"My G.o.d! John, what has happened?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WHAT HAS HAPPENED?"]

"Everything's happened. Where are the securities that were in the safe?"

"Oh, they're all right," said his father, a feeling of relief coming over him. Then the thought flashed through his mind: How did John know they were not in the safe? Sneed kept a tight rein on his affairs, and no one but himself knew the combination that would open the safe.

"How did you know that the securities were not there?"

"Because I had the safe blown open at one o'clock to-day."

"Blown open! For Heaven's sake, why?"

"Step into the carriage, and I'll tell you on the way home. The bottom dropped out of everything. All the Sneed stocks went down with a run.

We sent a tug after you, but that old devil had you tight. If I could have got at the bonds, I think I could have stopped the run. The situation might have been saved up to one o'clock, but after that, when the Street saw we were doing nothing, all creation couldn't have stopped it. Where are the bonds?"

"I sold them to Druce."

"What did you get? Cash?"

"I took his cheque on the Trust National Bank."

"Did you cash it? Did you cash it?" cried the young man. "And if you did, where is the money?"

"Druce asked me as a favour not to present the cheque until to-morrow."

The young man made a gesture of despair.

"The Trust National went to smash to-day at two. We are paupers, father; we haven't a cent left out of the wreck. That cheque business is so evidently a fraud that--but what's the use of talking. Old Druce has the money, and he can buy all the law he wants in New York. G.o.d!

I'd like to have a seven seconds' interview with him with a loaded seven-shooter in my hand! We'd see how much the law would do for him then."

General Sneed despondently shook his head.

"It's no use, John," he said. "We're in the same business ourselves, only this time we got the hot end of the poker. But he played it low down on me, pretending to be friendly and all that." The two men did not speak again until the carriage drew up at the brown stone mansion, which earlier in the day Sneed would have called his own. Sixteen reporters were waiting for them, but the old man succeeded in escaping to his room, leaving John to battle with the newspaper men.

Next morning the papers were full of the news of the panic. They said that old Druce had gone in his yacht for a trip up the New England coast. They deduced from this fact, that, after all, Druce might not have had a hand in the disaster; everything was always blamed on Druce.

Still it was admitted that, whoever suffered, the Druce stocks were all right. They were quite unanimously frank in saying that the Sneeds were wiped out, whatever that might mean. The General had refused himself to all the reporters, while young Sneed seemed to be able to do nothing but swear.

Shortly before noon General Sneed, who had not left the house, received a letter brought by a messenger.

He feverishly tore it open, for he recognised on the envelope the well- known scrawl of the great speculator.

DEAR SNEED (it ran),

You will see by the papers that I am off on a cruise, but they are as wrong as they usually are when they speak of me. I learn there was a bit of a flutter in the market while we were away yesterday, and I am glad to say that my brokers, who are sharp men, did me a good turn or two. I often wonder why these flurries come, but I suppose it is to let a man pick up some sound stocks at a reasonable rate, if he has the money by him. Perhaps they are also sent to teach humility to those who might else become purse-proud. We are but finite creatures, Sneed, here to-day and gone to-morrow. How foolish a thing is pride! And that reminds me that if your two daughters should happen to think as I do on the uncertainty of riches, I wish you would ask them to call. I have done up those securities in a sealed package and given the parcel to my daughter-in-law. She has no idea what the value of it is, but thinks it a little present from me to your girls. If, then, they should happen to call, she will hand it to them; if not, I shall use the contents to found a college for the purpose of teaching manners to young women whose grandfather used to feed pigs for a living, as indeed my own grandfather did. Should the ladies happen to like each other, I think I can put you on to a deal next week that will make up for Friday. I like you, Sneed, but you have no head for business. Seek my advice oftener.

Ever yours, DRUCE.

The Sneed girls called on Mrs. Edward Druce.

TRANSFORMATION.

If you grind castor sugar with an equal quant.i.ty of chlorate of potash, the result is an innocent-looking white compound, sweet to the taste, and sometimes beneficial in the case of a sore throat. But if you dip a gla.s.s rod into a small quant.i.ty of sulphuric acid, and merely touch the harmless-appearing mixture with the wet end of the rod, the dish which contains it becomes instantly a roaring furnace of fire, vomiting forth a fountain of burning b.a.l.l.s, and filling the room with a dense, black, suffocating cloud of smoke.

