Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/353

 The crown and brim of the hat were lightly sprinkled with ashes. Immobile, elbows on chair-arms, fingers laced across his chest, he might have been dead, but that the drooping eyelids were not quite closed and the thumbs twiddled occasionally.

The man was Gaylord. The chair he sat in was his chair—the president's chair. Some dream had brought him back as near as possible to the scene of his business activities, and held him there absorbed—thinking, thinking, thinking. Thinking what it had all come to—this thirty years of his living, his striving; thinking what an insane complex a mob is, anyway; how unnecessary it had been to burn Boland's building: how much more complicated it had made the situation and speculating whether there was any relief, any way out. There must be, of course.

Salzberg's eyes narrowed at the sight of his ancient enemy. He bristled and gloated to see the man so overwhelmed. It was good to find one representative of the capitalistic class stripped to the clothes he wore, to the chair he sat in.

"Vell, Gaylord," he rasped, in that high, unfeeling tone of his. "Vell, Gay—" But the memory of his so recent grief checked this gloating challenge.

The banker started up aggressively. "Hello! It's you, is it?" he recognized, features hardening. "You started all this trouble, you know."

"Trouble!" ejaculated the man, with an absurdly hurt expression. "Vell, I don' vant no more; I got trouble enough py my own self." Then his fraying voice broke. "You—you can keep your tam lot," he blurted; "I don't vant nottings but my Hulda." His voice gulped and his eyes spurted tears. "I lost my