CHAPTER XVII.
He was out in his taxicab again the next morning, and by noon he had secured what he wanted.
It was curiously significant that he worked so quickly.

All the years during which his wife had pressed him toward his present shift he had sworn to himself, as well as to her, that he would never yield; and yet when he did yield he had no plans to make, because he found them already prepared and worked out in detail in his mind; as if he had long contemplated the "step" he believed himself incapable of taking.
Sometimes he had thought of improving his income by exchanging his little collection of bonds for a "small rental property," if he could find "a good buy"; and he had spent many of his spare hours rambling over the enormously spreading city and its purlieus, looking for the ideal "buy." It remained unattainable, so far as he was concerned; but he found other things.
Not twice a crow's mile from his own house there was a dismal and slummish quarter, a decayed "industrial district" of earlier days.

Most of the industries were small; some of them died, perishing of bankruptcy or fire; and a few had moved, leaving their shells.

Of the relics, the best was a brick building which had been the largest and most important factory in the quarter: it had been injured by a long vacancy almost as serious as a fire, in effect, and Adams had often guessed at the sum needed to put it in repair.
When he passed it, he would look at it with an interest which he supposed detached and idly speculative.

"That'd be just the thing," he thought.