CHAPTER XXXI.
A VERY PERPLEXING SITUATION.
Wall Street was in a great flutter that day.

A forgery, a defalcation that to-day would cause but a ripple on the surface, would have at that day sent the street into a tempest of excitement.

A sheriff's deputy stood at the door of the office of the great Kidd Discovery Company, and a crowd of anxious and excited people, who had invested their money and now found they had lost it all, and had been made the victims of an aggravating fraud, surrounded the building.

Threats and imprecations, enough to have sent a much more respectable house to the bottom of the sea, were heaped on the firm of Topman & Gusher.

Nor indeed would it have been safe for any one connected with that enterprising firm to have shown his head in that assembly just at that time.
"Gentlemen will understand that this consolidated establishment is in a very unconsolidated condition.