Friday, the Thirteenth
A Novel by
Thomas W. Lawson
Frontispiece in colour by Sigismond de Ivanowski
1907
Copyright, 1906, 1907.
Copyright, 1907.
Published, February, 1907
To Her
I Dedicate This Book
All That Is Good In This Little Waif, Which Is Very
Dear To Me, I Know A Just God Will Place To
Her Credit. All That Is Mean And Low And
Human Could Never Have Been Birthed
Had She Been Nigh To Guide An
Ever Wayward Pen.
_The Author._
_The Nest, Dreamwold,
August, 1906._
Friday, the Thirteenth
Chapter I.
“Friday, the 13th; I thought as much. If Bob has started, there will be
hell, but I will see what I can do.”
The sound of my voice, as I dropped the receiver, seemed to part the mists
of five years and usher me into the world of Then as though it had never
passed on.
I had been sitting in my office, letting the tape slide through my fingers
while its every yard spelled “panic” in a constantly rising voice, when
they told me that Brownley on the floor of the Exchange wanted me at the
’phone, and “quick.” Brownley was our junior partner and floor man. He
talked with a rush. Stock Exchange floor men in panics never let their
speech hobble.
“Mr. Randolph, it’s sizzling over here, and it’s getting hotter every
second. It’s Bob—that is evident to all. If he keeps up this pace for
twenty minutes longer, the sulphur will overflow ‘the Street’ and get
into the banks and into the country, and no man can tell how much
territory will be burned over by to-morrow. The boys have begged me to ask
you to throw yourself into the breach and stay him. They agree you are the
only hope now.”
“Are you sure, Fred, that this is Bob’s work?” I asked. “Have you seen
him?”
“Yes, I have just come from his office, and glad I was to get out. He’s on
the war-path, Mr. Randolph—uglier than I ever saw him. The last time he
broke loose was child’s play to his mood to-day. Mother sent me word this
morning that she saw last night the spell was coming. He had been up to
see her and sisters, and mother thought from his tone he was about to
disappear again. When she told me of his mood, and I remembered the day, I
was afraid he might seek his vent here. Also I heard of his being about
town till long after midnight. The minute I opened his office door this
morning he flew at me like a panther. I told him I had only dropped in on
my rounds for an order, as they were running off right smart, and I didn’t
know but he might like to pick up some bargains. ‘Bargains!’ he roared,
‘don’t you know the day? Don’t you know it is Friday, the 13th? Go back
to that hell-pit and sell, sell, sell.’ ‘Sell what and how much?’ I asked.
‘Anything, everything. Give the thieves every share they will take, and
when they won’t take any more, ram as much again down their crops until
they spit up all they have been buying for the last three months!’ Going
out I met Jim Holliday and Frank Swan rushing in. They are evidently
executing Bob’s orders, and have been pouring Anti-People’s out for an
hour. They will be on the floor again in a few minutes, so I thought it
safer to call you before I started to sell. Mr. Randolph, they cannot take
much more of anything in here, and if I begin to throw stocks over, it
will bring the gavel inside of ten minutes; and that will be to announce a
dozen failures. It’s yet twenty minutes to one and God only knows what
will happen before three. It’s up to you, Mr. Randolph, to do something,
and unless I am on a bad slant, you haven’t many minutes to lose.”
It was then I dropped the receiver with “I thought as much!” As I had been
fingering the tape, watching five and ten millions crumbling from price
values every few minutes, I was sure this was the work of Bob Brownley.
No one else in Wall Street had the power, the nerve, and the devilish
cruelty to rip things as they had been ripped during the last twenty
minutes. The night before I had passed Bob in the theatre lobby. I gave
him close scrutiny and saw the look of which I of all men best knew the
meaning. The big brown eyes were set on space; the outer corners of the
handsome mouth were drawn hard and tense as though weighted. As I had my
wife with me it was impossible to follow him, but when I got home I called
up his house and his clubs, intending to ask, him to run up and smoke a
cigar with me, but could locate him nowhere. I tried again in the morning
without success, but when just before noon the tape began to jump and
flash and snarl, I remembered Bob’s ugly mood, and all it portended.
Fred Brownley was Bob’s youngest brother, twelve years his junior. He had
been with Randolph & Randolph from the day he left college, and for over a
year had been our most trusted Stock Exchange man. Bob Brownley, when
himself, was as fond of his “baby brother,” as he called him, as his
beautiful Southern mother was of both; but when the devil had possession
of Bob—and his option during the past five years had been exercised many
a time—mother and brother had to take their place with all the rest of
the world, for then Bob knew no kindred, no friends. All the wide world
was to him during those periods a jungle peopled with savage animals and
reptiles to hunt and fight and tear and kill.
It is hardly necessary for me to explain who Randolph & Randolph are. For
more than sixty years the name has spoken for itself in every part of the
world where dollar-making machines are installed. No railroad is financed,
no great “industrial” projected, without by force of habit, hat-in-handing
a by-your-leave of Randolph & Randolph, and every nation when entering the
market for loans, knows that the favour of the foremost American bankers
is something which must be reckoned with. I pride myself that at
forty-two, at the end of the ten years I have had the helm of Randolph &
Randolph, I have done nothing to mar the great name my father and uncle
created, but something to add to its sterling reputation for honest
dealing, fearless, old-fashioned methods, and all-round integrity.
