"Can you bring him down here to-night?" he asked quickly.

I reached for the telephone, found Craig in his laboratory finally,
and in less than an hour he was in the office.

"This is a most baffling case, Professor Kennedy, this case of Kerr
Parker," said the inspector, launching at once into his subject. "Here
is a broker heavily interested in Mexican rubber. It looks like a good
thing--plantations right in the same territory as those of the Rubber
Trust. Now in addition to that he is branching out into coastwise
steamship lines; another man associated with him is heavily engaged in
a railway scheme for the United States down into Mexico. Altogether
the steamships and railroads are tapping rubber, oil, copper, and
I don't know what other regions. Here in New York they have been
pyramiding stocks, borrowing money from two trust companies which they
control. It's a lovely scheme--you've read about it, I suppose. Also
you've read that it comes into competition with a certain group of
capitalists whom we will call 'the System.'

"Well, this depression in the market comes along. At once rumors are
spread about the weakness of the trust companies; runs start on both
of them. The System--you know them--make a great show of supporting
the market. Yet the runs continue. God knows whether they will spread
or the trust companies stand up under it to-morrow after what happened
to-day. It was a good thing the market was closed when it happened.

"Kerr Parker was surrounded by a group of people who were in his
schemes with him. They are holding a council of war in the directors'
room. Suddenly Parker rises, staggers toward the window, falls, and is
dead before a doctor can get to him. Every effort is made to keep the