ry careful look at the tiled floor, walls,
ceiling, that I noted that those plain smooth tiles were of the very
finest, were probably of his own designing, certainly had been imported
from some great Dutch or German kiln. Not an inch of drapery, not a
picture, nothing that could hold dust or germs anywhere; a square of
sanitary matting by the bed; another square opposite an elaborate
exercising machine. The bed was of the simplest metallic construction--but
I noted that the metal was the finest bronze. On it was a thin, hard
mattress. You could wash the big room down and out with the hose, without
doing any damage.

"Quite a contrast," said I, glancing from the one room to the other.

"My architect is a crank on sanitation," he explained, from his lounge.

I noted that the windows were huge--to admit floods of light--and that
they were hermetically sealed so that the air should be only the pure air
supplied from the ventilating apparatus. To many people that room would
have seemed a cheaply got together cell; to me, once I had examined it, it
was evidently built at enormous cost and represented an extravagance of
common-sense luxury which was more than princely or royal.

Suddenly my mind reverted to my business. "How do you account for the
steadiness of Textile, Langdon?" I asked, returning to the carved
sitting-room and trying to put those surroundings out of my mind.

"I don't account for it," was his languid, uninterested reply.

"Any of your people under the market?"

"It isn't to my interest to have it supported, is it?" he replied.

"I know that," I admitted. "But why doesn't it drop?"

"Those letters of yours may have overeducated the public in confidence,"
suggested he. "Your followers have the habit of believing implicitly
whatever you say."

"Yes, but I haven't written a line about Textile for nearly a month now," I
pretended to object, my vanity fairly purring with pleasure.

"That's the only reason I can give," said he.

"You are sure none of your people is supporting the stock?" I asked, as a
form and not for information; for I thought I knew they weren't--I trusted
him to have seen to that.

"I'd like to get my holdings back," said he. "I can't buy until it's down.
And I know none of my people would dare support it."

You will notice he did not say directly that he was not himself supporting
the market; he simply so answered me that I, not suspecting him, would
think he reassured me. There