Friday, the Thirteenth: A Novel
million dollars. Would he resume selling or was he through? Was it short
stock, which must be bought back, or long stock; and if long, whose stock?
Were the insiders selling out on one another, or were they all selling
together, and under cover of Barry Conant’s movements were Camemeyer and
“Standard Oil” emptying their bag preparatory to the slaughter of the
Washington contingent? All these questions were rushing through the heads
of that crowd of brokers like steam through a boiler, now hot, now cold,
but always at high pressure, for upon the correctness of the answers
depended the fortune of many who breathlessly awaited the renewal or the
suspension of the contest. Even Barry Conant’s usually impassive face wore
a tinge of anxiety.
Indeed, Bob’s was the only one in the centre of that throng that showed no
sign of what was going on behind it. The same cynical smile that had been
there since the opening still played around the corners of his mouth as he
squared himself in front of his opponent. All knew now that he was not
through. Barry Conant had evidently decided to force the fighting,
although more cautiously than before. “67 for a thousand.” One of his
lieutenants bid 67 for 500, another 67 for 300, and as Bob had not yet
shown his intention of meeting their bids, 67 for different amounts was
heard all over the crowd. Bob might have been tossing a mental coin to
decide the advisability of buying back what he had sold; he might have
been adding up the bids as they were made. He said nothing for a fraction
of a minute, which to those tortured men must have seemed like an age.
Then with a wave of his hand, as though delivering a benediction, he swept
the circle with a cold-blooded, “Sold the lots. 5,600 in all.”
“Sixty-seven for a thousand”—again Barry Conant’s bid. “Sold.” “67 for
5,000.” “Sold.” “66 for a thousand.” “Sold.” The drop from five thousand
to one thousand and a dollar a share in Barry Conant’s bids was the
mortally wounded but still game general’s “Sound the retreat.” Bob heard
it. “Any part of 10,000 at 65, 64, 62, 60.” The din was now as fierce as
before. The entire crowd, all but Barry Conant and his lieutenants, seemed
to have concluded that Bob’s renewal of attack meant that his was the
winning side, and those who had been hanging on to their stock, hoping
against hope, and those who were short and had been undecided whether to
cover or to hold on and sell more for greater profits, vied with one
another in a frantic effort to sell. All could now feel the coming panic.
All could see that it was to be a bad one, as the least informed on the
floor knew that there was a tremendous amount of Sugar stock in the hands
of Washington novices at speculation and of others who had bought it at
high prices. Sugar was now dropping two, three, five dollars a share
between trades, and the panic was spreading to the other poles, as is
always the case, for when there are sudden large losses in one stock, the
losers must throw over the other stocks they hold to meet this loss, and
thus the whole structure tumbles like a house of cards. Sugar had just
crossed 110 when the loud bang of the president’s gavel resounded through
the room. Instantly there was a silence as of death. All knew the meaning
of the sound, the most ominous ever heard in a stock exchange, calling for
the temporary suspension of business while the president announces the
failure of some member or house.
Perkins, Blanchard & Company
Announce that They Cannot Meet Their Obligations
This statement that one of the oldest houses had been swamped in the crash
Bob had started caused further frantic selling, and, as though every
member had employed the lull to refill his lungs, a howl arose that pealed
and wailed to the dome.
I watched Bob closely; in fact, it was impossible for me to take my eyes
off him; he seemed absolutely unmindful of the agonised shrieks about him,
for the frenzied brokers were no longer crying their bids or offers, but
screaming them. He still continued relentlessly to hammer Sugar, offering
it in thousand and tens of thousand lots.
Again and again the gavel fell, and again and again an announcement of
failure was followed by blood-curdling howls. When Sugar struck 80—not
180, but plain 80—it seemed that the last day of stock speculation was
at hand. Announcements were being made every few minutes of the failure of
this bank, the closing of the doors of that trust company. Where would it
end? What power could stop this Niagara of molten dollars? Suddenly above
the tumult rose Bob Brownley’s voice. He must have been standing on his
tiptoes. His hands were raised aloft. He seemed to tower a head above the
mob. His voice was still clear and unimpaired by the terrible strain of
the past two hours. To that mob it must have sounded like the trumpet of
the delivering angel. “80 for any part of 25,000 Sugar.” Instantly Sugar
was hurled at him from all sides of the crowd. He was the only buyer of
moment who had appeared since Sugar broke 125. Barry Conant and his
lieutenants had disappeared like snowflakes at the opening of the door of
the firebox of a locomotive speeding through the storm. In a few seconds
Bob had been sold all the 25,000 he had bid for. Again his voice rang out:
“80 for 25,000.” The sellers momentarily halted. He got only a few
thousands of his twenty-five. “85 for 25,000.” A few thousands more. “90
for 25,000.” Still fewer thousands. His bidding was beginning to tell on
the mob. A cry ran through the room into the crowds around the other
poles—“Brownley has turned!”—and taking renewed courage at the report,
the bulls rallied their forces and began to bid for the different stocks,
which a moment before it had seemed that no one wanted at any price.
