"If I understand aright, Mr. Rogers," I asked, "this statement does not take in our Boston deals nor my loans on the Butte and other affairs, but is a settlement of this first section only—a final clearing-up showing just what my twenty-five per cent. of the Amalgamated and the things connected with it amount to? Am I right?"
My voice was even and calmly business-like, and he answered in exactly the same tone.
"It shows where you stand on this particular affair, and gives your balance of stock and cash, which we are ready to pay over in whole or in part, in case you may want to leave some of it against the loans on the other section."
I turned to the paper; I leaned over it, letting my two hands with the elbows resting on the table support my head. Mr. Rogers could see only the back and top of my head, no part of my face. At the first glance I caught the balance—it was a little less than two millions and a half. At once the other lines upon the sheet became a crimson blur. Into my mind rushed an avalanche of figures and facts which seemed to prove irresistibly that I should have read nine millions in place of the numbers that were burning themselves into my brain. But what if it were rightly but two and a half millions, and the great sum on which all my market movements had been predicated was a hideous miscalculation on my part? Then inevitably was I hopelessly bankrupt, or saved from that only to find my neck irrevocably caught in the "Standard Oil" noose. I strove fiercely to steady my nerves, to arrest the stampeding terrors that had broken loose in my brain. There came to me a feverish memory of the hideous procession of Thursday's midnight vigil. I desperately asseverated to myself, "I must be cool, I must, I must." But all my resolutions went as goes the powder when touched by the match. In an instant more nothing in the world mattered; I sprang to my feet, kicked over the chair, and with an exclamation which was half yell, half