That evening Wickersham was closeted for some time with a man who had of late come into especial notice as a strong and merciless financier—­Mr. Kestrel.

Mr. Kestrel received him at first with a coldness which might have repelled a less determined man.  He had no delusions about Wickersham; but Wickersham knew this, and unfolded to him, with plausible frankness, a scheme which had much reason in it.  He had at the same time played on the older man’s foibles with great astuteness, and had awakened one or two of his dormant animosities.  He knew that Mr. Kestrel had had a strong feeling against Norman for several years.

“You are one of the few men who do not have to fall down and worship the name of Wentworth,” he said.

“Well, I rather think not,” said Mr. Kestrel, with a glint in his eyes, as he recalled Norman Wentworth’s scorn of him at the board-meeting years before, when Norman had defended Keith against him.

“—­Or this new man, Keith, who is undertaking to teach New York finance?”

Mr. Kestrel gave a hard little laugh, which was more like a cough than an expression of mirth, but which meant that he was amused.

“Well, neither do I,” said Wickersham.  “To tell you frankly, I hate them both, though there is money, and big money, in this, as you can see for yourself from what I have said.  This is my real reason for wanting you in it.  If you jump in and hammer down those things, you will clean them out.  I have the old patents to all the lands that Keith sold those people.  They antedate the titles under which Rawson claims.  If you can break up the deal now, we will go in and recover the lands from Rawson.  Wentworth is so deep in that he’ll never pull through, and his friend Keith has staked everything on this one toss.”

Old Kestrel’s parchment face was inscrutable as he gazed at Wickersham and declared that he did not know about that.  He did not believe in having animosities in business matters, as it marred one’s judgment.  But Wickersham knew enough to be sure that the seed he had planted would bear fruit, and that Kestrel would stake something on the chance.

In this he was not deceived.  The next day Mr. Kestrel acceded to his plan.

For some days after that there appeared in a certain paper a series of attacks on various lines of property holdings, that was characterized by other papers as a “strong bearish movement.”  The same paper contained a vicious article about the attempt to unload worthless coal-lands on gullible Englishmen.  Meantime Wickersham, foreseeing failure, acted independently.

The attack might not have amounted to a great deal but for one of those untimely accidents that sometimes overthrow all calculations.  One of the keenest and oldest financiers in the city suddenly dropped dead, and a stampede started on the Stock Exchange.  It was stayed in a little while, but meantime a number of men had been hard hit, and among these was Norman Wentworth.  The papers next day announced the names of those who had suffered, and much space was given in one of them to the decline of the old firm of Wentworth & Son, whose history was almost contemporary with that of New York.