Harassed by reporters, driven on by the need for a show of action, he set out to raise the money, but the support he had hoped for failed him when it transpired that his bank’s assets consisted mainly of real estate at boom prices and stock in his various companies which had been inflated to the bursting-point.  Days passed, a week or more; then he was compelled to relinquish his option on the steamship line he had partly purchased, and to sacrifice all that had been paid in on the enterprise.  This, too, made a big story for the newspapers, for it punctured one of the most imposing corporations in the famous “Gordon System.”  It likewise threatened to involve the others in the general crash.  Hope Consolidated, indeed, still remained, and Gordon’s declaration that the value of its shares was more than sufficient to protect his bank met with some credence until, swift upon the heels of the other disasters, came an application for a receiver by the stock-holders, coupled with the promise of a rigorous investigation into his various financial manipulations.  Then at last Gordon acknowledged defeat.

Ruin had come swiftly; the diversity of his interests made his situation the more hopeless, for so cunningly had he interlocked one with another that to separate them promised to be an endless task.

He still kept up a fairly successful pretense of confidence, and publicly he promised to bring order out of chaos, but in secret he gave way to the blackest despair.  Heretofore, failure had never affected him deeply, for he had always managed to escape with advantage to his pocket and without serious damage to his prestige, but out of the present difficulty he could find no way.  His office force stopped work, frightened at his bearing; the bellboys of his hotel brought to the desk tales of such maniacal violence that he was requested to move.

At last the citizens of Cortez, who up to this time had been like putty in his fingers, realized their betrayal and turned against him.  Creditors attached the railway property, certain violent-tempered men prayed openly and earnestly to their gods for his return to Alaska in order that they might exact satisfaction in frontier fashion.  Eastern investors in Hope Consolidated appeared in Seattle:  there was talk of criminal procedure.

Bewildered as he was, half crazed with anxiety, Gordon knew that the avalanche had not only wrecked his fortunes, but was bearing him swiftly toward the penitentiary.  Its gates yawned to welcome him, and he felt a chilling terror such as he had never known.

One evening as Captain Johnny Brennan stood on the dock superintending the final loading of a cargo for the S. R. & N. he was accosted by a tall, nervous man with shifting eyes and twitching lips.  It was hard to recognize in this pitiable shaken creature the once resplendent Gordon, who had bent the whole northland to his ends.  Some tantalizing demons inside the man’s frame were jerking at his sinews.  Fear was in his roving glance; he stammered; he plucked at the little captain’s sleeve like a frightened woman.  The open-hearted Irishman was touched.