How I was worked that day! The Section Traction Company almost caught us napping, and they’d have done it surely if we hadn’t obtained the Judge’s signature to the injunction by four o’clock that afternoon. They not only laid two miles of track inside of eighteen hours, and came within four blocks of crossing our main line, but they sold our stock on the market, thousands and thousands of shares—poured it in from ten o’clock till three, pounding and hammering every supporting bid we made, and the only thing that saved us was the Exchange closing at three o’clock. As it was, our Board man, Reynolds, became hysterical as the gong struck, and he’s never been up to much since.
Well, it was a shrewd, ably-planned move, and, executed earlier, would have succeeded in wrecking us. But it cost them, as we figured it, two millions, and sent them higher than a kite. I didn’t know they were so big—employed three thousand men, they say.
III.
The name on a passing ambulance directed my steps to Roosevelt Hospital at the close of business, a few nights later. I don’t think I wanted to nail that very poor lie of Sandy’s but I knew Waldron, the Superintendent, and thought I’d invite him to dinner and joke him a bit about his new whisky ward.
Waldron was in, but could not go to dinner. Worst time in the day for him to get off, he said.
“By the way,” he continued, “too bad you couldn’t give Sandy McWhiffle a job—he would have it you’d take him, so we let him go, with a dose of whisky to carry him through. But you lazy devils get down so late it didn’t last him, and he fainted in the street on the way back. Queer fellow, but I liked him—his sense of humour hasn’t disappeared as it has with most of his class.”
Perhaps my sense of humour had disappeared, but I saw no fun in my rehearsed jokes of a few minutes previous.
“Is he here now?” I asked.
“No, we discharged him yesterday.—Hope he’ll get a job, but there’s an awful lot of men looking for work.”
It was probably because I was out of temper with myself, but the city seemed hideously cruel to me as I walked down Broadway from the Hospital. The clang of the car gongs sounded like fierce commands—the electric lights snapped and glittered like cunning, wicked eyes—the hot air from the shops offended like venomous breath—the rattle of the carts and cabs sounded reckless—the crowds seemed to jostle and grapple. The gaily-lighted windows mocked me with their glitter, and the darkened ones had a menace in their black indifference. In every elbow touching me I seemed to feel some threat—in every eye looking at me I seemed to read some impatient question asked in brutal scorn. These masses of men rushing by me this way and that—they hated me—longed to trample me down and crush me into the dirt beneath their feet!—No, they didn’t.—And wouldn’t?—Unless they found me in their path, and then they’d wipe me from it with scarce a thought—yes, and rush on without a sign, without knowledge of my obliteration.—Well, it wasn’t worth struggling against—the odds were too great.—And anyway, what difference did it make?