Culver shifted from one weak leg to the other, and the movement reminded Dumont of his existence. "That's all. Clear out!" he exclaimed, and fell back into his big chair and closed his eyes. He thought he at last understood publicity.

But he was mistaken.

He finished dressing and choked down a little breakfast. As he advanced toward the front door the servant there coughed uneasily and said: "Beg pardon, sir, but I fear you won't be able to get out."

"What's the matter?" he demanded, his brows contracting and his lips beginning to slide back in a snarl—it promised to be a sad morning for human curs of all kinds who did not scurry out of the lion's way.

"The crowd, sir," said the servant. And he drew aside the curtain across the glass in one of the inside pair of great double doors of the palace entrance. "It's quite safe to look, sir. They can't see through the outside doors as far as this."

Dumont peered through the bronze fretwork. A closely packed mass of people was choking the sidewalk and street—his brougham was like an island in a troubled lake. He saw several policemen—they were trying to move the crowd on, but not trying sincerely. He saw three huge cameras, their operators under the black cloths, their lenses pointed at the door—waiting for him to appear. For the first time in his life he completely lost his nerve. Not only publicity, the paper—a lifeless sheet of print; but also publicity, the public—with living eyes to peer and living voices to jeer. He looked helplessly, appealingly at the "cur" he had itched to kick the moment before.

"What the devil shall I do?" he asked in a voice without a trace of courage.

"I don't know, sir," replied the servant. "The basement door wouldn't help very much, would it?"

The basement door was in front also. "Idiot! Is there no way out at the rear?" he asked.

"Only over the fences, sir," said the servant, perfectly matter-of-fact. Having no imagination, his mind made no picture of the great captain of industry scrambling over back fences like a stray cat flying from a brick.

Dumont turned back and into his first-floor sitting-room. He unlocked his stand of brandy bottles, poured out an enormous drink and gulped it down. His stomach reeled, then his head. He went to the window and looked out—there must have been five hundred people in the street, and vehicles were making their way slowly and with difficulty, drivers gaping at the house and joking with the crowd; newsboys, bent sidewise to balance their huge bundles of papers, were darting in and out, and even through the thick plate glass he could hear: "All about Millionaire Dumont's disgrace!"

He went through to a rear window. No, there was a continuous wall, a high brick wall. A servant came and told him he was wanted at the telephone. It was Giddings, who said in a voice that was striving in vain to be calm against the pressure of some intense excitement: "You are coming down to-day, Mr. Dumont?"

"Why?" asked Dumont, snapping the word out as short and savage as the crack of a lash.

"There are disquieting rumors of a raid on us."

"Who's to do the raiding?"

"They say it's Patterson and Fanning-Smith and Cassell and Herron. It's a raid for control."

Dumont snorted scornfully. "Don't fret. We're all right. I'll be down soon." And he hung up the receiver, muttering: "The ass! I must kick him out! He's an old woman the instant I turn my back."

He had intended not to go down, but to shut himself in with the brandy bottle until nightfall. This news made his presence in the Street imperative. "They couldn't have sprung at me at a worse time," he muttered. "But I can take care of 'em!"

He returned to the library, took another drink, larger than the first. His blood began to pound through his veins and to rush along under the surface of his skin like a sheet of fire. Waves of fury surged into his brain, making him dizzy, confusing his sight—he could scarcely refrain from grinding his teeth. He descended to the basement, his step unsteady.

"A ladder," he ordered in a thick voice.

He led the way to the rear wall. A dozen men-servants swarming about, tried to assist him. He ordered them aside and began to climb. As the upper part of his body rose above the wall-line he heard a triumphant shout, many voices crying: "There he is! There he is!"

The lot round the corner from his place was not built upon; and there, in the side street, was a rapidly swelling crowd, the camera-bearers hastily putting their instruments in position, the black cloths fluttering like palls or pirate flags. With a roaring howl he released his hold upon the ladder and shook both fists, his swollen face blazing between them. He tottered, fell backward, crashed upon the stone flooring of the area. His head struck with a crack that made the women-servants scream. The men lifted him and carried him into the house. He was not stunned; he tried to stand. But he staggered back into the arms of his valet and his butler.

"Brandy!" he gasped.

He took a third drink—and became unconscious. When the doctor arrived he was raving in a high fever. For years he had drunk to excess—but theretofore only when HE chose, never when his appetite chose, never when his affairs needed a clear brain. Now appetite, long lying in wait for him, had found him helpless in the clutches of rage and fear, and had stolen away his mind.

The news was telephoned to the office at half-past eleven o'clock. "It doesn't matter," said Giddings. "He'd only make things worse if he were to come now."

Giddings was apparently right. From a tower of strength, supporting alone, yet with ease, National Woolens, and the vast structure based upon it, Dumont had crumbled into an obstruction and a weakness. There is an abysmal difference between everybody knowing a thing privately and everybody knowing precisely the same thing publicly. In that newspaper exposure there was no fact of importance that was not known to the entire Street, to his chief supporters in his great syndicate of ranches, railroads, factories, steamship lines and selling agencies. But the tremendous blare of publicity acted like Joshua's horns at Jericho. The solid walls of his public reputation tottered, toppled, fell flat.

There had been a tight money-market for two weeks. Though there had been uneasiness as to all the small and many of the large "industrials," belief in National Woolens and in the stability of John Dumont had remained strong. But of all the cowards that stand sentinel for capital, the most craven is Confidence. At the deafening crash of the fall of Dumont's private character, Confidence girded its loins and tightened its vocal cords to be in readiness for a shrieking flight.

Dumont ruled, through a parent and central corporation, the National Woolens Company, which held a majority of the stock in each of the seventeen corporations constituting the trust. His control was in part through ownership of Woolens stock but chiefly through proxies sent him by thousands of small stock-holders because they had confidence in his abilities. To wrest control from him it was necessary for the raiders both to make him "unload" his own holdings of stock and to impair his reputation so that his supporters would desert him or stand aloof.

On the previous day National Woolens closed at eighty-two for the preferred and thirty-nine for the common. In the first hour of the day of the raid Giddings and the other members of Dumont's supporting group of financiers were able to keep it fairly steady at about five points below the closing price of the previous day, by buying all that was offered—the early offerings were large, but not overwhelming. The supporters of other industrials saw that the assault on Woolens was a menace to their stocks—if a strong industrial weakened, the weaker ones would inevitably suffer disaster in the frightened market that would surely result. They showed a disposition to rally to the support of the Dumont stocks.

At eleven o'clock Giddings began to hope that the raid was a failure, if indeed it had been a real raid. At eleven-twenty Herron played his trump card.

The National Industrial Bank is the huge barometer to which both speculative and investing Wall Street looks for guidance. Whom that bank protects is as safe as was the medieval fugitive who laid hold of the altar in the sanctuary; whom that bank frowns upon in the hour of stress is lost indeed if he have so much as a pin's-point area of heel that is vulnerable. Melville, president of the National Industrial, was a fanatically religious man, with as keen a nose for heretics as for rotten spots in collateral. He was peculiarly savage in his hatred of all matrimonial deviations. He was a brother of Fanshaw's mother; and she and Herron had been working upon him. But so long as Dumont's share in the scandal was not publicly attributed he remained obdurate—he never permitted his up-town creed or code to interfere with his down-town doings unless it became necessary—that is, unless it could be done without money loss. For up-town or down-town, to make money was always and in all circumstances the highest morality, to lose money the profoundest immorality.

At twenty minutes past eleven Melville and the president of the other banks of his chain called loans to Dumont and the Dumont supporting group to the amount of three millions and a quarter. Ten minutes later other banks and trust companies whose loans to Dumont and his allies either were on call or contained provisions permitting a demand for increased collateral, followed Melville's example and aimed and sped their knives for Dumont's vitals.

Giddings found himself face to face with unexpected and peremptory demands for eleven millions in cash and thirteen millions in additional collateral securities. If he did not meet these demands forthwith the banks and trust companies, to protect themselves, would throw upon the market at whatever price they could get the thirty-odd millions of Woolens stocks which they held as collateral for the loans.

"What does this mean, Eaversole?" he exclaimed, with white, wrinkled lips, heavy circles suddenly appearing under his eyes. "Is Melville trying to ruin everything?"

"No," answered Eaversole, third vice-president of the company. "He's supporting the market, all except us. He says Dumont must be driven out of the Street. He says his presence here is a pollution and a source of constant danger."

The National Woolens supporting group was alone; it could get no help from any quarter, as every possible ally was frightened into his own breastworks for the defense of his own interests. Dumont, the brain and the will of the group, had made no false moves in business, had been bold only where his matchless judgment showed him a clear way; but he had not foreseen the instantaneous annihilation of his chief asset—his reputation.

Giddings sustained the unequal battle superbly. He was cool, and watchful, and effective. It is doubtful if Dumont himself could have done so well, handicapped as he would have been on that day by the Fanshaw scandal. Giddings cajoled and threatened, retreated slowly here, advanced intrepidly there. On the one side, he held back wavering banks and trust companies, persuading some that all was well, warning others that if they pressed him they would lose all. On the other side, he faced his powerful foes and made them quake as they saw their battalions of millions roll upon his unbroken line of battle only to break and disappear. At noon National Woolens preferred was at fifty-eight, the common at twenty-nine. Giddings was beginning to hope.

At three minutes past noon the tickers clicked out: "It is reported that John Dumont is dying."

As that last word jerked letter by letter from under the printing wheel the floor of the Stock Exchange became the rapids of a human Niagara. By messenger, by telegraph, by telephone, holders of National Woolens and other industrials, in the financial district, in all parts of the country, across the sea, poured in their selling orders upon the frenzied brokers. And all these forces of hysteria and panic, projected into that narrow, roofed-in space, made of it a chaos of contending demons. All stocks were caught in the upheaval; Melville's plans to limit the explosion were blown skyward, feeble as straws in a cyclone. Amid shrieks and howls and frantic tossings of arms and mad rushes and maniac contortions of faces, National Woolens and all the Dumont stocks bent, broke, went smashing down, down, down, every one struggling to unload.

