oustache was black, but his
hair already showed streaks of gray although he was not quite thirty-eight,
and as he lit a cigarette his right hand twitched perceptibly.

Bruce Cunningham had married just after he left law school. He had worked
in a law office which took receiverships by the score, and through managing
bankrupt concerns by slow degrees he had made himself a financial surgeon.
He had set up an office of his own and was doing splendidly. But he worked
under fearful tension. Bruce had to deal with bankrupts who had barely
closed their eyes for weeks, men half out of their minds from the strain,
the struggle to keep up their heads in those angry waters of finance which
Roger vaguely pictured as a giant whirlpool. Though honest enough in his
own affairs, Bruce showed a genial relish for all the tricks of the savage
world which was as the breath to his nostrils. And at times he appeared so
wise and keen he made Roger feel like a child. But again it was Bruce who
seemed the child. He seemed to be so naive at times, and Edith had him so
under her thumb. Roger liked to hear Bruce's stories of business, when
Edith would let her husband talk. But this she would not often do, for she
said Bruce needed rest at night. She reproved him now for staying so late,
she wrung from him the fact that he'd had no supper.

"Well, Bruce," she exclaimed impatiently, "now isn't that just like you?
You're going straight home--that's where you're going--"

"To be fed up and put to bed," her husband grumbled good-naturedly. And
while she made ready to bundle him off he turned to his father-in-law.

"What do you think's my latest?" he asked, and he gave a low chuckle which
Roger liked. "Last week I was a brewer, to-day I'm an engineer," he said.
"Can you beat it? A building contractor. Me." And as he smoked his
cigarette, in laconic phrases he explained how a huge steel construction
concern had gone to the wall, through building skyscrapers "on spec" and
outstripping even the growth of New York. "They got into court last week,"
he said, "and the judge handed me the receivership. The judge and I have
been chums for years. He has hay fever--so do I."

"Come, Bruce, I'm ready," said his wife.

"I've been in their office all day," he went on. "Their general manager was
stark mad. He hadn't been out of the office since last Sunday night, he
said. You had to ask him a question and wait--while he looked at you and
held onto his chair. He br