going to be
an explosion."

CHAPTER XIV

As the police withdrew from in front of Ward & Co.'s office, the crowd
returned. It flowed into the corridor of the office building, a sullen,
silent mob, full of repressed anger that required only the slightest
spark to transform it into a roaring flame. They massed about the locked
door, gazing at the lettered panel as at a corpse.

Out in the street newsboys were crying the failure of the banking house.
They did a brisk business. Mourners everywhere are feverishly anxious to
read of the deceased, his achievements and his failure and his demise.
And these mourners, gathered at the funeral of an institution that held
for them so vital an interest, devoured every detail of its expired
life.

Inside the office, the clerks worked with their customary deliberation,
tallying the accounts for the receiver. No tentative statement of assets
and liability had been announced by the court's representative. He could
have prepared a fairly accurate statement and posted it on the door. But
he was a charitable man and wished to spare the depositors further
anguish. Give them time to recover from the first great shock before
inflicting a greater one, he argued. So he postponed the evil moment
when he must reveal the wretched condition of the institution.

Each time the door opened and a messenger left, the crowd set on him
beseeching information of the financial condition of the private bank.
But the messengers had nothing to reveal.

As invariably happens with crowds, the dullness and depression wears off
after a while, exhausts itself, so to speak, and is succeeded gradually
by a blind resentment directed against the first object which offers
itself as a handy target. A sort of mob intoxication sets in, as
unreasoning as it frequently is destructive.

And so the crowd now began to hurl maledictions on the innocent head of
the receiver. As if he had brought on the catastrophe!

"Why don't he tell us where we stand?" demanded one obstreperous
creditor. "Smash in the door! Let's find out what's become of our
money!"

"He's in cohoots with thieves!" exclaimed another. "They're all a lot of
crooks! What one has left behind the other'll take."

Britz and Greig, mingling with the crowd, neither encouraged nor
discouraged the destructive fury which they saw gathering. They knew the
psychology of mobs. It is brave with collective courage, but timorous,
hesitant, individually. In t