I unwrapped the handkerchief and his eyes stuck out in astonishment. "Where did you get it?" he asked.
"Off my land in North Carolina."
"Have you very much of it?" he asked, scaling off thin sheets with his knife.
"Tons of it."
"You don't say so! Then you've got a fortune. We are not very large manufacturers and don't use a great deal. How much did you bring with you?"
"Only a trunk full."
"Well, I guess we can take that much. Bring it around."
I did so, and I could scarcely believe that I had correctly caught his words when he offered me five hundred dollars, though now I know that he paid me much less than it was worth. He talked a long time with his partner, and then came back to me with the money, asked my name and a number of other questions. "Young man," said he, "if we had the ready means we would buy that mine, but we haven't. Now, I tell you what you do: Take a sample—this piece—and go at once to Chicago. I know of some capitalists there who are making large investments in the South, and I have no doubt that they will be pleased to make you an offer for your property. Here, I'll write their names on a card. To tell you the truth, we are to some extent interested with them. Now, don't show this sample to anyone else, but go straight to Clarm & Ging, Rookery building, Chicago. Anybody can tell you where it is. Here's the card. We'll telegraph them that you are coming, so you are somewhat in honor bound, you understand, not to go elsewhere—we have in some degree sealed the transaction with a part purchase, you see."
I walked out of that house, dazed, bewildered with my own luck. And I took passage on the first train for Chicago. If money could clear Alf, he would now be cleared, and proudly I mused over the great difference that I would make between his first and his last trial. But during all this time I was conscious of a heaviness—the silence of Guinea.
The train reached Chicago at morning. And now I was in the midst of a whirl and a roar—a confused babbling at the base of Babel's tower. And as I walked up a street I thought that a tornado had broken loose and that I was in the center of it. I called a hackman, for my reading taught me what to do, and I told him to drive me to the Rookery. He rattled away and came within one of being upset by other vehicles, and I yelled at him to be more particular, but on he went, paying no attention to me. After a while he drew up in front of a building as big as a lopped-off spur of a mountain range; and when I got out I found that the vitals of the hurricane had shifted with me, for the roar and the confusion was worse, was gathering new forces. But no one laughed at me, no one pointed me out, and I really felt quite pleased with myself—a school-teacher, a lawyer's assistant, expected by a capitalist! I went under a marble arch-way, and asked a man if he knew Clarm & Ging, and he pointed to an elevator—I knew what it was—and shouted a number. I got in and was shot to the eighth floor. I knocked at a door, but no one opened it. There was no bell to ring, so I knocked louder and still no one opened the door. This was hardly the courtesy that I expected. But while I was standing there a man came along and went in without knocking. I thought that he must be one of the men I was looking for, and I followed him, but he simply looked round after going in and then went out again without saying anything. I saw a man sitting at a desk, and I handed him the card which the hardware dealer had given me. He looked at it and said: "Yes, you are Hawes, eh? Where's your mica."