“I'm none the less obliged,” I said carelessly. “He assured me that he acted on your words.”
“What on earth are you doing for Mr. Knapp?” she asked earnestly, dropping her half-bantering tone. There was a trace of apprehension in her eyes.
“I'm afraid Mr. Knapp wouldn't think your recommendations were quite justified if I should tell you. Just get him in a corner and ask him.”
“I suppose it is that dreadful stock market.”
“Oh, madam, let me say the chicken market. There is a wonderful opportunity just now for a corner in fowls.”
“There are a good many to be plucked in the market that Mr. Knapp will look after,” she said with a smile. But there was something of a worried look behind it. “Oh, you know, Henry, that I can't bear the market. I have seen too much of the misery that has come from it. It can eat up a fortune in an hour. A dear friend saw her home, the house over her head, all she possessed, go in a breath on a turn of the cards in that dreadful place. And her husband left her to face it with two little children. The coward escaped it with a bullet through his head, after he had brought ruin on his home and family.”
She shuddered as she looked about her, as though in fancy she saw herself turned from the palace into the street.
“Mr. Knapp is not a man to lose,” I said.
“Mr. Knapp is a strong man,” she said with a proud straightening of her figure. “But the whirlpool can suck down the strongest swimmer.”
“But I suspect Mr. Knapp makes whirlpools instead of swimming into them,” I said meaningly.