word stamped itself on everything as though a thousand little devils had
suddenly turned themselves into letters of the alphabet and were
skipping about in fours.

Valiant started as the other spoke at his elbow. He, too, had come to
the window and was looking down at the pavement. "How quickly some news
spreads!"

For the first time the young man noted that the street below was filling
with a desultory crowd. He distinguished a knot of Italian laborers
talking with excited gesticulations--a smudged plasterer, tools in
hand,--clerks, some hatless and with thin alpaca coats--all peering at
the voiceless front of the great building, and all, he imagined, with a
thriving fear in their faces. As he watched, a woman, coarsely dressed,
ran across the street, her handkerchief pressed to her eyes.

"The notice has gone up on the door," said the manager. "I sent word to
the police. Crowds are ugly sometimes."

Valiant drew a sudden sharp breath. The Corporation down in the mire,
with crowds at its doors ready to clamor for money entrusted to it, the
aggregate savings of widow and orphan, the piteous hoarded sums earned
by labor over which pinched sickly faces had burned the midnight oil!

The older man had turned back to the desk to draw a narrow typewritten
slip of paper from a pigeonhole. "Here," he said, "is a list of the
bonds of the subsidiary companies recorded in your name. These are
all, of course, engulfed in the larger failure. You have, however,
your private fortune. If you take my advice, by the way," he added
significantly, "you'll make sure of keeping that."

"What do you mean?" John Valiant faced him quickly.

The other laughed shortly. "'A word to the wise,'" he quoted. "It's
very good living abroad. There's a boat leaving to-morrow."

A dull red sprang into the younger face. "You mean--"

"Look at that crowd down there--you can hear them now. There'll be
a legislative investigation, of course. And the devil'll get the
hindmost." He struck the desk-top with his hand. "Have you ever seen
the bills for this furniture? Do you know what that rug under your feet
cost? Twelve thousand--it's an old Persian. What do you suppose the
papers will do to that? Do you think such things will seem amusing to
that rabble down there?" His hand swept toward the window. "It's been
going on for too many years, I tell you! And now some one'll pay the
piper. The lightning won't strike _me_--I'm not tall enough. _You're_
a v