“Garrettson?”
“The great W. H. Garrettson! I am planning a campaign in Con. Steel. Garrettson's health is important. I must consider the state of his liver as carefully as the condition of the iron trade, because it is not only a question of the dividend rate, but of the price per share—not alone an investment, but a speculation. You can't lose all your mills and furnaces in one minute and you can't destroy all your customers overnight; but Garrettson can die in a second!”
“Of course that contingency has been provided for. His firm would undoubtedly be on the job.”
“So would the undertaker. As a matter of fact everything to-day depends upon the character of Garrettson's life. Have you ever stopped to think of how much depends upon the character of his death?”
“All deaths are alike. You talk like a novelist unaware of the resources of a firm like Garrettson's.”
“And you talk like a plain ass or a bank president, my boy. Is there no difference to the stock-market between the death of Garrettson by pneumonia and his death by lynching at the hands of a thousand indignant fellow-citizens? Stop and think.”
“Oh, well, that will never happen.”
“I cannot swear that it will, but you cannot guarantee that it never will. Stranger things have come to pass. By Jingo! it's three minutes to ten! Would it not be curious if something had happened?”
“How do you mean?”
“I have studied the great Garrettson and his habits, that I may, in my operations in Con. Steel, know on what to bank and against what to guard. He leaves his Lexington Avenue house every morning at nine and arrives at his office not later than nine-fifty. He is like the clock. All his life he has come down-town in his coupé, driven by a coachman who has been in his employ thirty years. In this age of novelties that old-fashioned coupé suggests a stability and solid respectability comparable to Founded 1732! on a firm's letter-head. However, just as the wireless has introduced a new element into maritime life, so has the automobile changed the character of street traffic. Do you remember the case of James M. Barrier, the famous sculptor, smashed in his taxicab on his way to his studio? You remember the insurance advertisements, and how he carried a two-hundred-and-seventeen-thou-sand-dollar accident policy? Well, it's ten o'clock. In one minute, if Garrettson is not here, I shall sell short one thousand shares of Con. Steel. For each delay of one minute, one thousand shares.”