and for it. Now let me
tell you a few. You're going to stand for it and keep on standin's for
it. You're going to continue supplying me and taking my paper until
the pinch is over. How you're going to do it is your trouble, not
mine. You remember what I did to Klinkner and the Altamont Trust
Company? I know the inside of your business better than you do
yourself, and if you try to drop me I'll smash you. Even if I'd be
going to smash myself, I'd find a minute to turn on you and bring you
down with me. It's sink or swim for all of us, and I reckon you'll
find it to your interest to keep me on top the puddle."

Perhaps his bitterest fight was with the stockholders of the United
Water Company, for it was practically the whole of the gross earnings
of this company that he voted to lend to himself and used to bolster up
his wide battle front. Yet he never pushed his arbitrary rule too far.
Compelling sacrifice from the men whose fortunes were tied up with his,
nevertheless when any one of them was driven to the wall and was in
dire need, Daylight was there to help him back into the line. Only a
strong man could have saved so complicated a situation in such time of
stress, and Daylight was that man. He turned and twisted, schemed and
devised, bludgeoned and bullied the weaker ones, kept the faint-hearted
in the fight, and had no mercy on the deserter.

And in the end, when early summer was on, everything began to mend.
Came a day when Daylight did the unprecedented. He left the office an
hour earlier than usual, and for the reason that for the first time
since the panic there was not an item of work waiting to be done. He
dropped into Hegan's private office, before leaving, for a chat, and as
he stood up to go, he said:--

"Hegan, we're all hunkadory. We're pulling out of the financial
pawnshop in fine shape, and we'll get out without leaving one
unredeemed pledge behind. The worst is over, and the end is in sight.
Just a tight rein for a couple more weeks, just a bit of a pinch or a
flurry or so now and then, and we can let go and spit on our hands."

For once he varied his program. Instead of going directly to his
hotel, he started on a round of the bars and cafes, drinking a cocktail
here and a cocktail there, and two or three when he encountered men he
knew. It was after an hour or so of this that he dropped into the bar
of the Parthenon for one last drink before going to dinner. By this
time all his