day should demonstrate that heretofore he had been only a gentle and playful cub.  Cash—­cash, cash!  Such had been his watchword and he had stamped on the world of finance a belief that his command of gold was endless.  Even should he reach the end of his resources with his task unfinished, he knew that his tremendous nerve was in itself unlimited backing.  The nature of the trading on the floor precluded any discovery, during the length of the session, of a depleted treasury—­and left open the path for onward charges.  But before his treasury was depleted the whole structure would lie in ruins.

He glanced out of his window and smiled.  It was the sort of a day which men in police circles describe as “suicide weather.”  Coroners will tell you that on such days their calls are most numerous and history will tell you that on such days the greatest financial disasters of the world have visited stock-exchanges and bourses.  Burton’s jaws were set and his eyes ablaze with a fiery tenseness which was hardly sane.  His loins were girded and to one focal object was every power dedicated.  He was going to mete out death and destruction.  He would grapple with enemies who had taught him the art of death and destruction.  As he ended his instructions to his brokers he looked at his watch; it was nine-forty-five.  “Cut loose!” he almost shouted.  “Railway Generals closed at 175.  By noon I want them down to 50.  When Malone’s gang begin pegging the market, break their pegs.  Don’t spare Coal and Ore.  Keep them too busy with self-preservation to let them think of rescuing others.  Give them slaughter—­and unshirted hell!”

* * * * *

The light that rains down from the ceiling of the Stock-Exchange is a softened, benevolent light, even when the outer skies are lowering.  The gentlemen inside play their game in a well-appointed gambling parlor.

It would not be fitting that they should seem pikers.  Above them stretches a ceiling of soft color scheme in delicate pink and blue and from this canopy sixty-two ceiling lights shed down a tempered radiance from globes suggestive of inverted golden blossoms.  The great bronze-framed windows, too, at the east and west make a greater part of the wall area as receptive of brightness as does a studio skylight—­for the world’s cleverest financiers must be cheered by brightness and protected against gloom.

Today the great interior cube of space needed all the light that could flood the area between its marble walls—­for despite the sixty-two inverted blossoms it was to see black hours.

Of that there was of course no suspicion at first.

The assembled brokers chatted carelessly, and between them sedately passed the floor employees in cadet gray, and boys carrying green watering-pots with which, when many feet had pounded the boards into dust, they would sprinkle this hot-house of Finance, as they might have sprinkled a bed of thirsty geraniums.