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 sething 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
organization of a "Citizens Union," whose avowed object was to make a
cam