To go down to the office with the pall of disaster and tragedy over it, to face the accusatory looks of Hauk and Flaspoller with the dread consciousness of his own personal responsibility, was the hardest thing Bojo had ever had to do. Several times in the subway, filled with the Wall Street crowd excitedly discussing the sudden turn of yesterday, alarmed for the future, he had a wild impulse toward flight. Before him were the startling scare-heads of the Morning Post, the sole paper to have the story.

DRAKE BUYS AND SELLS PITTSBURGH AND NEW ORLEANS

SECURED CONTROL AT 6 MONDAY. SOLD AT MIDNIGHT. PROFIT IN MILLIONS. BROKERS HARD HIT. THREE FIRMS SUSPEND. CLIMAX OF DRAMATIC DAY.

He saw only dimly what every one else was poring over frantically. He was reading over for the twentieth time the ugly story of Forshay's suicide.

WELL-KNOWN BROKER ENDS LIFE AT CLUB

W.O. FORSHAY THOUGHT TO HAVE BEEN CAUGHT IN DRAKE'S CLEAN UP

The bare facts followed, with a history of Forshay's career, his social connections, an account of his marriage, city house, and country house.

"But after all am I responsible?" he said to himself miserably, and though he returned always to the premise that he had been an innocent participant, he began to be obsessed with the spreading sense of ruin which such victories could occasion.

Forshay would not have blamed him, perhaps, for Forshay had played the game to the limit of the law and asked no favors. It was not that which profoundly troubled him and awoke the long dormant ethical sense. Had Drake figured out just what his conclusions would be and the effect on the public from allowing him to proceed blindly on a wrong start? In a word, had Drake deliberately used him to mislead others, knowing that after the success of Indiana Smelter his prospective son-in-law would be credited with inside information?

He did not as yet answer these questions in the affirmative; to do so meant a decision subversive of all his newly acquired sense of success. But though he still denied the accusations, they would not be thus answered, constantly returning.

At the offices it was as though the dead man were lying in wait. A sense of fright possessed him with the opening of the door. The girl at the telephone greeted him with swollen eyes, swollen with hysterical weeping; the stenographers moved noiselessly, hushed by the indefinable sense of the supernatural. The brass plate on the door—W.O. Forshay—seemed to him something inexpressibly grim and horrible. He had the feeling which the others showed in their roving glances, as though that plate hid something, as though there was something behind his door, waiting.

He went into the inner offices, at a sudden summons. Hauk was at the table, gazing out of the window; Flaspoller worrying and fussing in the center of the rug, switching aimlessly back and forth.

Bojo nodded silently on entering.

"You saw?" said Hauk with a jerk of his head.

"Yes. Horrible!"

Flaspoller broke out: "Not a cent in the world. God knows how much the firm will have to make good. Thirty-five, forty, forty-five thousand, maybe more. Oh, we're stuck all right."

"Do you mean to say," said Bojo slowly, "that he left nothing—no property?"

"Oh, a house perhaps—mortgaged, of course; and then do we know what else he owes? No. A hell of a hole we've got in with your Pittsburgh & New Orleans."

"That's not quite fair," said Bojo quietly. "I did give you a tip on Indiana Smelter and you made money on that. I never said anything about Pittsburgh & New Orleans. I distinctly refused to. You drew your own conclusions."

"That's a good joke," said Flaspoller with a contemptuous laugh.

"What do you mean?" said Bojo, flushing angrily.

"Well, I'll tell you what I mean," said Flaspoller, discretion to the winds. "When you come into a firm that has treated you generously as we have, put up your salary without waiting to be asked, and you bring in orders, confidential orders, to sell five hundred shares to-day, a thousand to-morrow, like you sell yourself, and your friends sell too—if you let your firm go on selling and don't know what's up, you're either one big jackass or a—"

"Or a what?" said Bojo, advancing.

Something in the menacing eye caused the little broker to halt abruptly with a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders.

"I wouldn't go too far, Flaspoller," said Bojo coldly. "If this was a mistake, I paid for it too, as you know. You know what I dropped."