Dumont's fortune was the stateliest of the many galleons that day driven on the rocks and wrecked. Dumont's crew was for the most part engulfed. Giddings and a few selected friends reached the shore half-drowned and humbly applied at the wreckers' camp; they were hospitably received and were made as comfortable as their exhausted condition permitted.

John Dumont was at the mercy of Hubert Herron in his own company. If he lived he would be president only until the next annual meeting—less than two months away; and the Herron crowd had won over enough of his board of directors to make him meanwhile powerless where he had been autocrat.



XXV.

THE FALLEN KING.

Toward noon the next day Dumont emerged from the stupor into which Doctor Sackett's opiate had plunged him. At once his mind began to grope about for the broken clues of his business. His valet appeared.

"The morning papers," said Dumont.

"Yes, sir," replied the valet, and disappeared.

After a few seconds Culver came and halted just within the doorway. "I'm sorry, sir, but Doctor Sackett left strict orders that you were to be quiet. Your life depends on it."

Dumont scowled and his lower lip projected—the crowning touch in his most imperious expression. "The papers, all of 'em,—quick!" he commanded.

Culver took a last look at the blue-white face and bloodshot eyes to give him courage to stand firm. "The doctor'll be here in a few minutes," he said, bowed and went out.

Choking with impotent rage, Dumont rang for his valet and forced him to help him dress. He was so weak when he finished that only his will kept him from fainting. He took a stiff drink of the brandy—the odor was sickening to him and he could hardly force it down. But once down, it strengthened him.

"No, nothing to eat," he said thickly, and with slow but fairly steady step left his room and descended to the library. Culver was there—sat agape at sight of his master. "But you—you must not—" he began.

Dumont gave him an ugly grin. "But I will!" he said, and again drank brandy. He turned and went out and toward the front door, Culver following with stammering protests which he heeded not at all. On the sidewalk he hailed a passing hansom. "To the Edison Building," he said and drove off, Culver, bareheaded at the curb, looking dazedly after him. Before he reached Fifty-ninth Street he was half-sitting, half-reclining in the corner of the seat, his eyes closed and his senses sinking into a stupor from the fumes of the powerful doses of brandy. As the hansom drove down the avenue many recognized him, wondered and pitied as they noted his color, his collapsed body, head fallen on one side, mouth open and lips greenish gray. As the hansom slowly crossed the tracks at Twenty-third Street the heavy jolt roused him.

"The newspapers," he muttered, and hurled up through the trap in the roof an order to the driver to stop. He leaned over the doors and bought half a dozen newspapers of the woman at the Flat-iron stand. As the hansom moved on he glanced at the head-lines—they were big and staring, but his blurred eyes could not read them. He fell asleep again, his hands clasped loosely about the huge proclamations of yesterday's battle and his rout.

The hansom was caught in a jam at Chambers Street. The clamor of shouting, swearing drivers roused him. The breeze from the open sea, blowing straight up Broadway into his face, braced him like the tonic that it is. He straightened himself, recovered his train of thought, stared at one of the newspapers and tried to grasp the meaning of its head-lines. But they made only a vague impression on him.

"It's all lies," he muttered. "Lies! How could those fellows smash ME!" And he flung the newspapers out of the hansom into the faces of two boys seated upon the tail of a truck.

"You're drunk early," yelled one of the boys.

"That's no one-day jag," shouted the other. "It's a hang-over."

He made a wild, threatening gesture and, as his hansom drove on, muttered and mumbled to himself, vague profanity aimed at nothing and at everything. At the Edison Building he got out.

"Wait!" he said to the driver. He did not see the impudent smirk on the face of the elevator boy nor the hesitating, sheepish salutation of the door-man, uncertain how to greet the fallen king. He went straight to his office, unlocked his desk and, just in time to save himself from fainting, seized and half-emptied a flask of brandy he kept in a drawer. It had been there—but untouched ever since he came to New York and took those offices; he never drank in business hours.

His head was aching horribly and at every throb of his pulse a pain tore through him. He rang for his messenger.

"Tell Mr. Giddings I want to see him—you!" he said, his teeth clenched and his eyes blazing—he looked insane.

Giddings came. His conscience was clear—he had never liked Dumont, owed him nothing, yet had stood by him until further fidelity would have ruined himself, would not have saved Dumont, or prevented the Herron-Cassell raiders from getting control. Now that he could afford to look at his revenge-books he was deeply resenting the insults and indignities heaped upon him in the past five years. But he was unable to gloat, was moved to pity, at sight of the physical and mental wreck in that chair which he had always seen occupied by the most robust of despots.

"Well," said Dumont in a dull, far-away voice, without looking at him. "What's happened?"

Giddings cast about for a smooth beginning but could find none. "They did us up—that's all," he said funereally.

Dumont lifted himself into a momentary semblance of his old look and manner. "You lie, damn you!" he shouted, his mouth raw and ragged as a hungry tiger's.

Giddings began to cringe, remembered the changed conditions, bounded to his feet.

"I'll tolerate such language from no man!" he exclaimed. "I wish you good morning, sir!" And he was on his way to the door.

"Come back!" commanded Dumont. And Giddings, the habit of implicit obedience to that voice still strong upon him, hesitated and half turned.

Dumont was more impressed with the truth of the cataclysm by Giddings' revolt than by the newspaper head-lines or by Giddings' words. And from somewhere in the depths of his reserve-self he summoned the last of his coolness and self-control. "Beg pardon, Giddings," said he. "You see I'm not well."

Giddings returned—he had taken orders all his life, he had submitted to this master slavishly; the concession of an apology mollified him and flattered him in spite of himself.

"Oh, don't mention it," he said, seating himself again. "As I was saying, the raid was a success. I did the best I could. Some called our loans and some demanded more collateral. And while I was fighting front and rear and both sides, bang came that lie about your condition. The market broke. All I could do was sell, sell, sell, to try to meet or protect our loans."

Giddings heard a sound that made him glance at Dumont. His head had fallen forward and he was snoring. Giddings looked long and pityingly.

"A sure enough dead one," he muttered, unconsciously using the slang of the Street which he habitually avoided. And he went away, closing the door behind him.

After half an hour Dumont roused himself—out of a stupor into a half-delirious dream.

"Must get cash," he mumbled, "and look after the time loans." He lifted his head and pushed back his hair from his hot forehead. "I'll stamp on those curs yet!"

He took another drink—his hands were so unsteady that he had to use both of them in lifting it to his lips. He put the flask in his pocket instead of returning it to the drawer. No one spoke to him, all pretended not to see him as he passed through the offices on his way to the elevator. With glassy unseeing eyes he fumbled at the dash-board and side of the hansom; with a groan like a rheumatic old man's he lifted his heavy body up into the seat, dropped back and fell asleep. A crowd of clerks and messengers, newsboys and peddlers gathered and gaped, awed as they looked at the man who had been for five years one of the heroes of the Street, and thought of his dazzling catastrophe.

"What's the matter?" inquired a new-comer, apparently a tourist, edging his way into the outskirts of the crowd.

"That's Dumont, the head of the Woolens Trust," the curb-broker he addressed replied in a low tone. "He was raided yesterday—woke up in the morning worth a hundred millions, went to bed worth—perhaps five, maybe nothing at all."

At this exaggeration of the height and depth of the disaster, awe and sympathy became intense in that cluster of faces. A hundred millions to nothing at all, or at most a beggarly five millions—what a dizzy precipice! Great indeed must be he who could fall so far. The driver peered through the trap, wondering why his distinguished fare endured this vulgar scrutiny. He saw that Dumont was asleep, thrust down a hand and shook him. "Where to, sir?" he asked, as Dumont straightened himself.

"To the National Industrial Bank, you fool," snapped Dumont. "How many times must I tell you?"

"Thank you, sir," said the driver—without sarcasm, thinking steadfastly of his pay—and drove swiftly away.

Theretofore, whenever he had gone to the National Industrial Bank he had been received as one king is received by another. Either eager and obsequious high officers of King Melville had escorted him directly to the presence, or King Melville, because he had a caller who could not be summarily dismissed, had come out apologetically to conduct King Dumont to another audience chamber. That day the third assistant cashier greeted him with politeness carefully graded to the due of a man merely moderately rich and not a factor in the game of high finance.

"Be seated, Mr. Dumont," he said, pointing to a chair just inside the railing—a seat not unworthy of a man of rank in the plutocratic hierarchy, but a man of far from high rank. "I'll see whether Mr. Melville's disengaged."

Dumont dropped into the chair and his heavy head was almost immediately resting upon his shirt-bosom. The third assistant cashier returned, roused him somewhat impatiently. "Mr. Melville's engaged," said he. "But Mr. Cowles will see you." Mr. Cowles was the third vice-president.

Dumont rose. The blood flushed into his face and his body shook from head to foot. "Tell Melville to go to hell," he jerked out, the haze clearing for a moment from his piercing, wicked eyes. And he stalked through the gateway in the railing. He turned. "Tell him I'll tear him down and grind him into the gutter within six months."

In the hansom again, he reflected or tried to reflect. But the lofty buildings seemed to cast a black shadow on his mind, and the roar and rush of the tremendous tide of traffic through that deep canon set his thoughts to whirling like drink-maddened bacchanals dancing round a punch-bowl. "That woman!" he exclaimed suddenly. "What asses they make of us men! And all these vultures—I'm not carrion yet. But THEY soon will be!" And he laughed and his thoughts began their crazy spin again.

A newsboy came, waving an extra in at the open doors of the hansom. "Dumont's downfall!" he yelled in his shrill, childish voice. "All about the big smash!"

