And whether the gentle Wizard, as he sat with mother planning his vast benefaction to Plutoria University, would have felt more at home with his new group of fellow-shareholders than his old, it were hard to say.
But, meantime, at the office of Skinyer and Beatem all was activity.
For not only were they drafting the conveyances of the perpetual trusts as fast as legal brains working overtime could do it, but in another part of the office a section of the firm were busily making their preparations against the expected actions for fraud and warrants of distraint and injunctions against disposal of assets and the whole battery of artillery which might open on them at any moment.

And they worked like a corps of military engineers fortifying an escarpment, with the joy of battle in their faces.
The storm might break at any moment.

Already at the office of the _Financial Undertone_ the type was set for a special extra with a heading three inches high: COLLAPSE OF THE ERIE CONSOLIDATED ARREST OF THE MAN TOMLINSON EXPECTED THIS AFTERNOON Skinyer and Beatem had paid the editor, who was crooked, two thousand dollars cash to hold back that extra for twenty-four hours; and the editor had paid the reporting staff, who were crooked, twenty-five dollars each to keep the news quiet, and the compositors, who were also crooked, ten dollars per man to hold their mouths shut till the morning, with the result that from editors and sub-editors and reporters and compositors the news went seething forth in a flood that the Erie Auriferous Consolidated was going to shatter into fragments like the bursting of a dynamite bomb.

It rushed with a thousand whispering tongues from street to street till it filled the corridors of the law courts and the lobbies of the offices, and till every honest man that held a share of the stock shivered in his tracks and reached out to give, sell, or destroy it.

Only the unwinking Idiots, and the mild Orphans, and the calm Deaf mutes and the impassive Chinese held tight to what they had.