The world of finance is a mysterious world in which, incredible as the fact may appear, evaporation precedes liquidation.

First the capital evaporates, and then the company goes into liquidation.

These are very unnatural physics, but they account for the persistent inertia of Heyst, at which we "out there" used to laugh among ourselves--but not inimically.

An inert body can do no harm to anyone, provokes no hostility, is scarcely worth derision.

It may, indeed, be in the way sometimes; but this could not be said of Axel Heyst.