Dumont snatched a paper and flung a copper at the boy.

"Gimme a tip on Woolens, Mr. Dumont," said the boy, with an impudent grin, balancing himself for flight. "How's Mrs. Fanshaw?"

The newspapers had made his face as familiar as the details of his private life. He shrank and quivered. He pushed up the trap. "Home!" he said, forgetting that the hansom and driver were not his own.

"All right, Mr. Dumont!" replied the driver. Dumont shrank again and sat cowering in the corner—the very calling him by his name, now a synonym for failure, disgrace, ridicule and contempt, seemed a subtile insult.

With roaring brain and twitching, dizzy eyes he read at the newspaper's account of his overthrow. And gradually there formed in his mind a coherent notion of how it had come to pass, of its extent; of why he found himself lying in the depths, the victim of humiliations so frightful that they penetrated even to him, stupefied and crazed with drink and fever though he was. His courage, his self-command were burnt up by the brandy. His body had at last revolted, was having its terrible revenge upon the mind that had so long misused it in every kind of indulgence.

"I'm done for—done for," he repeated audibly again and again, at each repetition looking round mentally for a fact or a hope that would deny this assertion—but he cast about in vain. "Yes, I'm done for." And flinging away the newspaper he settled back and ceased to try to think of his affairs. After a while tears rolled from under his blue eyelids, dropped haltingly down his cheeks, spread out upon his lips, tasted salt in his half-open mouth.

The hansom stopped before his brick and marble palace. The butler hurried out and helped him alight—not yet thirty-seven, he felt as if he were a dying old man. "Pay the cabby," he said and groped his way into the house and to the elevator and mechanically ran himself up to his floor. His valet was in his dressing-room. He waved him away. "Get out! And don't disturb me till I ring."

"The doctor—" began Mallow.

"Do as I tell you!"

When he was alone he poured out brandy and gulped it down a drink that might have eaten the lining straight out of a stomach less powerful than his. He went from door to door, locking them all. Then he seated himself in a lounging-chair before the long mirror. He stared toward the image of himself but was so dim-eyed that he could see nothing but spinning black disks. "Life's not such a good game even when a man's winning," he said aloud. "A rotten bad game when he's losing."

His head wabbled to fall forward but he roused himself. "Wife gone—" The tears flooded his eyes—tears of pity for himself, an injured and abandoned husband. "Wife gone," he repeated. "Friends gone—" He laughed sardonically. "No, never had friends, thank God, or I shouldn't have lasted this long. No such thing as friends—a man gets what he can pay for. Grip gone—luck gone! What's the use?"

He dozed off, presently to start into acute, shuddering consciousness. At the far end of the room, stirring, slowly oozing from under the divan was a—a Thing! He could not define its shape, but he knew that it was vast, that it was scaly, with many short fat legs tipped with claws; that its color was green, that its purpose was hideous, gleaming in craft from large, square, green-yellow eyes. He wiped the sticky sweat from his brow. "It's only the brandy," he said loudly, and the Thing faded, vanished. He drew a deep breath of relief.

He went to a case of drawers and stood before it, supporting himself by the handles of the second drawer. "Yes," he reflected, "the revolver's in that drawer." He released the handles and staggered back to his chair. "I'm crazy," he muttered, "crazy as a loon. I ought to ring for the doctor."

In a moment he was up again, but instead of going toward the bell he went to the drawers and opened the second one. In a compartment lay a pearl-handled, self-cocking revolver. He put his hand on it, shivered, drew his hand away—the steel and the pearl were cold. He closed the drawer with a quick push, opened it again slowly, took up the revolver, staggered over to his desk and laid it there. His face was chalk-white in spots and his eyes were stiff in their sockets. He rested his aching, burning, reeling head on his hands and stared at the revolver.

"But," he said aloud, as if contemptuously dismissing a suggestion, "why should I shoot myself? I can smash 'em all—to powder—grind 'em into the dirt."

He took up the revolver. "What'd be the use of smashing 'em?" he said wearily. He felt tired and sick, horribly sick.

He laid it down. "I'd better be careful," he thought. "I'm not in my right mind. I might—"

He took it in his hand and went to the mirror and put the muzzle against his temple. He laughed crazily. "A little pressure on that trigger and—bang! I'd be in kingdom come and shouldn't give a damn for anybody." He caught sight of his eyes in the mirror and hastily dropped his arm to his side. "No, I'd never shoot myself in the temple. The heart'd be better. Just here"—and he pressed the muzzle into the soft material of his coat—"if I touched the trigger—"

And his finger did touch the trigger. Pains shot through his chest like cracks radiating in glass when a stone strikes it. He looked at his face—white, with wild eyes, with lips blue and ajar, the sweat streaming from his forehead.

"What have I done?" he shrieked, mad with the dread of death. "I must call for help." He turned toward the door, plunged forward, fell unconscious, the revolver flung half-way across the room.

When he came to his senses he was in his bed—comfortable, weak, lazy. With a slight effort he caught the thread of events. He turned his eyes and saw a nurse, seated at the head of his bed, reading. "Am I going to die?" he asked—his voice was thin and came in faint gusts.

"Certainly not," replied the nurse, putting down her book and standing over him, her face showing genuine reassurance and cheerfulness.

"You'll be well very soon. But you must lie quiet and not talk."

"Was it a bad wound?"

"The fever was the worst. The bullet glanced round just under the surface."

"It was an accident," he said, after a moment's thought. "I suppose everybody is saying I tried to kill myself."

"'Everybody' doesn't know anything about it. Almost nobody knows. Even the servants don't know. Your secretary sent them away, broke in and found you."

He closed his eyes and slept.

When he awoke again he felt that a long time had passed, that he was much better, that he was hungry. "Nurse!" he called.

The woman at the head of the bed rose and laid a cool hand upon his forehead. "How good that feels," he mumbled gratefully. "What nice hands you have, nurse," and he lifted his glance to her face. He stared wonderingly, confusedly. "I thought I was awake and almost well," he murmured. "And instead, I'm out of my head."

"Can I do anything for you?" It certainly was HER voice.

"Is it you, Pauline?" he asked, as if he feared a negative answer.

"Yes—John."

A long silence, then he said: "Why did you come?"

"The doctor wrote me that—wrote me the truth."

"But haven't you heard? Haven't you seen the papers? Don't they say I'm ruined?"

"Yes, John."

He lay silent for several minutes. Then he asked hesitatingly: "And—when—do you—go back—West?"

"I have come to stay," she replied. Neither in her voice nor in her face was there a hint of what those five words meant to her.

He closed his eyes again. Presently a tear slid from under each lid and stood in the deep, wasted hollows of his eye-sockets.



XXVI.

A DESPERATE RALLY.

When he awoke again he felt that he should get well rapidly. He was weak, but it seemed the weakness of hunger rather than of illness. His head was clear, his nerves tranquil; his mind was as hungry for action as his body was for food.

"As soon as I've had something to eat," he said to himself, "I'll be better than for years. I needed this." And straightway he began to take hold of the outside world.

"Are you there, Pauline?" he asked, after perhaps half an hour during which his mind had swiftly swept the whole surface of his affairs.

The nurse rose from the lounge across the foot of the bed. "Your wife was worn out, Mr. Dumont," she began. "She has—"

"What day is it?" he interrupted.

"Thursday."

"Of the month, I mean."

"The seventeenth," she answered, smiling in anticipation of his astonishment.

But he said without change of expression,

"Then I've been ill three weeks and three days. Tell Mr. Culver I wish to see him at once."

"But the doctor—"

"Damn the doctor," replied Dumont, good-naturedly. "Don't irritate me by opposing. I shan't talk with Culver a minute by the clock. What I say will put my mind at rest. Then I'll eat something and sleep for a day at least."

The nurse hesitated, but his eyes fairly forced her out of the room to fetch Culver. "Now remember, Mr. Dumont—less than a minute," she said. "I'll come back in just sixty seconds."

"Come in forty," he replied. When she had closed the door he said to Culver: "What are the quotations on Woolens?"

"Preferred twenty-eight; Common seven," answered Culver. "They've been about steady for two weeks."

"Good. And what's Great Lakes and Gulf?"

Culver showed his surprise. "I'll have to consult the paper," he said. "You never asked me for that quotation before. I'd no idea you'd want it." He went to the next room and immediately returned. "G. L. and G. one hundred and two."

Dumont smiled with a satisfied expression.

"Now—go down-town—what time is it?"

"Eight o'clock."

"Morning?"

"Yes, sir, morning."

"Go down-town at once and set expert accountants—get Evarts and Schuman—set them at work on my personal accounts with the Woolens Company. Tell everybody I'm expected to die, and know it, and am getting facts for making my will. And stay down-town yourself all day—find out everything you can about National Woolens and that raiding crowd and about Great Lakes and Gulf. The better you succeed in this mission the better it'll be for you. Thank you, by the way, for keeping my accident quiet. Find out how the Fanning-Smiths are carrying National Woolens. Find out—"

The door opened and the plain, clean figure of the nurse appeared. "The minute's up," she said.

"One second more, please. Close the door." When she had obeyed he went on: "See Tavistock—you know you must be careful not to let any one at his office know that you're connected with me. See him—ask him—no, telephone Tavistock to come at once—and you find out all you can independently—especially about the Fanning-Smiths and Great Lakes and Gulf."

"Very well," said Culver.

"A great deal depends on your success," continued Dumont—"a great deal for me, a great deal—a VERY great deal for you."

His look met Culver's and each seemed satisfied with what he saw. Then Culver went, saying to himself: "What makes him think the Fanning-Smiths were mixed up in the raid? And what on earth has G. L. and G. got to do with it? Gad, he's a WONDER!" The longer Culver lived in intimacy with Dumont the greater became to him the mystery of his combination of bigness and littleness, audacity and caution, devil and man. "It gets me," he often reflected, "how a man can plot to rob millions of people in one hour and in the next plan endowments for hospitals and colleges; despise public opinion one minute and the next be courting it like an actor. But that's the way with all these big fellows. And I'll know how to do it when I get to be one of 'em."

