Part 4 (1/2)

”And who was he? Who? Tell me!”

He choked and caught his breath again; but he could not say the words. As he felt the warmth of her breath and the pressure of her arms about him, it sent a sudden shudder through his frame, and he flung her away with a force that sent her reeling across the floor. Then he staggered to his feet, and with a moan he rushed to the door. He caught one glimpse of the girl's face, and then fled madly down the steps.

Outside his cab was waiting. He did not see it, and started away; but the driver shouted to him, and that brought him to his senses for an instant. He leaped in.

”Drive! drive!” he panted.

”Where to?” asked the man.

”Anywhere,” he screamed. ”Drive!”

And so they whirled away down the street, van Rensselaer crouching in a corner, writhing and twisting his hands together.

There was a thought that came over him every few seconds like a spasm and made him cry out. He could not bear it very long; he shouted to the driver to stop, and sprang out, and flung him some money. They were in a deserted portion of the park, and he turned and fled away into the darkness.

XXIX.

And meanwhile Mary was left alone in the ghastly silence of the room, crouching in the corner like a hunted animal. Her face was ashen, and her eyes distended; in her quivering hands she clutched the locket.

She was staring at it and staring at it, in terror, powerless to move. She wished to open it; but ten minutes must have gone before she rose and groped her way across the room. She found a chisel and knelt down upon the floor, and worked in frenzied fear to force it. Her hands were like a drunkard's, and she cut herself again and again; but then suddenly the cover flew off, and she pounced upon it.

One glance she took; and then it fell to the ground from her helpless grasp, and she staggered backward, with a shuddering moan, against the wall. She swayed there an instant, and then like a flash she turned and fled across the room. She fumbled for an instant in a drawer of the desk; then a pistol shot rang out, and she sunk down in a quivering heap upon the floor, her brains spattered out upon the carpet.

x.x.x.

Wall Street was crowded long before nine o'clock that Thursday morning with a jostling, shouting mob of men; the gallery of the exchange was packed; the curb outside was thronged. The London quotations were on every tongue, and suspense and terror on every face, in the very air. All knew that the crisis of the combat had come, that one way or other all would now soon be known.

Through this crowd Robert van Rensselaer pushed his way. n.o.body heeded him, n.o.body knew him; his clothing was soiled and muddy, his hat broken and jammed down upon his head. His face was inflamed, his eyes blood-shot, and he reeled and groped about him as he walked. He was drunk.

He made his way up to his office, staggered in, and sunk into a chair. ”Get me some whiskey,” he panted to his secretary. ”Hurry up!”

The latter was staring at him in amazement. ”Some whiskey!” he shouted again. ”Don't you hear? And shut the door, and don't let any one come in here. Quick!”

The man turned and vanished, and van Rensselaer sat in the chair, staring in front of him with his wild eyes. He had made his way down town like a man in a dream; one idea had possessed him and driven him--he muttered it to himself as he walked: ”Wall Street! Wall Street! Ten o'clock!”

Now he turned suddenly and looked at the ticker, then rose and staggered to it and leaned there, swaying. He read the early reports, and then glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes to ten.

”Ah!” he panted. ”Safe!”

The secretary returned, and the other seized the bottle he brought and drank from it. Then he said: ”I wrote Jones and Co. yesterday to turn three millions over to my brokers. See that it's done. And tell the brokers to sell T. & S., and sell it just as fast as they can, until it's every cent gone. And then you come back here, and don't let any one into this room--not a soul, mind you, not a soul. Do you understand?”

”I understand,” said the man, and went away, lost in wonder. The first thing he did was to order his own broker to cover some T. & S. of his own; the secretary had never seen van Rensselaer lose his nerve before.

And meanwhile van Rensselaer was kneading his hands and muttering, his eyes fixed upon the creeping clock, and the bottle of liquor on the table by his side. So the minutes pa.s.sed by, and the hands pa.s.sed the stroke of ten.

x.x.xI.

It was worth going down into that seething crowd to see the floor of the exchange at that moment. A thousand men were swaying about one spot of it, and at the instant of ten they broke into a deafening chorus of yells.

Transatlantic and Suburban! Transatlantic and Suburban! There was no other stock thought of that day--there were many of the smaller firms that had closed their doors, not daring to do business on such a market. And those who hung over the ticker read nothing but T. & S.,--157-1/4--157-1/2--157-3/8,--and so on and on. The fluctuating of T. & S. was the swaying of two monsters that wrestled in a death embrace; and van Rensselaer, as he fed his eyes upon it, was himself a free man once more. Horror haunted him no longer; the excitement drove the fumes of the liquor from his brain, and he was drunk, but with the battle ecstasy. To him every figure meant a blow, as with a war-axe, at foes of his; he could fancy that this stroke was his father's, and that his own, and that Shrike's, and so on. He clenched his hands and muttered swiftly, as one watching a fight: ”Give it to them! Down with them! Down with them!” And meanwhile the ticker raced on: T. & S. 100--157-1/2; T. & S. 500--157-5/8; T. & S. 3000--157-3/8; T. & S. 10,000--157-1/4; and so almost without a pause. Down below in the street shrieked a frantic mob; it was like looking into a huge well packed full of writhing bodies.

So half an hour crept by, and T. & S. still stood the onslaught; van Rensselaer had gotten help, but evidently so had the syndicate. It was as if Wall Street had divided into two armies, and vowed no quarter. And they fought on; the time crept along to 10.45; T. & S. was moving at last--it was 157-3/4, the highest mark of the day! Van Rensselaer took another great gulp of the liquor and pounded his bell.

