Gorman laughed at the proposal.
“You needn’t pay anything,” he said. “All we want from you is your name on our list of directors and your influence with Ascher. Those shares will be worth a couple of hundred dollars each at least when we begin our squeeze and you don’t run the slightest risk of losing anything.”
The owning of shares of this kind seems to me the easiest way there is of making money. I thanked Gorman effusively and pocketed the certificate.
We went down town by the elevated railway, and got out at Rector Street. Tim Gorman met us at the bottom of the steps which lead to the station. He was carrying his cash register in his arms. We hurried across Broadway and passed through the doors of a huge sky-scraper building. I thought we were entering Ascher’s office. We were not. We were taking a short cut through a kind of arcade like one of the covered shopping ways which one sees in some English towns, especially in Birmingham. There was a large number of little shops in it, luncheon places, barbers’ shops, newspaper stalls, tobacconists’ stalls, florists’ stalls, and sweet shops, which displayed an enormous variety of candies. We were in the very centre of the business part of the city, a part to which women hardly ever go, unless they are typists or manicure girls. Above our heads were offices, tiers and tiers of them. I wondered why there were so many florists’ shops and sweet shops. The American business man must, I imagine, have a gentle and childlike heart. No one who has lost his first innocence would require such a supply of flowers and chocolate at his office door.
There were lifts on each side of this arcade, dozens of them, in cages. Some were labelled “Express” and warned passengers that they would make no stop before the eleventh floor. I should have liked very much to make a journey in an express lift, and I hoped that Ascher’s office might turn out to be on the 25th or perhaps the 30th floor of the building. I was disappointed. Gorman hurried us on.
We emerged into the open air and found ourselves in a narrow, crooked street along which men were hurrying in great numbers and at high speed. On both sides of it were enormously tall houses. There was just one building, right opposite to us, which was of English height. It was not in the least English in any other way. It was white and very dignified. Its lines were severely classical. It had tall, narrow windows and a door which somehow reminded me of portraits of the first Duke of Wellington. The architect may perhaps have been thinking of the great soldier’s nose. Gorman walked straight up to that door.
“Here we are,” he said.
“Surely,” I said, “this Greek temple can’t be Ascher’s office?”
“This is the exact spot.”
“Tell me,” I said, “do we take off our shoes at the threshold or say grace, or perform some kind of ceremonial lustration? We can’t go in just as we are.”