As the nurse reentered Dumont's bedroom he called out, lively as a boy: "SOMETHING to eat! ANYthing to eat! EVERYthing to eat!"

The nurse at first flatly refused to admit Tavistock. But at half-past nine he entered, tall, lean, lithe, sharp of face, shrewd of eye, rakish of mustache; by Dumont's direction he closed and locked the door. "Why!" he exclaimed, "you don't look much of a sick man. You're thin, but your color's not bad and your eyes are clear. And down-town they have you dying."

Dumont laughed. Tavistock instantly recognized in laugh and look Dumont's battle expression. "Dying—yes. Dying to get at 'em. Tavistock, we'll kick those fellows out of Wall Street before the middle of next week. How much Great Lakes is there floating on the market?"

Tavistock looked puzzled. He had expected to talk National Woolens, and this man did not even speak of it, seemed absorbed in a stock in which Tavistock did not know he had any interest whatever. "G. L. and G.?" he said. "Not much—perhaps thirty thousand shares. It's been quiet for a long time. It's an investment stock, you know."

Dumont smiled peculiarly. "I want a list of the stock-holders—not all, only those holding more than a thousand shares."

"There aren't many big holders. Most of the stock's in small lots in the middle West."

"So much the better."

"I'm pretty sure I can get you a fairly accurate list."

Tavistock, Dumont's very private and personal broker, had many curious ways of reaching into the carefully guarded books and other business secrets of brokers and of the enterprises listed on the New York Stock Exchange. He and Dumont had long worked together in the speculative parts of Dumont's schemes. Dumont was the chief source of his rapidly growing fortune, though no one except Culver, not even Mrs. Tavistock, knew that they had business relations. Dumont moved through Tavistock secretly, and Tavistock in turn moved through other agents secretly. But for such precautions as these the great men of Wall Street would be playing with all the cards exposed for the very lambs to cock their ears at.

"I want it immediately," said Dumont. "Only the larger holders, you understand."

"Haste always costs. I'll have to get hold of a man who can get hold of some one high up in the Great Lakes dividend department."

"Pay what you must—ten—twenty thousand—more if necessary. But get it to-night!"

"I'll try."

"Then you'll get it."

He slept, with a break of fifteen minutes, until ten the next morning. Then Tavistock appeared with the list. "It was nearly midnight before my man could strike a bargain, so I didn't telephone you. The dividend clerk made a memory list. I had him verify it this morning as early as he could get at the books. He says at least a third of the road is held in small lots abroad. He's been in charge of the books for twenty years, and he says there have been more changes in the last two months than in all that time. He thinks somebody has sold a big block of the stock on the quiet."

Dumont smiled significantly. "I think I understand that," he said. He glanced at the list. "It's even shorter than I thought."

"You notice, one-third of the stock's tied up in the Wentworth estate," said Tavistock.

"Yes. And here's the name of Bowen's dividend clerk. Bowen is traveling in the far East. Probably he's left no orders about his Great Lakes—why should he when it's supposed to be as sound and steady as Government bonds? That means another fifty thousand shares out of the way for our purposes. Which of these names stand for the Fanning-Smiths?"

"I only recognize Scannell—James Fanning-Smith's private secretary. But there must be others, as he's down for only twenty-one thousand shares."

"Then he's the only one," said Dumont, "for the Fanning-Smiths have only twenty-one thousand shares at the present time. I know that positively."

"What!" Tavistock showed that he was astounded. "I knew James Fanning-Smith was an ass, but I never suspected him of such folly as that. So they are the ones that have been selling?"

"Yes—not only selling what they owned but also— However, no matter. It's safe to say there are less than a hundred and fifty thousand shares for us to take care of. I want you to get me—right away—options for fifteen days on as many of these remaining big lots as possible. Make the best terms you can—anything up to one hundred and twenty-five—and offer five or even ten dollars a share forfeit for the option. Make bigger offers—fifteen—where it's necessary. Set your people to work at once. They've got the rest of to-day, all day to-morrow, all day Sunday. But I'd rather the whole thing were closed up by Saturday night. I'll be satisfied when you've got me control of a hundred thousand shares—that'll be the outside of safety."

"Yes, you're reasonably sure to win, if you can carry that and look after offerings of fifty thousand in the market. The options on the hundred thousand shares oughtn't to cost you much more than a million. The fifty thousand you'll have to buy in the market may cost you six or seven millions." Tavistock recited these figures carelessly. In reality he was watching Dumont shrewdly, for he had believed that the National Woolens raid had ruined him, had certainly put him out of the large Wall Street moves.

"In that small drawer, to the left, in the desk there," said Dumont, pointing. "Bring me the Inter-State National check-book, and pen and ink."

When he had the book he wrote eight checks, the first for fifty thousand, the next five for one hundred thousand each, the last two for two hundred and fifty thousand each. "The first check," he said, "you may use whenever you like. The others, except the last two, will be good after two o'clock to-day. The last two can be used any time after eleven to-morrow. And—don't forget! I'm supposed to be hopelessly ill—but then, no one must know you've seen me or know anything about me. Spread it as a rumor."

Tavistock went away convinced, enthusiastic. There was that in Dumont which inspired men to their strongest, most intelligent efforts. He was harsh, he was tyrannical, treacherous even—in a large way, often cynically ungrateful. But he knew how to lead, knew how to make men forget all but the passion for victory, and follow him loyally. Tavistock had seen his financial brain solve too many "unsolvable" problems not to have confidence in it.

"I might have known!" he reflected. "Why, those fellows apparently only scotched him. They got the Woolens Company away from him. He lets it go without a murmur when he sees he's beaten, and he turns his mind to grabbing a big railway as if Woolens had never existed."

Just after his elevated train passed Chatham Square on the way down-town Tavistock suddenly slapped his leg with noisy energy and exclaimed half-aloud, "By Jove, of course!" to the amusement of those near him in the car. He went on to himself: "Why didn't I see it before? Because it's so beautifully simple, like all the things the big 'uns do. He's a wonder. So THAT'S what he's up to? Gad, what a breeze there'll be next week!"

At eleven o'clock Doctor Sackett came into Dumont's bedroom, in arms against his patient.

"You're acting like a lunatic. No business, I say—not for a week. Absolute quiet, Mr. Dumont, or I'll not answer for the consequences."

"I see you want to drive me back into the fever," replied Dumont. "But I'm bent on getting well. I need the medicine I've had this morning, and Culver's bringing me another dose. If I'm not better when he leaves, I agree to try your prescription of fret and fume."

"You are risking your life."

Dumont smiled. "Possibly. But I'm risking it for what's more than life to me, my dear Sackett."

"You'll excite yourself. You'll——"

"On the contrary, I shall calm myself. I'm never so calm and cheerful as when I'm fighting, unless it's when I'm getting ready to fight. There's something inside me—I don't know what—but it won't let me rest till it has pushed me into action. That's my nature. If any one asks how I am, say you've no hope of my recovery."

"I shall tell only the truth in that case," said Sackett, but with resignation—he was beginning to believe that for his extraordinary patient extraordinary remedies might be best.

Dumont listened to Culver's report without interrupting him once. Culver's position had theretofore been most disadvantageous to himself. He had been too near to Dumont, had been merged in Dumont's big personality. Whatever he did well seemed to Dumont merely the direct reflection of his own abilities; whatever he did ill seemed far more stupid than a similar blunder made by a less intimate subordinate—what excuse for Culver's going wrong with the guiding hand of the Great Man always upon him?

In this, his first important independent assignment, he had at last an opportunity to show his master what he could do, to show that he had not learned the Dumont methods parrot-fashion, but intelligently, that he was no mere reflecting asteroid to the Dumont sun, but a self-luminous, if lesser and dependent, star.

Dumont was in a peculiarly appreciative mood.

"Why, the fellow's got brains—GOOD brains," was his inward comment again and again as Culver unfolded the information he had collected—clear, accurate, non-essentials discarded, essentials given in detail, hidden points brought to the surface.

It was proof positive of Dumont's profound indifference to money that he listened without any emotion either of anger or of regret to the first part of Culver's tale, the survey of the wreck—what had been forty millions now reduced to a dubious six. Dumont had neither time nor strength for emotion; he was using all his mentality in gaging what he had for the work in hand—just how long and how efficient was the broken sword with which he must face his enemies in a struggle that meant utter ruin to him if he failed. For he felt that if he should fail he would never again be able to gather himself together to renew the combat; either he would die outright or he would abandon himself to the appetite which had just shown itself dangerously near to being the strongest of the several passions ruling him.

When Culver passed to the Herron coterie and the Fanning-Smiths and Great Lakes and Gulf, Dumont was still motionless—he was now estimating the strength and the weaknesses of the enemy, and miscalculation would be fatal. At the end of three-quarters of an hour Culver stopped the steady, swift flow of his report—"That's all the important facts. There's a lot more but it would be largely repetition."

Dumont looked at him with an expression that made him proud. "Thanks, Culver. At the next annual meeting we'll elect you to Giddings' place. Please go back down-town and—" He rapidly indicated half a dozen points which Culver had failed to see and investigate—the best subordinate has not the master's eye; if he had, he would not be a subordinate.

Dumont waved his hand in dismissal and settled himself to sleep. When Culver began to stammer thanks for the promised promotion, he frowned.

"Don't bother me with that sort of stuff. The job's yours because you've earned it. It'll be yours as long as you can hold it down—or until you earn a better one. And you'll be loyal as Giddings was—just as long as it's to your interest and not a second longer. Otherwise you'd be a fool, and I'd not have you about me. Be off!"