"I know nothing," said Flaspoller, recovering his courage with his anger, and planting himself defiantly in the young fellow's path. "I know only what you lost—here, and I know too what we lose."

"Good heavens, do you mean to insinuate that I did anything crooked?" said Bojo loudly, yet at the bottom ill at ease.

"Shut up now," said Hauk, as Flaspoller started on another angry tirade. "Look here, Mr. Crocker, there's no use wasting words. The milk's spilt. Well, what then?"

"I'm sorry, of course," said Bojo, frowning.

"Of course you understand after what's happened," said Hauk quietly, "it would be impossible for us to make use of your services any more."

Much as he himself had contemplated breaking off relations, it gave him quite a shock to hear that he was being dismissed. He caught his breath, looked from one to another and said:

"Quite right. There I agree with you. I shall be very glad to leave your office to-day."

He went to his desk in a towering rage, went through his papers blindly, and rose shortly to go out where he could get hold of himself and decide on a course of action. The fact was that for the first time he had a feeling of guilt. He again assured himself that he was perfectly innocent, that there was nothing in his whole course which could be objected to. Yet how many would have believed him if they knew that this very morning he had deposited a check for a quarter of a million? What would Hauk and Flaspoller have said at the bare announcement?

He wandered into familiar groups, tarrying a moment and then passing on, parrying the questions that were showered on him by those who knew the intimacy of his relations with the successful manipulator. In all their conversations Drake appeared like a demigod. Men went back to the famous corners of Commodore Vanderbilt for a comparison with the skill and boldness of the late manipulator. It was freely said that there was no other man in Wall Street who would have dared so openly to defy the great powers of the day and force them to terms.

In this chorus of admiration there was no note of censure. He had played the game as they played it. No one held him responsible for the tragedy of Forshay and the unwritten losses of those who had been caught.

Yet Bojo was not convinced. He knew that he had not been able to meet the partners openly; that despite all the injustice of their attitude, he had withheld the knowledge of his ultimate winnings, and that he had withheld it because he would have been at a loss to explain it. More potent than the stoic indifference of Wall Street was the memory of the chance acquaintance, wrecked by the accident of this meeting; of Forshay, calmly matching quarters with him before the opening of the market, calculating the fatal point beyond which a rise meant to him the end. And as he examined it from this intimate outlook, he wondered more and more how free from responsibility and cruelty, from the echoes of agony, could be any fortune of ten millions made over night, because of others who had been led recklessly to gamble beyond their means.

Forshay recalled DeLancy, and he shuddered at the thought of how close the line of disaster had passed to him. Again and again he remembered with distaste the look in DeLancy's face when at the end he had persuaded him to take the check. What sat most heavily upon his conscience was that now, with the ranging of events in clearer perspective, he began to compare his own attitude with Drake's, with DeLancy's weak submission to his explanation. If DeLancy had taken money that Marsh had indignantly rejected, what had he himself done?

At twelve, making a sudden resolve, he went up to the offices. The partners were still there, brooding over the rout, favoring him with dark looks at his interruption.

"Mr. Hauk, will you give me the total of Mr. Forshay's indebtedness to your firm?"

Flaspoller wheeled with an insolent dismissal on his lips, but Hauk forestalled him. "What business is that of yours?"

"You stated that his losses might amount to forty or forty-five thousand. Is that correct?"

"That's our affair!"

"You don't understand," said Bojo quietly, "but I think it will be to your interest to listen to me. Do I understand that you intend to exercise your claim on whatever property may still be left to Mr. Forshay's widow?"

"What nonsense is he talking?" said Flaspoller, turning to his partner in amazement.

"I thought so," said Bojo, taking his answer from their attitude. "I repeat, kindly give me the exact figures, in detail, of the total indebtedness of Mr. Forshay to your firm."

"I suppose you want to pay it, eh?" said Flaspoller contemptuously.

"Exactly."

"What!"

The reply came almost in a shout. Hauk, keener than his partner, perceiving from the exalted calm of the young man that the matter was serious, caught Flaspoller by the arm and shot him into a chair.

