Friday, the Thirteenth: A Novel
“But can you not, at least temporarily, disguise from him just how you
have arranged the relief?”
Her big blue eyes stared at me in bewilderment.
“Mr. Randolph, I could not deceive father. I could not tell him a lie even
to save his life. It would be impossible. My father abhors a lie. He
believes a man or woman who would lie the lowest of the low things on
earth. When I go back to my father he will say, ‘Tell me what you have
done.’ I can just see him now, standing between the big white pillars at
the end of the driveway. I can hear him say calmly, ‘Beulah, my daughter,
welcome. Your mother is waiting for you in her room. Do not lose a moment
getting to her.’ Afterward he’ll take me over the plantation to show me
all the familiar things, and not one word will he allow me to say about
our affairs until dinner is over, until the neighbours have left, for no
Sands returns from long absence without a fitting home welcome. When I
have said good night to mother and sister and he has drawn up my rocker in
front of his big chair in the library alcove and I’ve lighted his cigar
for him, he will look me in the eye and say, ‘Daughter, tell me all you
have done.’ I would no more think of holding anything back than I would of
stabbing him to the heart. No, Mr. Randolph, there is no possibility of
relief except in fairly using that $30,000, and fairly winning back what
Wall Street has stolen from father. Even that will cause both of us many
twinges of conscience, and anything more is impossible. If this cannot be
done, father must, all of us must, pay the penalty of Reinhart’s ruthless
act.”
Bob had listened, but made no comment until she was through; then he said,
“It looks to me as though the market is shaping up so that we may be able
to do something soon.” It was evident to both of us that he had some plan
in mind.
Later we learned that that night Beulah wrote her father a long letter,
telling him what she had done; that she had made almost two millions
profit from her operations, that they had been lost, and that the outlook
was not reassuring. She begged him to prepare himself for the final
calamity; promising that if there were no change for the better by
December 1st, she would come home to be with him when the blow fell. She
begged him to prepare to meet it like a Sands, and assured him that if
worse came to worst she would earn enough to keep poverty away. Judge
Sands would receive this letter the second day following, Friday, the 13th
day of November. My God! how well I know the date. It is seared into my
brain as though with a white-hot iron.
After our talk with Beulah Sands I begged Bob to dine with me and go over
matters at length to see if we could not find a way out to relief.
“No, Jim, I have work to do to-night, worn that won’t wait. That Tariff
Bill was buttoned up to-day, and it has just been announced that the
Sugar directors have declared a big extra stock dividend. Things have come
out just about as I told you they would, and the stock is climbing to-day.
They say it will touch 200 to-morrow and ‘the Street’ is predicting 250
for it in ten days. Barry Conant has been a steady buyer all day and the
news bureaus announced that Camemeyer and the ‘Standard Oil’ are twenty
millions winners. They say the Washington gamblers, the Congressmen,
Senators, and Cabinet members with their heelers and lobbyists have made a
killing. About every one seems to have fattened up, Jim, but you and me
and Beulah Sands and the public. The public gets the axe both ways as
usual. They have been shaken out of their stock, and they will be
compelled to pay millions more each year for their sugar than they would
if this law had not been made for their benefit. Jim, there is no
disguising the fact that the American people are as helpless in the hands
of these thugs of the ‘System’ as though they lived in the realm of the
Sultan, where a few cutthroat brigands are licensed to rob and oppress to
their heart’s content. Jim Randolph, you know this game of finance. You
know how it is worked and the men who work it. Tell me if there is any
consideration due Wall Street and its heart-and-soul butchers at the hands
of honest men.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Bob. What are you driving at?”
“Never mind what I am driving at. I ask you whether, if an honest man knew
how to beat Wall Street at its own game, he should hesitate to beat
it—hesitate because of anything connected with conscience or morals? You
saw what Barry Conant was able to do to us that day simply by standing on
the floor of the Stock Exchange and outstaying me in opening and closing
his mouth. You saw he was able to sell Sugar to a point so low that I was
obliged to let go of our 150,000 shares at eight to ten million dollars
less than we could have got for them if we could have held them until
to-day. Because of this trick his clients, the ‘System,’ instead of us,
make five to seven millions.”
“I don’t follow you, Bob. I know that Barry Conant was able to do this
because he had more money behind him than you.”
“You think so, do you, Jim? That is the way it looks to you, but I tell
you money had nothing to do with it. Nothing had to do with it but the
fiendish system of fraud and trickery upon which the whole stock-gambling
structure is reared. Nothing entered into the whole business but the
trickery of stock-gambling as conducted to-day. It was only a question,
Jim, of a man’s opening and closing his mouth and spitting out words. From
the minute Barry Conant came into that crowd until he left and we were
ruined, he showed no money, no anything that I did not show. From the very
nature of the business he could not. He simply said ‘Sold’ oftener and
longer than I said ‘Buy.’ He may have had money back of him, or he may
only have had nerve. God Almighty is the only one who can tell, for when
Conant was through he was able to buy back at 90 the 50,000 shares he sold
me at 175, the 50,000 that broke my back. Jim, if I had known as much that
day as I do now I would have stood in that crowd and bought all the stock
he sold at 180 and I would have stood there buying until hell froze over
or he quit; then I would have made him rebuy it at 280 or 2,080, and I
would have broken him and all his Camemeyer and ‘Standard Oil’ backers;
broken them to their last crime-covered dollar.”