He slept an hour and a half, then Pauline brought him a cup of beef extract—"A very small cup," he grumbled good-humoredly. "And a very weak, watery mess in it."

As he lay propped in his bed drinking it—slowly to make it last the longer—Pauline sat looking at him. His hands had been fat and puffy; she was filled with pity as she watched the almost scrawny hand holding the cup to his lips; there were hollows between the tendons, and the wrist was gaunt. Her gaze wandered to his face and rested there, in sympathy and tenderness. The ravages of the fever had been frightful—hollows where the swollen, sensual cheeks had been; the neck caved in behind and under the jaw-bones; loose skin hanging in wattles, deeply-set eyes, a pinched look about the nostrils and the corners of the mouth. He was homely, ugly even; except the noble curve of head and profile, not a trace of his former good looks—but at least that swinish, fleshy, fleshly expression was gone.

A physical wreck, battered, torn, dismantled by the storm and fire of disease! It was hard for her to keep back her tears.

Their eyes met and his instantly shifted. The rest of the world saw the man of force bent upon the possessions which mean fame and honor regardless of how they are got. He knew that he could deceive the world, that so long as he was rich and powerful it would refuse to let him undeceive it, though he might strive to show it what he was. But he knew that SHE saw him as he really was—knew him as only a husband and a wife can know each the other. And he respected her for the qualities which gave her a right to despise him, and which had forced her to exercise that right. He felt himself the superior of the rest of his fellow-beings, but her inferior; did she not successfully defy him; could she not, without a word, by simply resting her calm gaze upon him, make him shift and slink?

He felt that he must change the subject—not of their conversation, for they were not talking, but of their—her—thoughts. He did not know precisely what she was thinking of him, but he was certain that it was not anything favorable how could it be? In fact, fight though she did against the thought, into her mind as she looked, pitying yet shrinking, came his likeness to a wolf—starved and sick and gaunt, by weakness tamed into surface restraint, but in vicious teeth, in savage lips, in jaw made to crush for love of crushing, a wicked wolf, impatient to resume the life of the beast of prey.

By a mischance unavoidable in a mind filled as was his he began to tell of his revenge—of the exhibition of power he purposed to give, sudden and terrible. He talked of his enemies as a cat might of a mouse it was teasing in the impassable circle of its paws. She felt that they deserved the thunderbolt he said he was about to hurl into them, but she could not help feeling pity for them. If what he said of his resources and power were true, how feeble, how helpless they were—pygmies fatuously disporting themselves in the palm of a giant's hand, unconscious of where they were, of the cruel eyes laughing at them, of the iron muscles that would presently contract that hand and—she shuddered; his voice came to her in a confused murmur.

"If he does not stop I shall loathe him AGAIN!" she said to herself. Then to him: "Perhaps you'd like to see Langdon—he's in the drawing-room with Gladys."

"I sent for him two hours ago. Yes, tell him to come up at once."

As she took the cup he detained her hand. She beat down the impulse to snatch it away, let it lie passive. He pressed his lips upon it.

"I haven't thanked you for coming back," he said in a low voice, holding to her hand nervously.

"But you know it wasn't because I'm not grateful, don't you? I can hardly believe yet that it isn't a dream. I'd have said there wasn't a human being on earth who'd have done it—except your mother. No, not even you, only your mother."

At this tribute to her mother, unexpected, sincere, tears dimmed Pauline's eyes and a sob choked up into her throat.

"It was your mother in you that made you come," he went on. "But you came—and I'll not forget it. You said you had come to stay—is that so, Pauline?"

She bent her head in assent.

"When I'm well and on top again—but there's nothing in words. All I'll say is, you're giving me a chance, and I'll make the best of it. I've learned my lesson."

He slowly released her hand. She stood there a moment, without speaking, without any definite thought. Then she left to send Langdon.

"Yes," Dumont reflected, "it was her duty. It's a woman's duty to be forgiving and gentle and loving and pure—they're made differently from men. It was unnatural, her ever going away at all. But she's a good woman, and she shall get what she deserves hereafter. When I settle this bill for my foolishness I'll not start another."

Duty—that word summed up his whole conception of the right attitude of a good woman toward a man. A woman who acted from love might change her mind; but duty was safe, was always there when a man came back from wanderings which were mere amiable, natural weaknesses in the male. Love might adorn a honeymoon or an escapade; duty was the proper adornment of a home.

"I've just been viewing the wreck with Culver," he said, as Langdon entered, dressed in the extreme of the latest London fashion.

"Much damage?"

"What didn't go in the storm was carried off by Giddings when he abandoned the ship. But the hull's there and—oh, I'll get her off and fix her up all right."

"Always knew Giddings was a rascal. He oozes piety and respectability. That's the worst kind you have down-town. When a man carries so much character in his face—it's like a woman who carries so much color in her cheeks that you know it couldn't have come from the inside."

"You're wrong about Giddings. He's honest enough. Any other man would have done the same in his place. He stayed until there was no hope of saving the ship."

"All lost but his honor—Wall Street honor, eh?"

"Precisely."

After a pause Langdon said: "I'd no idea you held much of your own stock. I thought you controlled through other people's proxies and made your profits by forcing the stock up or down and getting on the other side of the market."

"But, you see, I believe in Woolens," replied Dumont. "And I believe in it still, Langdon!" His eyes had in them the look of the fanatic.

"That concern is breath and blood and life to me, and wife and children and parents and brothers and sisters. I've put my whole self into it. I conceived it. I brought it into the world. I nursed it and brought it up. I made it big and strong and great. It's mine, by heaven! MINE! And no man shall take it from me!"

He was sitting up, his face flushed, his eyes blazing. "Gad—he does look a wild beast!" said Langdon to himself. He would have said aloud, had Dumont been well: "I'm precious glad I ain't the creature those fangs are reaching for!" He was about to caution him against exciting himself when Dumont sank back with a cynical smile at his own outburst.

"But to get down to business," he went on. "I've eleven millions of the stock left—about a hundred and twenty thousand shares. Gladys has fifty thousand shares—how much have you got?"

"Less than ten thousand. And I'd have had none at all if my mind hadn't been full of other things as I was sailing. I forgot to tell my broker to sell."

Dumont was reflecting. Presently he said: "Those curs not only took most of my stock and forced the sale of most of my other securities; they've put me in such a light that outside stockholders wouldn't send me their proxies now. To get back control I must smash them, and I must also acquire pretty nearly half the shares, and hold them till I'm firm in the saddle again."

"You'd better devote yourself for the present to escaping the grave. Why bother about business? You've got enough—too much, as it is. Take a holiday—go away and amuse yourself."

Dumont smiled. "That's what I'm going to do, what I'm doing—amusing myself. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't live, if I didn't feel that I was on my way back to power. Now—in the present market I couldn't borrow on my Woolens stock. I've two requests to make of you."

"Anything that's possible."

"The first is, I want you to lend me four millions, or, rather, negotiate the loan for me, as if it were for yourself. I've got about that amount in Governments, in several good railways and in the property here. The place at Saint X is Pauline's, but the things I can put up would bring four millions and a half at least at forced sale. So, you'll be well secured. I'm asking you to do it instead of doing it myself because, if I'm to win out, the Herron crowd must think I'm done for and nearly dead."

Langdon was silent several minutes. At last he said: "What's your plan?"

Dumont looked irritated—he did not like to be questioned, to take any one into his confidence. But he restrained his temper and said: "I'm going to make a counter-raid. I know where to strike."

"Are you sure?"

Dumont frowned. "Don't disturb yourself," he said coldly. "I can arrange the loan in another way."

"I'm asking you only for your own sake, Jack," Langdon hastily interposed. "Of course you can have the money, and I don't want your security."

"Then I'll not borrow through you." Dumont never would accept a favor from any one. He regarded favors as profitable investments but ruinous debts.

"Oh—very well—I'll take the security," said Langdon. "When do you want the money?"

"It must be covered into my account at the Inter-State National—remember, NOT the National Industrial, but the Inter-State National. A million must be deposited to-day—the rest by ten o'clock to-morrow at the latest."

"I'll attend to it. What's your other request?"

"Woolens'll take another big drop on Monday and at least two hundred and fifty thousand shares'll be thrown on the market at perhaps an average price of eighteen—less rather than more. I want you quietly to organize a syndicate to buy what's offered. They must agree to sell it to me for, say, two points advance on what they pay for it. I'll put up—in your name—a million dollars in cash and forfeit it if I don't take the stock off their hands. As Woolens is worth easily double what it now stands at, they can't lose. Of course the whole thing must be kept secret."

Langdon deliberated this proposal. Finally he said: "I think brother-in-law Barrow and his partner and I can manage it."

"You can assure them they'll make from six hundred thousand to a million on a less than thirty days' investment of four millions and a half, with no risk whatever."

"Just about that," assented Langdon—he had been carefully brought up by his father to take care of a fortune and was cleverer at figures than he pretended.

"Do your buying through Tavistock," continued Dumont. "Give him orders to take on Monday all offerings of National Woolens, preferred and common, at eighteen or less. He'll understand what to do."

"But I may be unable to get up the syndicate on such short notice."

"You must," said Dumont. "And you will. You can get a move on yourself when you try—I found that out when I was organizing my original combine. One thing more—very important. Learn for me all you can—without being suspected—about the Fanning-Smiths and Great Lakes."

He made Langdon go over the matters he was to attend to, point by point, before he would let him leave. He was asleep when the nurse, sent in by Langdon on his way out, reached his bed—the sound and peaceful sleep of a veteran campaigner whose nerves are trained to take advantage of every lull.

