But for one optimist there were scores of pessimists and disquiet mounted like a fever.  The floor was nervous.

Across from the president’s gallery is another balcony like it, for in all but its processes of business this is a temple of justly balanced symmetry and proportion.

There sits an operator, controlling an electric switchboard provided with one button for each floor member.  When one of these buttons is pressed a flap swings down on the great wall blackboards and a white number flashes into sight.  It stands for a while, then twinkles again into blackness, but in the meantime it has summoned its man to telephone communication with his office.  In periods of stress these imperative signals register the rise and fall of anxiety’s barometer.

Now the quiet boards began to break into a sudden epidemic of appearing and vanishing numerals and men hurried to the booths where wires linked the central floor with outlying offices.  Each line buzzed to the same portent.

“Rumor credits Burton with plans for a bear raid.  Watch him.  Send word of his first move.  The time is ripe for an avalanche.”

Suddenly around one post voices rose.  They went from calm to shouts, from shouts to yells, then broke in a crescendo of turmoil.  Collars came loose and voices grew hoarse.  The restrained anxiety had swept into an open furore of fear.  It looked as if the bottom were dropping out of Coal Tar Products.  At once a dozen operators raced for their telephones.  Hamilton Burton had struck, and his first blow was on Coal Tars!  That was the whispered word that ran like wild fire.

While this turbulence was going forward, Hamilton Burton sat in his twentieth-floor office, gazing fixedly up at a portrait of Napoleon.  About the walls were several other portraits of the emperor.  Busts in bronze and marble gazed down with those same inscrutable eyes.  One important likeness was missing.  It was that which shows the face of a man broken in defeat—­the wistful St. Helena eyes that seem always brooding out over the ruins of mighty dreams.

Carl Bristoll opened the door, and the musing face turned with the impatient frown of a broken revery.

“Mr. Malone’s secretary on the ’phone,” announced the young man.  “Mr. Malone wants to know if you can come at once to his office.”

“Tell Mr. Malone”—­Burton snapped his words out irritably—­“that if he wants to find me I will be here in my own office for just thirty minutes.”

The employee hesitated in momentary embarrassment, then he added: 

“Of course, you know that I mean J.J.  Malone himself, sir?”

Burton laughed.  “In the world of finance, Carl, I didn’t know there was more than one Malone.”

Also, reflected the secretary as he closed the door behind him, there was in the world of finance only one who would care to ignore a summons from that source.