Then strange faces passed quite near to his face. A sickening smell of perspiration moved with them in the air. Christopher’s eyes became rigid and glassy. Faces ... faces of a strange race. Some smiled pale smiles. These had won. Everything would be theirs, it was only a question of time. Theirs the gold, the town, the country.
And the grandson of Ulwing the builder, ruined, tottered through the gates of the Stock Exchange among the new men.
Life became confused and dreary. After Black Saturday, the Stock Exchange differences were enormous. No bright Sunday shone for Christopher. He had to pay, and, as he had never reckoned, he attacked Anne’s fortune too. This was a secret between Otto Füger and himself. He said nothing of it to Thomas.
He clutched like a drowning man. He wanted to turn everything into money. To hide the truth, to keep up appearances as long as possible ... fighting, lying. Sometimes Otto Füger whispered into his ears and then he shrivelled up and looked horrified at the door.
“No, no, tell them to-morrow.... It cannot be done to-day!”
From day to day, from hour to hour, he kept things going and the strings of his nerves tightened in his neck. To gain time, if only minutes ... even a minute is a long time for a man clinging to his life.
Summer passed like this and then, in autumn, came the terrible wave of bankruptcy affecting the whole building trade. The firm of Münster became insolvent. Many of the new businesses went bankrupt. Christopher alone kept himself still going and one afternoon he carried his last hope to Paternoster Street.
No one took any notice of him in the office. One inferior clerk to whom he told his name stared over his head. He had to wait a long time before he entered the manager’s office.
The manager was reading a letter at his writing-table and seemed to take no notice of his presence. Christopher could not help remembering how different everything had been when he signed his first bill in this same office. The smoky low room had disappeared and the business occupied the whole building. It had become a bank.
His eyes were arrested by the fat, owl-like head of the all-powerful manager. He recognised in him suddenly the little owl-faced clerk who in those old times cringed humbly before him. The proportions of his face had doubled since, and so had his body; there was scarcely room enough for him in the armchair.