Manderson meant nothing; the life and work of the world went on. Weeks before
he died strong hands had been in control of every wire in the huge network of
commerce and industry that he had supervised. Before his corpse was buried his
countrymen had made a strange discovery--that the existence of the potent
engine of monopoly that went by the name of Sigsbee Manderson had not been a
condition of even material prosperity. The panic blew itself out in two days,
the pieces were picked up, the bankrupts withdrew out of sight; the market
'recovered a normal tone'.

While the brief delirium was yet subsiding there broke out a domestic scandal
in England that suddenly fixed the attention of two continents. Next morning
the Chicago Limited was wrecked, and the same day a notable politician was
shot down in cold blood by his wife's brother in the streets of New Orleans.
Within a week of its rising, 'the Manderson story', to the trained sense of
editors throughout the Union, was 'cold'. The tide of American visitors
pouring through Europe made eddies round the memorial or statue of many a man
who had died in poverty; and never thought of their most famous plutocrat.
Like the poet who died in Rome, so young and poor, a hundred years ago, he was
buried far away from his own land; but for all the men and women of
Manderson's people who flock round the tomb of Keats in the cemetery under the
Monte Testaccio, there is not one, nor ever Will be, to stand in reverence by
the rich man's grave beside the little church of Marlstone.

CHAPTER II: Knocking the Town Endways

In the only comfortably furnished room in the offices of the Record, the
telephone on Sir James Molloy's table buzzed. Sir James made a motion with his
pen, and Mr. Silver, his secretary, left his work and came over to the
instrument.