Montague spent another hour wandering about with Bates, listening to his opinion of the newspapers of the Metropolis.  Then, utterly exhausted, he went home; but not to sleep.  He sat in a chair for an hour or two, his mind besieged by images of ruin and destruction.  At last he lay down, but he had not closed his eyes when daylight began to stream into the room.

At eight o’clock he was up again and at the telephone.  He called up Lucy’s apartment house.

“I want to speak to Mrs. Taylor,” he said.

“She is not in,” was the reply.

“Will you ring up the apartment?” asked Montague.  “I will speak to the maid.”

“This is Mr. Montague,” he said, when he heard the woman’s voice.  “Where is Mrs. Taylor?”

“She has not come back, sir,” was the reply.

Montague had some work before him that day which could not be put off.  Accordingly he bathed and shaved, and had some coffee in his room, and then set out for his office.  Even at that early hour there were crowds in the financial district, and another day’s crop of rumours had begun to spring.  He heard nothing about the Gotham Trust Company; but when he left court at lunch time, the newsboys on the street were shouting the announcement of the action of the bank directors.  Lucy had failed in her errand, then; the blow had fallen!

There was almost a panic on the Exchange that day, and the terror and anxiety upon the faces of the people who thronged the financial district were painful to see.  But the courts did not suspend, even on account of the Gotham Trust; and Montague had an important case to argue.  He came out on the street late in the afternoon, and though it was after banking hours, he saw crowds in front of a couple of the big trust companies, and he read in the papers that a run upon the Gotham Trust had begun.

At his office he found a telegram from his brother Oliver, who was still in the Adirondacks:  “Money in Trust Company of the Republic.  Notify me of the slightest sign of trouble.”

He replied that there was none; and, as he rode up in the subway, he thought the problem over, and made up his own mind.  He had a trifle over sixty thousand dollars in Prentice’s institution—­more than half of all he owned.  He had Prentice’s word for it that the Company was in a sound condition, and he believed it.  He made up his mind that he would not be one of those to be stampeded, whatever might happen.

He dined quietly at home with his mother; then he took his way up town again to Lucy’s apartment; for he was haunted by the thought of her, and could not rest.  He had read in the late evening papers that Stanley Ryder had resigned from the Gotham Trust Company.

“Is Mrs. Taylor in?” he asked, and gave his name.

“Mrs. Taylor says will you please to wait, sir,” was the reply.  And Montague sat down in the reception-room.  A couple of minutes later, the hall-boy brought him a note.