It was then I dropped the receiver with “I thought as much!” As I had been fingering the tape, watching five and ten millions crumbling from price values every few minutes, I was sure this was the work of Bob Brownley.  No one else in Wall Street had the power, the nerve, and the devilish cruelty to rip things as they had been ripped during the last twenty minutes.  The night before I had passed Bob in the theatre lobby.  I gave him close scrutiny and saw the look of which I of all men best knew the meaning.  The big brown eyes were set on space; the outer corners of the handsome mouth were drawn hard and tense as though weighted.  As I had my wife with me it was impossible to follow him, but when I got home I called up his house and his clubs, intending to ask, him to run up and smoke a cigar with me, but could locate him nowhere.  I tried again in the morning without success, but when just before noon the tape began to jump and flash and snarl, I remembered Bob’s ugly mood, and all it portended.

Fred Brownley was Bob’s youngest brother, twelve years his junior.  He had been with Randolph & Randolph from the day he left college, and for over a year had been our most trusted Stock Exchange man.  Bob Brownley, when himself, was as fond of his “baby brother,” as he called him, as his beautiful Southern mother was of both; but when the devil had possession of Bob—­and his option during the past five years had been exercised many a time—­mother and brother had to take their place with all the rest of the world, for then Bob knew no kindred, no friends.  All the wide world was to him during those periods a jungle peopled with savage animals and reptiles to hunt and fight and tear and kill.

It is hardly necessary for me to explain who Randolph & Randolph are.  For more than sixty years the name has spoken for itself in every part of the world where dollar-making machines are installed.  No railroad is financed, no great “industrial” projected, without by force of habit, hat-in-handing a by-your-leave of Randolph & Randolph, and every nation when entering the market for loans, knows that the favour of the foremost American bankers is something which must be reckoned with.  I pride myself that at forty-two, at the end of the ten years I have had the helm of Randolph & Randolph, I have done nothing to mar the great name my father and uncle created, but something to add to its sterling reputation for honest dealing, fearless, old-fashioned methods, and all-round integrity.  Bradstreet’s and other mercantile agencies say, in reporting Randolph & Randolph, “Worth fifty millions and upward, credit unlimited.”  I can take but small praise for this, for the report was about the same the day I left college and came to the office to “learn the business.”  But, as the survivor of my great father and uncle, I can say, my Maker as my witness, that Randolph & Randolph have never loaned a dollar of their millions at over legal rates, 6 per cent, per annum; have never added to their hoard by any but fair, square business methods; and that blight of blights, frenzied finance, has yet to find a lodging-place beneath the old black-and-gold sign that father and uncle nailed up with their own hands over the entrance.