The faculty to see a situation
whole must be his, to focus instantly the lay of the land, the enemy's
plans and strength, his own resources, the strategic possibilities of
his position; and instantly, if necessity demands it, he must be ready
with a new plan of campaign fitted to the first emergency. The more
rapidly his mind works the safer are the interests he is guarding. But
if he has not this capacity, he can never be a market manipulator.

For a moment I could not but pause to admire the devilish ingenuity of
the trap that had been sprung on us. The state of affairs that Addicks
revealed was about the worst imaginable. I had been on this particular
war-path so long that my mind instantly grasped the possibilities of
destruction that lay in this new attack. I saw November 1st--no money to
pay Rogers; everything forfeited; Addicks in a nauseating scandal; and
all those friends of mine who had put their funds into Bay State because
of their confidence in my ability to win out slaughtered. No, it should
not be if I could prevent it. Other storms we had met and weathered, why
not this? Even if it were a tornado, we would "ride her out." Perhaps we
should not be afloat when the rollers subsided, but at least we should
be at rest--on the bottom. I turned to Addicks, who, heaped up on his
lounge, was staring into vacancy.

"Brace up, Addicks," I said. "We are not knocked out yet. At least let
us find out what has struck us."

I was some moments in arousing him from his condition of despair, but
finally he pulled himself together, and piece by piece we went over
the situation. I had to agree with him that he was in an
end-to-end-center-pull trap. The cunning machinery he had set up to
meet just such an emergency, now that it was in hostile hands, was
rather a source of danger than of safety. There was but one way out of
the complication--we must undo this receivership and release our
properties and funds before November 1st. Addicks, when he got his
thinking loom running, declared the receivership was all a "Standard
Oil" plot to ruin him. I felt sure it was an independent operation,
but there was no time for controversy.

The telephone bell rang again. It was Fred Keller, talking from Addicks'
house. We soon had all the details of the raid. This is what had
happened. Dwight Braman, a former Boston broker, now a New York
capitalist and promoter, had suddenly appeared in Wilmington, Del.,
accompanied by Roger Foster, a