“It’s going down,” said Oliver.

Montague sat staring ahead of him.  “It must be the Steel Trust,” he whispered, half to himself.

“Nothing more likely,” was the reply.  “My tip comes from that direction.”

“Do you suppose they are going to try to break Price?”

“I don’t know; I guess they could do it if they made up their mind to.”

“But he owns a majority of the stock!” said Montague.  “They can’t take it away from him outright.”

“Not if he’s got it locked up in his safe,” was the reply; “and if he’s got no debts or obligations.  But suppose he’s overextended; and suppose some bank has loaned him money on the stock—­what then?”

Montague was now keenly interested.  He went with his brother while the latter drew his money from the bank, and called at his brokers and ordered them to sell Mississippi Steel.  The other was called away then by an engagement in court, which occupied him for several hours; when he came out, he made for the nearest ticker, and the first figures he saw were Mississippi Steel—­quoted at nearly twenty points below the price of the morning!

The bare figures were eloquent to him of many tragedies; they brought before him half a dozen different personalities, with their triumphs and despairs.  He could read in them the story of a Titan struggle.  Oliver had made his killing; but what of Price and Ryder?  Montague knew that most of Price’s stock was hypothecated at the Gotham Trust.  And now what would become of it?  And what would become of the Northern Mississippi?

He bought the afternoon papers.  Their columns were full of the sensational events of the day.  The bottom had dropped out of Mississippi Steel, as they phrased it.  The wildest rumours were afloat.  The Company was known to be making enormous extensions, and it was said to have overreached itself; there were whispers that its officers had been speculating, that the Company would be unable to meet the next quarterly payment upon its bonds, that a receivership would be necessary.  There were hints that the concern was to be taken over by the Trust, but this was vigorously denied by officers of the latter.

All of which had come like a bolt out of the blue.  To Montague it was an amazing and terrible thing.  It counted little to him that he was out of the struggle himself; that he no longer had anything to lose personally.  He was like a man who had been through an earthquake, and who stood and stared at a gaping crack in the ground.  Even though he was safe at the moment, he could not forget that this was the earth upon which he had to spend the rest of his life, and that the next crack might open where he stood.

Montague could not see that there was the least chance for Price and Ryder; he pictured them bowled clean out, and he would not have been surprised to read that they were ruined.  But apparently they weathered the storm.  The episode passed with no more than a crop of rumours.  Mississippi Steel did not go back, however; and he noticed that Northern Mississippi stock had also “gone off” eight or ten points on the curb.