r
proceeded, "This is Mr. Y----. Listen closely to what I am going to say.
I want you to get out of the street railway business in New York or
something is going to happen to you. I am giving you a reasonable
warning. Take it." Then the phone clicked most savagely and ominously
and superiorly at the other end.

"I knew at the time," went on X----, addressing the grand jury, "that I
was really listening to the man who was most powerful in such affairs in
New York and elsewhere and that he meant what he said. At the same time
I was in no position to get out without closing up the one deal which
stood to net me two million dollars clear if I closed it. At the same
time I wanted to enter this field and didn't see why I shouldn't. If I
didn't it spelled not ruin by any means but a considerable loss, a very
great loss, to me, in more ways than one. Oddly enough, just at this
time I was being pressed by those with whom I was associated to wind up
this particular venture and turn my attention to other things. I have
often wondered, in the light of their subsequent actions, why they
should have become so pressing just at this time. At the same time,
perhaps I was a little vain and self-sufficient. I had once got the
better of some agents of another great financier in a Western Power
deal, and I felt that I could put this thing through too. Hence I
refused to heed the warning. However, I found that all those who were
previously interested to buy or at least develop the property were now
suddenly grown cold, and a little later when, having entered on several
other matters, I needed considerable cash, the State banking department
descended on me and, crying fraud and insolvency, closed all my banks.

"You know how it is when they do this to you. Cry 'Fire!' and you can
nearly wreck a perfectly good theater building. Depositors withdraw,
securities tumble, investigation and legal expenses begin, your
financial associates get frightened or ashamed and desert you. Nothing
is so squeamish or so retiring and nervous as money. Time will show that
I was not insolvent at the time. The books will show a few technically
illegal things, but so would the books or the affairs of any great bank,
especially at this time, if quickly examined. I was doing no more than
all were doing, but they wanted to get me out--and they did."

Regardless of proceedings of various kinds--legal, technical and the
like--X---- was finally sent to the penitentiary,