At ten the next morning he sent the nurse out of his room. "And close the doors," he said, "and don't come until I ring." He began to use the branch telephone at his bedside, calling up Langdon, and then Tavistock, to assure himself that all was going well. Next he called up in succession five of the great individual money-lenders of Wall Street, pledged them to secrecy and made arrangements for them to call upon him at his house at different hours that day and Sunday. Another might have intrusted the making of these arrangements to Culver or Langdon, but Dumont never let any one man know enough of his plan of battle to get an idea of the whole.

"Now for the ammunition," he muttered, when the last appointment was made. And he rang for Culver.

Culver brought him writing materials. "Take this order," he said, as he wrote, "to the Central Park Safety Deposit vaults and bring me from my compartment the big tin box with my initials in white—remember, IN WHITE—on the end of it."

Three-quarters of an hour later Culver returned, half-carrying, half-dragging the box. Dumont's eyes lighted up at sight of it. "Ah!" he said, in a sigh of satisfaction and relief. "Put it under the head of the bed here. Thanks. That's all."

The nurse came as Culver left, but he sent her away. He supported himself to the door, locked it. He took his keys from the night-stand, drew out the box and opened it. On the mass of stocks and bonds lay an envelope containing two lists—one, of the securities in the box that were the property of Gladys Dumont; the other, of the securities there that were the property of Laura Dumont, their mother.

His hands shook as he unfolded these lists, and a creaking in the walls or flooring made him start and glance round with the look of a surprised thief. But this weakness was momentary. He was soon absorbed in mentally arranging the securities to the best advantage for distribution among the money-lenders as collateral for the cash he purposed to stake in his game.

Such thought as he gave to the moral quality of what he was doing with his sister's and his mother's property without asking their consent was altogether favorable to himself. His was a well-trained, "practical" conscience. It often anticipated his drafts upon it for moral support in acts that might at first blush seem criminal, or for soothing apologies for acts which were undeniably "not QUITE right." This particular act, conscience assured him, was of the highest morality—under his own code. For the code enacted by ordinary human beings to guide their foolish little selves he had no more respect than a lion would have for a moral code enacted by and for sheep. The sheep might assert that their code was for lions also; but why should that move the lions to anything but amusement? He had made his own code—not by special revelation from the Almighty, as did some of his fellow practitioners of high finance, but by especial command of his imperial "destiny." And it was a strict code—it had earned him his unblemished reputation for inflexible commercial honesty and commercial truthfulness. The foundation principle was his absolute right to the great property he had created. This being granted, how could there be immorality in any act whatsoever that might be necessary to hold or regain his kingdom? As well debate the morality of a mother in "commandeering" bread or even a life to save her baby from death.

His kingdom! His by discovery, his by adroit appropriation, his by intelligent development, his by the right of mental might—HIS! Stake his sister's and his mother's possessions for it? Their lives, if necessary!

Than John Dumont, president of the Woolens Monopoly, there was no firmer believer in the gospel of divine right—the divine right of this new race of kings, the puissant lords of trade.

When he had finished his preparations for the money-lenders he unlocked the door and sank into bed exhausted. Hardly had he settled himself when, without knocking, Gladys entered, Pauline just behind her. His face blanched and from his dry throat came a hoarse, strange cry—it certainly sounded like fright. "You startled me—that was all," he hastened to explain, as much to himself as to them. For, a something inside him had echoed the wondering inquiry in the two women's faces—a something that persisted in reverencing the moral code which his new code had superseded.



XXVII.

THE OTHER MAN'S MIGHT.

At eleven o'clock on Monday morning James, head of the Fanning-Smith family, president of Fanning-Smith and Company, and chairman of the Great Lakes and Gulf railway—to note his chief titles to eminence up-town and down—was seated in his grandfather's office, in his grandfather's chair, at his grandfather's desk. Above his head hung his grandfather's portrait; and he was a slightly modernized reproduction of it. As he was thus in every outward essential his grandfather over again, he and his family and the social and business world assumed that he was the reincarnation of the crafty old fox who first saw the light of day through the chinks in a farm-hand's cottage in Maine and last saw it as it sifted through the real-lace curtains of his gorgeous bedroom in his great Madison Avenue mansion. But in fact James was only physically and titularly the representative of his grandfather. Actually he was typical of the present generation of Fanning-Smiths—a self-intoxicated, stupid and pretentious generation; a polo-playing and racing and hunting, a yachting and palace-dwelling and money-scattering generation; a business-despising and business-neglecting, an old-world aristocracy-imitating generation. He moved pompously through his two worlds, fashion and business, deceiving himself completely, every one else except his wife more or less, her not at all—but that was the one secret she kept.

James was the husband of Herron's daughter by his first wife, and Herron had induced him to finance the syndicate that had raided and captured National Woolens.

James was bred to conservatism. His timidity was of that wholesome strength which so often saves chuckle-heads from the legitimate consequences of their vanity and folly. But the spectacle of huge fortunes, risen overnight before the wands of financial magicians whose abilities he despised when he compared them with his own, was too much for timidity. He had been born with a large vanity, and it had been stuffed from his babyhood by all around him until it was become as abnormal as the liver of a Strasburg goose—and as supersensitive. It suffered acutely as these Jacks went climbing up their bean-stalk wealth to heights of magnificence from which the establishments and equipages of the Fanning-Smiths must seem poor to shabbiness. He sneered at them as "vulgar new-comers"; he professed abhorrence of their ostentation. But he—and Gertrude, his wife—envied them, talked of them constantly, longed to imitate, to surpass them.

In the fullness of time his temptation came. He shivered, shrank, leaped headlong—his wife pushing.

About ten days before the raid on National Woolens there had drifted in to Dumont through one of his many subterranean sources of information a rumor that the Fanning-Smiths had stealthily reduced their holdings of Great Lakes to twenty-one thousand shares and that the property was not so good as it had once been. He never permitted any Wall Street development to pass unexplained—he thought it simple prudence for a man with the care of a great financial and commercial enterprise to look into every dark corner of the Street and see what was hatching there. Accordingly, he sent an inquiry back along his secret avenue. Soon he learned that Great Lakes was sound, but the Fanning-Smiths had gone rotten; that they were gambling in the stock of the road they controlled and were supposed in large part to own; that they were secretly selling its stock "short"—that is, were betting it would go down—when there was nothing in the condition of the property to justify a fall. He reflected on this situation and reached these conclusions: "James Fanning-Smith purposes to pass the autumn dividend, which will cause the stock to drop. Then he will take his profits from the shares he has sold short and will buy back control at the low price. He is a fool and a knave. Only an imbecile would thus trifle with an established property. A chance for some one to make a fortune and win a railroad by smashing the Fanning-Smiths." Having recorded in his indelible memory these facts and conclusions as to James Fanning-Smith's plunge from business into gambling, Dumont returned to his own exacting affairs.

He had himself begun the race for multi-millions as a gambler and had only recently become ALMOST altogether a business man. But he thought there was a radical difference between his case and Fanning-Smith's. To use courageous gambling as means to a foothold in business—he regarded that as wise audacity. To use a firm-established foothold in business as a means to gambling—he regarded that as the acme of reckless folly. Besides, when he marked the cards or loaded the dice for a great Wall Street game of "high finance," he did it with skill and intelligence; and Fanning-Smith had neither.

When the banking-house of Fanning-Smith and Company undertook to finance the raid on National Woolens it was already deep in the Great Lakes gamble. James was new to Wall Street's green table; and he liked the sensations and felt that his swindle on other gamblers and the public—he did not call it by that homely name, though he knew others would if they found him out—was moving smoothly. Still very, very deep down his self-confidence was underlaid with quicksand. But Herron was adroit and convincing to the degree attainable only by those who deceive themselves before trying to deceive others; and James' cupidity and conceit were enormous. He ended by persuading himself that his house, directed and protected by his invincible self, could carry with ease the burden of both loads. Indeed, the Great Lakes gamble now seemed to him a negligible trifle in the comparison—what were its profits of a few hundred thousands beside the millions that would surely be his when the great Woolens Monopoly, bought in for a small fraction of its value, should be controlled by a group of which he would be the dominant personality?

He ventured; he won. He was now secure—was not Dumont dispossessed, despoiled, dying?

At eleven o'clock on that Monday morning he was seated upon his embossed leather throne, under his grandfather's portrait, immersed in an atmosphere of self-adoration. At intervals he straightened himself, distended his chest, elevated his chin and glanced round with an air of haughty dignity, though there was none to witness and to be impressed. In Wall Street there is a fatuity which, always epidemic among the small fry, infects wise and foolish, great and small, whenever a paretic dream of an enormous haul at a single cast of the net happens to come true. This paretic fatuity now had possession of James; in imagination he was crowning and draping himself with multi-millions, power and fame. At intervals he had been calling up on the telephone at his elbow Zabriskie, the firm's representative on 'Change, and had been spurring him on to larger and more frequent "sales" of Great Lakes.

His telephone bell rang. He took down the receiver—"Yes, it's Mr. Fanning-Smith—oh—Mr. Fanshaw——" He listened, in his face for the first few seconds all the pitying amusement a small, vain man can put into an expression of superiority. "Thank you, Mr. Fanshaw," he said. "But really, it's impossible. WE are perfectly secure. No one would venture to disturb US." And he pursed his lips and swelled his fat cheeks in the look for which his father was noted. But, after listening a few seconds longer, his eyes had in them the beginnings of timidity.

He turned his head so that he could see the ticker-tape as it reeled off. His heavy cheeks slowly relaxed. "Yes, yes," he said hurriedly.

"I'll just speak to our Mr. Zabriskie. Good-by." And he rang off and had his telephone connected with the telephone Zabriskie was using at the Stock Exchange. All the while his eyes were on the ticker-tape. Suddenly he saw upon it where it was bending from under the turning wheel a figure that made him drop the receiver and seize it in both his trembling hands. "Great heavens!" he gasped. "Fanshaw may be right. Great Lakes one hundred and twelve—and only a moment ago it was one hundred and three."

