We walked for an hour, talking--with less constraint and more
friendliness than ever before, and when I left her I, for the first time,
felt that I had left a good impression.
When I entered my offices, I, from force of habit, mechanically went direct
to the ticker--and dropped all in an instant from the pinnacle of Heaven
into a boiling inferno. For the ticker was just spelling out these words:
"Mowbray Langdon, president of the Textile Association, sailed unexpectedly
on the _Kaiser Wilhelm_ at noon. A two per cent. raise of the dividend
rate of Textile Common, from the present four per cent, to six, has been
determined upon."
And I had staked up to, perhaps beyond, my limit of safety that Textile
would fall!
Ball was watching narrowly for some sign that the news was as bad as he
feared. But it cost me no effort to keep my face expressionless; I was like
a man who has been killed by lightning and lies dead with the look on his
face that he had just before the bolt struck him.
"Why didn't you tell me this," said I to Ball, "when I had you on the
'phone?" My tone was quiet enough, but the very question ought to have
shown him that my brain was like a schooner in a cyclone.
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