Doris arrived in the late afternoon and there was a family consultation, at which he was not present. Whatever might have been done the week before the issue had been decided. Drake's fate was in the hands of Gunther, to whose house he had been summoned that night to learn the terms which would be accorded him by the group of financial leaders who had been hastily organized to save the country from the convulsion which now threatened to overwhelm every industry and every institution.
At midnight Drake returned a ruined man, stripped of every possession, a bankrupt. Only Patsie and Bojo were there when he came in. A certain calm seemed to have replaced the unnatural febrile activity of the last forty-eight hours, the calm of accepted defeat, the end of hopes, the certainty of failure.
"It's over," he said with a nod of recognition. "They got me. I'm rather hungry; let's have something to eat."
"What do you mean by it's over?" said Patsie, coming towards him. "You lost?" He nodded. "How much?"
"Stripped clean."
"You mean that there's nothing left, not a cent?"
For the first time the old hunted look came back to his eyes. "It's worse than that," he said. "It's what's got to be made good. Your Daddy is a bankrupt, Patsie, one million and a half to the bad."
"You owe that?"
"But what will you do? They can't put you to prison."