He took another drink--his hands were so unsteady that he had to use both of them in lifting it to his lips. He put the flask in his pocket instead of returning it to the drawer. No one spoke to him, all pretended not to see him as he passed through the offices on his way to the elevator. With glassy unseeing eyes he fumbled at the dash-board and side of the hansom; with a groan like a rheumatic old man's he lifted his heavy body up into the seat, dropped back and fell asleep. A crowd of clerks and messengers, newsboys and peddlers gathered and gaped, awed as they looked at the man who had been for five years one of the heroes of the Street, and thought of his dazzling catastrophe. "What's the matter?" inquired a new-comer, apparently a tourist, edging his way into the outskirts of the crowd. "That's Dumont, the head of the Woolens Trust," the curb-broker he addressed replied in a low tone. "He was raided yesterday--woke up in the morning worth a hundred millions, went to bed worth--perhaps five, maybe nothing at all." At this exaggeration of the height and depth of the disaster, awe and sympathy became intense in that cluster of faces. A hundred millions to nothing at all, or at most a beggarly five millions--what a dizzy precipice! Great indeed must be he who could fall so far. The driver peered through the trap, wondering why his distinguished fare endured this vulgar scrutiny. He saw that Dumont was asleep, thrust down a hand and shook him. "Where to, sir?" he asked, as Dumont straightened himself. "To the National Industrial Bank, you fool," snapped Dumont. "How many times must I tell you?" "Thank you, sir," said the driver--without sarcasm, thinking steadfastly of his pay--and drove swiftly away. Theretofore, whenever he had gone to the National Industrial Bank he had been received as one king is received by another. Either eager and obsequious high officers of King Melville had escorted him directly to the presence, or King Melville, because he had a caller who could not be summarily dismissed, had come out apologetically to conduct King Dumont to another audience chamber. That day the third assistant cashier greeted him with politeness carefully graded to the due of a man merely moderately rich and not a factor in the game of high finance. "Be seated, Mr. Dumont," he said, pointing to a chair just inside the railing--a seat not unworthy of a man of rank in the plutocratic hierarchy, but a man of far from high rank. "I'll see whether Mr. Melville's disengaged." Dumont dropped into the chair and his heavy head was almost immediately resting upon his shirt-bosom. The third assistant cashier returned, roused him somewhat impatiently. "Mr. Melville's engaged," said he. "But Mr. Cowles will see you." Mr. Cowles was the third vice-president.