Master continued to observe, fascinated. Only when he tried to glance at his watch, and found he had such a crick in his neck that he could hardly look down, did he realize he’d been staring up for nearly an hour and a half.

He didn’t mind. He’d just witnessed a piece of history. Cunning Chrysler, by this brilliant ploy, must have added the best part of two hundred feet to the height of his building, taking his rivals completely by surprise and vanquishing them. Master wasn’t certain, but he was pretty sure the Chrysler Building had just surpassed the Eiffel Tower itself.

How fitting that it should be so. New York was the center of the world. The market was soaring. The skyscrapers were soaring. It was the spirit of the age.

Late as hell, but not caring at all, he hailed a cab and went cheerfully downtown to his office.

As he approached the door, he passed a little old fellow who was leaving. Maybe in his sixties, Italian by the look of him. He’d encouraged his people not to despise these small investors. “Don’t forget,” he’d tell them, “they are the future of America.” So when he got inside he asked the senior clerk who the fellow was.

“An Italian man, sir. Had an account with us for years. Remarkable really. He works in Little Italy as a waiter, but he has quite a respectable account.”

“What’s he good for?”

“About seventy thousand dollars. Unfortunately he’s just sold all his stock. We gave him the funds today.”

“Sold everything?”

“I tried to persuade him not to, but he came in on Monday and said he’d decided not to tempt fate.” The clerk smiled. “Said he’d had a sign from St. Anthony.”

“Really? Well, I think he was mistaken.” He grinned. “But I guess he didn’t know: God only talks to the Morgans.”

“Yes, sir. Though actually, sir, while you’ve been out, the market’s been falling quite a bit.”

The start of the great crash of 1929 is usually given as Black Thursday, October 24. This is incorrect. It began on Wednesday, the very day that the Chrysler Building became the tallest structure in the world, when stocks abruptly tumbled 4.6 percent. Strangely, few people had yet noticed the clever trick that Walter Chrysler had played. But everybody noticed Wednesday’s stock market collapse.

On Thursday morning, William Master went into the Stock Exchange as it opened its doors. The atmosphere was tense. Glancing up at the visitors’ gallery, he saw a face he thought looked familiar. “That’s Winston Churchill, the British politician,” one of the traders remarked. “He’s chosen a hell of a day to call.”

He certainly had. As trading began, Master was aghast. The market wasn’t just falling, it was in headlong panic. By the end of the first hour, there were cries of pain, then howls. Men with margin calls were being wiped out. A couple of times, sellers were shouting out prices and finding not a single buyer in the market. As noon approached, he reckoned the market would soon have fallen nearly ten percent. The anguished hubbub from the floor was so loud that, unable to bear it any longer, he walked outside.