"Easy," explained J. Rufus. "The quotations themselves tell it. Fox & Fleecer had instructions to unload at a dollar twenty-five, and they follow such instructions absolutely. They began unloading at that price, buying in at the same time for my farmers, and, in spite of the fact that they were pitching nearly two million bushels of wheat on the market after it hit the twenty-five mark, it went on up to thirty-four before it broke, showing that the buying orders until that time were in excess of selling orders. The farmers throughout the country simply ate up my two million bushels of wheat." "Then it's their money you got, after all," observed Blackie. "It's mine now," responded J. Rufus with a chuckle. "I saw it first." CHAPTER XXV MR. FOX SOLVES HIS GREAT PROBLEM, AND MR. WALLINGFORD FALLS WITH A THUD They arrived in Chicago late and they arose late. At breakfast, with languid interest, Wallingford picked up the paper that lay beside his plate, and the first item upon which his eyes rested was a sensational article headed: "BROKER SUICIDES." Even then he was scarcely interested until his eye caught the name of Edwin H. Fox. "What is the matter?" asked his wife anxiously, as, with a startled exclamation, he hastily pushed back his chair and arose. It was the first time that she had ever in any emergency seen his florid face turn ghastly pale. Dilemmas, reverses and even absolute defeats he had always accepted with a gambler's coolness, but now, since his vanity had let him dignify his pursuit of other people's money by the name of financiering, the blow came with crushing force; for it maimed not only his pocketbook but his pride as it swept away the glittering air castles that he had been building for the past year. "Matter!" he spluttered, half choking. "We are broke!" And leaving his breakfast untasted he hastily ordered a cab and drove to the office of Fox & Fleecer, devouring the details of the tragedy as he went. The philanthropic Mr. Fox, he of the glistening bald pate and the air of cold probity, the man who had been for thirty years in business at the old stand, who had seemed as firm as a rock and as unsusceptible as a quart of clams, had been leading not only a double but a sextuple life, for half a dozen pseudo-widows mourned his demise and the loss of a generous banker. To support all these expensive establishments, which, once set up, firmly declined to ever go out of existence, Mr. Fox had been juggling with the money of his customers; robbing Peter to pay Paul, until the time had come when Paul could be no longer paid and there was only one debt left that he could by any possibility wipe out--the debt he owed to Nature. That he had paid with a forty-four caliber bullet through the temple. At last he had solved that perplexing problem which had bothered him all these years.