Bean felt assaulted.

“He was a fighter?”

“Yah, fider—­a killer unt a sdealer.  You know what?”—­his face lightened a little with garrulity—­“my granmutter she seen him, yah, sure she seen him, seddin’ on his horse when he gone ridin’ into Utrecht in eighdeen hunderd fife, with soljus.  Sure she seen him; she loogs outer a winda’ so she could touch him if she been glose to him, unt a soljus rides oop unt says, ‘Ve gamp right here, not?’ unt Naboleon he shneer awful unt say, ’Gamp here vere dey go inter dem cellus from der ganal-side unt get unter us unt blow us high wit bowder—­you sheep’s head!  No; we gamp back in der Malibaan vere is old linden drees hunderd years old, eighd rows vun mile long, dere is vere we gamp, you gread fool!’ Sure my granmutter seen him.  He pull his nose mit t’um unt finger, so!  Muddy boods, vun glofe off, seddin’ oop sdraighd on a horse.  Sure, she seen him.  Robber unt big killer-sdealer!  She vas olt lady, but she remember it lige it was to-morrow.”

Excitement engendered by this reminiscence had well-nigh made Bean forget the dog.  Once he had made people afraid.  The world had trembled before him.  Policemen had been as insects.

“I’ll take that dog,” he announced royally—­then faltered—­“but I haven’t the money now.  You keep him for me till I get it.”

“Yah, you know vot?  A olt man, lige me, say that same ofer lasd mont’ ago, unt I nefer see him until yet!”

It was a time for extreme measures.  Bean pressed seven dollars upon the dog’s owner.

“And ten dollars every week; maybe more!”

The old man stowed the bills in a pocket under his apron and scratched the head of the parrot that was incisively remarking, “Oh!  What a fool!” and giggling fatuously at its own jest.

“I guess you giddim.  I guess mebbe you lige him, hey!  He iss a awful glutton to eat!”

Napoleon!

And in the street car the first headline he saw in his morning paper was, “Young Napoleon of Finance Flutters Wall Street!”

The thing was getting uncanny.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  It was a friendly young face he saw there, but troubled]

A Napoleon of Finance!

Something, Napoleonic at least for Bunker Bean, had to be done in finance immediately.  He had reached the office penniless.  He first tried Bulger, who owed him ten dollars.  But this was a Waterloo.

“Too bad, old top!” sympathized Bulger.  “If you’d only sejested it yesterday.  But you know how it is when a man’s out; he’s got to make a flash; got to keep up his end.”

He considered the others in the office.  Most of them, he decided, would, like Bulger, have been keeping their ends up.  Of course, there was Breede.  But Napoleon at his best would never have tried to borrow money of Breede, not even on the day of his coronation.  Tully, the chief clerk, was equally impossible.  Tully’s thick glasses magnified his eyes so that they were terrible to look at.  Tully would reach out a nerveless hand and draw forth the quivering heart of his secret.  Tully would know right off that a man could have no respectable reason for borrowing five dollars on Thursday.