“You mean that you think this slump may be the result of manipulation?” asked Montague, wonderingly.

“Why not?” asked the General.

“It seems to be such a widespread movement,” said Montague.  “It seems incredible that any one man could cause such an upset.”

“It is not one man,” said the General, “it is a group of men.  I don’t say that it’s true, mind you.  I wouldn’t be at liberty to say it even if I knew it; but there are certain things that I have seen, and I have my suspicions of others.  And you must realise that a half-dozen men now control about ninety per cent of the banks of this city.”

“Things will get worse before they get any better, I believe,” said Curtiss, after a pause.

“Something has got to be done,” replied the General.  “The banking situation in this country at the present moment is simply unendurable; the legitimate banker is practically driven from the field by the speculator.  A man finds himself in the position where he has either to submit to the dictation of such men, or else permit himself to be supplanted.  It is a new element that has forced itself in.  Apparently all a man needs in order to start a bank is credit enough to put up a building with marble columns and bronze gates.  I could name you a man who at this moment owns eight banks, and when he started in, three years ago, I don’t believe he owned a million dollars.”

“But how in the world could he manage it?” gasped Montague.

“Just as I stated,” said the General.  “You buy a piece of land, with as big a mortgage as you can get, and you put up a million-dollar building and mortgage that.  You start a trust company, and you get out imposing advertisements, and promise high rates of interest, and the public comes in.  Then you hypothecate your stock in company number one, and you have your dummy directors lend you more money, and you buy another trust company.  They call that pyramiding—­you have heard the term, no doubt, with regard to stocks; it is a fascinating game to play with banks, because the more of them you get, the more prominent you become in the newspapers, and the more the public trusts you.”

And the General went on to tell of some of the cases of which he knew.  There was Stewart, the young Lochinvar out of the West.  He had tried to buy the Trust Company of the Republic long ago, and so the General knew him and his methods.  He had fought the Copper Trust to a standstill in Montana; the Trust had bought up the Legislature and both political machines, but Cummings had appealed to the public in a series of sensational campaigns, and had got his judges into office, and in the end the Trust had been forced to buy him out.  And now he had come to New York to play this new game of bank-gambling, which paid even quicker profits than buying courts.—­And then there was Holt, a sporting character, a vulgar man-about-town, who was identified with everything that was low and vile in the city; he, too, had turned