To which Jack immediately replied: "Price satisfactory. Will arrive
Thursday with money."
This done, our hero proceeded to camp on the front doorstep of Colonel
Midas, and when that distinguished financier appeared to take his motor
down to his office Jack, still wearing his invisible cloak, climbed in
alongside of him, and hardly daring to breathe lest he should betray his
presence in the car, rode down to the offices of the Midas Trust Company
with the magnate himself. Here Midas descended from the car, and Jack,
close upon his heels, followed him into that holy of financial holies,
the private office.
"Any word from Rockernegie?" asked the Colonel of his secretary, as he
seated himself at his desk, Jack meanwhile having perched himself on the
mantelpiece.
"Here at ten," returned the secretary, laconically. They did not even
waste breath in that office.
"Moneypenny?"
"Wires, here ten-fifteen."
"Asterbilt?"
"Yachting. Mediterranean. Leaves all to you."
"Good!" said Midas. "When they come show them in, and I'm out to
everybody else."
And then it was that Jack had his first glimpse of really great men in
action. By ten-thirty all the magnates of finance, with the exception of
Mr. Asterbilt, were on hand, and the secret meeting of the rulers of the
San Francisco, Omaha & Mott Haven Transcontinental Railway System was
on. They came down to business without any preliminaries.
"Is it buy or build?" asked Midas.
"Buy," said Rockernegie.
"Build," said Moneypenny.
"All right--we buy," said Midas.
"It's a hold-up," said Moneypenny. "K., T. & W. was built for no other
purpose."
"Perfectly true," said Midas. "Therefore, instead of announcing that we
shall buy, thus sending the price up till it bumps against the Dipper,
let us announce that we have decided to build our own connecting line,
and when K., T. & W. lands down around 1-7/8 we can go in and scoop it."
"Always right, Midas," said Rockernegie.
"I'll change my vote and make it unanimous," said Moneypenny, whereupon
the Colonel passed the cigars and the meeting stood adjourned. It had
taken seven minutes to settle a question involving millions upon
millions of dollars, and for a moment Jack stood aghast, but for no
longer than a moment, for the time for him to get busy had arrived. He
was in possession of the most valuable secret on Wall Street, and it
behooved him to begin operations. Passing hastily out of the office, he
first paid a visit to the Urban National, where after an hour's hard
work he succeeded in getting $300,000 out of the vaults, leaving on the
cashier's desk, while he was out at lunch, as security for his loan, a
sufficient amount of gilt-edged collateral, also taken from the vaults
of the bank itself.
"It's all right," Jack wrote in his memorandum to the cashier. "I have a
big transaction on hand which can't help win out, and I shall rejoice
your heart by liquidating all my loans with you before spring. After
all, my dear sir, all business must be done on confidence, and I assure
you you can have plenty in me. I know myself through and through, and
can testify to my absolute integrity. Meanwhile let me repeat that your
money is the best I have ever used, and is received everywhere with real
enthusiasm."
That night before he retired, operating through a dozen brokers' offices
so as not to attract undue attention, Jack purchased five thousand
shares of K., T. & W. at 20, paying for them in cash. The next morning
on the announcement from Colonel Midas's office that the San Francisco,
Omaha & Mott Haven road had decided not to take over the property,
K., T. & W. fell off to 10, at which figure, after a hurried visit to
the bank, Jack acquired ten thousand more shares. At the end of the
week K., T. & W. had slumped to 3-1/8, whereat Jack pyramided by taking
over twenty thousand more, all paid for in cash, having meanwhile sent
his lawyer to Rocky Corners with seventy-five thousand dollars to close
his real-estate deal with Hiram Bumpus.
In the brief period of ten days the unfortunate tenant of the freezing
apartment at the Redmere had become the owner of fifty thousand shares
of K., T. & W., as well as the proprietor of a thirty-thousand-acre farm
through which a new line of railway was sure to pass.
So the campaign went on over the Christmas season. Jack, by following
close on the heels of Midas or Moneypenny, it mattered little which,
secured inside information as to every deal of magnitude on Wall Street
whole days, and even weeks, before anybody else knew about it; and
having the resources of the Urban National to draw upon at need, he was
never at a loss how to finance himself. January came, and just as it
seemed as if K., T. & W. was about to be wiped out of existence came the
report that the property had been acquired by the San Francisco, Omaha &
Mott Haven crowd, and that its stock had been put on an eight-per-cent.
guaranteed-dividend basis. The quotation immediately began to soar.
K., T. & W. began to jump like a kangaroo. First it leaped to 30, then
to 68. On the tenth of January it opened at 128-7/8, and closed at 150,
where it stuck. For a time Jack waited for a further rise, but it failed
to come, and in February he sold one hundred and twenty thousand shares,
which had cost him on an average of $7 a share, for $150 a share,
realizing a profit of $17,160,000. Reference to his books showed that he
had drawn on the Urban National for a trifle over $1,250,000, which sum
he now started to return in the same laborious fashion in which it had
been acquired. Every day for a period of ten days the lad would put on
his invisible cloak, and at the cashier's lunch-hour would walk into his
office and deposit a great bundle of currency on his desk. Once he found
that gentleman, and the president of the bank as well, awaiting him, but
it made no difference. Secure in the concealment of his marvellous
cloak, Jack stood in the doorway and tossed the package of bills into
the room, hitting the astonished president of the bank himself squarely
in the stomach with it.
In this way complete restitution with interest was made, and on the
first of February Jack found himself clear of all obligations, with a
comfortable fortune of over $15,000,000 on his hands, which made any
further involuntary loans on the bank's part unnecessary; but what was
even better than this, the meteoric successes of the young millionaire
upon the Street brought him such renown that it was not long before the
powers began to take notice.
"That young man," said Colonel Midas, after watching him for a little
while, "is the most singularly astute person I ever met. I don't wish to
be vulgar, but he has been the nigger in every woodpile I have tackled
for six months. He knows what I am going to do almost as quick as I do.
We'll have to take him in the firm."
"He has a singularly keen premonition as to values," observed Mr.
Rockernegie. "I've half a mind to start a trust company and make him
president."
As for Mr. Moneypenny, after a year's experience at finding Jack at the
bottom of pretty nearly every scheme he went into, he made the following
observation to his daughter, as he pointed Jack out to her at the
opera--in his own box now--one night.
"That young man in the third box on the left, my dear, is young Mr. Jack
Hardluck. He's so keen that I don't even dare think what I'm going to do
for fear he'll find it out!"
"If that's the case, papa," said Miss Moneypenny, blushing, "the best
thing to do is to take him into the family. Don't you think you'd
better--"
The girl hung her head shyly.
"Better what, my dear?" asked the old billionaire, kindly.
"Give him to me for a Christmas present?" she answered. "I think I could
get to like him very, very much."
And, indeed, that is how it came to be that in due course of time the
young financier became the son-in-law of one of the financial powers of
the world.
As for the invisible cloak, Jack wears it now only to travel _incog._,
which for a multi-millionaire is sometimes convenient.
Incidentally and in conclusion, let me add that Mike Brannigan,
once the janitor of the Redmere, is now the owner of that handsome
apartment-house, having received the title-deeds through the mails from
some anonymous benefactor.
"Who the divvle sint it, I dinnaw!" he said. "Nor what for he done it,
nayther. I ain't never done nothin' to injure nobody!"