You said you could lay your hands on
Monsieur X at any moment; why don't you do it?"
"Eldridge is too amusing."
"Too amusing!" echoed the girl. "All you think of is yourself."
"Is it?" drawled Darrow.
"Have you been out in the city? Have you seen the people? Have you seen
men out of work? Families leaving their homes? Panic spreading slowly but
surely over a whole city?"
"Those pleasures have been denied me," said Darrow blandly.
The girl looked at him with bright angry eyes. Her cheeks were glowing,
and her whole figure expressed a tense vibrant life in singular contrast
to the apparent indolence of the men at whom she was talking.
"You are insufferable!" She fairly stamped her foot in vexation. "You are
an egoist! You would play with the welfare of four million people to
gratify your little personal desire for getting even!"
"Steady, sis!" warned Jack.
Darrow had straightened, and his indolent manner had fallen from him.
"I have said I would permit no harm to come to these people, and I mean
it," said he.
"No harm!" cried Helen. "What do you call this--"
Darrow turned to the window looking out over the city.
"This!" he said. "Why, this isn't harm! There isn't a man out there who is
not better off for what has happened to him. He has lost a little time, a
little money, a little sleep, and he has been given a new point of view, a
new manhood. As a city dweller he was becoming a mollusk, a creature that
could not exist without its shell.
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