"You're 'way behind. I know something better than that. Come around next week."
He left Golightly smiling incredulously and ambled slowly through the motley group of New Street, that tragic anteroom to Wall Street, where fallen kings of finance retell the glories of the past and wager a few miserable dollars on a fugitive whisper.
"If they only knew what I know," he said to himself, smiling as he passed on in confident youth, through these wearied old men who in their misfortune still preferred to be last in the Street if only to be near Rome. At the offices, high on Exchange Place, looking down on the huddled group of the curb below in sheepskins and mufflers, flinging fingered signals in the air to waiting figures in windows above, he found a new order from Roscoe Marsh and hurriedly had it executed. He felt like calling up all his friends and asking them to follow his lead blindly.
He wanted every one to be making money as easily as he could. Before the market closed Indiana Smelter receded to 105¼ and he felt as though some one had bodily lifted $500 from his pocket. Still he had made a thousand dollars for the day. He caught the subway with the crowd of stockbrokers who came romping out of the stock exchange like released schoolboys after the day's tension, pommeling and shoving each other with released glee. His first action was to turn to the financial columns of his newspaper, to make sure there had been no error, to see in cold print that he had actually made no mistake. During the week Indiana Smelter climbed irregularly to 111¼, broke three points, and ended at 109 amid a sudden concentration of public interest.
On Saturday, when he came back to his blazing windows in the mellow half-lights of the court, preparatory to dressing for a party in the wake of Fred DeLancy, he took the flight two steps at a time, bursting with the need of pouring out his tale of good fortune to responsive ears. He found only George Granning, snug in the big armchair, sunk in the beatific contemplation of an immense ledger.
"What the deuce are you grinning at, you old rhinoceros?" said Bojo, stopping surprised.
"I'm casting up accounts," said Granning. "I'm twelve hundred and forty-two dollars ahead of the game. To-morrow you can buy me my first bond and make me a capitalist. Bojo, congratulate me. I've got my raise—forty a week from now on—assistant superintendent! What do you think of that?"
"No!" exclaimed Bojo, who had been dreaming in hundreds of thousands. He shook hands with all the enthusiasm he could force. Then a genuine pity seized him for the inequalities of opportunity. He seized a chair and drew it excitedly near his friend. "Granny, listen to me. Do you know what I have made in ten days? Almost five thousand dollars! Now you know nothing in this world would let me get you in wrong, unless I knew. Well, Granny, I know! I'll guarantee you—do you understand—that if you'll let me take your thousand and invest it as I want, I'll double your capital in a month."
"Thank you, no," said Granning in a way that admitted no discussion. "The gilt-edged kind is my ambition. Look here, how much money have you put up?"
"Only twenty thousand."