, shaking his fist under Dumont's nose.
"If you don't clear out instantly I'll have you thrown out," said Dumont. He was cool and watchful now.
Fanshaw folded his arms and looked down at him with the dignified fury of the betrayed and outraged. "So!" he exclaimed. "I see it all!"
Dumont pressed an electric button, then leaned back in his revolving chair and surveyed Fanshaw tranquilly. "Not a cent!" he repeated, a cruel smile in his eyes and round his mouth. The boy came and Dumont said to him: "Send the watchman."
Fanshaw drew himself up. "I shall punish you," he said. "Your wealth will not save you." And he stalked past the gaping office boy.
He stood in front of the Edison Building, looking aimlessly up and down the street as he pulled his long, narrow, brown-gray mustache. Gloom was in his face and hate in his heart—not hate for Dumont alone but hate for all who were what he longed to be, all rich and "successful" men. And the towering steel and stone palaces of prosperity sneered down on him with crushing mockery.
"Damn them all!" he muttered. "The cold-hearted thieves!"
From his entry into that district he had played a gambling game, had played it dishonestly in a small way. Again and again he had sneakingly violated Wall Street's code of morality—that curious code with its quaint, unexpected incorporations of parts of the decalogue and its quainter, though not so unexpected, infringements thereof and amendments thereto. Now by "pull," now by trickery, he had evaded punishment. But apparently at last he was to be brought to bar, branded and banished.