"Dot's a lie, chentlemens! Take my vord for it! Dey haf ninety millions on deposit."

It took the second bulletin with particulars to convince them. Bivens had not kept his solemn pledge. The great bank had stood the run for two hours and closed its doors. And the work of destruction had just begun.

At three o'clock, the doctor walked out of Dugro's office without a dollar. It was utterly impossible for a man of his temperament to realize it. The crash had come so suddenly, its work was so complete and overwhelming it seemed a sort of foolish prank Fate had played on him.

He walked home in a state of strange excitement. He had seen many sights in his eventful life among the people of New York; never had he passed through a scene so weird, so horrible, so haunting as the five hours he had just spent among those men and women whom the struggle for money had transformed into raving, jibbering, snivelling maniacs. It was too absurd to be real. His own loss was appalling but at least he thanked God he was not mad. He yet had two good hands and legs. He could see, hear, smell, taste and feel, and he had a soul with five more senses still turned upward toward the infinite and eternal by which he could see the invisible and hear the inaudible. He felt almost happy by contrast with the fools he had left shuffling over the floor of Dugro's office.

His own sense of loss was merely a blur. The revelation he had just had of the mad lust for money which had begun to possess all classes was yet so fresh and startling he could form no adequate conception of his own position.

It was not until he entered his own door, and paused at the sound of Harriet's voice, that he began to realize the enormity of the tragedy that had befallen him.

CHAPTER VII

AT THE KING'S COMMAND

Bivens's plan would have gone through without a hitch but for one thing. He had overlooked the fact that the Kingdom of Mammon in America has a king and that the present ruler is very much alive. This king has never been officially crowned and his laws are unwritten, but his rule is none the less real, and he is by far the most potent monarch Wall Street has ever known. A man of few words, of iron will, of fiery temper, of keen intellect, proud, ambitious, resourceful, bold, successful, a giant in physique, and a giant in personality. He moves among men with the conscious tread of royalty, thinks big thoughts and does big deeds as quietly and effectively as small men do small ones, and then moves on to greater tasks.

It happens that his majesty is an old time Wall Street banker with inherited traditions about banks and the way their funds should be handled. He had long held a pet aversion. The Van Dam Trust Company had become an offense to his nostrils.

His own bank, hitherto the most powerful in America, is a private concern which bears the royal name. It had long been the acknowledged seat of the Empire of Mammon and within its unpretentious walls the king has held his court for years, extending his sceptre of gold in gracious favour to whom he likes, refusing admission to his presence for those who might offend his fancy.

The Van Dam Trust Company had built a huge palace far up town and its president had attempted to set up a court of his own. He had gathered about him a following, among them an ex-president of the United States.

Gold had poured into the treasury of the great marble palace in a constant stream until its deposits had reached the unprecedented sum of $90,000,000, a sum greater than the royal bank itself could boast.

When the king heard the first rumour of the fact that the Van Dam Trust was backing the schemes of the Allied Bankers in their sensational raid on the market his big nostrils suddenly dilated.

At last he had them just where he wanted them. He signed the death warrant of the bank and handed it to his executioner without a word of comment. And then a most curious thing happened. The king summoned to his presence a little dark swarthy man.

When Bivens received this order to appear at court he was dumfounded.

He had long worshipped and feared the king with due reverence and always spoke his name with awe. To be actually called into his august presence in such a crisis was an undreamed-of honour.

He was sure that his majesty had heard of his generous offer to help the Van Dam Trust in its hour of trouble and meant to reward him with promotion to high rank in the Empire.

He hastened into the royal presence with beating heart.

A court official conducted him into the king's private room where the ruler sat alone, quietly smoking.

The sovereign glanced up with quick energy.

"Mr. Bivens, I believe?"

The little man bowed low.

"I hear that you are about to aid the Van Dam Trust with four millions in cash?"

Bivens smiled with pride.

"My secretary will deliver the money to the bank within an hour."

The king suddenly wheeled in his big arm chair, raised his eyebrows and fixed the little man with a stare that froze the blood in his veins.

When he spoke at length his tones were smooth as velvet.

