Page:Stirring Science Stories, March 1942.djvu/50



of 1922 and warned me: "When you see the board rooms crowded with people who have no business there—laundrymen, grocers, taxi drivers—then sell!" Ignoring the optimistic fictions of Mr. Roger W. Babson, prophet of the stock exchange, now, I belive, candidate for the presidency on the Prohibition Party's ticket, I sold and came out on top. I didn't even trust to the safe deposit vaults the money I had made; it went into the fireproof, burglarproof, earthquakeproof warrens of the Manhattan Storage and Warehouse Corporation. Quick-money imbeciles who had been stuck considered me a traitor not to have lost by the crash. For years I was as good as ostracised by former friends. That was all right with me—I was a scholar and intended to remain one while my capital lasted, which it did.

A man can be a recluse in the middle of New York; that much I found out in ten years of study. It wasn't in any of the books I read; it was what I proved with my own quiet life. And at the end of many years I heard again from Mac Leonard—a scenic postal card marked Uvalde, Mexico. Characteristically laconic, the message was: "—and wife". That and his signature was supposed to be all I wanted to know about him and his fortunes since we had parted at commencement.