“No, the Captain is sick. He is Number One.”
“What is his name?”
“Halloran—Jack Halloran.”
CHAPTER I—Mr. G. Hyde Bigelow
In a mahogany office high up in a very high building sat Mr. G. Hyde Bigelow. An elaborate building it was, with expensive statuary about the entrance, with unusually expensive mosaic floors on all of the fifteen or more stories. A dozen elevators were at Mr. Bigelow's service, and a dozen uniformed elevator boys to bow deferentially whenever he granted his brief presence in the necessary actions of going up to his office or coming down from his office—boys that were fond of remarking casually when the great man had stepped out, “That's G. Hyde Bigelow.” A very expensive building, in fact, such as best comported with his dignity.
For Mr. Bigelow was a rising man; and the simple inscription on the ground-glass door, “G. Hyde Bigelow & Company,” already stood in the eyes of a small quarter of the financial world of Chicago for unqualified success. If a syndicate was to be floated, if a mysterious new combine was to be organized, what so important to its success as the name of G. Hyde Bigelow somewhere behind the venture—what so necessary in the somewhat difficult task of making it plain that paper is gold, that water is a solid, as the indorsement of G. Hyde Bigelow & Company? If Bigelow invested largely in Kentucky coal lands, what more reasonable than an immediate boom in Kentucky coal—and that men should speak sagely on the street of the immense value of the new mines? If Bigelow went heavily into the new-style freighters that were to revolutionize the lake-carrying trade, what more natural than a rush in “new freighters,” and who could know if the Bigelows should unload rapidly on an inflated market? But the great man is speaking!
Before him, on the mahogany desk, were spread some papers—vastly important papers, or they could never have penetrated to the Presence to take up time of such inestimable value. “Time is money” is a phrase that had been heard to fall from the Bigelow lips. Perhaps some one else had coined this phrase years before; perhaps Mr. Bigelow himself might even vaguely remember hearing it: what matters it! Did not old phrases fall new-minted from his lips? Did not the minor earths and moons and satellites that revolved about the Bigelow sun recognize in each authoritative Bigelow utterance an addition to the language? And were there ever such jokes as the Bigelow jokes?
Before him were the papers; beside him, in a broad-armed, leather-backed mahogany chair, sat the junior partner, the “Company” of Bigelow & Company, Mr. William H. Babcock. A youngish man was Mr. Babcock; a very well dressed man with a shrewd, somewhat incredulous eye; a man who speaks cautiously, is even inclined to mumble in a low voice; and who finds his worth and caution recognized as a useful, if secondary, part of the importance of Bigelow & Company. Lacking in the audacious qualities of his senior, it would seem, but shrewd, very shrewd—not a man given to unnecessary promises or straight-out declarations. And if Mr. Babcock had a phrase, a creed, locked securely away in the depths behind that quiet face, it was “Business is Business.” Business was business to Mr. Babcock; and he had hopes, even a fair prospect, indeed, of himself rising to a point where Time should be Money, thanks to the aid of the Bigelow name. And in the part of those depths where the thinking was done, the thought lurked, that if the time should ever come when Business-is-Business and Time-is-Money should be combined in his career (and everything about him tended to combination), Chicago would be too small for William H. Babcock.