"Don't be an ass, Ed," said Lynch, with irritation; "nothing can stop the market."
"The Atlantic Trust is as solvent as Gunther & Co.," insisted Fontaine, with a nervous, emphatic gesture. "Every depositor will be paid in full."
"It'll be in the hands of a receiver before the week's over—bet you five to three."
"Possibly; but then—"
"Moreover, what of the public? What's the public going to do when it hears Majendie's committed suicide? What'll it think? It'll think the whole blamed institution is rotten to the core—looted!"
"Sure," said Plunkett, and he added savagely, his glance lost in the distance: "Damn it, if I'd known the news an hour earlier, I could have made fifty thousand."
"Why, look at the situation," continued Bo Lynch, excited by his own images. "The Clearing-house closed against the Associated Trust and all its allies; runs on banks all over the country; Slade forced to the wall, out of it in a couple of days, perhaps—God knows, another suicide, maybe; two failures up into the hundreds of millions—everything in the country thrown on the market! Look at the sales to-day; they'll be doubled to-morrow. Nothing can hold out against it. The country'll go crazy! I tell you, '93 was nothing to it."
Gunther rose.
"What do you think, Bruce?" said Plunkett anxiously.
"Don't know a thing about it," said Gunther brusquely. "Neither does Eddie or Bo. If you want to gamble, gamble."