I was surprised when Langdon appeared in my office a few
minutes later.

He was a tallish, slim man, carefully dressed, with a bored, weary look
and a slow, bored way of talking. I had always said that if I had not been
myself I should have wished to be Langdon. Men liked and admired him; women
loved and ran after him. Yet he exerted not the slightest effort to please
any one; on the contrary, he made it distinct and clear that he didn't
care a rap what any one thought of him or, for that matter, of anybody or
anything. He knew how to get, without sweat or snatching, all the good
there was in whatever fate threw in his way--and he was one of those men
into whose way fate seems to strive to put everything worth having. His
business judgment was shrewd, but he cared nothing for the big game he was
playing except as a game. Like myself, he was simply a sportsman--and, I
think, that is why we liked each other. He could have trusted almost any
one that came into contact with him; but he trusted nobody, and frankly
warned every one not to trust him--a safe frankness, for his charm caused
it to be forgotten or ignored. He would do anything to gain an object,
however trivial, which chanced to attract him; once it was his, he would
throw it aside as carelessly as an ill-fitting collar.

His expression, as he came into my office, was one of cynical amusement,
as if he were saying to himself: "Our friend Blacklock has caught the
swollen head at last." Not a suggestion of ill humor, of resentment
at my impertinence--for, in the circumstances, I had been guilty of an
impertinence. Just languid, amused patience with the frailty of a friend.
"I see," said he, "that you have got Textile up to eighty-five."

He was the head of the Textile Trust which had been built by his
brother-in-law and had fallen to him in the confusion following his
brother-in-law's death. As he was just then needing some money for his
share in the National Coal undertaking, he had directed me to push Textile
up toward par and unload him of two or three hundred thousand shares--he,
of course, to repurchase the shares after he had taken profits and Textile
had dropped back to its normal fifty.

"I'll have it up to ninety-eight by the middle of next month," said I. "And
there I think we'd better stop."

"Stop at about ninety," said he. "That will give me all I find I'll need
for this Coal business. I don't want to be bothered with hunting up an
investment."