Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/216

 Gould's sisters, and to other friends, apprising them of the death; and a telephone message summoned the undertaker and his assistants who had been waiting the word from their headquarters in Forty-fourth street. Vice-President Clark, of the Union Pacific road, who had been waiting for a week at the Windsor to confer with his chief, dropped over to the hotel and sent a number of messages.

Then a huge cravat of black crape was placed upon the door-bell to warn passersby that Death had entered at the door. One by one the flags on the hotels of the city, on the Western Union and some other buildings were raised to half mast. The "L" road engines were draped in black, and soon the voices of the newsboys crying their extras spread the tidings through the city.

Persons loitered about the house where death was master and gazed up curiously at the windows. There was but one Jay Gould, and in his going out lay an infinity of food for curiosity and comment.

During the day carriages continued to stop at the mansion and at the house of Edwin Gould, 1 East Forty-seventh street. The Rev. Dr. Paxton called again in the afternoon, and Chancellor MacCracken was among those admitted. The members of the family were, however, entirely inaccessible to any except their most intimate friends. Cards presented at the house or at the houses of either of the sons, with a view to seeing members of the family, met with the answer that they could not be seen.

In the afternoon, when the usual parade of car