Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/292

268 were luxurious; the shelves were filled with books; from the walls the stern faces of his forbears looked down, haughty, relentless as their lives had shown. It was difficult to realize that he was an embezzler and a bankrupt, suspended above a vacuous abyss by a line that the to-morrow would cut short.

For five years he had been the receiver of the Massachusetts Iron Company. In those five years he had bought and sold on the street with the abandon of a master. He had used the funds of this company as a workman would use a tool left lying in his shop. He had won great sums, and he had lost until the very earth seemed slipping away beneath him.

Then the slump in the stocks of a great railroad system caught him, and he had put in every dollar of this trust fund and watched it vanish like a vapor. Still, no one knew. Carper's reputation stood on the street flawless, perfect in outline, an empty shell—but no one knew.

When the stockholders of the Massachusetts Iron Company finally demanded a reorganiza-