His visions of wealth and power and fame were whisking off in a gale of terror. A new quotation was coming from under the wheel—Great Lakes one hundred and fifteen. In his eyes stared the awful thought that was raging in his brain—"This may mean——" And his vanity instantly thrust out Herron and Gertrude and pointed at them as the criminals who would be responsible if—he did not dare formulate the possibilities of that bounding price.

The telephone boy at the other end, going in search of Zabriskie, left the receiver off the hook and the door of the booth open. Into Fanning-Smith's ear came the tumult from the floor of the Exchange—shrieks and yells riding a roar like the breakers of an infernal sea. And on the ticker-tape James was reading the story of the cause, was reading how his Great Lakes venture was caught in those breakers, was rushing upon the rocks amid the despairing wails of its crew, the triumphant jeers of the wreckers on shore. Great Lakes one hundred and eighteen—tick—tick—tick—Great Lakes one hundred and twenty-three—tick—tick—tick—Great Lakes one hundred and thirty—tick—tick—tick—Great Lakes one hundred and thirty-five—

"It can't be true!" he moaned. "It CAN'T be true! If it is I'm ruined—all of us ruined!"

The roar in the receiver lessened—some one had entered the booth at the other end and had closed the door. "Well!" he heard in a sharp, impatient voice—Zabriskie's.

"What is it, Ned—what's the matter? Why didn't you tell me?" Fanning-Smith's voice was like the shrill shriek of a coward in a perilous storm. It was in itself complete explanation of Zabriskie's neglect to call upon him for orders.

"Don't ask me. Somebody's rocketing Great Lakes—taking all offerings. Don't keep me here. I'm having a hard enough time, watching this crazy market and sending our orders by the roundabout way. Got anything to suggest?"

Tick—tick—tick—Commander-in-chief Fanning-Smith watched the crawling tape in fascinated horror—Great Lakes one hundred and thirty-eight. It had spelled out for him another letter of that hideous word, Ruin. All the moisture of his body seemed to be on the outside; inside, he was dry and hot as a desert. If the price went no higher, if it did not come down, nearly all he had in the world would be needed to settle his "short" contracts. For he would have to deliver at one hundred and seven, more than two hundred thousand shares which he had contracted to sell; and to get them for delivery he would have to pay one hundred and thirty-eight dollars a share. A net loss of more than six millions!

"You must get that price down—you must! You MUST!" quavered James.

"Hell!" exclaimed Zabriskie—he was the youngest member of the firm, a son of James' oldest sister. "Tell me how, and I'll do it."

"You're there—you know what to do," pleaded James. "And I order you to get that price down!"

"Don't keep me here, talking rot. I've been fighting—and I'm going to keep on."

James shivered. Fighting! There was no fight in him—all his life he had got everything without fighting. "Do your best," he said. "I'm very ill to-day. I'm—"

"Good-by—" Zabriskie had hung up the receiver.

James sat staring at the tape like a paralytic staring at death. The minutes lengthened into an hour—into two hours. No one disturbed him—when the battle is on who thinks of the "honorary commander"? At one o'clock he shook himself, brushed his hand over his eyes—quotations of Woolens were reeling off the tape, alternating with quotations of Great Lakes.

"Zabriskie is selling our Woolens," he thought. Then, with a blinding flash the truth struck through his brain. He gave a loud cry between a sob and a shriek and, flinging his arms at full length upon his desk, buried his face between them and burst into tears.

"Ruined! Ruined! Ruined!" And his shoulders, his whole body, shook like a child in a paroxysm.

A long, long ring at the telephone. Fanning-Smith, irritated by the insistent jingling so close to his ear, lifted himself and answered—the tears were guttering his swollen face; his lips and eyelids were twitching.

"Well?" he said feebly.

"We've got 'em on the run," came the reply in Zabriskie's voice, jubilant now.

"Who?"

"Don't know who—whoever was trying to squeeze us. I had to throw over some Woolens—but I'll pick it up again—maybe to-day."

Fanning-Smith could hear the roar of the Exchange—wilder, fiercer than three hours before, but music to him now. He looked sheepishly at the portrait of his grandfather. When its eyes met his he flushed and shifted his gaze guiltily. "Must have been something I ate for breakfast," he muttered to the portrait and to himself in apologetic explanation of his breakdown.

In a distant part of the field all this time was posted the commander-in-chief of the army of attack. Like all wise commanders in all well-conducted battles, he was far removed from the blinding smoke, from the distracting confusion. He had placed himself where he could hear, see, instantly direct, without being disturbed by trifling reverse or success, by unimportant rumors to vast proportions blown.

To play his game for dominion or destruction John Dumont had had himself arrayed in a wine-colored, wadded silk dressing-gown over his white silk pajamas and had stretched himself on a divan in his sitting-room in his palace. A telephone and a stock-ticker within easy reach were his field-glasses and his aides—the stock-ticker would show him second by second the precise posture of the battle; the telephone would enable him to direct it to the minutest manoeuver.

The telephone led to the ear of his chief of staff, Tavistock, who was at his desk in his privatest office in the Mills Building, about him telephones straight to the ears of the division commanders. None of these knew who was his commander; indeed, none knew that there was to be a battle or, after the battle was on, that they were part of one of its two contending armies. They would blindly obey orders, ignorant who was aiming the guns they fired and at whom those guns were aimed. Such conditions would have been fatal to the barbaric struggles for supremacy which ambition has waged through all the past; they are ideal conditions for these modern conflicts of the market which more and more absorb the ambitions of men. Instead of shot and shell and regiments of "cannon food," there are battalions of capital, the paper certificates of the stored-up toil or trickery of men; instead of mangled bodies and dead, there are minds in the torment of financial peril or numb with the despair of financial ruin. But the stakes are the same old stakes—power and glory and wealth for a few, thousands on thousands dragged or cozened into the battle in whose victory they share scantily, if at all, although they bear its heaviest losses on both sides.

It was half-past eight o'clock when Dumont put the receiver to his ear and greeted Tavistock in a strong, cheerful voice. "Never felt better in my life," was his answer to Tavistock's inquiry as to his health. "Even old Sackett admits I'm in condition. But he says I must have no irritations—so, be careful to carry out orders."

He felt as well as he said. His body seemed the better for its rest and purification, for its long freedom from his occasional but terrific assaults upon it, for having got rid of the superfluous flesh which had been swelling and weighting it.

He made Tavistock repeat all the orders he had given him, to assure himself he had not been misunderstood. As he listened to the rehearsal of his own shrewd plans his eyes sparkled. "I'll bag the last——of them," he muttered, and his lips twisted into a smile at which Culver winced.

When the ticker clicked the first quotation of Great Lakes Dumont said: "Now, clear out, Culver! And shut the door after you, and let no one interrupt me until I call." He wished to have no restraint upon his thoughts, no eyes to watch his face, no ears to hear what the fortune of the battle might wring from him.

As the ticker pushed out the news of the early declines and recoveries in Great Lakes, Tavistock leading the Fanning-Smith crowd on to make heavier and heavier plunges, Dumont could see in imagination the battle-field—the floor of the Stock Exchange—as plainly as if he were there.

The battle began with a languid cannonade between the two seemingly opposed parts of Dumont's army. Under cover of this he captured most of the available actual shares of Great Lakes—valuable aids toward making his position, his "corner," impregnable. But before he had accomplished his full purpose Zabriskie, nominal lieutenant-commander, actual commander of the Fanning-Smith forces, advanced to give battle. Instead of becoming suspicious at the steadiness of the price under his attacks upon it, Zabriskie was lured on to sell more of those Great Lakes shares which he did not have. And he beamed from his masked position as he thought of the batteries he was holding in reserve for his grand movement to batter down the price of the stock late in the day, and capture these backers of the property that was supposed to be under the protection of the high and honorable Fanning-Smiths.

He was still thinking along this line, as he stood aloof and apparently disinterested, when Dumont began to close in upon him. Zabriskie, astonished by this sudden tremendous fire, was alarmed when under its protection the price advanced. He assaulted in force with large selling orders; but the price pushed on and the fierce cannonade of larger and larger buying orders kept up. When Great Lakes had mounted in a dozen bounds from one hundred and seven to one hundred and thirty-nine, he for the first time realized that he was facing not an unorganized speculating public but a compact army, directed by a single mind to a single purpose. "A lunatic—a lot of lunatics," he said, having not the faintest suspicion of the reason for the creation of these conditions of frenzy. Still, if this rise continued or was not reversed the Fanning-Smiths would be ruined—by whom? "Some of those Chicago bluffers," he finally decided. "I must throw a scare into I them."

He could have withdrawn from the battle then with a pitiful remnant of the Fanning-Smiths and their associates—that is, he thought he could, for he did not dream of the existence of the "corner." But he chose the opposite course. He flung off his disguise and boldly attacked the stock with selling orders openly in the name of the Fanning-Smiths.

"When they see us apparently unloading our own ancestral property I think they'll take to their heels," he said. But his face was pale as he awaited the effect of his assault.

The price staggered, trembled. The clamor of the battle alarmed those in the galleries of the Stock Exchange—Zabriskie's brokers selling, the brokers of the mysterious speculator buying, the speculating public through its brokers joining in on either side; men shrieking into each other's faces as they danced round and round the Great Lakes pillar. The price went down, went up, went down, down, down—Zabriskie had hurled selling orders for nearly fifty thousand shares at it and Dumont had commanded his guns to cease firing. He did not dare take any more offerings; he had reached the end of the ammunition he had planned to expend at that particular stage of the battle.

The alarm spread and, although Zabriskie ceased selling, the price continued to fall under the assaults of the speculating public, mad to get rid of that which its own best friends were so eagerly and so frankly throwing over. Down, down, down to one hundred and twenty, to one hundred and ten, to one hundred and five——

Zabriskie telephoned victory to his nominal commander, lifting him, weak and trembling, from the depths into which he had fallen, to an at least upright position upon his embossed leather throne. Then Zabriskie began stealthily to cover his appallingly long line of "shorts" by making purchases at the lowest obtainable prices—one hundred and four—one hundred and three—one hundred and one—ninety-nine—one hundred and six!

