“Your order is executed, Mr. Robison.” Mr. Richards whispered it out of a corner of his mouth without turning his head, all the time looking meditatively at the quotation-board.
“Got the whole twenty?”
“Yes.”
“Good!”
“Do you think—” began the broker in a voice that would make flint turn to putty.
“I do!” cut in Robison. “I do, indeed! There is no telling what has happened. The sharpness of the break was intensified by two facts.” He had unconsciously raised his voice.
A startled look fastened itself on the seventeen faces of the seventeen customers who were short of Steel. The seventeen owners of the faces drew nearer to Mr. Robison, who, apparently unaware of having any other listener than Mr. George B. Richards, went on, nasally but amiably:
“By two things: First, the mystery. What has become of Mr. W. H. Garrettson? Second: If the great Garrettson has disappeared it must be because of a worse-than-death. Many things can be worse than death, in the stock-market—failure, for instance.”
“Oh, but that's out of the question.”
“Yes, it is! So is the disappearance of W. H. Garrettson, one of the best-known men in America, in broad daylight, in a crowded and very efficiently policed city thoroughfare.”