Alas, the gentleman had protested too much! "You'd find me one of your troublesome small investors, I am afraid," said the doctor, wishing uncomfortably that he could believe in Pallinder. "It's rarely a professional man lays up any money, you know."
"Oh, you'd be a different pair of shoes," said Colonel Pallinder genially. "I'd rather handle a couple of hundred for a man like you than a couple of thousand for some others I could mention. Now I always contend that stocks such as I deal in are a Heaven-sent boon to the man of moderate means. Say you only have a hundred or so. You put it into Ozark Field or—well—yes, you could get half-a-dozen shares of Lone Star. I know a man, a banker in New York, a personal friend, you understand, that I think I could persuade into parting with a little block like that, although they hate to like the devil—but I believe he'd do it for me. Now these things advance so rapidly that in a month or six weeks you could sell out to great advantage—if you didn't want to wait for your dividends, or found the speculation kept you lying awake o' nights," he interpolated, with jovial sarcasm. "Of course, Doctor, I hardly need to tell a man of your intelligence and breadth of view that—um—ah—'there's a tide in the affairs of men,' you know—the time is coming when nobody but the kings of finance will be able to buy and control these shares, they're going up so fast; but if you were already in the ring, as I may say——"
"I doubt if the kings of finance and I would hit it off very well," said the doctor soberly. Colonel Pallinder laughed uproariously. He slapped his knees and laughed, and wiped his eyes and laughed again. Never had the doctor's dry humour received such appreciation; and not being acutely conscious of having been humorous, he observed the colonel's manifestations of delight with a good deal of interest.
"You talk in a rather disparaging vein about the business ability of professional men, Doctor," he said, when his mirth had somewhat subsided. "But the fact is, I've met with just as much shrewdness among them as anywhere else. A successful lawyer, a widely-known and successful physician like yourself—why, he's got to be very much above the average in intellect and education both. A man like you can take hold of anything, no matter whether he's had any previous experience or not—he can take up anything and do well at it. Now, look at you! I suppose you've hardly ever been in a broker's office before in your life, and you come in here, and with scarcely a word of explanation from me, grasp the whole subject at once! I tell you what, I'd like you to meet Sheister, and just hear him talk Phosphate once. He's a self-made man, Doctor, no gentleman-of-the-old-school such as you, but for that very reason I think you'd find it an interesting experience. He'll talk by the hour about his early trials and struggles—it sounds like a romance. He has the whole history of Phosphate at his finger-ends. Of course I can't talk about the stuff except in a business way—I only know that it's been a gold mine for Sheister and the men he got to go in with him. Sir, I knew that fellow when he hadn't but one shirt in the world, and he didn't know where his next meal was to come from—and now he's travelling round in his private car with a valet and a cook! I've done pretty well in Phosphate myself," said the colonel, with becoming restraint; "but I'm not a patch on Sheister. Really, I'd like you to see Mrs. Sheister's diamonds, just for a curiosity. My wife can't bear her—thinks she's common, and all that—you know how women are—but I tell her she's down on Mrs. Sheister just because she's jealous of her diamonds."
"Mrs. Pallinder has no cause to be jealous of anybody's diamonds, I think," said the doctor smoothly. "Our young people will be giving their entertainment in a few days now," he added, thinking it high time to change the subject. And the colonel glided away on the new tack as gracefully as if the manœuvre had been of his own suggestion.
"Yes, and what do you think that daughter of mine said to me the other day? It seems they have to make a great show of jewelry in the second play—what's the name of it—'Mrs. Tinkleton'? Mazie's 'Mrs. Tinkleton,' and she's going to pile on all her own and her mother's too. So she comes to me: 'Oh, papa, wouldn't it be nice if we could have a real tiara? We've got to fix ma's necklace to look like one, but I think those little coronets they have at Tiffany's are just too utterly sweet.' That's the way the girls and boys talk nowadays, Doctor, 'too utterly too,' 'too intensely all but,'—can't understand half the gibberish they're saying; but I grasped the meaning of that! 'Why, good heavens, my child,' I said, 'do you think I'm made of money? There's your mother's necklace cost me thirty-five hundred—the papers made it five thousand, but you know, Doctor, they always blow around and talk big—not so very long ago, not more than two years, I believe, and now you want a tiara.' 'Well, papa, you know you said ma's necklace was just bought out of that rise in Phosphate, and it was like getting it for nothing, and you'd never miss the money because the dividends were so much more than you had expected. Won't something else take a rise?' And in fact, Doctor," continued Colonel Pallinder, pulling at his goatee with a ruefully comic grin, "she rather had me there. It was just as she said, the stock having gone up beyond my wildest expectations. I realised treble what I'd been looking for, and I always like to make my wife some little gift when anything of that sort happens. But a tiara at Tiffany's! I couldn't quite go that. Must you be going? Well, good-bye. When you feel like looking into Phosphate a little farther, drop in. I've some figures I think would interest you."
Doctor Vardaman took his way from the Turner Building, walking fast in a brown study; such was his preoccupation that twenty steps from the entrance he collided with a young man carrying a green cloth bag, weighted with books or papers, heading for the stairs.
"Hello, Doctor!" he began to apologise. "I didn't know it was you. Why, it's great to see you down here. Come up and take a look at my office."
"I've just been up in the building, Harvey," said the old gentleman, recognising him. "I ought to be home sitting down to my luncheon this minute. Huddesley would discharge me if I were not on time. I went up to see Ogden about those signboards on Richmond Avenue." He paused and then some indefinable feeling prompted him to add: "Fine office Colonel Pallinder has, hasn't he? The building is certainly very complete and well-equipped; you ought to have seen the two-story frame shanty where I first hung out my shingle. It was over a grocery with an outside stairs leading up to it."