



Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by Google Books









THE GOLDEN FLOOD

By Edwin Lefevre

Illustrated By W. R. Leigh

New York

McClure, Phillips & Co.

1905


TO

DANIEL GRAY REID





PART ONE: THE FLOOD

The president looked up from the underwriters’ plan of the latest
“Industrial” consolidation capital stock, $100,000,000; assets, for
publication, $100,000,000 which the syndicate’s lawyers had pronounced
perfectly legal. Judiciously advertised, the stock probably would be
oversubscribed. The profits ought to be enormous. He was one of the
underwriters.

“What is it?” he asked. He did not frown, but his voice was as though
hung with icicles. The assistant cashier, an imaginative man in the
wrong place, shivered.

“This gentleman,” he said, giving a card to the president, “wishes to
make a deposit of one hundred thousand dollars.”

The president looked at the card. He read on it:

_MR. GEORGE KITCHELL GRINELL_

“Who sent him to us?” he asked.

“I don’t know, sir. He said he had a letter of introduction to you,”
 answered the assistant cashier, disclaiming all responsibility in the
matter.

The president read the card a second time. The name was unfamiliar.

“Grinnell?” he muttered. “Grinnell? Never heard of him.” Perhaps he felt
it was poor policy to show ignorance on any matter whatever. When he
spoke again, it was in a voice overflowing with a dignity that was a
subtle rebuke to all assistant cashiers:

“I will see him.”

He busied himself once more with the typewritten documents before him,
lost in its alluring possibilities, until