The price rebounded so rapidly and so high that Zabriskie was forced to stop his retreat. Dumont, noting the celerity with which the enemy were escaping under cover of the demoralization, had decided no longer to delay the move for which he had saved himself. He had suddenly exploded under the falling price mine after mine of buying orders that blew it skyward. Zabriskie's retreat was cut off.

But before he had time to reason out this savage renewal of the assault by that mysterious foe whom he thought he had routed, he saw a new and more dreadful peril. Brackett, his firm's secret broker, rushed to him and, to make himself heard through the hurly-burly, shouted into his ear:

"Look what's doing in Woolens!"

Dumont had ordered a general assault upon his enemies, front, rear and both flanks. His forces were now attacking not only through Great Lakes but also through Woolens. Two apparently opposing sets of his brokers were trading in Woolens, were hammering the price down, down, a point, an eighth, a half, a quarter, at a time. The sweat burst out all over Zabriskie's body and his eyes rolled wildly. He was caught among four fires:

To continue to sell Great Lakes in face of its rising price—that was ruin. To cease to sell it and so let its price go up to where he could not buy when settlement time came—that was ruin. To sell Woolens, to help batter down its price, to shrink the value of his enormous investment in it—ruin again. To buy Woolens in order to hold up its price, to do it when he would need all obtainable cash to extricate him from the Great Lakes entanglement—ruin, certain ruin.

His judgment was gone; his brute instinct of fighting was dominant; he began to strike out wildly, his blows falling either nowhere or upon himself.

At the Woolens post he was buying in the effort to sustain its price, buying stock that might be worthless when he got it—and that he might not be able to pay for. At the Great Lakes post he was selling in the effort to force the price down, selling more and more of a stock he did not have and—— At last the thought flashed into his befuddled brain: "There may be a corner in Great Lakes. What if there were no stock to be had?"

He struck his hands against the sides of his head. "Trapped!" he groaned, then bellowed in Brackett's ear. "Sell Woolens—do the best you can to keep the price up, but sell at any price! We must have money—all we can get! And tell Farley"—Farley was Brackett's partner—"to buy Great Lakes—buy all he can get—at any price. Somebody's trying to corner us!"

He felt—with an instinct he could not question—that there was indeed a corner in Great Lakes, that he and his house and their associates were caught. Caught with promises to deliver thousands upon thousands of shares of Great Lakes, when Great Lakes could be had only of the mysterious cornerer, and at whatever price he might choose to ask!

"If we've got to go down," he said to himself, "I'll see that it's a tremendous smash anyhow, and that we ain't alone in it." For he had in him the stuff that makes a man lead a forlorn hope with a certain joy in the very hopelessness of it.

The scene on the day of Dumont's downfall was a calm in comparison with the scene which Dumont, sitting alone among the piled-up coils of ticker-tape, was reconstructing from its, to him, vivid second-by-second sketchings.

The mysterious force which had produced a succession of earthquakes moved horribly on, still in mystery impenetrable, to produce a cataclysm. In the midst of the chaos two vast whirlpools formed—one where Great Lakes sucked down men and fortunes, the other where Woolens drew some down to destruction, flung others up to wealth. Then Rumor, released by Tavistock when Dumont saw that the crisis had arrived, ran hot foot through the Exchange, screaming into the ears of the brokers, shrieking through the telephones, howling over the telegraph wires, "A corner! A corner! Great Lakes is cornered!" Thousands besides the Fanning-Smith coterie had been gambling in Great Lakes, had sold shares they did not have. And now all knew that to get them they must go to the unknown, but doubtless merciless, master-gambler—unless they could save themselves by instantly buying elsewhere before the steel jaws of the corner closed and clinched.

Reason fled, and self-control. The veneer of civilization was torn away to the last shred; and men, turned brute again, gave themselves up to the elemental passions of the brute.

In the quiet, beautiful room in upper Fifth Avenue was Dumont in his wine-colored wadded silk dressing-gown and white silk pajamas. The floor near his lounge was littered with the snake-like coils of ticker-tape. They rose almost to his knees as he sat and through telephone and ticker drank in the massacre of his making, glutted himself with the joy of the vengeance he was taking—on his enemies, on his false or feeble friends, on the fickle public that had trampled and spat upon him. His wet hair was hanging in strings upon his forehead. His face was flushed and his green-gray eyes gleamed like a mad dog's. At intervals a jeer or a grunt of gratified appetite ripped from his mouth or nose. Like a great lean spider he lay hid in the center of that vast net of electric wires, watching his prey writhe helpless. Pauline, made uneasy by his long isolation, opened his door and looked—glanced, rather. As she closed it, in haste to shut from view that spectacle of a hungry monster at its banquet of living flesh, Culver saw her face. Such an expression an angel might have, did it chance to glance down from the battlements of heaven and, before it could turn away, catch a glimpse of some orgy in hell.

But Dumont did not hear the door open and close. He was at the climax of his feast.

Upon his two maelstroms, sucking in the wreckage from a dozen other explosions as well as from those he had directly caused, he could see as well as if he were among the fascinated, horrified spectators in the galleries of the Exchange, the mangled flotsam whirling and descending and ascending. The entire stock list, the entire speculating public of the country was involved. And expression of the emotions everywhere was by telegraph and telephone concentrated in the one hall, upon the faces and bodies of those few hundred brokers. All the passions which love of wealth and dread of want breed in the human animal were there finding vent—all degrees and shades and modes of greed, of hate, of fear, of despair. It was like a shipwreck where the whole fleet is flung upon the reefs, and the sailors, drunk and insane, struggle with death each in his own awful way. It was like the rout where frenzied victors ride after and among frenzied vanquished to shoot and stab and saber.

And while this battle, precipitated by the passions of a few "captains of industry," raged in Wall Street and filled the nation with the clamor of ruined or triumphant gamblers, ten-score thousand toilers in the two great enterprises directly involved toiled tranquilly on—herding sheep and shearing them, weaving cloths and dyeing them, driving engines, handling freight, conducting trains, usefully busy, adding to the sum of human happiness, subtracting from the sum of human misery.

At three o'clock Dumont sank back among his cushions and pillows. His child, his other self, his Woolens Monopoly, was again his own; his enemies were under his heel, as much so as those heaps and coils of ticker-tape he had been churning in his excitement. "I'm dead tired," he muttered, his face ghastly, his body relaxed in utter exhaustion.

He closed his eyes. "I must sleep—I've earned it. To-morrow"—a smile flitted round his mouth—"I'll hang their hides where every coyote and vulture can see."

Toward four o'clock in came Doctor Sackett and Culver. The room was flooded with light—the infinite light of the late-spring afternoon reflected on the white enamel and white brocade of walls and furniture. On the floor in the heaps and coils of ticker-tape lay Dumont.

In his struggles the tape had wound round and round his legs, his arms, his neck. It lay in a curling, coiling mat, like a serpent's head, upon his throat, where his hands clutched the collar of his pajamas.

Sackett knelt beside him, listening at his chest, feeling for his pulse in vain. And Culver stood by, staring stupidly at the now worthless instrument of his ambition for wealth and power.



XXVIII.

AFTER THE LONG WINTER.

Within two hours Langdon, in full control, had arranged with Tavistock to make the imperiled victory secure. Thus, not until the next day but one did it come out that the cataclysm had been caused by a man ruined and broken and with his back against death's door to hold it shut; that Dumont himself had turned the triumphing host of his enemies into a flying mob, in its panic flinging away its own possessions as well as its booty.

Perhaps the truth never would have been known, perhaps Langdon would have bribed Tavistock to silence and would have posed as the conquering genius, had he found out a day earlier how Dumont had put himself in funds. As it was, this discovery did not come too late for him to seize the opportunity that was his through Dumont's secret methods, Pauline's indifference to wealth and his own unchecked authority. He has got many an hour of—strictly private—mental gymnastics out of the moral problem he saw, in his keeping for himself and Gladys the spoils he gathered up. He is inclined to think he was intelligent rather than right; but, knowing his weakness for self-criticism, he never gives a positive verdict against himself. That, however, is unimportant, as he is not the man to permit conscience to influence conduct in grave matters.

He feels that, in any case, he did not despoil Pauline or Gardiner. For, after he had told her what Dumont did—and to protect himself he hastened to tell it—she said: "Whatever there may be, it's all for Gardiner. I waive my own rights, if I have any. But you must give me your word of honor that you won't let anything tainted pass to him." Langdon, judging with the delicacy of a man of honor put on honor, was able to find little such wealth.

He gives himself most of the credit for Gardiner's turning out so well—"Inherited riches are a hopeless handicap," he often says to Gladys when they are talking over the future of their children.

Pauline—

The first six months of her new life, of her resumed life, she spent in Europe with her father and mother and Gardiner. Late in the fall they were back at Saint X, at the old house in Jefferson Street. In the following June came Scarborough. She was in the garden, was waiting for him, was tying up a tall rose, whose splendid, haughty head had bent under the night's rain.

He was quite near her when she heard his step and turned. He stood, looked at her—the look she had seen that last afternoon at Battle Field. He came slowly up and took both her hands.

"After all the waiting and longing and hoping," he said, "at last—you! I can't put it into words—except to say—just—Pauline!"

She drew a long breath; her gaze met his. And in her eyes he saw a flame that had never shone clearly there before—the fire of her own real self, free and proud. "Once you told me about your father and mother—how he cared—cared always."

"I remember," he answered.

"Well—I—I," said Pauline, "I care as SHE must have cared when she gave him herself—and YOU."

THE END