at his sanitarium in Berlin might aid in restoring her mind. They returned
the following August. The trip had been fruitless. It was plain to me that
Bob was the same hopelessly desperate man as when he left, more hopeless,
more desperate if anything than when he warned me of his determination.

When he left for Europe "the Street" breathed more freely, and as time
went by and there was no sign of his confidence-disturbing influence in
the market, the "System" began to bring out its deferred deals. Times were
ripe for setting up the most wildly inflated stock lamb-shearing traps. It
had been advertised throughout the world that Tom Reinhart, now a
two-hundred-time millionaire, was to consolidate his and many other
enterprises into one gigantic trust with twelve billions of capital. His
Union and Southern Pacific Railroads, his coal and Southern lines,
together with his steamship company and lead, iron, and copper mines, were
to be merged with the steel, traction, gas, and other enterprises he owned
jointly with "Standard Oil." Some of the railroads owned by Rockefeller
and his pals, in which Reinhart had no part, were to go in too, and with
these was to unite that mother hog of them all, "Standard Oil" itself. The
trust was to be an enormous holding company, the like of which had until
then not even been dreamed of by the most daring stock manipulators. The
"System's" banks, as well as trust and insurance companies throughout the
country, had for a long time been getting into shape by concentrating the
money of the country for this monster trust. It was newspaper and news
bureau gossip that Reinhart and his crowd had bought millions of shares of
the different stocks involved in the deal, and it was common knowledge
that upon its successful completion Reinhart's fortune would be in the
neighbourhood of a billion. On October 1st the certificate of the
Anti-People's Trust, $12,000,000,000 capital, 120,000,000 shares, were
listed upon the New York, London, and Boston Stock Exchanges, and the
German and French Bourses, and trading in them started off fast and
furious at 106. The claim that one billion of the twelve billions capital
had been set aside to be used in protecting and manipulating the stock in
the market, had been so widely advertised that even the most daring
plunger did not think of selling it short.

It was evident to all in the stock-gambling world that this was to be the
"System's" grand coup, that at its com