The secrecy and the deadliness of the attack was what unnerved Bascom. All properties in which Francis was interested were being pressed down as if by a slow-moving glacier. There was nothing spectacular about the movement, merely a steady persistent decline that made Francis’ large fortune shrink horribly. And, along with what he owned outright, what he held on margin suffered even greater shrinkage. Then had come rumors of war. Ambassadors were receiving their passports right and left, and half the world seemed mobilizing. This was the moment, with the market shaken and panicky, and with the world powers delaying in declaring moratoriums, that Regan selected to strike. The time was ripe for a bear raid, and with him were associated half a dozen other big bears who tacitly accepted his leadership. But even they did not know the full extent of his plans, nor guess at the specific direction of them. They were in the raid for what they could make, and thought he was in it for the same reason, in their simple directness of pecuniary vision catching no glimpse of Francis Morgan nor of his ghostly father at whom the big blow was being struck. Regan’s rumor factory began working overtime, and the first to drop and the fastest to drop in the dropping market were the stocks of Francis, which had already done considerable dropping ere the bear market began. Yet Regan was careful to bring no pressure on Tampico Petroleum. Proudly it held up its head in the midst of the general slump, and eagerly Regan waited for the moment of desperation when Francis would be forced to dump it on the market to cover his shrunken margins in other lines. * * * * * “Lord! Lord!” Bascom held the side of his face in the palm of one hand and grimaced as if he had a jumping toothache. “Lord! Lord!” he reiterated. “The market’s gone to smash and Tampico Pet along with it. How she slumped! Who’d have dreamed it!” Francis, puffing steadily away at a cigarette and quite oblivious that it was unlighted, sat with Bascom in the latter’s private office. “It looks like a fire-sale,” he vouchsafed. “That won’t last longer than this time to-morrow morning——then you’ll be sold out, and me with you,” his broker simplified, with a swift glance at the clock. It marked twelve, as Francis’ swiftly automatic glance verified. “Dump in the rest of Tampico Pet,” he said wearily. “That ought to hold back until to-morrow.” “Then what to-morrow?” his broker demanded, “with the bottom out and everybody including the office boys selling short.” Francis shrugged his shoulders. “You know I’ve mortgaged the house, Dreamwold, and the Adirondack Camp to the limit.” “Have you any friends?” “At such a time!” Francis countered bitterly. “Well, it’s the very time,” Bascom retorted. “Look here, Morgan. I know the set you ran with at college. There’s Johnny Pathmore——”