to his rooms he went, where immediately was mixed
for him the first of a series of double Martinis. By dinner, his brain
was well clouded and the panic forgotten. By bedtime, with the
assistance of Scotch whiskey, he was full--not violently nor
uproariously full, nor stupefied, but merely well under the influence
of a pleasant and mild anesthetic.

Next morning he awoke with parched lips and mouth, and with sensations
of heaviness in his head which quickly passed away. By eight o'clock he
was at his desk, buckled down to the fight, by ten o'clock on his
personal round of the banks, and after that, without a moment's
cessation, till nightfall, he was handling the knotty tangles of
industry, finance, and human nature that crowded upon him. And with
nightfall it was back to the hotel, the double Martinis and the Scotch;
and this was his program day after day until the days ran into weeks.

CHAPTER XXI

Though Daylight appeared among his fellows hearty voiced,
inexhaustible, spilling over with energy and vitality, deep down he was
a very weary man. And sometime under the liquor drug, snatches of
wisdom came to him far more lucidity than in his sober moments, as, for
instance, one night, when he sat on the edge of the bed with one shoe
in his hand and meditated on Dede's aphorism to the effect that he
could not sleep in more than one bed at a time. Still holding the
shoe, he looked at the array of horsehair bridles on the walls. Then,
carrying the shoe, he got up and solemnly counted them, journeying into
the two adjoining rooms to complete the tale. Then he came back to the
bed and gravely addressed his shoe:--

"The little woman's right. Only one bed at a time. One hundred and
forty hair bridles, and nothing doing with ary one of them. One bridle
at a time! I can't ride one horse at a time. Poor old Bob. I'd
better be sending you out to pasture. Thirty million dollars, and a
hundred million or nothing in sight, and what have I got to show for
it? There's lots of things money can't buy. It can't buy the little
woman. It can't buy capacity. What's the good of thirty millions when
I ain't got room for more than a quart of cocktails a day? If I had a
hundred-quart-cocktail thirst, it'd be different. But one quart--one
measly little quart! Here I am, a thirty times over millionaire,
slaving harder every day than any dozen men that work for me, and all I
get is two meals that don't taste good, one bed