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
b