It is difficult to arrest the progress of a millionaire who is starting off in the direction of caviare, but Mr. Waddington, with a frenzied clutch at the other's coat-sleeve, succeeded in doing so for a brief instant.
"When did you hear this?"
"Just as I was starting out this morning?"
"Do you think anybody else knows about it?"
"Everybody down-town, I should say."
"But, listen," said Mr. Waddington urgently. "Say, listen!" He clung to the caviare-maddened man's sleeve with a desperate grip. "What I am getting at is, I know a guy—nothing to do with business—who has a block of that stock. Do you think there's any chance of him not having heard about this?"
"Quite likely. But, if you're thinking of getting it off him, you'd better hurry. The story is probably in the evening papers by now."
The words acted on Sigsbee H. Waddington like an electric shock. He released the other's sleeve, and United Beef shot off towards the refreshment-table like a homing pigeon. Mr. Waddington felt in his hip-pocket to make sure that he still possessed the three hundred dollars which he had hoped that day to hand over to Fanny Welch, and bounded out of the room, out of the house, and out of the front gate; and, after bounding along the broad highway to the station, leaped into a train which might have been meeting him there by appointment. Never in his life before had Sigsbee H. Waddington caught a train so expeditiously: and the fact seemed to him a happy omen. He looked forward with a cheery confidence to the interview with that policeman fellow to whom he had—in a moment of mistaken generosity—parted with his precious stock. The policeman had seemed a simple sort of soul, just the sort of man with whom it is so nice to do business. Mr. Waddington began to rehearse the opening speeches of the interview.
"Say, listen," he would say. "Say, listen, my dear...."
He sat up in his seat with a jerk. He had completely forgotten the policeman's name.