As the two girls dressed hurriedly for the theater, Adored confessed: 

“Golly!  I’m glad I stayed.  He’s not bright; he’s perfectly silly about some things, and yet he’s the most interesting talker I ever heard.  And—­can’t he play a piano?”

CHAPTER XVII

Hannibal Wharton arrived in New York at five o’clock and went directly to Merkle’s bank.  At eight o’clock Jarvis Hammon died.  During the afternoon and evening other financiers, summoned hurriedly from New England shores and Adirondack camps, were busied in preparations for the struggle they expected on the morrow.  During the closing hours of the market prices had slumped to an alarming degree; a terrific raid on metal stocks had begun, and conditions were ripe for a panic.

Hammon had bulked large in the steel world, and his position in circles of high finance had become prominent; but alive he could never have worked one-half the havoc caused by his sudden death.  That persistent rumor of suicide argued, in the public mind, the existence of serious money troubles, and gave significance to the rumor that for some time past had disturbed the Street.  Hammon’s enemies summoned their forces for a crushing assault.

In this emergency Bob’s father found himself the real head of those vast enterprises in which he had been an associate, and until a late hour that night he was forced to remain in consultation with men who came and went with consternation written upon their faces.

The amazing transformation which followed the birth of the giant Steel Trust had raised many men from well-to-do obscurity into prominence and undreamed-of wealth.  Since then the older members of the original clique had withdrawn one by one from active affairs, and of the younger men only Wharton and Hammon had remained.  Equally these two had figured in what was perhaps the most remarkable chapter of American financial history.  Both had been vigorous, self-made, practical men.  But the outcome had affected them quite differently.

Riches had turned Jarvis Hammon’s mind into new channels; they had opened strange pathways and projected him into a life foreign to his early teachings.  His duties had kept him in New York, while Wharton’s had held him in his old home.  Hammon had become a great financier; Wharton had remained the practical operating expert, and, owing to the exactions of his position, he had become linked more closely than ever to business detail.  At the same time he had become more and more unapproachable.  Unlimited power had forced him into the peculiar isolation of a chief executive; he had grown hard, suspicious, arbitrary.  Even to his son he had been for years a remote being.

It was not until the last conference had broken up, not until the last forces had been disposed for the coming battle, that he spoke to Merkle of Bob’s marriage.  Merkle told him what he knew, and the old man listened silently.  Then he drove to the Elegancia.