Page:Barr--Stranleighs millions.djvu/319

Rh know, and, quite with her permission, there was her money in the States to draw upon. No one could have foreseen this panic of the end of October. My wife drew a bill for fifty thousand pounds on the Knickerbocker Trust Company, which, if you will observe, would have put everything straight, but by ill-luck, that draft arrived in New York the day after the Knickerbocker closed its doors, and whether we'll get anything or not ultimately, we've not been able to obtain a penny now, at the time we need it."

"Yes, I admit the American panic could not have been foreseen. That was hard lines. Well, now you have got things to such a point that anything this clever Southern Railway agent does to depress your stock, you lose control of your road. The new owners may tear it up if they like, or abandon it, and then you hold a town like Mahomet's coffin hung in mid-air. Your visible assets are a couple of estates—oh, by the way, did you and Sanderson mortgage your land?"

"I believe Sanderson has. Mine is clear, but one can neither sell nor mortgage with the bank rate at seven per cent."

"Then your only assets are these unsalable acres and a town in pawn, because Gorham-on-Sea doesn't belong to you—not a brick of it. If it were put in the market to-morrow I venture to say it wouldn't pay back the money that has been lent on it. Now I suppose you and Sanderson are