409. Several merchants contributed to a common fund 100 times as many rubles as there were merchants. They sent a trusted person to Venice, who received a number of rubles from each hundred rubles, twice the number of merchants. The question is: how many merchants were there, if the trusted person received 2662 rubles?
409. Let the number of merchants be $x$. Each contributed $100 x$, and the total capital is $100 x^{2}$. The profit on the capital is $2 x^{3}=2662$, from which $x^{3}=1331$, hence $x=11$.