He glowed from this new exercise.  He became more witty, more masterful, while the repartee of his adversaries sank to wretched piffle.  He met disaster only once.  That was when his conscience began to hurt him after a particularly bitter assault on Bulger in which the latter had been more than usually contemptible in the matter of the overdue debt.  He felt that he had really been too hard on the fellow.  And Bulger, who must have been psychically gifted himself, came over from his typewriter at that moment and borrowed an additional five without difficulty.  In later justification, Bean reflected that he would almost certainly have refused this second loan had it not been for his softened mood of the moment.  Still he was glad that, with his instinctive secrecy he had kept from Bulger any knowledge of his new fortune.  With Bulger aware that he had thousands of dollars in the bank, something told him that distressing complications would have ensued.

He debated several days about this money.  He resolved, at length, that a thousand dollars should be devoted to the worthy purpose of living up to his new condition.  A thousand dollars would, for the present, give him an adequate sensation of wealth.  Three thousand more must be paid to Professor Balthasar when his secret agents brought It from Its long-hidden resting-place.  Suppose the professor pleaded unexpected outlays, officials not too easily bribed or something, and demanded a further sum?  At once, in a crowded street, he brought about a heated interview with the professor, in which the seer was told that a bargain was a bargain, and that if he had thought Bean was a man to stand nonsense of any sort he was indeed wildly mistaken.  Bean was going to hold him to the exact sum, and his parting sting was that the professor had better get a new lot of controls if his old ones hadn’t been able to tell him this.  After he had cooled a little he reflected that if there were really any small sums the professor would be out of pocket, he would of course not be mean.

This left him four thousand dollars with which to buy his way into the directorate of that express company, as suggested by Aunt Clara.  He had learned a great deal about buying stocks.  He knew there was a method called “buying on a margin” which was greatly superior to buying the shares outright:  you received a great many more shares for a given sum.  Therefore he would buy thus, and the sooner be a director.  He liked to think of that position in his moments of lesser exaltation.  He recalled his child-self sitting beside his father on the seat of an express wagon.  It was queer how life turned out—­sometimes you couldn’t get away from a thing.  Maybe he would always be a director; still he could go into baseball, too.

He did his business with the broker without a twinge of his old timidity.  Indeed, he was rather bored by the affair.  The broker took his money and later in the day he learned that he controlled a very large number of the shares of the Federal Express Company.  He forgot how many, but he knew it was a number befitting his new dignity.  Having done this much he thought the directorship could wait.  Let them come to him if they wanted him.  He had other affairs on.