Friday, the Thirteenth: A Novel

which they rest—the money of the nation. But my power is greater, a thousand, yes, a million times greater than theirs. Jim, they say that I have made more money than any man in the world. They say that I have five hundred millions of dollars, but the fools don’t keep track of my movements. They only know that I have pulled five hundred millions from my open whirls, the ones they have had an opportunity to keep tab on. But I tell you that I have made even more in my secret deals than the amount they have seen me take. I have had my agents with my capital in every deal, every steal the ‘System’ has rigged up. The world has been throwing up its hands in horror because Carnegie, the blacksmith of Pittsburgh, pulled off three hundred millions of swag in the Steel hold-up—yes, swag, Jim. Don’t scowl as though you wanted to read me a lecture on the coarseness of my language. I have learned to call this game of ours by its right name. It is not business enterprise with earned profits as results, but pulled-off tricks with bags of loot—black-jack swag—for their end. “I got away with three hundred millions when Steel slumped from 105 to 50 and from 50 to 8, and no one knew I’d made a dollar. You and ‘the Street’ read every morning last year the ‘guesses’ as to who could be rounding up the hundreds of millions on the slump. The papers and the market letters one morning said it was ‘Standard Oil’; the next, that it was Morgan; then it was Frick, Schwab, Gates, and so on down through the list. Of course, none of them denied; it is capital to all these knights of the road to be making millions in the minds of the world, even though they never get any of the money. Dick Turpin and Jonathan Wild never were fonder of having the daring hold-ups that other highwaymen perpetrated laid to their doors, than are these modern bandits of being credited with ruthless deeds that they did not commit. But Jim, ’twas I, ’twas I who sold Pennsylvania every morning for a year, while the selling was explained by the press as ‘Cassatt cutting down Gould’s telegraph poles. Gould and old man Rockefeller selling Pennsylvania to get even.’ Jim Randolph, I have to-day a billion dollars, not the Rockefeller or Carnegie kind, but a real billion. If I had no other power but the power to call to-morrow for that billion in cash, it would be sufficient to lay in waste the financial world before to-morrow night. You are welcome, Jim, to any part of that billion, and the more you take the happier you will make me, but when I strike in again, don’t attempt to stay me, for it will do no good.” Shortly after this talk Bob left for Europe with Beulah. A great German expert on brain disorders had held out hope that a six month’s treatment at his sanitarium in Berlin might aid in restoring her mind. They returned the following August. The trip had been fruitless. It was plain to me that Bob was the same hopelessly desperate man as when he left, more hopeless, more desperate if anything than when he warned me of his determination. When he left for Europe “the Street” breathed more freely, and as time went by and there was no sign of his confidence-disturbing influence in the market, the “System” began to bring out its deferred deals. Times were ripe for setting up the most wildly inflated stock lamb-shearing traps. It had been advertised throughout the world that Tom Reinhart, now a two-hundred-time millionaire, was to consolidate his and many other enterprises into one gigantic trust with twelve billions of capital. His Union and Southern Pacific Railroads, his coal and Southern lines, together with his steamship company and lead, iron, and copper mines, were to be merged with the steel, traction, gas, and other enterprises he owned jointly with “Standard Oil.” Some of the railroads owned by Rockefeller and his pals, in which Reinhart had no part, were to go in too, and with these was to unite that mother hog of them all, “Standard Oil” itself. The trust was to be an enormous holding company, the like of which had until then not even been dreamed of by the most daring stock manipulators. The “System’s” banks, as well as trust and insurance companies throughout the country, had for a long time been getting into shape by concentrating the money of the country for this monster trust. It was newspaper and news bureau gossip that Reinhart and his crowd had bought millions of shares of the different stocks involved in the deal, and it was common knowledge that upon its successful completion Reinhart’s fortune would be in the neighbourhood of a billion. On October 1st the certificate of the Anti-People’s Trust, $12,000,000,000 capital, 120,000,000 shares, were listed upon the New York, London, and Boston Stock Exchanges, and the German and French Bourses, and trading in them started off fast and furious at 106. The claim that one billion of the twelve billions capital had been set aside to be used in protecting and manipulating the stock in the market, had been so widely advertised that even the most daring plunger did not think of selling it short. It was evident to all in the stock-gambling world that this was to be the “System’s” grand coup, that at its completion the masses would be rudely awakened to a realisation that their savings were invested in the combined American industries at vastly inflated values, that the few had all the real money, and that any attempt upon the people’s part to regulate and control the new system of robbery, would be fraught with unparalleled disaster—not to the “System,” but to the people. Since Bob’s return from Europe I had seen him but a few times. Up to October 1st he had not been near the Stock Exchange or “the Street.” Shortly after the listing of the “People Be Damned,” as “the Street” had dubbed the new trust, he began to show up at his office regularly. This