“My club is near here,” said Harry. “Come in for a nightcap.”
Nested in a deep leather chair, with a fresh cigar between his lips, Joe’s gaze at the dying fire appeared to become slightly rapt. “Look here, Harry, you’re the best friend I’ve got. I can talk to you. God! the life we lead, we never get a chance to open up. You don’t dare to let yourself go with any ordinary guy. . . . I want to tell you something, Harry. I suppose to you I appear just a fly kid; happy-go-lucky, and all that. But that ain’t the real me. I hate the position I’m in. You’re a whole lot better off than me; still, it’s much the same. I don’t see how you can stand it either!”
“Stand what?” asked Harry sharply.
“Sucking up to that —— —— ——!”
“Well, there are good pickings!” said Harry with a sickly smile.
“To hell with pickings! Are you going to be satisfied with his droppings all your life? Not me! . . . We only have to look around us. Everybody on the inside is making pots of money right now, pots! There’s never been anything like it. Why shouldn’t we? Wouldn’t you like to have money enough of your own to tell that old swell-front to go to hell, and close the door as he went out?”
Harry twisted in his chair without answering.
“Well, I mean to,” said Joe. “I want a pile, and I’m going to grab it.”
“How?” asked Harry.
“Well, I been picking up quite a bit about the ways of the Street, one place and another,” said Joe. “I make the old man talk about it, without his getting on to how much he’s giving away. All the talk is of mergers now. The air is full of it. That is how the money is made. Millions in a stroke of the pen!”