Page:Edgar Wallace - The Man who Knew.djvu/103



ACKWELL STREET, in the City of London, contains one palatial building which at one time was the headquarters of the South American Stock Exchange, a superior which on its failure had claimed its fifty thousand victims. The ornate gold lettering on its great plate-glass window had long since been removed, and the big brass plate which announced to the passerby that here sat the spider weaving his golden web for the multitude of flies, had been replaced by a modest, oxidized scroll bearing the simple legend:

What Mr. Mann's business was few people knew. He kept an army of clerks. He had the largest collection of file cabinets possessed by any three business houses in the City, he