Street on a Sunday; nevertheless
Mr. O'Connor, on arriving, had found him standing aimlessly and
undecided in front of the door.

"What do you want here?" he had said to George, coldly.

"Nothing. That is, I came over from Brooklyn to see if any one wanted
anything. I thought maybe somebody would be down, and they'd need some
one to help take off the lines, sir."

"Well, I don't need any help. You can go," said the other.

"I didn't know. We've got a lot of business in that part of Boston,
sir. I know where all the dailies are filed. You'll need me if you're
going to go over the lines, sir."

O'Connor considered.

"Well, come up, then," he said ungraciously. "We'll have to walk up;
there's no steam on."

It was then three o'clock. At not later than a quarter to four Mr.
O'Connor had definitely determined that unless the report of the
conflagration's extent had been exaggerated beyond all human connection
with the facts, the Salamander had sustained a loss in Boston which was
considerably greater than its resources would permit it to pay. In
other words, if the printed account were even remotely true, the
Salamander was, as the phrase has it, insolvent. To put it even more
shortly, the company was ruined. Facing this fact and its string of
entailed consequences, the man most directly interested was silent so
long that his youthful assistant became nervous.

"Pretty bad loss, ain't it?" he asked sympathetically.

O'Connor looked at him unseeingly. In his busy mind he was running
through an imaginary calculation. It was somewhat as follows:
Salamander's net liability in the section of Boston presumably
destroyed, $600,000--Salamander's net surplus available for payment of
losses, $400,000. Inevitably the problem ended: Salamander's
impairment of capital, $200,000. And the fire was still burning.
Boston could be rebuilt, but could the Salamander?

He turned on the clerk beside him with the savage and melodramatic
gesture of an irritated musical comedy star, and the boy recoiled
before him.

"That's all. You can go home," he said curtly.

Two minutes later he was left alone in the silent office.

At the best of times there was in the nature of Mr. Edward Eggleston
Murch not overmuch genuine urbanity. Urbanity of the surface he had,
of course; he called on it at need in very much the same way that he
called on his stenographer. But of true courtesy or consideration Mr.
Murch's makeup was si