Nothing of it all interested him. His mind was on the talk at the breakfast table, especially his uncle's ideas of hospitality, all of which had appalled and disgusted him. With his father there had always been a welcome for every one, no matter what the position in life, the only standard being one of breeding and character—and certainly Peter had both. His uncle had helped him, of course—put him under obligations he could never repay. Yet after all, it was proved now to him that he was but a guest in the house enjoying only such rights as any other guest might possess, and with no voice in the welcome—a condition which would never be altered, until he became independent himself—a possibility which at the moment was too remote to be considered. Then his mind reverted to his conversation the night before with Mr. Grayson and with this change of thought his father's portrait—the one that hung in his room—loomed up. He had the night before turned on the lights—to their fullest—and had scanned the picture closely, eager to find some trace of Peter in the counterfeit presentment of the man he loved best, and whose memory was still almost a religion, but except that both Peter and his father were bald, and that both wore high, old-fashioned collars and neck-cloths, he had been compelled to admit with a sigh that there was nothing about the portrait on which to base the slightest claim to resemblance.
“Yet he's like my father, he is, he is,” he kept repeating to himself as the cab sped on. “I'll find out what it is when I know him better. To-night when Mr. Grayson comes I'll study it out,” and a joyous smile flashed across his features as he thought of the treat in store for him.
When at last the boy reached his office, where, behind the mahogany partition with its pigeon-hole cut through the glass front he sat every day, he swung back the doors of the safe, took out his books and papers and made ready for work. He had charge of the check book, and he alone signed the firm's name outside of the partners. “Rather young,” one of them protested, until he looked into the boy's face, then he gave his consent; something better than years of experience and discretion are wanted where a scratch of a pen might mean financial ruin.
Breen had preceded him with but a nod to his clerks, and had disappeared into his private office—another erection of ground glass and mahogany. Here the senior member of the firm shut the door carefully, and turning his back fished up a tiny key attached to a chain leading to the rear pocket of his trousers. With this he opened a small closet near his desk—a mere box of a closet—took from it a squatty-shaped decanter labelled “Rye, 1840,” poured out half a glass, emptied it into his person with one gulp, and with the remark in a low voice to himself that he was now “copper fastened inside and out”—removed all traces of the incident and took up his morning's mail.
By this time the circle of chairs facing the huge blackboard in the spacious outer office had begun to fill up. Some of the customers, before taking their seats, hurried anxiously to the ticker, chattering away in its glass case; others turned abruptly and left the room without a word. Now and then a customer would dive into Breen's private room, remain a moment and burst out again, his face an index of the condition of his bank account.
When the chatter of the ticker had shifted from the London quotations to the opening sales on the Exchange, a sallow-faced clerk mounted a low step-ladder and swept a scurry of chalk marks over the huge blackboard, its margin lettered with the initials of the principal stocks. The appearance of this nimble-fingered young man with his piece of chalk always impressed Jack as a sort of vaudeville performance. On ordinary days, with the market lifeless, but half of the orchestra seats would be occupied. In whirl-times, with the ticker spelling ruin, not only were the chairs full, but standing room only was available in the offices.
Their occupants came from all classes; clerks from up-town dry-goods houses, who had run down during lunch time to see whether U.P. or Erie, or St. Paul had moved up an eighth, or down a quarter, since they had devoured the morning papers on their way to town; old speculators who had spent their lives waiting buzzard-like for some calamity, enabling them to swoop down and make off with what fragments they could pick up; well-dressed, well-fed club men, who had had a run of luck and who never carried less than a thousand shares to keep their hands in; gray-haired novices nervously rolling little wads of paper between their fingers and thumbs—up every few minutes to listen to the talk of the ticker, too anxious to wait until the sallow-faced young man with the piece of chalk could make his record on the board. Some of them had gathered together their last dollar. Two per cent. or one percent, or even one-half of one per cent. rise or fall was all that stood between them and ruin.
“Very sorry, sir, but you know we told you when you opened the account that you must keep your margins up,” Breen had said to an old man. The old man knew; had known it all night as he lay awake, afraid to tell his wife of the sword hanging above their heads. Knew it, too, when without her knowledge he had taken the last dollar of the little nest-egg to make good the deficit owed Breen & Co. over and above his margins, together with some other things “not negotiable”—not our kind of collateral but “stuff” that could “lie in the safe until he could make some other arrangement,” the cashier had said with the firm's consent.
Queer safe, that of Breen & Co., and queer things went into it. Most of them were still there. Jack thought some jeweller had sent part of his stock down for safe-keeping when he first came across a tiny drawer of which Breen alone kept the key. Each object could tell a story: a pair of diamond ear-rings surely could, and so could four pearls on a gold chain, and perhaps, too, a certain small watch, the case set with jewels. One of these days they may be redeemed, or they may not, depending upon whether the owners can scrape money enough together to pay the balances owed in cash. But the four pearls on the gold chain are likely to remain there—that poor fellow went overboard one morning off Nantucket Light, and his secret went with him.
During the six months Jack had stood at his desk new faces had filled the chairs—the talk had varied; though he felt only the weary monotony of it all. Sometimes there had been hours of tense excitement, when even his uncle had stood by the ticker, and when every bankable security in the box had been overhauled and sent post-haste to the bank or trust company. Jack, followed by the porter with a self-cocking revolver in his outside pocket, had more than once carried the securities himself, returning to the office on the run with a small scrap of paper good for half a million or so tucked away in his inside pocket. Then the old monotony had returned with its dull routine and so had the chatter and talk. “Buy me a hundred.” “Yes, let 'em go.” “No, I don't want to risk it.” “What's my balance?” “Thought you'd get another eighth for that stock.” “Sold at that figure, anyhow,” etc.