As always, the office work proceeded with silent regularity. Simpson, the almoner, saw callers. Atwood, the chief broker, telephoned for orders uptown. Conover, the confidential clerk, traveled several times a day between his master’s house and his master’s place of business in one of his master’s motor-cars. At the brown man’s home, the famous physicians issued their non-committal bulletins; L. Bergen Rivington and George J. Hallett came in and went out, the former worried and elliptical, the latter loud in denial. And directly across the street the relays of reporters resumed their watching, asked hourly the same questions and received always the same replies. Rumor once more hinted dark things about a ruined digestion and an overworked brain. Nevertheless, there was a difference between this occasion and its predecessors, and the delicate nerves of the financial world quivered with their subtle and sure appreciation of it. The interval of good health had been briefer than ever before. Simpson looked grave. Atwood received few orders. Conover more often than not failed to see whom he sought. The famous physicians called other famous physicians into consultation. Rivington and Hallett were sometimes denied audience. The reporters sent their chiefs a word that made every newspaper-office in the country hunt up a certain long-prepared obituary, set it in type and keep it standing on the bank with a slug-line that read, "Hold for Orders." Rumor shook its thousand heads, and this time rumor was right: the thumbs of the gods were turned down. No more rising early and working late for the man with the beady eyes and hairy hands. No more gluttony. No more scheming. All hours are alike in the sickroom; his only food was tepid broth, and about a brain too tired to scheme for itself, the only scheming was how to drag forward from minute to minute its life that was death-in-life. In the street straw had one day been strewn to quiet the noise of traffic, and the next day commands from City Hall closed that street to traffic. Outside was silence, and silence was inside, behind the brownstone walls and shuttered windows, over the rich rugs, among the pictures by the great dead artists.