Quincy, Illinois. September 6, 2009.

Hamilton Burton had always denied with scorn the existence of blind luck as an element in human greatness or failure. Now if he had leaped head-foremost into an empty swimming pool, at the exact moment when he stood midway of an enterprise which should crown him as omnipotent—or ruin him, perhaps it was a thing beyond coincidence. Yesterday he had aligned colossal forces for today’s conflict—and taken his toll of vengeance. Today he must turn to profit the chaos he had wrought to that end through plans known only to himself—and today he lay with a fractured skull, sleeping the sleep of unconsciousness.

Today every hand in the world of finance with turned against him with the desperation of a struggle for survival—save those of his own lieutenants who were leaderless. All the way down the line from the Department of Justice to the small sufferers of the provinces a slogan of war without quarter sounded against the most hated man in America. That such would be the case he had known yesterday, but he also knew—or thought he did—that his directing hand would still be on the tiller and his uncannily shrewd brain would be puzzling, bewildering and deluding his enemies into unwittingly serving his ends.

Excerpted from Destiny, a novel by Charles Neville Buck. Published by W.J. Watt & Company, New York, 1916.