struck at Klinkner. It was the last unexpected thing Klinkner
would have dreamed of, and Daylight knew it. He knew, further,
that the California & Altamont Trust Company has an intrinsically
sound institution, but that just then it was in a precarious
condition due to Klinkner's speculations with its money. He
knew, also, that in a few months the Trust Company would be more
firmly on its feet than ever, thanks to those same speculations,
and that if he were to strike he must strike immediately. "It's
just that much money in pocket and a whole lot more," he was
reported to have said in connection with his heavy losses. "It's
just so much insurance against the future. Henceforth, men who
go in with me on deals will think twice before they try to
double-cross me, and then some."

The reason for his savageness was that he despised the men with
whom he played. He had a conviction that not one in a hundred of
them was intrinsically square; and as for the square ones, he
prophesied that, playing in a crooked game, they were sure to
lose and in the long run go broke. His New York experience had
opened his eyes. He tore the veils of illusion from the business
game, and saw its nakedness. He generalized upon industry and
society somewhat as follows:--

Society, as organized, was a vast bunco game. There were many
hereditary inefficients--men and women who were not weak enough
to be confined in feeble-minded homes, but who were not strong
enough to be ought else than hewers of wood and drawers of water.

Then there were the fools who took the organized bunco game
seriously, honoring and respecting it. They were easy game for