”Listen to me,” he said swiftly to the breathless clerk. ”The crisis has come--go outside as fast as you can and tell somebody that the Arkansas legislature has doubled the freight rates on the T. & S. There'll be a dozen people doing the same. And then wait five minutes--not a second more, do you hear? and let it out that I am breaking T. & S., and that the Governor's with me, and Shrike, and the rest of them.”

The man nodded and disappeared, and van Rensselaer turned once more to the ticker. There was a moment's pause, and he went to the window and stared out. Then it began again--T. & S. still holding. Van Rensselaer knew that the ticker was some minutes behind the market, and he cursed with impatience. Then he took a pencil and began figuring, as well as he could, with his trembling hands.

He had put twenty-seven million dollars into this thing; he had bought the margins of something like a million and three-quarters shares. That was more shares than were in existence, actually; but under Wall Street's systems of speculating that is a common enough state of affairs. The fact that impressed him was that every point that T. & S. went down he stood to win a million and three-quarters of dollars from the men he had been fighting. And if instead it went up, and stayed up the time limit, he owed the same sum instead. And then suddenly the ticker clicked again; it was five minutes of eleven, and T. & S. still holding,--157-5/8--157-3/8--157-1/2. He could bear the thing no more; he drained the bottle and sprang out of the door. In a few moments more he was on the street.

x.x.xII.

There were thousands of men flying this way and that, wild-eyed and shrieking. Van Rensselaer caught a phrase here and there,--”freight rates--ruin them--the van Rensselaers--Shrike.” And meanwhile he was hurrying on his way to the board-room. He was a member and was admitted to the bedlam, to the edge of that writhing, hysterical ma.s.s of men who were crus.h.i.+ng each other, breathless in their efforts to reach the trading-post. Van Rensselaer gazed at the figure of the stock--it was 157! He heard the same exclamations here that he had heard outside,--”freight rates--the van Rensselaers,”--and all the rest; and then suddenly he saw near him a huge ox of a man, waving a paper in one hand and bellowing in a voice that rang above the whole uproar. It was one of van Rensselaer's own brokers, the best of them; and as van Rensselaer heard him his heart stood still. The moment had come!

”I offer twenty thousand three-day sellers! T. & S. twenty thousand!--one fifty-seven! one fifty-seven! Twenty thousand three-day sellers--one fifty-six and seven-eighths! one fifty-six and three-quarters!”

And then again the roar swelled up and drowned him. Men were screaming from a hundred places: ”One thousand at one fifty-six and a half! Thirty-five hundred at one fifty-six! one fifty-six! one fifty-five and a half!”

And van Rensselaer, mad, drunk, and blind with pa.s.sion, shook his hands in the air and screamed in frenzy, ”Down! down with them! Down! Jump on them! Pound them! Go on! go on!” He knew now that it was victory; he could feel it in the air--the panic, the wild, raging, mad tornado that uproots all things on its way. It had begun--it had begun! There were no more takers--the enemy was retreating--the rout was on! And so he yelled and laughed in delirium; and the crowd, crushed tightly about the post, went mad likewise, with terror or joy, as the case might be. There were men there who were losing a million with every point--the millions that van Rensselaer was winning. And they saw defeat and ruin glaring at them with fiery eyes. So they raged and screamed for some one to buy T. & S.--to buy it at one fifty-six! to buy it at one fifty-five! to buy it at one fifty-three! And there was no longer any one to buy it at any price.

So it was that the hurricane burst, in all its fury; it was not a panic, it was chaos and destruction let loose. The stock was ”turned” at last; its supporters beaten; and the public, the great terror-stricken public, plunged in to overwhelm it. The price went no longer by fractions, no longer even by points; it went by three points, by five points, by ten points. Its speed was regulated by nothing but the time it took electricity to spread the panic through the whole country, for messages to come in bidding brokers to sell at any price. And in the meantime, of course, there stood van Rensselaer's bull-voiced agent hammering it down by five and by ten points at a bound with his twenty thousand shares to sell.

The mad frenzy had gone on until van Rensselaer could no longer bear the strain, and backed out of the crowd and sat down and laughed and sobbed like an overwrought child. It was half an hour before he could command himself again; and then T. & S. was at seventy-six, and finding takers at last! That meant that the ”shorts” were ”covering,” buying the stock they needed, and reaping their rewards; and so the awful panic at last was coming to an end. Van Rensselaer had estimated the true value of T. & S. at ninety, and so he sought out his brokers and bade them buy all there was to be had.

x.x.xIII.

Our hero made his way out of the crush, jostling past men who were crying and men who were cursing, men who were tearing their hair and men who were shaking their fists at the sky--all of them men who had lost all they owned in the world and saw ruin and starvation ahead of them. It was a fearful, a h.e.l.lish scene; but van Rensselaer did not heed it, he had emotions enough of his own. They were emotions not easy to describe--emotions of a man who has made seventy or eighty dollars a share upon a million or two of shares, and who has been made the wealthiest man in New York in half an hour. Van Rensselaer the elder came hobbling into the office a few moments later and flung his arms about his son. ”Robbie!” he gasped, ”Robbie!” and could say no more, for he was choking. Shrike and the other three were close behind him, and the five gentlemen went beside themselves with rejoicing--now singing, now laughing, now dancing about, now falling on each other's necks.

I have said five; for van Rensselaer the younger, strange to say, joined them but halfway. Now he would sit back in the chair and laugh nervously, while his father told over the unthinkable sums he had gained, and his heart throbbed with exultation; but then a few seconds later he would be sitting staring in front of him, his quivering hands wandering aimlessly about. ”Poor Robbie!” said the fond father; ”it's easy to see he's done up. Here, have a drop.” He was surprised to see Robbie gulp down the contents of a flask at one draught.