Friday, the Thirteenth: A Novel
trend of their battle. All knew that if Bob should be beaten down by this
concentrated modern finance devil, a panic would ensue and Sugar would go
none could say how low. But if Bob should play him to a standstill by
exhausting his selling power, Sugar would quickly soar to even higher
figures than before. It was known that Barry Conant’s usual order from his
clients, the “System” masters, for such an occasion as the present was
“Break the price at any cost.” On the other hand, every one knew that
Randolph & Randolph were usually behind Bob’s big operations; this was
evidently one of his biggest; and every man there knew that Randolph &
Randolph were seldom backed down by any force.
As Bob made his bid “72 for 5,000,” and got it, I saw a quick flash of
pain shoot across his face, and realised that it probably meant he was
nearing the end of my last order. I sized it up that there was deviltry of
more than usual significance behind this selling movement; that Barry
Conant must have unlimited orders to sell and smash. My final order of
fifty thousand brought our total up to one hundred and fifty thousand
shares, a large amount for even Randolph & Randolph to buy of a stock
selling at nearly $200 a share. I then and there decided that whatever
happened I would go no further. Just then Bob’s wild eye caught mine, and
there was in it a piteous appeal, such an appeal as one sees in the eye of
the wounded doe when she gives up her attempt to swim to shore and waits
the coming of the pursuing hunter’s canoe. I sadly signaled that I was
through. As Bob caught the sign, he threw his head back and bellowed a
deep, hoarse “70 for 10,000.” I knew then that he had already bought forty
thousand, and that this was the last-ditch stand. Barry Conant must have
caught the meaning too. Instantly, like a revolver report, came his
“Sold!” Then the compact, miniature mass of human springs and wires, which
had until now been held in perfect control, suddenly burst from its
clamps, and Barry Conant was the fiend his Wall Street reputation pictured
him. His five feet five inches seemed to loom to the height of a giant.
His arms, with their fate-pointing fingers, rose and fell with bewildering
rapidity as his piercing voice rang out—“5,000 at 69, 68, 65,” “10,000 at
63,” “25,000 at 60.” Pandemonium reigned. Every man in the crowd seemed
to have the capital stock of the Sugar Trust to sell, and at any price. A
score seemed to be bent on selling as low as possible instead of for as
much as they could get. These were the shorts who had been punished the
day before by Bob’s uplift.
Poor Bob, he was forgotten! An instant after he made his last effort he
was the dead cock in the pit. Frenzied gamblers of the Stock Exchange have
no more use for the dead cocks than have Mexicans for the real birds when
they get the fatal gaff. The day after the contest, or even that same
night at Delmonico’s and the clubs, these men would moan for poor Bob;
Barry Conant’s moan would be the loudest of them all, and, what is more,
it would be sincere. But on battle day away to the dump with the fallen
bird, the bird that could not win! I saw a look of deep, terrible agony
spread over Bob’s face; and then in a flash he was the Bob Brownley who I
always boasted had the courage and the brain to do the right thing in all
circumstances. To the astonishment of every man in the crowd he let loose
one wild yell, a cross between the war-whoop of an Indian and the bay of a
deep-lunged hound regaining a lost scent. Then he began to throw over
Sugar stock, right and left, in big and little amounts. He slaughtered the
price, under-cutting Barry Conant’s every offer and filling every bid. For
twenty minutes he was a madman, then he stopped. Sugar was falling rapidly
to the price it finally reached, 90, and the panic was in full swing, but
panics seemed now to have no interest for Bob. He pushed his way through
the crowd and, joining me, said: “Jim, forgive me. I have dragged you into
an enormous loss, have ruined Beulah Sands, her father, and myself. I
think at the last moment I did the only thing possible. I threw over the
150,000 shares and so cut off some of our loss. Let us go to the office
and see where we stand.” He was strangely, unnaturally calm after that
heart-crushing, nerve-tearing day. I tried to tell him how I admired his
cool nerve and pluck in about-facing and doing the only thing there was
left to do; to tell him that required more real courage and
level-headedness than all the rest of the day’s doings; but he stopped me:
“Jim, don’t talk to me. My conceit is gone. I have learned my lesson
to-day. My plans were all right, and sound, but poor fool that I was, I
did not take into consideration the loaded dice of the master thieves. I
knew what they could do, have seen them scores of times, as you have, at
their slaughter; seen them crush out the hearts of other men just as good
as you or I; seen them take them out and skin and quarter-slice them,
unmindful of the agony of those who were dear to and dependent on their
owners, but it never seemed to strike me home. It was not my heart, and
somehow, I looked at it as a part of the game and let it go at that.