"You sit down and be quiet." He approached Bojo, studying him keenly. "You want to pay up for Forshay—am I right?"

"You are.

"When?"

"Now."

Hauk himself was not proof against the shock the announcement brought. He sat down, stupidly rubbing his hand across his forehead, glancing suspiciously at Bojo. Finally he recovered himself sufficiently to say:

"For what reason do you want to do this?"

"That is my business," said Bojo, "and besides you would not understand in the least."

"Well, well," said Flaspoller, recovering his eagerness with his cupidity.

"You're not going to refuse, are you?"

"That's very noble, very generous," said Hauk slowly. "We were a little hasty, Mr. Crocker. We've lost a good deal of money. We sometimes say things a little more than we mean at such times. You mustn't think too much of that. We are very much upset—we thought the world of Mr. Forshay—"

"All this is quite unnecessary," said Bojo with quiet scorn. "We are dealing with figures. Have you the account ready—now?"

"Yes, yes—we can have it ready in a moment—look it over—take just a few moments," said Flaspoller eagerly. "Sit down, Mr. Crocker, while we look it up."

"Thanks, I prefer to wait outside. Remember I want a complete and minute statement."

He wheeled and went out with disgust, taking his seat by his old place at the window, without removing his hat and coat. He waited thus, long minutes, staring out at the dirt-stained walls of the opposite skyscraper that, five hundred feet in the air, shut them out from a glimpse of the sky, oblivious to whispered conversations, curious glances, or the nervous bustling to and fro of the partners. Presently the telephone buzzed at his side.

"Mr. Hauk would like you to step into his office, sir."

"Tell him to come to me."

It was bravado, but a revenge that was precious to him. Almost immediately Hauk came sliding to his desk, laying a paper before him.

"This is it, Mr. Crocker."

"Every claim you have against the estate—every one?" said Bojo, examining carefully the items.

"Perfectly."

But at this moment Flaspoller arrived hastily and alarmed.

"We forgot the share in the expense of the office," he said hurriedly.

"Put it down," said Bojo, with a wave of his hand. At the point of bitter scorn at which he had arrived, it seemed to him a sublime thing to accept all figures without condescending to enter into discussion. "Anything more, gentlemen?"

Flaspoller in vain tortured his memory at this last summons. Hauk, misunderstanding the frown and the stare with which Bojo continued to gaze at the paper, began to explain: "This item here is calculated on a third share in—"

"I don't want any explanations," said Bojo, cutting him short. "You will, of course, furnish complete details to the executor of the estate. Now if this is complete, kindly give me a written acknowledgment of a payment in full of every claim you hold against the estate of W.O. Forshay, and likewise an attestation that this is in every respect a just and true bill of Mr. Forshay's debts." He drew out his check-book. "Fifty-two thousand, seven hundred—"

"And forty-six dollars," said Flaspoller, who followed the strokes of the pen with incredulous eyes as though unable to believe in Providence.

Bojo rose, took the acquittals and the bill of items, and handed them the check, saying: "This closes the matter, I believe."

An immense struggle was going on in the minds of the two partners—curiosity, cupidity, and a new sense of the financial strength of the man who could thus toss off checks, plainly written in their startled expressions.

"Mr. Crocker, Tom, we should be very glad if you forgot what we said this morning," said Flaspoller hurriedly. "You've been very handsome, very handsome indeed. You can always have a desk in our offices. Mr. Crocker, I apologize for mistaking you. Shake hands!"

"Good-by, gentlemen!" said Bojo, lifting his hat with the utmost punctiliousness.

He took a hasty luncheon and went uptown to the Court, where Della, the pretty little Irish girl at the telephone desk, opened her eyes in surprise at this unusual appearance.

"Why, Mr. Crocker, what's wrong?"

"I'm changing my habits, Della," he said with an attempted laugh.

He went to his room and sat a long while before the fireplace, pulling at a pipe. At length he rose, went to the desk, and wrote:

Bojo.