The action of Thomas Mavick in giving up the fight was as unexpected in New York as it was in Newport.  It was a shock even to those familiar with the Street.  It was known that he was in trouble, but he had been in trouble before.  It was known that there had been sacrifices, efforts at extension, efforts at compromise, but the general public fancied that the Mavick fortune had a core too solid to be washed away by any storm.  Only a very few people knew—­such old hands as Uncle Jerry Hollowell, and such inquisitive bandits as Murad Ault—­that the house of Mavick was a house of cards, and that it might go down when the belief was destroyed that it was of granite.

The failure was not an ordinary sensation, and, according to the excellent practices and differing humors of the daily newspapers, it was made the most of, until the time came for the heavy weeklies to handle it in its moral aspects as an illustration of modern civilization.  On the first morning there was substantial unanimity in assuming the totality of the disaster, and the most ingenious artists in headlines vied with each other in startling effects:  “Crash in Wall Street.”  “Mavick Runs Up the White Flag.”  “King of Wall Street Called Down.”  “Ault Takes the Pot.”  “Dangerous to Dukes.”  “Mavick Bankrupt.”  “The House of Mavick a Ruin.”  “Dukes and Drakes.”  “The Sea Goes Over Him.”

This, however, was only the beginning.  The sensation must be prolonged.  The next day there were attenuating circumstances.

It might be only a temporary embarrassment.  The assets were vastly greater than the liabilities.  There was talk in financial circles of an adjustment.  With time the house could go on.  The next day it was made a reproach to the house that such deceptive hopes were put upon the public.  Journalistic enterprise had discovered that the extent of the liabilities had been concealed.  This attempt to deceive the public, these defenders of the public interest would expose.  The next day the wind blew from another direction.  The alarmists were rebuked.  The creditors were disposed to be lenient.  Doubtful securities were likely to realize more than was expected.  The assignees were sharply scored for not taking the newspapers into their confidence.

And so for ten days the failure went on in the newspapers, backward and forward, now hopeless, now relieved, now sunk in endless complications, and fallen into the hands of the lawyers who could be trusted with the most equitable distribution of the property involved, until the reading public were glad to turn, with the same eager zest, to the case of the actress who was found dead in a hotel in Jersey City.  She was attended only by her pet poodle, in whose collar was embedded a jewel of great price.  This jewel was traced to a New York establishment, whence it had disappeared under circumstances that pointed to the criminality of a scion of a well-known family—­an exposure which would shake society to its foundations.