was the condition of affairs when Fred Brownley called me up on the telephone, as I related at the beginning of my story, which I did not realise I had been so long in telling. My thoughts had been chasing each other with lightning-like rapidity back over the last five years and the fifteen before them, and each thought deepened the black mist over my present mental vision. In the midst of my reflections my telephone rang again. “Mr. Randolph, for Heaven’s sake have you done nothing yet?” It was Fred Brownley’s voice. “Things are frightful here. Bob’s brokers are selling stocks at five and ten thousand-lot clips. Barry Conant is leading Reinhart’s forces. It is said he has the pool’s protection order in Anti-People’s and that it is unlimited, but Bob has the Reinhart crowd pretty badly scared. Swan has just finished giving Conant a hundred thousand off the reel in 10,000 lots, and he told me a moment ago he was going over to get Bob himself to face Barry Conant. They’re down twenty points on the average, although they haven’t let Anti-People’s break an eighth yet. They have it pegged at 106, but there is an ugly rumour just in that Bob, under cover of a general attack, is unloading Anti-People’s on to the Reinhart wing for Rogers and Rockefeller, and the rumour is getting in its work. Even Barry Conant is growing a bit anxious. The latest talk is that Reinhart is borrowing hundreds of millions on Anti-People’s, and that his loans are being called in all directions. Do you know Reinhart is at his place in Virginia and cannot get here before to-morrow night? If Bob breaks through Anti-People’s peg, it will be the worst crash yet.” “All right, Fred,” I answered. “I will go over to Bob’s right now. I hate to do it, but there is no other hope.” I dropped the receiver and started for Bob’s office. As I went through his counting-room one of the clerks said, “They have just broken Anti-People’s to 90 on a bulletin that Tom Reinhart’s wife and only daughter have been killed in an automobile accident at their place in Virginia. They first had it that Reinhart himself was killed. That has been corrected, although the latest word is that he is prostrated.” I rapped on Bob’s private-office door. I felt the coming struggle as I heard his hoarse bellow, “Come in.” He stood at the ticker, with the tape in one hand, while with the other he held the telephone receiver to his ear. My God, what a picture for a stage! His magnificent form was erect, his feet were as firmly planted as if he were made of bronze, his shoulders thrown back as if he were withstanding the rush of the Stock Exchange hordes, his eyes afire with a sullen, smouldering blaze, his jaw was set in a way that brought into terrible relief the new, hard lines of desperation that had recently come into his face. His great chest was rising and falling as though he were engaged in a physical struggle; his perfect-fitting, heavy black Melton cutaway coat, thrown back from the chest, and a low, turned-down, white collar formed the setting for a throat and head that reminded one of a forest monarch at bay on the mountain crag awaiting the coming of the hounds and hunters. I hesitated at the threshold to catch my breath, as I took in the terrific figure. Had Bob Brownley been an enemy of mine I should have backed out in fear, and I do not confess to more than my fair share of cowardice. Inwardly I thanked God that Bob was in his office instead of on the floor of the Exchange. His whole appearance was frightful. He showed in every line and lineament that he was a man who would hesitate at nothing, even at killing, if he should find a human obstacle in his road and his mind should suggest murder. He was the personification of the most awful madness. Even when he caught sight of me, he hardly moved, although my coming must have been a surprise. “So it is you, Jim Randolph, is it? What brings _you_ here?” His voice was hoarse, but it had a metallic ring that went to my marrow. Bob Brownley in all the years of our friendship had never spoken to me except in kind and loving regard. I looked at him, stunned. I must have shown how hurt I was. But if he saw it, he gave no sign. His eyes, looking straight into mine, changed no more than if he had been addressing his deadliest enemy. Again his voice rang out, “What brings you here? Do you come to plead again for that dastard Reinhart after the warning I gave you?” I clenched both hands until I felt the nails cut the flesh of my palms. I loved Bob Brownley. I would have done anything to make him happy, would willingly have sacrificed my own life to protect his from himself or others, but this madman, this wild brute, was no more Bob Brownley as I had known him than the howling northeast gale of December is the gentle, welcome zephyr of August; and I felt a resentment at his brutal speech that I could hardly suppress. With a mighty effort I crushed it back, trying to think of nothing but his awful misery and the Bob of our college days. I said in a firm voice, “Bob, is this the way to talk to me in your own office?” At any time before, my words and tone would have touched his all-generous Southern chivalry, but now he said harshly—“To hell with sentiment. What——” He did not take his eyes from mine, but they told me that he was listening to a voice in the receiver. Only for a second; then he let loose a wild laugh, which must have penetrated to the outer office. “Eighty and coming like a spring freshet,” he said into the mouthpiece, “and the boys want to know if I won’t let up now that Reinhart is down? Go back and smother them with all they will take down to 60. That’s my answer. Tell them if Reinhart had ten more wives and daughters and they were all killed, I’d rend his bastard trust to help him dull his sorrow. Give the word at every pole that I will have Reinhart where he will curse