"If I may give you a suggestion, Mr. Bivens, I would venture to say that the Van Dam Trust Company is beyond aid. The larger interests of the nation require the elimination of this institution and its associates.

"I have heard good reports of you and I wish to save you from the disaster about to befall the gentlemen who have been conducting the present campaign in Wall Street. If your secretary will report to me at once with the four millions you have set aside for the Van Dam Company I shall be pleased to place your name on my executive council in the big movement we begin to-day. The other gentlemen whom I have thus honoured are now waiting for me in the adjoining room. They represent a banking power that is resistless at the present moment.

"When the Van Dam Trust closes its doors to-day, a temporary panic will follow. We will give the gentlemen who started this excitement a taste of their own medicine, render a service to the nation, and, incidentally of course, earn an honest dollar or two for ourselves. I trust I have your hearty support in this programme?"

Bivens again bowed low.

"My hearty support and my profoundest gratitude!"

"I'll expect your secretary with your check for four millions within thirty minutes."

The king waved a friendly gesture of dismissal and the little dark figure tremblingly withdrew.

It was not until he had reached the seclusion of his own office that the magnitude of the crisis through which he had passed fully dawned on Bivens. One of the dreams of his life had been to touch elbows with this mighty ruler at whose name he had often trembled. To-day he had joined the magic circle of those about the throne. The place had been bought at a fearful price. But the end would justify the means. No one knew with clearer perception than he what the king meant by his "suggestions." They were orders. He had been ordered to stab his associates.

At first he had raged in silent fury, but as the king continued his wonderful speech and revealed his generous intentions, his anger had melted into glowing gratitude.

"After all, business means war!" he exclaimed, "a war in which dog eat dog and devil take the hindmost becomes sooner or later the supreme law."

It hurt to break his word--the pledge he had made the president of the Van Dam Company--but it was unavoidable. Their death warrant had already been signed. His money would only be sunk in the bottomless pit the king had dug beneath them. He felt himself for the moment in the grip of forces beyond human control, blind, inevitable, overwhelming.

The only thing for a sane man to do was to ride the storm and take care of himself. He had found a place of safety. And such a place--at the right hand of the king himself.

He had dreamed of making a paltry five millions when the raid on the market had ended. Now his very soul stood blinded by the splendour of the vision before him. Beyond a doubt in the holocaust which would follow the day's work he would more than treble his entire fortune, perhaps multiply it by four. He could see it all before it happened.

His slender hands trembled as he fumbled his beard and his bead eyes became two scintillating points of light. The thirst for gold was now a raging fever and his blood molten fire. The lust for gain had ceased to be a human passion--it was the hunger of a beast.

Without a moment's hesitation he gave the cruel orders that sent his associates hurling over the precipice. As the day progressed he stood with one hand on the tape of his private ticker and the other holding the receiver of the telephone which connected him with the floor of the Stock Exchange. He received no word from friend or foe without. Only the king's messenger could reach him. He paused not a moment for food or drink, and at three o'clock when the market closed he stood with a hundred yards of tape from the ticker coiled serpent like about his legs, the wreck of empires of wealth beneath his feet, his heart still beating a single wild cry--"more, more, more!"

What a day! In all the annals of man's inhumanity to his fellow-man never were there more opportunities for generosity, for kindly deeds and noble acts of kingly heroism. Never were so few recorded.

Martial war at least has for its justification the flag and the life of a nation for which it stands the gleaming symbol in the sky, and in real war they do not kill the wounded or fire on women and children.

Even the Turk does not fire on a hospital. But in this war which maniacs waged for gold, they fired on women and children without mercy and when night had fallen they searched the field, dragged out and stabbed to death the wounded!

When the president of the Van Dam Trust Company failed to receive the promised millions from Bivens he called his telephone and receiving no answer sprang into his automobile and dashed down town to the little main office.

When the clerk at the door informed him that Mr. Bivens could not be seen by anyone, he turned quickly on his heel, drove back to the palatial house of his bank, smiled sadly at the mob in front of its huge pillars, ordered its bronze doors closed, walked around the corner to his home, locked himself in his room and blew his brains out.

CHAPTER VIII

A RAY OF SUNLIGHT