e!

In ten minutes stocks tumbled five points and the doctor's last dollar
was swept into space while the whole market plunged down, down, down
into the abyss of ruin and despair.

Men no longer tried to conceal their emotion. Some wept, some cursed,
some laughed; but the most pitiful sight of all was the man who could
do neither, the man with white lips and the strange hunted expression
in his eyes who was looking Death in the face for the first time.

A full quarter of an hour of the panic had spent itself before the
dazed crowds in the broker's offices read the startling news that
caused the big break. The ticker shrieked its message above the storm's
din like a little laughing demon:

"_The Van Dam Trust Company Has Closed Its Doors and Asked for
the Appointment of a Receiver!_"

"Impossible!"

"A fake!"

"Hell--it's a joke!"

From all who read it at first came these muttered exclamations. It was
beyond belief.

The "Judge" was particularly emphatic.

"Dot's a lie, chentlemens! Take my vord for it! Dey haf ninety millions
on deposit."

It took the second bulletin with particulars to convince them. Bivens
had not kept his solemn pledge. The great bank had stood the run for
two hours and closed its doors. And the work of destruction had just
begun.

At three o'clock, the doctor walked out of Dugro's office without a
dollar. It was utterly impossible for a man of his temperament to
realize it. The crash had come so suddenly, its work was so complete
and overwhelming it seemed a sort of foolish prank Fate had played on
him.

He walked home in a state of strange excitement. He had seen many
sights in his eventful life among the people of New York; never had he
passed through a scene so weird, so horrible, so haunting as the five
hours he had just spent among those men and women whom the struggle for
money had transformed into raving, jibbering, snivelling maniacs. It
was too absurd to be real. His own loss was appalling but at least he
thanked God he was not mad. He yet had two good hands and legs. He
could see, hear, smell, taste and feel, and he had a soul with five
more senses still turned upward toward the infinite and eternal by
which he could see the invisible and hear the inaudible. He felt almost
happy by contrast with the fools he had left shuffling over the floor
of Dugro's office.

His own sense of loss was merely a blur. The revelation he had just had
of the mad lust for money whi