The people who would suffer most from the collapse of this high-sounding enterprise could not reach the scene of calamity at half an hour's notice; they were dwellers in many parts of the British Isles, strangers most of them to London city, with but a vague mental picture of the local habitation of the Britannia Loan, Assurance, Investment, and Banking Company, Limited.
His arm was seized, and a voice said hoarsely in his ear-- 'By God! too late.' Hugh Carnaby had tumbled out of a cab, and saw his friend in the same moment that he got near enough to perceive that the doors of the bank were shut.
'The thieves have lost no time,' he added, pale with fury.
'You had warning of it ?' Hugh pulled him a few yards away, and whispered---- 'Bennet Frothingham shot himself last night.' Again Harvey experienced that disagreeable heart-shock, with the alternation of hot and cold.
'Where?
At home ?' 'At the office of _Stock and Share_.

Come farther away.

It'll be in the evening papers directly, but I don't want those blackguards to hear me.
I got up late this morning, and as I was having breakfast, Sibyl rushed in.

She brought the news; had it from some friend of her mother's, a man connected somehow with _Stock and Share_.

I thought they would shut up shop, and came to try and save Sibyl's balance--a couple of hundred, that's all--but they've swallowed it with the rest.' 'With the rest ?' Hugh laughed mockingly.
'Of hers.