At the dub he was lucky enough to meet Red Mead, whose father was a capitalist and--so Red said--had been very successful in finding highly profitable investments in all sorts of manufacturing enterprises. Red told Tommy he was sure the old gentleman would fall for a hundred thousand bucks, provided the talk was sufficiently convincing to justify Mr. Mead in sending an expert to look over the property. Whereat Tommy promised to call on Mr. Mead, though he was almost certain Red's father was the kind that wanted big dividends. And Bull Wilson told him that only the day before his father was regretting not having taken a block of Bishop-Wolf automobile stock that was offered to him for thirty-five thousand dollars three years before and was now worth a million. “He's your meat, Tommy. He's gone to Washington with his patent lawyer. When he comes back I'll tell him that I've asked you to do me the favor to call on him before you see any one else.” Tommy did not permit himself to feel encouraged by these promises; nevertheless, he decided not to see Colonel Willetts until after he had tried elsewhere. But Rivington insisted upon going to his father's office that very afternoon. “They are always after him. Every time he invests in a new thing or puts up another building he talks poverty for a month. You just chase yourself down-town right away.” Rivington's obvious eagerness to see Tommy succeed had the effect of making Tommy feel that, after all, his friends were in New York. The work lay in Dayton, but his happiness in New York. For a moment, as he held Rivington's hand, Tommy felt that his stay in Dayton thereafter must be tinged by the regret that he could not see his best friend every day. But the work was too important. If only Rivington would move to Dayton! Of course if Rivington was there Marion would visit him frequently. What a place Dayton would be evenings! In the Subway on his way to Colonel Willetts's office Tommy's mood left him. The New York he saw about him, with its alien faces--all kinds of faces and all alien--was not the place for him to work in. And his own particular New York was very small--a city with a score of inhabitants. His real life could never merge with the life of the strange and dislikable New York he saw in the streets and in the shops and in the office buildings. He could not work here, where every man was concerned with himself and no one else, and so plainly showed it in his face. New York could never be a city of brothers, of men who wished both to be helped and to help. He would go back to Dayton, of course. And he must take back checks for a total of two hundred thousand dollars. He must! And he would! He paused a moment in the hallway of the sixth floor of the Willetts Building, one of Wall Street's earliest skyscrapers, and considered a moment how he should proceed. He was about to grasp the knob of the door of Colonel Willetts's office when the door opened and Mr. Leigh came out.