000 with a Steel
Corporation man that there'd be four suicides in the Allegheny rolling
mills to-day. So everybody in sight had to walk up and have drinks on
him. He took a fancy to me and asked me to dinner with him. We went to
a restaurant in Diamond alley and sat on stools and had a sparkling
Moselle and clam chowder and apple fritters.

"'Then he wanted to show me his bachelor apartment on Liberty street.
He's got ten rooms over a fish market with privilege of the bath on
the next floor above. He told me it cost him $18,000 to furnish his
apartment, and I believe it.

"'He's got $40,000 worth of pictures in one room, and $20,000 worth of
curios and antiques in another. His name's Scudder, and he's 45, and
taking lessons on the piano and 15,000 barrels of oil a day out of his
wells.'

"'All right,' says I. 'Preliminary canter satisfactory. But, kay
vooly, voo? What good is the art junk to us? And the oil?'

"'Now, that man,' says Andy, sitting thoughtfully on the bed, 'ain't
what you would call an ordinary scutt. When he was showing me his
cabinet of art curios his face lighted up like the door of a coke
oven. He says that if some of his big deals go through he'll make
J. P. Morgan's collection of sweatshop tapestry and Augusta, Me.,
beadwork look like the contents of an ostrich's craw thrown on a
screen by a magic lantern.

"'And then he showed me a little carving,' went on Andy, 'that anybody
could see was a wonderful thing. It was something like 2,000 years
old, he said. It was a lotus flower with a woman's face in it carved
out of a solid piece of ivory.

"Scudder looks it up in a catalogue and describes it. An Egyptian
carver named Khafra made two of 'em for King Rameses II. about the
year B.C. The other one can't be found. The junkshops and antique bugs
have rubbered all Europe for it, but it seems to be out of stock.
Scudder paid $2,000 for the one he has.'

"'Oh, well,' says I, 'this sounds like the purling of a rill to me. I
thought we came here to teach the millionaires business, instead of
learning art from 'em?'

"'Be patient,' says Andy, kindly. 'Maybe we will see a rift in the
smoke ere long.'

"All the next morning Andy was out. I didn't see him until about noon.
He came to the hotel and called me into his room across the hall. He
pulled a roundish bundle about as big as a goose egg out of his pocket
and unwrapped it. It was an ivory carving just as he had described the
millionaire's to me