n nowhere; though it is to be suspected
that it was first whispered over the telephone--together with an urgent
selling order--by some employee in the cable service. In five minutes
the dull noise of the curbstone market in Broad Street had leaped to a
high note of frantic interrogation. From within the hive of the Exchange
itself could be heard a droning hubbub of fear and men rushed hatless in
and out. Was it true? asked every man; and every man replied, with
trembling lips, that it was a lie put out by some unscrupulous "short"
interest seeking to cover itself. In another quarter of an hour news
came of a sudden and ruinous collapse of "Yankees" in London at the
close of the Stock Exchange day. It was enough. New York had still four
hours' trading in front of her. The strategy of pointing to Manderson as
the savior and warden of the market had recoiled upon its authors with
annihilating force, and Jeffrey, his ear at his private telephone,
listened to the tale of disaster with a set jaw. The new Napoleon had
lost his Marengo. He saw the whole financial landscape sliding and
falling into chaos before him. In half an hour the news of the finding
of Manderson's body, with the inevitable rumor that it was suicide, was
printing in a dozen newspaper offices; but before a copy reached Wall
Street the tornado of the panic was in full fury, and Howard B. Jeffrey
and his collaborators were whirled away like leaves before its breath.

* * * * *

All this sprang out of nothing.

Nothing in the texture of the general life had changed. The corn had not
ceased to ripen in the sun. The rivers bore their barges and gave power
to a myriad engines. The flocks fattened on the pastures, the herds were
unnumbered. Men labored everywhere in the various servitudes to which
they were born, and chafed not more than usual in their bonds. Bellona
tossed and murmured as ever, yet still slept her uneasy sleep. To all
mankind save a million or two of half-crazed gamblers, blind to all
reality, the death of Manderson meant nothing; the life and work of the
world went on. Weeks before he died strong hands had been in control of
every wire in the huge network of commerce and industry that he had
supervised. Before his corpse was buried his countrymen had made a
strange discovery: that the existence of the potent engine of monopoly
that went by the name of Sigsbee Manderson had not been a condition of
even material pro