Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-07-30
CHAPTER /.
The Crash.

cOlOfed rug Ike nuSe WnIlS SpiotSii
of sudden fright. The Corporation
failedl'
The young man was the glass of
fashion, from the sill5en ribbon on the
spotless Panama to his pearl-gray
CATERS, and well favored-a 1.-THE
stalwart figure, with wide-set hazel
eyes and strong brown hair waving
back from a candid forehead. The
soft straw. however, had been wrung
to a wisp between clutehing fingers
and the face was glazed in kind
of Mortified and assiduous surprise,
as if the rosy peach of life, bitten,
had suddenly revealed itself an I'M
ripe persimmon. The very words
themselves came with galvanic
witch and a stagger that conveyed
a sense at once of shock and of pro-
test Even the white bulldog stretched
on the floor. nose between paws and
one restless eye on his master in
troubled wonder that any one should
prefer to forsake the ecstatic sun
shine of the street, with It's thou
sand Fascinating scents and cross
trails, for stuffy business office,
lifted his wrinkling pink nose and
snuffled with acute and hopeful In
quiry.
Never had John Valiant's innocu-
Gus and butterfly existence known
surprise more startling. He had
swung into the room with all the
nonchalant habits, the ingrained Ger
titude of the man born with achieve
ment ready-made in his hands. And
a single curt statement-like the ruth
less blades of a pair of shears-had
shipped across the one splendid scarlet
thread in the wool that constituted
life as he knew 1t. He had knotted
his lavender scarf that morning
vice-president of the Valiant Corpora
tion-one of the greatest and most
successful of modern-day organiza-
tons; he sat now in the fading ar
ternoon trying to realize that the
huge fabric, without warning, had
toppled to its fall.
With every nerve of his six feet
of manhood in rebellion, he rose and
strobe to the half-opened window,
through which sifted the smell of
growing things-for the great build
ing fronted the square-and the SOFT
alluring moistness of early spring.
Failed" he repeated helplessly, and
the echo seemed to go differing about
the substantial walls like a derisiye
Indian-rubber bat on a spree.
The bulldog sat up, humping the
rug with a vibrant tail. There was
some mistake, surely; one went out
by the door, not by the window! lie
rose. picked up the Panama in his
mouth, and padding across the rug,
poked it tentatively into his masters
hand. But no, the hand made no re-
sponse. Clearly they were not to go
out, and he dropped 1T and went puz-
zledly back and law down with
pricked ears, while his master stared
out into the foliaged day.
How solid and changeless it had
always seemed-that great business
fabric woven by the father he could
so dimly rememberi His own in
vested fortune had been derived from
the great corporation the elder
Valiant had founded and controlled
until his death With almost unpre-
cedented earnings, it had stood as
a very Gibraltar of finance, a type
and sign of brilliant organization.
Now, on the heels of a trusts dissolu-
ton which would be a nine-days
wonder, the vast structure had
crumpled up like a cardboard. The
rains had descended and the floods
had come, and it had fallen.
The man at the desk had wheeled
in his revolving chair and was look
ing at the trim athletic back plotting
the daylight, with a smile that was
little short of a covert sneer. He was
one of the local managers of the cor
poration whose ruin was to be that
days sensation, colorless man who
had acquired middle age with his first
long trousers, and had been dedicated
to the commercial treadmll before he
had bought a safety-razor. He
despised all loiterers along the priin-
rose paths, and John Valiant was
but a decorative figurehead
The bulldog lifted his head. The
ghost of a furred throaty growl
rumbled in the silence, and the man
at the desk shrank a little, as the
hair rippled up on the thick neck and
the faithful red-rimmed eyes opened
a shade wider But John Valiant did
not turn. Tic was plAbOiiy opooipSN
with his own thoughts.
Till this moment he had never really
known how proud he had always been
of the corporation. of the fact that
he was its founders son. His cleo
ton to high office in the small coterie
that controlled it's destinies he had
known very we'll to be but the modern
concrete expression of his individual
holdings. but it had nevertheless
deeply pleased him. The fieeting
sense of power. the intimate touching
of wide issues in city of Big Things
had battered him; for a while he had
dreamed of playing a great part, Of
pushing the activities of the Corpora
ton into new territory, invading for
eign soil He might have done much,
for he had begun with good equip
ment. He had read law, had even
been admitted TO the bar. But to
what had 1t come? A gradual slip.
ping back into the rut of careless
amusement, the tacit assumption of
his prerogatives by other waiting
hands. The huge wheels had con-
tinued to turn, smoothly, inevitably
and he had drawn his dividends
and that was all. John Valiant
swallowed something that was very
like a Sob
AS he stood trying to plumb the
depth of the calamity. self-anger be-
gan to stir and buzz in his heart
like a great bee. Like tingling x
raw there went stabbing through the
huslS woven of a thousand inherent
habits the humiliating knowledge Of
his own uselessness. In those profit.
less seasons through which he hat
sauntered, as he had strolled through
his ca s11al years of college, he haf