urkett Ryder saw his opportunity. He
made secret overtures to the road, guaranteeing a vast amount of
business if he could get exceptionally low rates, and the illegal
compact was made. His competitors, undersold in the market, stood
no chance, and one by one they were crushed out of existence.
Ryder called these manoeuvres "business"; the world called them
brigandage. But the Colossus prospered and slowly built up the
foundations of the extraordinary fortune which is the talk and the
wonder of the world to-day. Master now of the oil situation, Ryder
succeeded in his ambition of organizing the Empire Trading
Company, the most powerful, the most secretive, and the most
wealthy business institution the commercial world has yet known.

Yet with all this success John Burkett Ryder was still not
content. He was now a rich man, richer by many millions that he
had dreamed he could ever be, but still he was unsatisfied. He
became money mad. He wanted to be richer still, to be the richest
man in the world, the richest man the world had ever known. And
the richer he got the stronger the idea grew upon him with all the
force of a morbid obsession. He thought of money by day, he dreamt
of it at night. No matter by what questionable device it was to be
procured, more gold and more must flow into his already
overflowing coffers. So each day, instead of spending the rest of
his years in peace, in the enjoyment of the wealth he had
accumulated, he went downtown like any twenty-dollar-a-week clerk
to the tall building in lower Broadway and, closeted with his
associates, toiled and plotted to make more money.

He acquired vast copper mines and secured control of this and
that railroad. He had invested heavily in the Southern and
Transcontinental road and was chairman of its board of directors.
Then he and his fellow-conspirators planned a great financial
coup. The millions were not coming in fast enough. They must make
a hundred millions at one stroke. They floated a great mining
company to which the public was invited to subscribe. The scheme
having the endorsement of the Empire Trading Company no one
suspected a snare, and such was the magic of John Ryder's name
that gold flowed in from every point of the compass. The stock
sold away above par the day it was issued. Men deemed themselves
fortunate if they were even granted an allotment. What matter if,
a few days later, the house of cards came tumbling down, and a
dozen suicides we