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!"

T