“Maybe there’s something we don’t understand about it,” he ventured to Cassidy.

“I know th’ kind well,” persisted Cassidy.  “Th’ idle rich!  Small use have they f’r th’ wur-r-r-kin’ man!  Souls no wider than th’ black av y’r nail!”

“Might have had good reasons,” said Bean, cautiously.

“Millions av thim,” assented Cassidy with a pointed cynicism.  “An’ me own father dyin’ twinty-three years ago fr’m ixposure contracted in County Mayo!”

Bean returned the paper to its owner and went slowly in to Ram-tah.  One of the idle rich!  Well, that is what kings mostly were, if you came down to it.  At least they had to be rich to buy all those palaces.  But not necessarily idle.  The renewed Ram-tah would not be idle.  It was not idleness to own a major-league club.

For the first time in their intercourse he felt that he faced the dead king almost as an equal.  He was confronted by problems of administration, as Ram-tah must often have been.  He must think.

If the flapper quite madly brought about an immediate marriage they would, for their honeymoon, follow the home club on its Western trip, and the groom would not be idle.  He would be “looking over the ground.”  Then he would buy one of the clubs.  If he proved to be not rich enough for that, not quite as rich as one of the idle rich, he would buy stock and become a director.  He was feeling now that he knew how to be a director; that his experience with the express company had qualified him.  He wondered how rich he would prove to be.  Maybe he would have as much as thirty thousand dollars.

And he was a puzzle to Breede.  He looked knowingly at Ram-tah when he remembered this.  Ram-tah had probably puzzled people, too.

* * * * *

He went to the office in the morning still wondering how rich he might be.  The newspaper he read did not enlighten him, though it spoke frankly of “Federal Express Scandal.”  If the thing was very scandalous, perhaps he had made a lot of money.  But he could not be sure of this.  It might be merely “newspaper vituperation,” which was something he knew to be not uncommon.  The paper had declared that those directors had juggled a twenty-million dollar surplus for years, lending it to one another at a low rate of interest, until, alarmed by clamouring stockholders, they had declared this enormous dividend, taking first, however, the precaution to buy for a low price all the stock they could.  But the newspaper did not say how rich any one would be that had a whole lot of margins on that stock at Kennedy & Balch’s.  Maybe you had to hire a lawyer in those cases.

Entering the office, he was rudely shocked by Tully.

“Good-morning, Mr. Bean!” said Tully distinctly.

“Good-morning!” returned Bean, stunned by Tully’s “Mr.”  “Uh! pleasant day,” he added.

“Yes, sir!” said Tully, again distinctly.