Through it all he had remained unshattered, boyishly delighted, his body unyielding to the strain of sleepless nights and months of unrelenting vigilance. He had lived hard, ready to gamble for a thousand or a hundred thousand, cynically announcing his motto:
"No friends. So long as every man is my enemy, I am safe."
And this theory of life he had carried out to the minutest detail. Men represented to him simply the male of the species, to be met head on, to strive with and overthrow. So completely did this obsess him that no one, not even his secretaries (whom he changed constantly), had the slightest inkling of his plans. Two of his subordinates, hoping to profit by their intimacy, had foolishly invested on his deliberately given tips—and had been ruined. Afterward he cited their cases as a warning to other applicants.
From the start, always counting on the year ahead, he had outrun his income. When he had ten thousand, he was spending fifteen; at fifty thousand, seventy-five. Every one who came in contact with him was paid twice over, and robbed him in the bargain—a fact on which he counted and to which he was quite indifferent.
Coming to Wall Street in that period of fevered speculation, he had been among the first to perceive the enormous instruments at hand in the development of a chain of trust companies which would supply a conveniently masked agency for the enormous capital that he needed to compete on equal terms with the leaders of the Street.
That now, for the first time, he was confronted with a situation of absolute and impending ruin, brought him not the slightest depression, but rather that exhilaration and sudden clearness of mind which is characteristic of the gambler face to face with the supreme hour which means absolute bankruptcy or a fortune.
At every block some one on the crowded sidewalk, or a group in a passing carriage, turned with a hasty exclamation at the sight of his bulky figure under the black sombrero, fleeing in the red automobile that was itself at this period a rarity. At one point where a blockade compelled him to halt, a newsboy, jumping on the sideboard, thrust a newspaper in his face. He flung a dime and glanced at the headlines:
MARKET STILL GOING DOWN
RUMORED SUSPENSIONS
Then he tossed it aside and returned to his own calculations. All at once he roused himself and addressed the chauffeur: