Strangely enough, the shrewdest of the detectives failed to connect the disappearance of the millionaires with the comprehensive plans they were forming, and which could not be carried out except by the plotters in person.
Other rich men of the country, who were wont to trim their sails in accordance with whatever wind blew from the offices of The Four, in Wall Street, were already shifting affairs to lay a course that would give them the best headway against the projected new order. This sudden disappearance of the powers to which the lesser rich looked for guidance left them becalmed in an uncharted sea.
The middle class, long accustomed to being mulcted right and left, accepted the astonishing situation with equanimity. So far as they were concerned, Gilhooly, Popham, Meigs, and Markham were abstract generalities--merely names to conjure with. For years the middle class had paid for the conjuring, and had been taught to look calmly into the eyes of what they had come to believe was the inevitable. If their annual outing to the seashore or the mountains cost too much, they could stay at home; if the butcher, the baker, and the grocer ran prices too high, some of the luxuries could be cut out; if anthracite went to $20 a ton, they would heat fewer rooms; and if clothing became too expensive, there would be fewer suits and gowns to wear. By a little self-denial, the middle class also could trim their sails to any gale that blew. They were used to it.
With the poor it was different. They were already down to bed-rock in the way of self-denial. No sooner had it drifted through their brains that the influence of Gilhooly, Popham, Meigs, and Markham had been blotted out than they lifted their voices in praise of the blessed event. Their situation had been bad enough, and any change among the vaguely understood causes presiding over their affairs could hardly be for the worse.
The detectives, feeling that they were at work on a particularly complex case, hampered themselves by looking for complex causes. At first, they believed it was a matter of sequestration and that presently a ransom in seven or eight figures would be called for. However, a delving into Quinn's past failed to reveal any lawless actions that would point to a ransom in his present line of endeavor. The detectives, growing more complex as the ambiguities closed them in, overlooked entirely the simplicity of Quinn's character.