nt to prove that he had any intention
of robbing anybody--that is, directly. In the usual Wall Street high
finance style he was robbing Peter to pay Paul, that is, he was using
the monies of one corporation which he controlled to bolster up any of
the others which he controlled, and was "washing one hand with the
other," a proceeding so common in finance that to really radically and
truly oppose it, or do away with it, would mean to bring down the whole
fabric of finance in one grand crash.

Be that as it may. In swift succession there now followed the so-called
"legal" seizure and confiscation of all his properties. In the first
place, by alienists representing the District Attorney and the State
banking department, he was declared sane and placed on trial for
embezzlement. Secondly, his sister's plea that his property be put into
her hands as trustee or administrator was thrown out of court and she
herself arrested and confined for perjury on the ground that she had
perjured herself in swearing that she was his next of kin when in
reality his real parents, or so they swore, were alive and in America.
Next, his banks, trust companies and various concerns, including his
great country estate, were swiftly thrown into the hands of receivers
(what an appropriate name!) and wound up "for the benefit of creditors."
All the while X---- was in prison, protesting that he was really not
guilty, that he was solvent, or had been until he was attacked by the
State bank examiner or the department back of him, and that he was the
victim of a cold-blooded conspiracy which was using the State banking
department and other means to drive him out of financial life, and that
solely because of his desire to grow and because by chance he had been
impinging upon one of the choicest and most closely guarded fields of
the ultra-rich of Wall Street--the street railway area in New York and
Brooklyn.

One day, so he publicly swore to the grand jury, by which he was being
examined, as he was sitting in his great offices, in one of the great
sky-scrapers of New York, which occupied an entire floor and commanded
vast panoramas in every direction (another evidence of the man's insane
"delusion of grandeur," I presume), he was called to answer the
telephone. One Mr. Y----, so his assistant said, one of the eminent
financiers of Wall Street and America, was on the wire. Without any
preliminary and merely asking was this Mr. X---- on the wire, the latte