It seems a not unnatural suspicion that the vanished Metropolitan books would have disclosed similar performances in New York.
The concluding chapter of this tragedy has its setting in the Stock Exchange.

These inside gentlemen, as already said, received no cash as their profits from these manipulations--only stock.

But in the eyes of the public this stock represented an enormous value.

Metropolitan securities, for example, represented the control and ownership of all the surface transit business in the city of New York.

Naturally, it had a great investment value.