In a chip of a minute the whole scene changed; there was almost as wild a
panic on the up side as there had been on the down. Bob Brownley continued
buying Sugar until he had pushed it above 150. He then went about tallying
up his trades. At the end of ten minutes’ calculation he returned to the
centre and bought 11,000 shares more; coming out, his eye caught mine.
“Jim, have you been here long?”
“An eternity. I was here at the opening and I pray God never to put me
through another two hours like the past two. It seems a hideous dream, a
nightmare. Bob, in the name of God what have you been doing?”
He gave me a wild, awful look of exultation. Sublime triumph shone in
those blazing brown orbs, triumph such as I had never seen in the eyes of
man.
“Jim Randolph, I have been giving Wall Street and its hell ‘System’ a
dose of its own poison, a good full-measure dose. They planned by
harvesting a fresh crop of human hearts and souls on the bull side to give
Friday the 13th a new meaning. Tradition says Friday the 13th is bear
Saints’ day. I believe in maintaining old traditions, so I harvested their
hearts instead. I will tell you about it some time, Jim, but now I must
see Beulah Sands. Jim Randolph, I’ve saved her and her father. I’ve made
them a round three millions and a strong seven millions for myself.”
He almost yelled it as he rushed away and left me dazed, stupefied. A
moment, and I came to. Something urged me to follow him.
Chapter VI.
As I passed through my office a few minutes later I heard Bob’s voice in
Beulah Sands’s office. It was raised in passionate eloquence.
“Yes, Beulah, I have done it single-handed. I have crucified Camemeyer,
‘Standard Oil,’ and the ‘System’ that spiked me to the cross a few weeks
ago. You have three millions, and I have seven. Now there is nothing more
but for you to go home to your father, and then come back to me. Back to
me, Beulah, back to me to be my wife!”
He stopped. There was no sound. I waited; then, frightened, I stepped to
the door of Beulah Sands’s office. Bob was standing just inside the
threshold, where he had halted to give her the glad tidings. She had risen
from her desk and was looking at him with an agonised stare. He seemed to
be transfixed by her look, the wild ecstasy of the outburst of love yet
mirrored in his eyes. She was just saying as I reached the door:
“Bob, in mercy’s name tell me you got this money fairly, honourably.”
Bob must have realised for the first time what he had done. He did not
speak. He only stared into her eyes. She was now at his side.
“Bob, you are unnerved,” she said; “you have been through a terrible
ordeal. For an hour I have been reading in the bulletins of the banks and
trust companies that have failed, of the banking-houses that have been
ruined. I have been reading that you did it; that you have made
millions—and I knew it was for me, for father, but in the midst of my
joy, my gratitude, my love—for, oh, Bob, I love you,” she interrupted
herself passionately; “it seems as though I love you beyond the capacity
of a human heart to love. I think that for the right to be yours for one
single moment of this life I would smilingly endure all the pains and
miseries of eternal torture. Yes, Bob, for the right to have you call me
yours for only while I heard the word, I would do anything, Bob, anything
that was honourable.”
She had drawn his head down close to her face, and her great blue eyes
searched his as though they would go to his very soul. She was a child in
her simple appeal for him to allow her to see his heart, to see that there
was nothing black there.
As she gazed, her beautiful hands played through his hair as do a mother’s
through that of the child she is soothing in sickness.
“Bob, speak to me, speak to me,” she begged, “tell me there was no
dishonour in the getting of those millions. Tell me no one was made to
suffer as my father and I have suffered. Tell me that the suicides and the
convicts, the daughters dragged to shame and the mothers driven to the
madhouse as a result of this panic, cannot be charged to anything unfair
or dishonourable that you have done. Bob, oh, Bob, answer! Answer no, or
my heart will break; or if, Bob, you have made a mistake, if you have done
that which in your great desire to aid me and my father seemed
justifiable, but which you now see was wrong, tell it to me, Bob dear, and
together we will try to undo it. We will try to find a way to atone. We
will give the millions to the last, last penny to those upon whom you have
brought misery. Father’s loss will not matter. Together we will go to him
and tell him what we have done, what we have lived through, tell him of
our mistake, and in our agony he will forget his own. For such a horror
has my father of anything dishonourable that he will embrace his misery as
happiness when he knows that his teachings have enabled his daughter to
undo this great wrong. And then, Bob, we will be married, and you and I
and father and mother will be together, and be, oh, so happy, and we will
begin all over again.”
“Beulah, stop; in the name of God, in the name of your love for me, don’t
say another word. There is a limit to the capacity of a man to suffer,
even if he be a great, strong brute like myself, and, Beulah, I have
reached that limit. The day has been a hard one.”
His voice softened and became as a tired child’s.
“I must go out into the hustle of the street, into the din and sound, and
get down my nerves and get back my head. Then I shall be able to think
clear and true, and I will come back to you, and together we will see if I
have done anything that makes me unfit to touch the cheek and the hands
and the lips of the best and most beautiful woman God ever put upon earth.
Beulah, you know I would not deceive you to save my body from the fires
of this world, and my soul from the torture of the damned, and I promise
you that if I find that I have done wrong, what you call wrong, what your