Then he and his fellow-conspirators planned a great financial
coup. The millions were not coming in fast enough. They must make
a hundred millions at one stroke. They floated a great mining
company to which the public was invited to subscribe. The scheme
having the endorsement of the Empire Trading Company no one
suspected a snare, and such was the magic of John Ryder's name
that gold flowed in from every point of the compass. The stock
sold away above par the day it was issued. Men deemed themselves
fortunate if they were even granted an allotment. What matter if,
a few days later, the house of cards came tumbling down, and a
dozen suicides were strewn along Wall Street, that sinister
thoroughfare which, as a wit has said, has a graveyard at one end
and the river at the other! Had Ryder any twinges of conscience?
Hardly. Had he not made a cool twenty millions by the deal?

Yet this commercial pirate, this Napoleon of finance, was not a
wholly bad man. He had his redeeming qualities, like most bad men.
His most pronounced weakness, and the one that had made him the
most conspicuous man of his time, was an entire lack of moral
principle. No honest or honourable man could have amassed such
stupendous wealth. In other words, John Ryder had not been
equipped by Nature with a conscience. He had no sense of right, or
wrong, or justice where his own interests were concerned. He was
the prince of egoists. On the other hand, he possessed qualities
which, with some people, count as virtues. He was pious and
regular in his attendance at church and, while he had done but
little for charity, he was known to have encouraged the giving of
alms by the members of his family, which consisted of a wife,
whose timid voice was rarely heard, and a son Jefferson, who was
the destined successor to his gigantic estate.