Friday, the Thirteenth: A Novel
his luck that he was not in the automobile with the rest of his tribe——
“To hell with sentiment!” He was speaking to me again. “What do you want?
If you are here to beg for Reinhart and his pack of yellow curs, you’ve
got your answer. I wouldn’t let up on that fiendish hyena, not if his wife
and daughter and all the dead wives and daughters of every ‘System’ man
came back in their grave clothes and begged. I wouldn’t let up a share.” I
gasped in horror.
“When did those robbers of men and despoilers of women and children ever
let up because of death? When were they ever known to wait even till the
corpse stiffened to pluck out the hearts of the victims? It is my turn
now, and if I let up a hair may I, yes, and Beulah, too, be damned,
eternally damned.”
I could not stand it. If I stayed, I, too, should become mad. I reached
for the doorknob, but before I could swing the door open Bob was upon me
like a wolf. He grasped me by the shoulders and with the strength of a
madman hurled me half across the room. I sank into a chair.
“No, you don’t, Jim Randolph, no, you don’t. You came here for something
and, by heaven, you will tell me what it is! You know me; you are the only
human being who does. You know what I was, you see what I am. You know
what they did to me to make me what I am. You know, Jim Randolph, you know
whether I deserved it. You know whether in all my life up to the day those
dollar-frenzied hounds tore my soul, I had done any man, woman, or child a
wrong. You know whether I had, and now you are going to sneak off and
leave me as though I were a cur dog of the Reinhart-‘Standard Oil’ breed
gone mad!”
He was standing over me, a terrible yet a magnificent figure. As he hurled
these words at me, I was sure he had really lost his mind; that I was in
the presence of a man truly mad. But only for an instant; then my horror,
my anger turned to a great, crushing, all-consuming agony of pity for
Bob, and I dropped my head on my hands and wept. It is hard to admit it,
but it is true—I wept uncontrollably. In an instant the room was quiet
except for the sound of my own awful grief. I heard it, was ashamed of it,
but I could not stop. The telephone rang again and again, wildly, shrilly,
but there was no answer. The stillness became so oppressive that even my
own sobs quieted. I gasped as the lump in my throat choked me, then I
slowly raised my eyes.
Bob’s towering figure was in front of me. His head had fallen forward, and
his arms were folded across his breast. But that he stood erect I should
have thought him dead, so still was he. I jumped to my feet and looked
into his face, down which great tears were dropping silently. I touched
him on the shoulder.
“Bob, my dear old chum, Bob, forgive me. For God’s sake, forgive me for
intruding on your misery.”
I looked at him. I will never forget his face. No heartbroken woman’s
could have been sadder. He slowly raised his head, then staggered and
grasped the ticker-stand for support.
“Don’t, Jim, don’t—don’t ask me to forgive you. Oh, Jim, Jim, my old
friend, forgive me for my madness; forget what I said to you, forget the
brute you just saw and think of me as of old, when I would have plucked
out my tongue if I had caught it saying a harsh word to the best and
truest friend man ever had. Jim, forget it all. I was mad, I am mad, I
have been mad for a long time, but it cannot last much longer. I know it
can’t, and, Jim, by all our past love, by the memories of the dear old
days at St. Paul’s and at Harvard, the dear old days of hope and
happiness, when we planned for the future, try to think of me only as you
knew me then, as you know that I should now be, but for the ‘System’s’
curse.”
The clerks were pounding on the door; through the glass showed many forms.
They had been gathering for minutes while Bob talked in his low, sad tone,
a tone that no one could believe came from the same mouth that a few
moments before had poured forth a flood of brutal heartlessness.
Bob went to the door. The office was in an uproar. Twenty or thirty of
Bob’s brokers were there, aghast at not getting a reply to their calls.
Many more were pouring in through the outer office. Bob looked at them
coldly. “Well, what is the trouble? Is it possible we are down to a point
where the Stock Exchange rushes over to a man’s office when his wire
happens to break down?”
They saw his bluff. You cannot deceive Stock Exchange men, at least not
the kind that Bob Brownley employed on panic days, but his coolness
reassured them, and when they saw me it was odds-on that they guessed to a
man why Bob had ignored his wires—guessed that I had been pleading for
the life of “the Street.”
“Well, where do you stand?”
Frank Swan answered for the crowd: “The panic is in full swing. She’s a
cellar-to-ridge-pole ripper. They’re down 40 or over on an average.
Anti-People’s is down to 35, and still coming like sawdust over a broken
dam. Barry Conant’s house and a dozen other of Reinhart’s have gone under.
His banks and trust companies are going every minute. The whole Street
will be overboard before the close. The governing committee has just
called a meeting to see whether it will not be best to adjourn the
Exchange over to-day and to-morrow.”
Bob listened as if he had been a master at the wheel in a gale, receiving
reports from his mates.