Bradstreet’s and other mercantile agencies say, in reporting Randolph &
Randolph, “Worth fifty millions and upward, credit unlimited.” I can take
but small praise for this, for the report was about the same the day I
left college and came to the office to “learn the business.” But, as the
survivor of my great father and uncle, I can say, my Maker as my witness,
that Randolph & Randolph have never loaned a dollar of their millions at
over legal rates, 6 per cent, per annum; have never added to their hoard
by any but fair, square business methods; and that blight of blights,
frenzied finance, has yet to find a lodging-place beneath the old
black-and-gold sign that father and uncle nailed up with their own hands
over the entrance.
Nineteen years ago I was graduated from Harvard. My classmate and chum,
Bob Brownley, of Richmond, Va., was graduated with me. He was class poet,
I, yard marshal. We had been four years together at St. Paul’s previous to
entering Harvard. No girl and lover were fonder than we of each other.
My people had money, and to spare, and with it a hard-headed, Northern
horse-sense. The Brownleys were poor as church mice, but they had the
brilliant, virile blood of the old Southern oligarchy and the romantic,
“salaam-to-no-one” Dixie-land pride of before-the-war days, when Southern
prodigality and hospitality were found wherever women were fair and men’s
mirrors in the bottom of their julep-glasses.
Bob’s father, one of the big, white pillars of Southern aristocracy, had
gone through Congress and the Senate of his country to the tune of “Spend
and not spare,” which left his widow and three younger daughters and a
small son dependent upon Bob, his eldest.
Many a warm summer’s afternoon, as Bob and I paddled down the Charles, and
often on a cold, crispy night as we sat in my shooting-box on the Cape Cod
shore, had we matched up for our future. I was to have the inside run of
the great banking business of Randolph & Randolph, and Bob was eventually
to represent my father’s firm on the floor of the Stock Exchange. “I’d die
in an office,” Bob used to say, “and the floor of the Stock Exchange is
just the chimney-place to roast my hoe-cake in.” So when our college days
were over my able had saddled Bob’s youth with the heavy responsibilities
of husbanding and directing his family’s slim finances that he took to
business as a swallow to the air. We entered the office of Randolph &
Randolph on the same day, and on its anniversary, a year later, my father
summoned us into his office for a sort of tally-up talk. Neither of us
quite knew what was coming, and we thrilled with pleasure when he said:
“Jim, you and Bob have fairly outdone my expectations. I have had my eye
on both of you and I want you to know that the kind of industry and
business intelligence you have shown here would have won you recognition
in any banking-house on ‘the Street.’ I want you both in the firm—Jim to
learn his way round so he can step into my shoes; you, Bob, to take one of
the firm’s seats on the Stock Exchange.”
Bob’s face went red and then pale with happiness as he reached for my
father’s hand.
“I’m very grateful to you sir, far more so than any words can say, but I
want to talk this proposition of yours over with Jim here first. He knows
me better than any one else in the world and I’ve some ideas I’d like to
thrash out with him.”
“Speak up here, Bob,” said my father.
“Well, sir, I should feel much better if I could go over there into the
swirl and smash it out for myself. You see if I could win out alone and
pay back the seat price, and then make a pile for myself, if you felt
later like giving me another chance to come into the firm, then I should
not be laying myself open to the charge of being a mere pensioner on your
friendship. You know what I mean, sir, and won’t think I am filled with
any low-down pride, but if you will let me have the price of a Stock
Exchange seat on my note, and will give me the chance, when I get the hang
of the ropes, to handle some of the firm’s orders, I shall be just as much
beholden to you and Jim, sir, and shall feel a lot better myself.”
I knew what Bob meant; so did father, and we were glad enough to do what
he asked, father insisting on making the seat price in the form of a
present, after explaining to us that a foundation Stock Exchange rule
prohibited an applicant from borrowing the seat price. Four years after
Bob Brownley entered the Stock Exchange he had paid back the forty
thousand, with interest, and not only had a snug fifty thousand to his
credit on Randolph & Randolph’s books, but was sending home six thousand a
year while living up to, as he jokingly put it, “an honest man’s notch.” I
may say in passing, that a Wall Street man’s notch would make twice six
thousand yearly earnings cast an uncertain shadow at Christmas time. Bob
was the favourite of the Exchange, as he had been the pet at school and at
college, and had his hands full of business three hundred days in the
year. Besides Randolph & Randolph’s choicest commissions, he had the
confidential orders of two of the heavy plunging cliques.
I had just passed my thirty-second birthday when my kind old dad suddenly
died. For the previous six years I had been getting ready for such an
event; that is, I had grown accustomed to hearing my father say: “Jim,
don’t let any grass grow in getting the hang of every branch of our
business, so that when anything happens to me there will be no disturbance
in ‘the Street’ in regard to Randolph & Randolph’s affairs. I want to let
the world know as soon as possible that after I am gone our business will