An unfinished palace in Newport. God knows how you’d sell that in the present market. Nobody was buying fancy houses that he knew of. He’d marked its value down severely.

So, absent a miracle, he’d find out in the next few hours whether his net worth was positive, zero, or negative. He preferred to do that alone. Then, when it was over, he’d have to go home and tell Rose that they were broke.

She had no idea.

“Pick me up at four o’clock, Joe,” he said, as he got out.

The sun was still shining quite brightly when Joe opened the door for him again that afternoon. He settled comfortably into the back seat, and looked out at the street.

“Take me for a drive, Joe,” he said. “We’ll go up the West Side.” He smiled. “Take me to Riverside Drive.”

It was a while since he’d driven up the Hudson. As they got into the Seventies, he looked out at its broad waters. They were pretty much the same, he supposed, as they would have been when the first Masters and Van Dycks had come to the city. That’s what they would have seen. The Indians before them, too.

That reminded him. The wampum belt. He still had the damn thing on. He’d forgotten about it during the day. Well, it hadn’t brought him much luck. So far as he could tell, when the brokerage was closed, the houses sold, and all debts paid, he had maybe fifty thousand dollars left in the world. Better than bankruptcy.

Three hundred years of accumulated family fortune, gone. Lost in its entirety. Lost by me, he thought. He’d been the one, the only one in all those generations, to achieve that. He continued to smile out of the window, as he took a deep breath, but it was no good. His body gave a sudden start. The shame of it made him squirm in his seat. He wasn’t sure he could bear it.

Had Joe noticed his sudden movement from the driver’s seat? There was no sign that he had. A good man, Joe. Never asked questions. He’d be all right.

William sat silently and stared out at the river. He tried not to cry. After a while, they passed Grant’s Tomb.

Ahead of them now was a magnificent sight. The mighty American economy might be sinking, Wall Street might be in collapse, yet everywhere you looked in Manhattan these days, you saw these huge construction projects rising into the sky.

The suspension bridge nearing completion across the Hudson River was not just large, it was stupendous. Even the Brooklyn Bridge looked modest by comparison.

“You never married, Joe, did you?” he remarked to the chauffeur.

“No, sir.”

“Any family? Parents?”

“Both dead, sir. I have a brother in New Jersey.”

“That’s a fine bridge, Joe.”

“Yes, sir.”