So strange a combination is that mystery which we term Human Nature, that a touch of adverse circ.u.mstance may transform a quiet, peaceable, law-abiding citizen into a malefactor whose heart is filled with a desire for vengeance, stopping at nothing to accomplish it.

In a little narrow street off the broad Rue de Rennes, near the great terminus of Mont-Parna.s.se, stood the clock-making shop of the brothers Delore. The window was filled with cheap clocks, and depending from a steel spring attached to the top of the door was a bell, which rang when any one entered, for the brothers were working clockmakers, continually busy in the room at the back of the shop, and trade in the neighbourhood was not brisk enough to allow them to keep an a.s.sistant.

The brothers had worked amicably in this small room for twenty years, and were reported by the denizens of that quarter of Paris to be enormously rich. They were certainly contented enough, and had plenty of money for their frugal wants, as well as for their occasional exceedingly mild dissipations at the neighbouring cafe. They had always a little money for the church, and a little money for charity, and no one had ever heard either of them speak a harsh word to any living soul, and least of all to each other. When the sensitively adjusted bell at the door announced the arrival of a possible customer, Adolph left his work and attended to the shop, while Alphonse continued his task without interruption. The former was supposed to be the better business man of the two, while the latter was admittedly the better workman. They had a room over the shop, and a small kitchen over the workroom at the back; but only one occupied the bedroom above, the other sleeping in the shop, as it was supposed that the wares there displayed must have formed an almost irresistible temptation to any thief desirous of acc.u.mulating a quant.i.ty of time-pieces. The brothers took week-about at guarding the treasures below, but in all the twenty years no thief had yet disturbed their slumbers.

One evening, just as they were about to close the shop and adjourn together to the cafe, the bell rang, and Adolph went forward to learn what was wanted. He found waiting for him an unkempt individual of appearance so disreputable, that he at once made up his mind that here at last was the thief for whom they had waited so long in vain. The man's wild, roving eye, that seemed to search out every corner and cranny in the place and rest nowhere for longer than a second at a time, added to Delore's suspicions. The unsavoury visitor was evidently spying out the land, and Adolph felt certain he would do no business with him at that particular hour, whatever might happen later.

The customer took from under his coat, after a furtive glance at the door of the back room, a small paper-covered parcel, and, untying the string somewhat hurriedly, displayed a crude piece of clockwork made of bra.s.s. Handing it to Adolph, he said, "How much would it cost to make a dozen like that?"

Adolph took the piece of machinery in his hand and examined it. It was slightly concave in shape, and among the wheels was a strong spring.

Adolph wound up this spring, but so loosely was the machinery put together that when he let go the key, the spring quickly uncoiled itself with a whirring noise of the wheels.

"This is very bad workmanship," said Adolph.

"It is," replied the man, who, notwithstanding his poverty-stricken appearance, spoke like a person of education. "That is why I come to you for better workmanship."

"What is it used for?"

The man hesitated for a moment. "It is part of a clock," he said at last.

"I don't understand it. I never saw a clock made like this."

"It is an alarm attachment," replied the visitor, with some impatience.

"It is not necessary that you should understand it. All I ask is, can you duplicate it and at what price?"

"But why not make the alarm machinery part of the clock? It would be much cheaper than to make this and then attach it to a clock."

The man made a gesture of annoyance.

"Will you answer my question?" he said gruffly.

"I don't believe you want this as part of a clock. In fact, I think I can guess why you came in here," replied Adolph, as innocent as a child of any correct suspicion of what the man was, thinking him merely a thief, and hoping to frighten him by this hint of his own shrewdness.

His visitor looked loweringly at him, and then with a quick eye, seemed to measure the distance from where he stood to the pavement, evidently meditating flight.

"I will see what my brother says about this," said Adolph. But before Adolph could call his brother, the man bolted and was gone in an instant, leaving the mechanism in the hands of the bewildered clockmaker.

Alphonse, when he heard the story of their belated customer, was even more convinced than his brother of the danger of the situation. The man was undoubtedly a thief, and the bit of clockwork merely an excuse for getting inside the fortress. The brothers, with much perturbation, locked up the establishment, and instead of going to their usual cafe, they betook themselves as speedily as possible to the office of the police, where they told their suspicions and gave a description of the supposed culprit. The officer seemed much impressed by their story.

"Have you brought with you the machine he showed you?"