outer room, and he made no sign throughout the
forenoon, except to strike savagely on his desk-bell from time to time,
and send out to Walker for some book of accounts or a letter-file. His
boy confidentially reported to Walker that the old man seemed to have
got a lot of papers round; and at lunch the book-keeper said to Corey,
at the little table which they had taken in a corner together, in
default of seats at the counter, "Well, sir, I guess there's a cold
wave coming."

Corey looked up innocently, and said, "I haven't read the weather
report."

"Yes, sir," Walker continued, "it's coming. Areas of rain along the
whole coast, and increased pressure in the region of the private
office. Storm-signals up at the old man's door now."

Corey perceived that he was speaking figuratively, and that his
meteorology was entirely personal to Lapham. "What do you mean?" he
asked, without vivid interest in the allegory, his mind being full of
his own tragi-comedy.

"Why, just this: I guess the old man's takin' in sail. And I guess
he's got to. As I told you the first time we talked about him, there
don't any one know one-quarter as much about the old man's business as
the old man does himself; and I ain't betraying any confidence when I
say that I guess that old partner of his has got pretty deep into his
books. I guess he's over head and ears in 'em, and the old man's gone
in after him, and he's got a drownin' man's grip round his neck. There
seems to be a kind of a lull--kind of a dead calm, I call it--in the
paint market just now; and then again a ten-hundred-thousand-dollar man
don't build a hundred-thousand-dollar house without feeling the drain,
unless there's a regular boom. And just now there ain't any boom at
all. Oh, I don't say but what the old man's got anchors to windward;
guess he HAS; but if he's GOIN' to leave me his money, I wish he'd left
it six weeks ago. Yes, sir, I guess there's a cold wave comin'; but
you can't generally 'most always tell, as a usual thing, where the old
man's concerned, and it's ONLY a guess." Walker began to feed in his
breaded chop with the same nervous excitement with which he abandoned
himself to the slangy and figurative excesses of his talks. Corey had
listened with a miserable curiosity and compassion up to a certain
moment, when a broad light of hope flashed upon him. It came from
Lapham's potential ruin; and the way out of the labyrinth that had
hitherto seemed so ho