of England. If Adams and Company were vulnerable, then nobody was
secure. The assets of the bankrupt firm were turned over to one Alfred
Cohen as receiver, with whom Jones, a member of the firm of Palmer,
Cook, and Company, and a third individual were associated as assignees.
On petition of other creditors the judge of the district court removed
Cohen and appointed one Naglee in his place. This new man, Naglee, on
asking for the assets was told that they had been deposited with Palmer,
Cook, and Company. The latter firm refused to give them up, denying
Naglee's jurisdiction in the matter. Naglee then commenced suit against
the assignees and obtained a judgment against them for $269,000. On
their refusal to pay over this sum, Jones and Cohen were taken into
custody. But Palmer, Cook, and Company influenced the courts, as did
about every large mercantile or political firm. They soon secured the
release of the prisoners, and in the general scramble for the assets of
Adams and Company they secured the lion's share.

It was the same old story. An immense amount of money had disappeared.
Nobody had been punished, and it was all strictly legal. Failures
resulted right and left. Even Wells, Fargo, and Company closed their
doors but reopened them within a few days. There was much excitement
which would probably have died as other excitement had died before, had
not the times produced a voice of compelling power. This voice spoke
through an individual known as James King of William.

King was a man of keen mind and dauntless courage, who had tried his
luck briefly at the mines, realized that the physical work was too much
for him, and had therefore returned to mercantile and banking pursuits
in San Francisco. His peculiar name was said to be due to the fact that
at the age of sixteen, finding another James King in his immediate
circle, he had added his father's name as a distinguishing mark. He was