To-day I know what it means to be put on the chopping-block of the
‘System’ butchers. I know what it is to see my heart and the heart of one
I love—and yours, too, Jim—systematically skewered to those of the
hundreds and thousands of victims who have gone before. Jim, we must be
three millions losers, and the men who have our money have so many, many
millions that they can’t live long enough even to thumb them over. Men who
will use our money on the gambling-table, at the race-tracks, squander it
on stage harlots, or in turning their wives and daughters or their
neighbours’ wives and daughters into worse than stage harlots. Men, Jim,
who are not fit, measured by any standard of decency, to walk the same
earth as you and Judge Sands. Men whose painted pets pollute the very air
that such as Beulah Sands must breathe. I’ve learned my lesson to-day. I
thought I knew the game of finance, but I’m suddenly awakened to a
realisation of the dense ignorance I wallowed in. Jim, but for the loading
of the dice, I should now have been taking Beulah Sands to her father with
the money that the hellish ‘System’ stole from him. Later I should have
taken her to the altar, and after, who knows but that I should have had
the happiest home and family in all the world, and lived as her people and
mine have lived for generations, honest, God-fearing, law-abiding,
neighbour-loving men and women, and then died as men should die? But now,
Jim, I see a black, awful picture. No, I’m not morbid, I’m going to make a
heroic effort to put the picture out of sight; but I’m afraid, Jim, I’m
afraid.”
He stopped as we pulled up on the sidewalk in front of Randolph &
Randolph’s office. “Here it is on the bulletin. See what did the trick,
Jim. They held the Sugar meeting last night instead of waiting till
to-morrow, and cut the dividend instead of increasing it. The world won’t
know it until to-morrow. Then they will know it, then they will know it.
They will read it in the headlines of the papers—a few suicides, a few
defaulters, a few new convicts, an unclaimed corpse or two at the morgue;
a few innocent girls, whose fathers’ fortunes have gone to swell
Camemeyer’s and ‘Standard Oil’s’ already uncountable gold, turned into
streetwalkers; a few new palaces on Fifth Avenue, and a few new libraries
given to communities that formerly took pride in building them from their
honestly earned savings. A report or two of record-breaking diamond sales
by Tiffany to the kings and czars of dollar royalty, then front-page news
stories of clawing, mauling, and hair-pulling wrangles among the stage
harlots for the possession of these diamonds. They were not quite sure
that the dividend cut alone would do the trick, and they were taking no
chances, these mighty warriors of the ‘System,’ so their hireling Senate
committee held a session last night and unanimously reported to put sugar
on the free list. The people will read that in the morning, and probably
the day after they’ll be told that the committee held another session
to-night and unanimously reported to take it off the free list. By that
time these honourable statesmen will have loaded up with the stock that
you and I and Beulah Sands sold, and that other poor devils will slaughter
to-morrow after reading their morning papers.”
Bob’s bitterness was terrible. My heart was torn as I listened. He stalked
through the office and into that of Beulah Sands. I followed. She was at
her desk, and when she looked up, her great eyes opened in wonderment as
they took in Bob, his grim, set face, the defiant, sullen desperation of
the big brown eyes, the dishevelled hair and clothes. For an instant she
stood as one who had seen an apparition.
“Look me over, Beulah Sands,” he said, “look me over to your heart’s
content, for you may never again see the fool of fools in all the world,
the fool who thought himself competent to cope with men of brains, with
men who really know how to play the game of dollars as it is played in
this Christian age. Don’t ask me not to call you Beulah; that what I tried
to do was for you is the one streak of light in all this black hell.
Beulah, Beulah, we are ruined, you, your father, and I, ruined, and I’m
the fool who did it.”
She rose from her desk with all the quiet, calm dignity that we had been
admiring for three months, and stood facing Bob. She did not seem to see
me; she saw nothing but the man who had gone out that morning the
personification of hope, who now stood before her the picture of black
despair, and she must have thought, “It was all for me.” Suddenly she took
the lapels of his torn coat in either hand. She had to reach up to do it,
this winsome little Virginia lady. With her big calm blue eyes looking
straight into his, she said:
“Bob.”
That was all, but the word seemed to change the very atmosphere in the
room. The look of desperation faded from Bob’s face, and as though the
words had sprung the hidden catch to the doors of his storehouse of
pent-up misery, his eyes filled with hot, blinding tears. His great chest
was convulsed with sobs. Again—clear, calm, fearless, and tender, came
the one syllable, “Bob.” And at that Bob’s self-control slipped the
leash. With a hoarse cry, he threw his arms around her and crushed her to
his breast. The sacredness of the scene made me feel like an intruder, and
I started to leave the room. But in a moment Beulah Sands was her usual
self and, turning to me, she said: “Mr. Randolph, please forget what you
have seen. For an instant, as I saw Mr. Brownley’s awful misery, I thought
of nothing but what he had done for me, what he had tried to do for my
father, what a penalty he has paid. From what you said when you left and
the fact that I got no word from either of you, I feared the worst and did
not dare look at the tape; I simply waited and hoped and—prayed. Yes, I
prayed as my mother taught me I should pray whenever I was helpless and
could do nothing myself. And I felt that God would not let the noble work
of two such men be overthrown by those you were battling with. In the
midst of a calmness that I took for a good omen, you came. Can you blame
me for forgetting myself? Mr. Brownley,” the voice was now calm and
self-controlled, “tell me what you have done. Where do we stand?” “There
is little to tell,” Bob answered. “Camemeyer and ‘Standard Oil’ have
taken me into camp as they would take a stuck pig. They have made a
monkeyfied ass out of me, and we are ruined, and I have caused Mr.
Randolph a heavy loss. Roughly, I figure that of your four hundred