THE SIXTY-FIRST SECOND

"'I shall have the detectives here—a man and a woman—within half an hour. There is nothing to do but wait'"—Page 61

ILLUSTRATIONS

"'I shall have the detectives here—a man and a woman—within half an hour. There's nothing to do but wait'" . . . . . . Frontispiece

"In that gay party one person was a thief—but which one? ... A match sputtered. There was a cry of amazement and horror. The table was absolutely bare"

"'Look here, Rita. Can't I help out some way?'"

"'Come outside—in the garden. I want to speak to you. Come quietly'"

"'I have not hesitated to trust in you—you must in me'"

"'Aha! I made them sit up, didn't I—your cold women!'"

The Sixty-First Second

CHAPTER I

In the year 19—, toward the end of the month of October, the country was on the eve of a stupendous panic. A period of swollen prosperity had just ended in which Titans had striven in a frenzy for the millions that opportunity had spilled before them.

For months the stock market had steadily lowered, owing to the flight of the small investor, affrighted by the succession of investigations, the fear of readjustments, and the distrust of the great manipulators. The public, which understands nothing of the secret wars and hidden alliances of finance, had begun tremulously to be aware of the threatening approach of a stupendous catastrophe. So in the ominous, grumbling days of October, when the air was full of confusing rumors and violent alarms, the public, with its necessity for humanizing all sensations, perceived distinctly only two figures, each dramatically in peril, about whose safety or ruin the whole comprehensible drama of the financial cataclysm seemed to center.

These two figures, both presidents of great trust companies, giants in their own sphere, represented two opposite elements of that great mass of society which seeks its level in Wall Street. Bernard L. Majendie, president of the Atlantic Trust Company, member of every exclusive club, patron of the arts, representative of one of the oldest American families, accustomed to leadership and wealth from colonial times, was linked in a common danger with John G. Slade, president of the Associated Trust Company, promoter, manipulator, owner of a chain of Western newspapers, a man who had hauled himself out of the lowest depths of society. Many believed that both, in the relentless readjustment which the banks were forcing on the trust companies, were destined to be blotted out in the general catastrophe. Many others, perceiving the strange oppositeness of the two individuals, speculated on which would survive the other, if indeed either were to persist.

About three o'clock of a certain afternoon, when each extra brought a new alarm, John G. Slade came abruptly from the great library, down the sounding marble descent that was a replica of the famous rampe of the Château of Gerny, into the tapestry-hung vestibule of his palace on upper Fifth Avenue.

He stood a moment in blank meditation, while the third man held his overcoat open and ready, watching anxiously the frown on the face of the master, who stood before him, a massive six-foot-four. Already in the great marble home itself was that feeling of alarm from the outer world which had communicated itself to the servants. Suddenly Slade, returning to himself, detected the furtive scrutiny of the footman and the butler, who had so far departed from their correctly petrified attitudes as to exchange wondering glances. He frowned, pointed to his loose black felt hat and his favorite cane, and tore so rapidly through the heavily ironed doors and down the steps to the waiting