hundred, and staring after the vanishing train.

7

7

When Grand finally drew himself back from the window and doffed his pig mask, it was to face a middle-aged woman across the aisle who was twisted halfway around in her seat, observing Grand with a curiosity so intense that the instant of their eyes actually meeting did not seem to register with her. Then she coughed and glanced away—but irresistibly back again, as Guy Grand rose, all smiles, to leave the day coach, giving the woman a wink of affectionate conspiracy as he did.

“Just having a laugh with that hot-frank vender,” he explained. “... no real harm done, surely.”

He returned to his compartment then, where he sat at the desk sipping his Campari—a drink the color of raspberries, but bitter as gall—and speculating about the possible reactions of the hotdog-man.

Outside the compartment, even at the far end of the corridor, the idle porters could often hear his odd chortle as he stirred about inside.

By the time the train reached New York, Guy Grand had gone through this little performance four or five times, curious fellow.

9

II

Out of the gray granite morass of Wall Street rises one building like a heron of fire, soaring up in blue-white astonishment—Number 18 Wall—a rocket of glass and blinding copper. It is the Grand Investment Building, perhaps the most contemporary business structure in our country, known in circles of high finance simply as Grand’s.

Offices of Grand’s are occupied by companies which deal in mutual funds—giant and fantastic corporations whose policies     define the shape of nations.

August Guy Grand himself was a billionaire. He10 had 180 millions cash deposit in New York banks, and this ready capital was of course but a part of his gross holdings.

10

In the beginning, Grand’s associates, wealthy men themselves, saw nothing extraordinary about him; a reticent man of simple tastes, they thought, a man who had inherited most of his money and had preserved it through large safe investments in steel, rubber, and oil. What his associates managed to see in Grand was usually a 

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