"Ridiculous! Who would knock? I have no enemies of sufficient importance
to hurt me, and particularly back there. Do your utmost, for the
situation is growing critical here--desperate, in fact."
And desperate was the word when Symes contemplated going into his own
pocket for money to make up the deficit--money which he had told himself
he would salt away against that rainy day with which he had become all
too familiar.
Symes's private bank account had grown to quite a respectable sum since
that memorable morning when he had received word that his balance was in
the red. If he was given a confidential discount upon machinery for
which he charged the company full price, was he not entitled to the
difference? If he received a modest revenue from his manipulation of the
commissary, and the hospital contract contributed its mite, was it not
all in the game? Wasn't it done every day by men in similar positions
and as honest as himself? It was legitimate enough, certainly, and, if
he did not mention it, it was because it was his own affair.
The longer and harder Symes walked the floor the more he realized that
payday must be met. Labor was not an account which could wait. Nothing
would so arouse suspicion and hurt his credit as a dilatory payday.
Local merchants would come down upon him like a thousand of brick for
the settlement of the large accounts which at the present moment they
were rather proud of his owing.
The impression was general that the affairs of the Symes Irrigation
Company were entirely satisfactory, and Symes's credit had only been
limited by the local merchants' own credit.
Heretofore the treasury had been replenished through the activities of
Mudge, but it was now disturbingly low and payday was close, while
instead of the expected check from the promoter came his disquieting
letter.
"Mudge is losin' his grip; he's gettin' timid," Symes thought irritably.
"I may have to go back myself and raise the wind." His success with J.
Collins Prescott had given him added confidence in his abilities along
this line.
The estate which Prescott represented were now the largest bondholders
and at the time of the purchase Symes had chortled--
"If we can just get this crowd in deep enough they won't dare lay down
if we get in a hole. They've got to see the proposition through to save
themselves."
"Yes," Mudge had agreed doubtfully, "but you gotta be careful." And
added in the tone of a specialist in the delicate art of handling
capital: "You can't force or crowd 'em, for once they get their necks
bowed they'd sooner drop their pile than give an inch."
The question which Symes was now trying to decide was whether it was
better to meet payday with his own money and trust Mudge to raise
sufficient to reimburse him and meet the next payday or to bare the
situation to the stock and bondholders and make an imperative demand for
funds.
In the end Symes's own money met the payroll, and the sensation of
checking it out was much like parting with his heart's blood. Though it
was a relief to feel that his credit was still good and that he could
continue to shine in the community for another month as its one large,
luminous star, it also brought the cold perspiration out on him when he
woke up in the night and remembered where this noble act had placed him.
He was worse than penniless if Mudge could not raise more money, but
this he refused to believe a possibility.
In the days which followed, the circles deepened beneath his eyes, his
high color faded and Mudge's laconic messages "Nothing doing" were not
calculated to restore it. As the time shortened toward another payday
there were moments when Symes felt that his overtaxed nerves nearly had
reached their limit. There was no rest or solace for him in his home,
for when Augusta was not away with Dr. Harpe the latter was there to
remind him of the skeleton jangling in his closet. He came and went
beneath the cold eyes of the one and the half-contemptuous glances of
the other, like, as he told himself, a necessary but objectionable
boarder.
He no longer found diversion in his nightly game of "slough" in the card
room of the Terriberry House, for they became only occasions to remind
him that he owed his fellow-players more than he could ever hope to pay
if Mudge did not dispose of more bonds quickly or the stockholders did
not "come through," as he phrased it. He knew fairly well the financial
resources of those whom he had favored with his liberal patronage and
realized that they were doomed to go down with him to that limbo
provided for the over-sanguine and the over-trusting.
At last the black day came when the treasury could not meet the smallest
bills. Delay was no longer possible. He must play his last card. An
imperative call must be made upon the stockholders and Symes telegraphed
Mudge to this effect.
Symes dreaded the reply, yet he tried to bolster his courage with the
argument which had seemed so potent at the time he used it, namely, that
they were all in too deep to refuse aid at this crisis. Symes imagined
that he could almost see himself growing old in the hours of suspense
which followed the sending of the telegram.
Symes's hand shook noticeably when he took the yellow sheet from the
operator who delivered it in person. The message read:
Turned down cold. Something wrong. Letter follows.