l, began to sell.... I saw little of Perry in those days, as I
have explained, but one day I met him in the Hambleton Building, and he
was white.

"Your friends are doing thus, Hugh," he said.

"Doing what?"

"Undermining the reputation of a company as sound as any in this city,
a company that's not overcapitalized, either. And we're giving better
service right now than any of your consolidated lines."...

He was in no frame of mind to argue with; the conversation was
distinctly unpleasant. I don't remember what I said something to the
effect that he was excited, that his language was extravagant. But after
he had walked off and left me I told Dickinson that he ought to be given
a chance, and one of our younger financiers, Murphree, went to Perry and
pointed out that he had nothing to gain by obstruction; if he were only
reasonable, he might come into the new corporation on the same terms
with the others.

All that Murphree got for his pains was to be ordered out of the office
by Perry, who declared that he was being bribed to desert the other
stockholders.

"He utterly failed to see the point of view," Murphree reported in some
astonishment to Dickinson.

"What else did he say?" Mr. Dickinson asked.

Murphree hesitated.

"Well--what?" the banker insisted.

"He wasn't quite himself," said Murphree, who was a comparative newcomer
in the city and had a respect for the Blackwood name. "He said that that
was the custom of thieves: when they were discovered, they offered to
divide. He swore that he would get justice in the courts."

Mr. Dickinson smiled....

Thus Perry, through his obstinacy and inability to adapt himself to new
conditions, had gradually lost both caste and money. He resigned from
the Boyne Club. I was rather sorry for him. Tom naturally took the
matter to heart, but he never spoke of it; I found that I was seeing
less of him, though we continued to dine there at intervals, and he
still came to my house to see the children. Maude continued to see
Lucia. For me, the situation would have been more awkward had I been
less occupied, had my relationship with Maude been a closer one. Neither
did she mention Perry in those days. The income that remained to him
being sufficient for him and his family to live on comfortably, he began
to devote most of his time to various societies of a semipublic nature
until--in the spring of which I write his activities suddenly became
concentrated in the organizati