Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/15

 Whittaker liked "the place"—this being, specifically, the east apartment on the third floor of an expensive building which otherwise was let to some of those young married people, whose parents were helping them pay the rent, or else to middle-aged, established men with families, each of whom could afford four or five thousand a year for a few rooms.

William Whittaker liked the place, not solely for its unquestionable value in the minds of persons you met socially but even more because to live here evidently was an advantage in his business; for Bill was a lawyer and, though only twenty-eight, Whittaker undoubtedly would be the next name to be lettered on the many doors of Kemphill, James, Jones and Stern in the First National Bank Building. Their clients were such obviously successful people as lived within the new loop of the Lake Shore Drive about "Streeterville"; and Billy's father (who was a banker in Bay City, Michigan), recognizing that it was an asset to a young lawyer in Chicago to live in evident prosperity, sent regularly the difference between what Bill earned and what he necessarily spent. Gregg had no help from home; and his salary and commissions seldom equalled Bill's earnings; so Gregg had no business to spend so much on living; but, persistently, it was Gregg who in the council of two downright opposed the taking of a third partner. He put it on the ground that they ought to keep a guest room.

"You can't call a place a home where you can't put up a man overnight," he argued; but his real reason was not to have others in but to keep another out. Gregg and Bill had been together since they were freshmen at the University of Michigan. That was for eleven years, now; and whatever their association meant