Part 21 (1/2)

He finished doing up the package, then he seated himself, and we both looked at it through the smoke of our cigars.

”It's just as easy to deal in big sums as in little, in large matters as in small, isn't it, Joe,” said I, ”once one gets in the way of it?”

”Do you remember--away back there--the morning,” he asked musingly--”the last morning--you and I got up from the straw in the stables over at Jerome Park--the stables they let us sleep in?”

”And went out in the dawn to roost on the rails and spy on the speed trials of old Revell's horses?”

”Exactly,” said Joe, and we looked at each other and laughed. ”We in rags--gosh, how chilly it was that morning! Do you remember what we talked about?”

”No,” said I, though I did.

”I was proposing to turn a crooked trick--and you wouldn't have it. You persuaded me to keep straight, Matt. I've never forgotten it. You kept me straight--showed me what a d.a.m.n fool a man was to load himself down with a petty larceny record. You made a man of me, Matt. And then those good looks of yours caught the eye of that bookmaker's girl, and he gave you a job at writing sheet--and you worked me in with you.”

So long ago it seemed, yet near and real, too, as I sat there, conscious of every sound and motion, even of the fantastic shapes taken by our upcurling smoke. How far I was from the ”rail bird” of those happy-go-lucky years, when a meal meant quite as much to me as does a million now--how far from all that, yet how near, too. For was I not still facing life with the same careless courage, forgetting each yesterday in the eager excitement of each new day with its new deal? We went on in our reminiscences for a while; then, as Joe had a little work to do, I drifted out into the house, took a bite of supper with young Melville, had a little go at the tiger, and toward five in the clear June morning emerged into the broad day of the streets, with the precious bundle under my arms and a five hundred-dollar bill in my waistcoat pocket.

”Give my win to me in a single bill,” I said to the banker, ”and blow yourself off with the change.”

Joe walked down the street with me--for companions.h.i.+p and a little air before turning in, he said, but I imagine a desire to keep his eye on his treasure a while longer had something to do with his taking that early morning stroll. We pa.s.sed several of those forlorn figures that hurry through the slowly-awakening streets to bed or to work. Finally, there came by an old, old woman--a scrubwoman, I guess, on her way home from cleaning some office building. Beside her was a thin little boy, hopping along on a crutch. I stopped them.

”Hold out your hand,” said I to the boy, and he did. I laid the five hundred-dollar bill in it. ”Now, shut your fingers tight over that,” said I, ”and don't open them till you get home. Then tell your mother to do what she likes with it.” And we left them gaping after us, speechless before this fairy story come true.

”You must be looking hard for luck to-day,” said Joe, who understood this transaction where another might have thought it a showy and not very wise charity. ”They'll stop in at the church and pray for you, and burn a candle.”

”I hope so,” said I, ”for G.o.d knows I need it.”

XX. A BREATHING SPELL.

Langdon, after several years of effort, had got recognition for Textile in London, but that was about all. He hadn't succeeded in unloading any great amount of it on the English. So it was rather because I neglected nothing than because I was hopeful of results that I had made a point of telegraphing to London news of my proposed suit. The result was a little trading in Textiles over there and a slight decline in the price. This fact was telegraphed to all the financial centers on this side of the water, and reinforced the impression my lawyers' announcement and my own ”bear” letter were making.

Still, this was nothing, or next to it. What could I hope to avail against Langdon's agents with almost unlimited capital, putting their whole energy under the stock to raise it? In the same newspapers that published my bear attack, in the same columns and under the same head-lines, were official denials from the Textile Trust and the figures of enormous increase of business as proof positive that the denials were honest. If the public had not been burned so many times by ”industrials,” if it had not learned by bitter experience that practically none of the leaders of finance and industry were above lying to make or save a few dollars, if Textiles had not been manipulated so often, first by Dumont and since his death by his brother-in-law and successor, this suave and cynical Langdon, my desperate attack would have been without effect. As it was--

Four months before, in the same situation, had I seen Textiles stagger as they staggered in the first hour of business on the Stock Exchange that morning, I'd have sounded the charge, clapped spurs to my charger, and borne down upon them. But--I had my new-born yearning for ”respectability”; I had my new-born squeamishness, which led me to fear risking Bob Corey and his bank and the money of my old friend Healey; finally, there was Anita--the longing for her that made me prefer a narrow and uncertain foothold to the bold leap that would land me either in wealth and power or in the bottomless abyss.

Instead of continuing to sell Textiles, I covered as far as I could; and I bought so eagerly and so heavily that, more than Langdon's corps of rocketers, I was responsible for the stock's rally and start upward. When I say ”eagerly” and ”heavily,” I do not mean that I acted openly or without regard to common sense. I mean simply that I made no attempt to back up my followers in the selling campaign I had urged them into; on the contrary, I bought as they sold. That does not sound well, and it is no better than it sounds. I shall not dispute with any one who finds this action of mine a betrayal of my clients to save myself. All I shall say is that it was business, that in such extreme and dire compulsion as was mine, it was--and is--right under the code, the private and real Wall Street code.

You can imagine the confused ma.s.s of transactions in which I was involved before the Stock Exchange had been open long. There was the stock we had been able to buy or get options on at various prices, between the closing of the Exchange the previous day and that morning's opening--stock from all parts of this country and in England. There was the stock I had been buying since the Exchange opened--buying at figures ranging from one-eighth above last night's closing price to fourteen points above it. And, on the debit side, there were the ”short” transactions extending over a period of nearly two months--”sellings” of blocks large and small at a hundred different prices.

An inextricable tangle, you will say, one it would be impossible for a man to unravel quickly and in the frantic chaos of a wild Stock Exchange day. Yet the influence of the mysterious state of my nerves, which I have described above, was so marvelous that, incredible though it seems, the moment the Exchange closed, I knew exactly, where I stood.

Like a mechanical lightning calculator, my mind threw up before me the net result of these selling and buying transactions. Textile Common closed eighteen points above the closing quotation of the previous day; if Langdon's brother had not been just a little indiscreet, I should have been as hopeless a bankrupt in reputation and in fortune as ever was ripped up by the bulls of Wall Street.

As it was, I believed that, by keeping a bold front, I might extricate and free myself when the Coal reorganization was announced. The rise of Coal stocks would square my debts--and, as I was apparently untouched by the Textile flurry, so far as even Ball, my nominal partner and chief lieutenant, knew, I need not fear pressure from creditors that I could not withstand.

I could not breathe freely, but I could breathe.

XXI. MOST UNLADYLIKE