The brain behind it, with its thousand slender nerves quivering with the energy of the globe, Jack never saw, nor, for that matter, did nine-tenths of the occupants of the chairs.

To them its spoken word was the dictum of fate.

Success meant debts paid, a balance in the bank, houses, horses, even yachts and estates--failure meant obscurity and suffering.

The turn of the roulette wheel or the roll of a cube of ivory they well knew brought the same results, but these turnings they also knew were attended with a certain loss of prestige.
Taking a flier in the Street was altogether different--great financiers were behind the fluctuations of values told by the tongue of the ticker, and behind them was the wealth of the Republic and still in the far distance the power of the American people.

Few of them ever looked below the grease paint, nor did the most discerning ever detect the laugh on the clown's face.
The boy half hidden by the glass screen, through which millions were passed and repassed every month, caught now and then a glimpse.
Once a faded, white-haired old man had handed Jack a check after banking hours to make good an account--a man whose face had haunted him for hours.