“Why, Charley Gilbert.  You must know him.”

“Yes, I know him.  What’s happened to him?”

“Flat broke—­that’s what happened to him.  Got caught in that gold swindle.  The stock dropped out of sight this afternoon, I hear—­ went down forty points.”

Garry crowded his way into the group:  “Which Mr. Gilbert?—­not Charley M., the—­”

“Yes; Sam’s just left him.  What did he tell you, Sam?”

“Just what you’ve said—­I hear, too, that he has got to stop on his house out in Jersey.  Can’t finish it and can’t pay for what’s been done.”

Garry gave a low whistle and looked at Jack.

“That’s rough.  Mr. Morris drew the plan of Gilbert’s house himself.  I worked on the details.”

“Rough!” burst out the first speaker.  “I should say it was—­might as well have burglared his safe.  They have been working up this game for months, so Charley told me.  Then they gave out that the lode had petered out and they threw it overboard and everybody with it.  They said they tried to find Charley to post him, but he was out of town.”

“Who tried?” asked Jack, with renewed interest, edging his way close to the group.  It was just as well to know the sheep from the goats, if he was to spend the remainder of his life in the Street.

“That’s what we want to know.  Thought you might have heard.”

Jack shook his head and resumed his seat beside Biffy, who had not moved or shown the slightest interest in the affair.  Nobody could sell Biff any gold stock—­nor any other kind of stock.  His came on the first of every month in a check from the Trust Company.

For some moments Jack did not speak.  He knew young Gilbert, and he knew his young and very charming wife.  He had once sat next to her at dinner, when her whole conversation had been about this new home and the keen interest that Morris, a friend of her father’s, had taken in it.  “Mr. Breen, you and Miss Corinne must be among our earliest guests,” she had said, at which Corinne, who was next to Garry, had ducked her little head in acceptance.  This was the young fellow, then, who had been caught in one of the eddies whirling over the sunken rocks of the Street.  Not very creditable to his intelligence, perhaps, thought Jack; but, then, again, who had placed them there, a menace to navigation?—­and why?  Certainly Peter could not have known everything that was going on around him, if he thought the effort of so insignificant an individual as himself could be of use in clearing out obstructions like these.

Garry noticed the thoughtful expression settling over Jack’s face, and mistaking the cause called Charles to take the additional orders.

“Cheer up—­try a high-ball, Jack.  It’s none of your funeral.  You didn’t scoop Gilbert; we are the worst sufferers.  Can’t finish his house now, and Mr. Morris is just wild over the design.  It’s on a ledge of rock overlooking the lake, and the whole thing goes together.  We’ve got the roof on, and from across the lake it looks as if it had grown there.  Mr. Morris repeated the rock forms everywhere.  Stunning, I tell you!”