A sense of delicate balance, which a gust might capsize, lay at the back of each mind, troubling it with vague forebodings.  Conditions were ripe for sudden hysteria.  Meanwhile well-groomed young men in pongee office coats and their equally sleek elders killed time with newspapers or resumed threads of conversation broken off at parting last night in drawing-room or theater-foyer.  The circular benches around the posts blossomed with magazines and a group formed about two brokers who gravely fought out chess problems on a pocket board.  Noise of a sort there was, for on the floor of the Exchange a “quiet” day is not as a quiet day elsewhere.  Unimportant bids and sales elicited sporadic shouts and clamor, but for the most part these demonstrations were tinged with laughter and badinage.  Seemingly the membership of Finance’s College of Cardinals was skylarking with indecorous levity.  Activity of a sort there was, too, as the litter of torn-up slips and memoranda on the floor attested.  Yet the silent goings and comings of the floor attendants in their cadet-gray livery were placid, and for that environment unhurried.  Around none of the posts surged the pandemonium of real activity and the two great blackboards that break the marble whiteness of the walls at the north and south twinkled no feverish signals from brokerage offices to floor operators.

But within two hours the smile of the spring sun died behind a cloud and a rumor insinuatingly whispered itself about the floor.  Magnet-wise it drew men from scattered points into focal groups and panic-wise it stamped a growing apprehension on faces that had been expressionless.

“Where did this ridiculous canard originate?” demanded a pompous and elderly gentleman as he tugged at his closely cropped mustache with a nervousness belying his scepticism.  His vis-a-vis shook a dubious head.

“All I get is that Hamilton Burton is out in war paint for a bear raid—­damn him!”

“And why not?” a third broker truculently demanded.  “He brought on the ‘little panic’ of two years ago and mopped up enough to double his fortune.  House after house went to the wall that day, but it was a glorious victory for him.  History repeats, gentlemen.”

“Where will he be most likely to hit?” The question came nervously from a thin man who chewed at a pencil.  About his inquiring eyes were the harassed little crow-feet of anxiety.

“When he smashes us, we’ll know all right.  There’s nothing ambiguous about his wallops.  I hoped the damned pirate was satisfied.  He ought to be.”

“Vat you mean, sadisfied?” A passing figure with a strong Teutonic countenance halted at the edge of the crowd and glared—­but his hatred was for Hamilton Burton.  “Sadisfied—­not till der American toller and der sovereign and der louis d’or vear his portrait vill he pe sadisfied.”

“There’s one comfort,” hazarded a lone optimist, “Hamilton Burton recognizes no conventions of finance; he heeds no laws.  He’s the most brilliant brigand in the Street—­and every hand is against him.  He’s always just one jump behind a billion dollars—­but also he may find himself just one jump ahead of the wolf.”