There is a romance of finance yet to be written, a
story of huge forces which are for ever waxing and waning, of bold
operations, of breathless suspense, of agonised failure, of deep
combinations which are baffled by others still more subtle. The mighty
debts of each great European Power stand like so many columns of
mercury, for ever rising and falling to indicate the pressure upon each.
He who can see far enough into the future to tell how that ever-varying
column will stand to-morrow is the man who has fortune within his grasp.
John Worlington Dodds had many of the gifts which lead a speculator to
success. He was quick in observing, just in estimating, prompt and
fearless in acting. But in finance there is always the element of luck,
which, however one may eliminate it, still remains, like the blank at
roulette, a constantly present handicap upon the operator. And so it
was that Worlington Dodds had come to grief. On the best advices he had
dabbled in the funds of a South American Republic in the days before
South American Republics had been found out. The Republic defaulted,
and Dodds lost his money. He had bulled the shares of a Scotch railway,
and a four months' strike had hit him hard. He had helped to underwrite
a coffee company in the hope that the public would come along upon the
feed and gradually nibble away some of his holding, but the political
sky had been clouded and the public had refused to invest.
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