Luke had been lied to at the offices of Hallett and at those of Rivington, but at the first office at which he had called, he was told the truth: the stout man, with the bright, short-sighted eyes and the pointed teeth was not at work that day. He was not at work for several days, and breaths of rumors, tremulous, expectant, began to shake the threads which centered at his working-place. The business of that place proceeded with its usual regularity and speed. Conover, promoted to the post of confidential clerk, went back and forth from Wall Street to his master’s house in one of his master’s motor-cars. Atwood and the other brokers telephoned hourly for orders to the house uptown. Simpson saw callers. But in the inner room, Washington wasted his stupid solemnity on emptiness, the ticker spun its yards and yards of tape for none to see, and nobody looked from the high windows down the maze of streets on which the people buzzed like flies. All this had been thus before, and more frequently thus during the past few years; the man with the hairy hands and crooked arms often suffered attacks from some malady that the newspapers did not name. His world, therefore, should not have taken the present seizure too seriously; but it always leaped to the belief that each seizure was the last. Rumor never learned from precedence, and on each occasion expected the worst. Now official bulletins and authorized announcements of a slight cold and a catarrhal affection of the mucous membrane of the throat did not check rumor. The doctors said no more than that, the papers printed no more; but news of another sort spread with a stronger conviction than the doctors could secure and a wider circulation than the circulation of all the newspapers combined. Rumor said that the sick man had always been a glutton, and that now, at last, his digestion had given way. Rumor said that he had been in the habit of rising early and working late, in the dawn and through the night, planning the crowded actions of the too brief business day; and rumor added that the price of these exertions must, at last, be paid. Rumor said that the man overworked his brain and nerves, and that, at last, the brain was working no more and the nerves strained to breaking-point. Rumor whispered of a projected sea-voyage and a change of scene to Biskra or the Riviera, and rumor sagely shook its many heads.