"All I can say now is, it is between 125 and 150 millions real, solid subscriptions, backed with actual money. We haven't got it figured out within some millions, and won't before to-morrow, when we will put in our subscription for the right amount, but we know it is surely between these two figures, and that each subscriber will have about one share in five, so we shall have a good, strong twenty-five per cent. margin. That is all I will or can say to-night."
I heard the sharp click as he hung up the receiver.
I went back to my pencil and pad and began again the interminable figuring. My head throbbed and my senses reeled. In those still, dark hours of the early morning I covered sheet after sheet with figures, all of which had for a basis 125 to 150 millions, 400 to 425 millions, one in five, and twenty-five per cent. margin, and these figures I turned and twisted in a vain, vain effort to bring out something with fifteen millions for an answer.
"No, it will not come," I said to myself at last in hopeless despair.
Numb and dull, I leaned back in my chair with half-closed eyes, while night, that master phantom maker, played upon my harried nerves and distraught mind. Stealthily out of his murky caldron the ghosts and goblins crept. I saw the spectres of all my dearest dreams trail slouching by, jostled and driven by sneering bullies. I saw a great company of scowling men, wailing women, and little children, with drawn, pinched faces, and they seemed to point at me as they plodded past, muttering, "But for you." Then, to the clanking of chains, hoarse curses, and the sharp whip-snap, lines upon lines of men in striped suits, with cropped heads, and faces branded by despair, filed up. Faintly a mutter of sobs and groans echoed, "But for you." The clanking ceased; there came the slow shuffling of many feet, and a procession of men, bearing stretchers on which lay shrouded figures, advanced into view. Like a solemn knell