“Bob, what are you talking about? It is all Chinese to me. I cannot get
head or tail of what you are driving at.”
“I know you can’t, Jim, neither could Wall Street if it were listening to
me. But you will, and Wall Street will too, before many days go by. Now I
must be off. I have work to do.”
He put on his hat and left me trying to puzzle out just what he meant.
Next day the Sugar bulls had the centre of the Stock Exchange stage. All
day long they tossed Sugar from one to another as though each thousand
shares had been a wisp of hay instead of $200,000—for soon after the
opening it soared to 200. The “System’s” cohorts were in absolute control,
with Barry Conant never a minute away from the Sugar-pole, always on the
alert to steer the course of prices when they threatened to run away on
the up or the down side. It was evident to the expert readers of the tape
that the “System” was currying its steed for an exceptionally brilliant
run. Ike Bloomstein, the Average Fiend, who for forty years had kept close
track of every movement on the floor, and who would bet anything, from his
Fifth Avenue mansion to his overripe boardroom straw hat, that all stocks
and movements were as strictly subject to the law of averages as are the
tides to the moon and sun, remarked to Joe Barnes, the loan expert:
“‘Cam’ unt de Keroseners are pudding up egstra dop rails to dot wool-pen
deh haf ben pilding since deh took Pop Prownlee and deh Rantolphs into
gamp. Unless my topesheet goes pack on me, for deh first dime in forty
years dere vill pe a record clip pefore a veek from to-tay.”
“I am with you there, Ike,” answered Joe. “If Barry Conant’s knife-edged
teeth ever spelt a killin’, they do to-day. I just got orders from
somewhere to drop call money from four to two and a half per cent., and
they have given me ten millions to drop it with and the order is to favour
Sugar as ‘collat.’ Some one is anxious to make it easy for the bleaters to
get the coin to buy all the Sugar they want. Ike, you and I might make
turkey money for Thanksgiving if we only knew whether Barry and his bunch
were going to shoot her up thirty or forty points before they turned the
bag upside down, or whether they will bury them from 200 to 150. What do
you think?”
“I gant make out, aldo I haf vatched dem sharp all day. Dey certainly haf
deh lambs lined up right now for any vey dey vont to twist id. I nefer see
a petter market for a deluge. From Barry’s movements all day I should say
dey vould keep hoistin’ her until apout noon to-morrow, unt dat deh might
get her up to two-tirty or even to deh two-fifty. Put dere are von or two
topes on deh sheet vhat run deh uder vay. First der is dey fact you gant
run out, dat dere is alreaty on deh Sugar vagon deh piggest load of chuicy
suckers dat efer game in from deh suppurbs. Sharley Pates says if any von
hat tapped his Vashington vire er any utter Capitol vire dis veek he vould
haf tought dere vas a Senate, House, unt Kabinet roll-gall on. Deh topes
say ‘Cam’ vill nefer led dat fat punch off grafters slite out mit real
money if he gan help id unt deh game iss endirely in his hands.”
“I agree with you, Ike. If I had the steering of this killing I don’t
think I would take any chance of tempting them to dump and grab the
profits by carrying it much over 200. But you can’t tell what ‘Cam’ and
those four-eyed dentists at 26 Broadway will do.”
“Yes, put der iss anudder t’ing, Cho, dat makes me sit up unt plink about
her goin’ ofer two hundred. To-morrow’s Friday der t’irteenth.”
“Of course, Ike, that is something to be reckoned with, and every man on
the floor and in the Street as well has his eye on it. Friday, the 13th,
would break the best bull market ever under way. You and I know that, Ike,
and the dope shows it too, but you have got to stack this up against it on
this trip: no man on the floor knows what Friday the 13th, means better
than Barry Conant. He has worked it to the queen’s taste many a time. Why,
Barry would not eat to-day for fear the food would get stuck in his
windpipe. He’s never left the pole for a minute; but suppose, Ike, Barry
has tipped off ‘Cam’ that all the boys will let go their fliers, and most
of them will take one on the short side over to-night for a superstition
drop at the opening; and suppose ‘Cam’ has told him to take them all into
camp and give her a rafter-scraper at the opening, where would old Friday,
13th, land on to-morrow’s dope-sheets? Bring up the average, wouldn’t it,
for five years to come? I tell you, Ike, she’s too deep for me this run,
and I’m goin’ to let her alone and pay for the turkey out of loan
commissions or stick to plain workday food.”
“Zame here, Cho. Say, Cho, haf you noticed Pop Prownlee to-tay? He has
frozen to deh fringe off dat Sugar crowd ess t’ough some von hat nipped
‘is scarf-pin unt he vos layin’ for him ass he game out. He hasn’t made a
trade to-tay unt yet he sticks like a stamp-tax. I ben keeping my eyes on
him for I t’ought he hat someding up his sleeve dat might raise tust ven
he tropt id. I dink Parry has hat deh same itear. He never loses sight of
him, yet Pop hasn’t made a trade to-tay, unt here id iss twenty minutes of
der glose unt dere iss Parry in deh centre again whooping her up ofer two
hundred unt four.”
Chapter V.
Thursday, November 12th, was a memorable day in Wall Street. As the gong
pealed its the-game’s-closed-till-another-day, the myriad of tortured