f the great man had been served and he
was admitted to bail to await his coming trial, there was a feeble
rally in the market, but the rats quickly began to desert a sinking
ship. The president under indictment had ceased to be a power. There
was a wild scramble of his associates who were equally guilty to save
their own skins. The press, which at first denounced Stuart, now boldly
demanded the merciless prosecution of all the guilty. And they hailed
the brilliant young District Attorney as the coming man.

In the meantime all kinds of securities continued to tumble. For six
consecutive days stocks had fallen with scarcely an hour's temporary
rally. Every effort of the bull operators, who had ruled the market for
the two years past, to stem the tide was futile. Below the surface, in
the silent depths of growing suspicion and fear, an army of sappers and
miners under the eye of one man were digging at the foundations of the
business world--the faith of man in his fellow-man.

Each day there was a crash and each day the little financier and his
unscrupulous allies marked a new victim. The next day the death notice
was posted on a new door, and when the bomb had exploded they picked up
the pieces and moved to a new attack.

In the midst of the campaign for the destruction of public credit which
Bivens and his associates, the Allied Bankers, were conducting with
such profound secrecy and such remarkable results, when their profits
had piled up into millions, a bomb was suddenly exploded under their
own headquarters.

The Van Dam Trust Company was put under the ban of the New York
Clearing House. The act was a breach of faith, utterly unwarranted by
any known law of the game. But it was done.

When the president of the company walked quietly into Bivens's office
and made the announcement, for a moment the little dark man completely
lost his nerve--cold beads of sweat started from his swarthy forehead.

"Are you joking?" he gasped.

"Do you think I'd joke about my own funeral?"

"No, of course not, but there must be some mistake."

"There's no mistake. It's a blow below the belt, but it's a knockout
for the moment. They know we are solvent, two dollars for one. But they
know we have $90,000,000 on deposit and we have some big enemies. They
know that the group we have supported have smashed this market, and
they've set out to fight the devil with fire. They're determined to
force a show-down and see how much real mon