they would find out who they were trying to keep off that Board.  What if they did put him in jail?  A good lawyer would get him out in a few minutes with a writ of something or other, a stay of proceedings, a demurrer, a legal technicality.  He read the papers.  Lawyers were always getting Wall Street speculators out of jail by some one of those devices; and if every other means failed a legal technicality did the work.  And the papers always called the released man a Napoleon of Finance.  It wasn’t going to be so bad.

He hauled Ram-tah out of the closet and stood him at the foot of the bed for the night, so that courage might come to him as he slept.  The plan proved to be an excellent one after Nap grew quiet.  Nap had always been excited in Ram-tah’s immediate presence, and now he insisted upon sniffing about the royal cadaver in a manner atrociously suggestive.  Being dissuaded from this and consenting to sleep, Bean sank into dreams of mastery beneath Ram-tah’s lofty aspect.

He awoke with a giant’s strength.  He arrayed himself in the newest check suit, and an especially beautiful shirt with a lavender stripe that bore his embroidered initials on one sleeve.  He thought he would like to face them in his shirtsleeves, and give Breede and the fussy old gentlemen a good look at that lettered arm.  He was almost persuaded to don the entirely red cravat, let the consequences be what they might.  His refreshed spirit was equal to this audacity—­but the red car.  Wearing a red cravat in a very red car was just a little too loud—­“different” enough, to be sure, but hardly “dignified.”  Too advanced, in short.  At eight o’clock he went out upon the world, grasping his yellow stick and gloves.  Most heroically would he enter the office with stick and gloves.  Make Bulger stare!  And if they put him in jail he must look right—­papers get his picture, of course!

[Illustration:  Thereafter, until late at night, the red car was trailed by the taxi-cab]

On the curb, before the car that vibrated so excitingly he had a happy thought.  Was he to go down there and wait, pallid, perhaps trembling, until they came in and did things with him?  Not he!  A certain Corsican upstart would let them assemble first, let them miss him—­wonder if he would come at all.  Then he would saunter in, superbly define the extreme limits of his imagination, and coolly ask them what they were going to do about it.  This would irritate them.  It would irritate them all, and especially the little oldest director.  He would swell up and grow purple.  Perhaps he would have a stroke right there on the rug.  Good work!

“Can’t go to business this early,” he said genially to the ever respectful Paul.  “Too fine a day.  And I got a deal on hand; have to think it over.  Go on out that way for a nice little spin.”