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The Works of A. Conan Doyle (7); Tragedy of the Korosko and the Green Flag
The Works of A Conan Doyle Tragedy of the Korosko and the Green Flag - 7 Author:Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Volume: 7 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1902 Original Publisher: D. Appleton and company Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Book... more »s.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: A SHADOW BEFORE The 15th of July, 1870, found John Worling- ton Dodds a ruined gamester of the Stock Exchange. Upon the 17th he was a very opulent man. And yet he had effected the change without leaving the penurious little Irish townlet of Dun- sloe, which could have been bought outright for a quarter of the sum which he had earned during the single day that he was within its walls. 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 thedays 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'...« less