There was no trace now of the scene he had just been through. He was cool,
masterful, like the seasoned sea-dog who knows that in spite of the
ocean’s rage and the wind’s howl, the wheel will answer his hand and the
craft its rudder. “Jim, come over to the Exchange.” The crowd followed
along. “We have but a minute and I want to have you say you forgive me,”
he said to me. “I know, Jim, you understand it all, but I must tell you
how sorrowful I am that in my madness I should have so forgotten my
admiration, respect, and love for you, yes, and my gratitude to you, as to
say what I did. I’ll do the only thing I can to atone. I will stop this
panic and undo as much as possible of my work; and now that I have wrecked
Reinhart I am through with this game forever, yes, through forever.”
He pressed my hand in his strong, honest one and strode into the Exchange
ahead of the crowd. All was chaos, although the trading had toned down to
a sullen desperation. So many houses, banks, and trust companies had
failed that no man knew whether the member he had traded with early in
the day would on the morrow be solvent enough to carry out his trades. The
man who had been “long” in the morning, and had sold out before the crash,
and who thought he now had no interest in the panic, found himself with
his stock again on hand, because of the failure of the one to whom he had
sold, and the price cut in two. The man who was “short” and who a few
minutes before had been eagerly counting his profits now knew that they
had been turned to loss, because the man from whom he had borrowed his
short stocks for delivery would be in no condition to repay for them, the
next day, when they should be returned to him. The “short” man was
himself, therefore, “long” stocks he had bought to cover his “short” sale.
In depressing the price he had been working against his own pocket instead
of against the bulls he had thought he was opposing. All was confusion and
black despair. There is, indeed, no blacker place than the floor of the
Stock Exchange after a panic cyclone has swept it, and is yet lingering in
its corners, while the survivors of its fury do not know whether or not it
will again gather force.
Chapter IX.
The Governing Committee was holding a meeting in its room. Bob rushed in
unceremoniously.
“One word, gentlemen,” he called. “I have more trades outstanding, both
buys and sells, than any other member or house. Before deciding whether to
adjourn in an attempt to save ‘the Street’, I ask your consideration of
this proposition: If the Exchange will suspend operations for thirty
minutes, and allow me to address the members on the floor, I will agree to
buy stocks all around the room, until they have regained at least half
their drop—all of it, if possible. I will buy until I have exhausted to
the last hundred my fortune of a billion dollars. This should make an
adjournment unnecessary. I know that this is a most extraordinary request,
but you are confronted with a most extraordinary situation, the most
remarkable in the history of the Stock Exchange. Already, if what they say
on the floor is correct, over two hundred banks and trust companies
throughout the country have gone under, and new failures are being
announced every minute. Half the members of this and the Boston and
Philadelphia Exchanges are insolvent and have closed their doors, or will
close them before three o’clock, and the shrinkage in values so far
reported runs over fifteen billions. Unless something is done before the
close, there will be a similar panic in every Exchange and Bourse in
Europe to-morrow.”
The committee instantly voted to lay the proposition before the full
board. In another minute the president’s gavel sounded, and the floor was
still as a tomb. All eyes were fixed on the president. Every man in that
great throng knew that upon the announcement they were about to hear,
might depend, at least temporarily, the welfare, not only of Wall Street,
but of the nation, perhaps even of the civilised world. The president
spoke:
“Members of the New York Stock Exchange:
“The Governing Committee instructs me to say that Mr. Robert Brownley has
asked that operations be suspended for thirty minutes, in order that he be
allowed to address you. Mr. Brownley has agreed, if this request be
granted, he will upon resumption of operations purchase a sufficient
amount of stock to raise the average price of all active shares at least
one-half their total drop—all of it, if possible. He agrees to buy to the
limit of his fortune of a billion dollars. I now put Mr. Brownley’s
request to a vote. All those in favour of granting it will signify the
same by saying ‘Yes.’”
A mighty roof-lifting “Yes” sounded through the room.
“All those opposed, ‘No.’”
There was a deathly hush.
“Mr. Brownley will please speak from this platform, and remember, in
thirty minutes to the second, I will sound the gavel for the resumption of
business.”
Bob Brownley strode to the place just vacated by the president. The crowd
was growing larger every minute. The ticker was already hissing a tape
biograph of this extraordinary situation in brokerage shops, hotels, and
banks throughout the country, and in a few minutes the news of it would be
in the capitals of Europe. Never before in history did man have such an
audience—the whole civilised world. Already arose from Wall, Broad, and
New Streets, which surround the Exchange, the hoarse bellow of the
gathering hordes. Before the ticker should announce the resumption of
business these would number hundreds of thousands, for the financial
district for more than an hour had been a surging mob.
For once at least the much-abused phrase, “He looked the part,” could be
used in all truthfulness. As Robert Brownley threw back his head and
shoulders and faced that crowd of men, some of whom he had hurt, many of
whom he had beggared, and all of whom he had tortured, he presented a
picture such as a royal lion recently from the jungles and just freed from
his cage might have made. Defiance, deference, contempt, and pity all
blended in his mien, but over all was an I-am-the-one-you-are-the-many
atmosphere of confidence that turned my spinal column into a mercury tube.
He began to speak:
“Men of Wall Street:
“You have just witnessed a record-breaking slaughter. I have asked
permission to talk to you for the purpose of showing you how any member of