"Are you going to stay in Chicago?" Miss M'Gann asked, with renewed curiosity. "We shall be glad to see you at the Keystone."
Sommers got up to leave, and asked for Webber's address in the city. "I may look him up," he explained. "I wish you could keep him away from Dresser. The converted socialist is likely to be a bad lot."
"Socialist!" Miss M'Gann exclaimed disdainfully. "He isn't any socialist.
He's after a rich girl."
* * * * *
Sommers left Miss M'Gann with a half-defined purpose of finding Webber and inducing him to give up the vain hope of rivalling the editor of The Investor's Monthly. He had always liked the clerk, and when he had helped to pull him out of the market without loss before, he had thought all would go well. But the optimism of the hour had proved too much for Webber's will. Carson's cheap and plentiful stocks had made it dangerously easy for every office boy to "invest." If Webber had been making money these last months, it would be useless to advise him; but if the erratic market had gone against him, he might be saved.
On the way to the city he called at St. Isidore's to see if any one in that hive would remember him. The little nurse, whom he recalled as one of the assistants at Preston's operation, had now attained the dignity of the "black band." There was hardly any one else who knew him, except the elevator boy; and he was leaving when he met Dr. Knowles, an old physician, who had a large, old-fashioned family practice in an unfashionable quarter of the city. Dr. Knowles had once been kind to the younger doctor, and now he seemed glad to meet him again. From him Sommers learned that Lindsay had about given up his practice. The "other things," thanks to his intimacy with Porter, and more lately with Carson, had put him outside the petty needs of professional earnings. Dr. Knowles himself was thinking of retiring, he told Sommers, not with his coffers full of trust certificates, but with a few thousand dollars, enough to keep him beyond want. They talked for a long time, and at the end Dr. Knowles asked Sommers to consider taking over his practice. "It isn't very swell," he explained good-humoredly. "And I don't want you to kill off my poor patients. But there are enough pickings for a reasonable man who doesn't practise for money." Sommers promised to see him in a few days, and started for the office where Webber worked.
Lindsay's final success amused him. He had heard a good deal about Porter and Carson; their operations, reported vaguely by the public, interested him. They formed a kind of partnership, evidently. Porter "financed" the schemes that Carson concocted and talked into being. And a following of small people gleaned in their train. Lindsay probably had gleaned more than the others. It was all the better, Sommers reflected, for the state of the medical profession.
As he sauntered down La Salle Street, the air of the pavement breathed the optimism of the hour. Sommers was amazed at the number of brokers' offices, at the streams of men going and coming around these busy booths. The war was over, or practically over, and speculation was brisker than ever. To be sure, the bills for the war were not paid, but success was in the air, and every one was striving to exploit that success in his own behalf. Sommers passed the blazing sign of WHITE AND EINSTEIN; the firm had taken larger offices this year. Sommers stopped and looked at the broad windows, and then, reflecting that he had nothing to do before dining with the Hitchcocks except to see Webber, he went in with a file of other men.
White and Einstein's offices were much more resplendent than the little room in the basement, where they had started two years before. There were many glass partitions and much mahogany-stained furniture. In the large room, where the quotations were posted, little rows of chairs were ranged before the blackboards, so that the weary patrons could sit and watch the game. The Chicago stocks had a blackboard to themselves, and this was covered with the longest lines of figures. Iron, Steel, Tobacco, Radiators, Vinegar, Oil, Leather, Spices, Tin, Candles, Biscuit, Rag,—the names of the "industrials" read like an inventory of a country store. "Rag" seemed the favorite of the hour; one boy was kept busy in posting the long line of quotations from the afternoon session of the Exchange. A group of spectators watched the jumps as quotation varied from quotation under the rapid chalk of the office boy.
The place was feverish with excitement, which Sommers could feel rather than read in the dull faces of the men. From time to time White or Einstein bobbed out of an inner office, or a telephone booth, and joined the watchers before the blackboards. Their detached air and genial smiles gave them the appearance of successful hosts. White recognized Sommers and nodded, with one eye on the board. "Rag's acting queer," he said casually in the doctor's ear. "Are you in the market? Rag is Carson's latest—ain't gone through yet, and there are signs the market's glutted. Look at that thing slide, waltz! Gee, there'll be sore heads to-morrow!"