At eleven o'clock on Monday morning James, head of the Fanning-Smith
family, president of Fanning-Smith and Company, and chairman of the
Great Lakes and Gulf railway--to note his chief titles to eminence
up-town and down--was seated in his grandfather's office, in his
grandfather's chair, at his grandfather's desk. Above his head hung
his grandfather's portrait; and he was a slightly modernized
reproduction of it. As he was thus in every outward essential his
grandfather over again, he and his family and the social and business
world assumed that he was the reincarnation of the crafty old fox who
first saw the light of day through the chinks in a farm-hand's cottage
in Maine and last saw it as it sifted through the real-lace curtains of
his gorgeous bedroom in his great Madison Avenue mansion. But in fact
James was only physically and titularly the representative of his
grandfather. Actually he was typical of the present generation of
Fanning-Smiths--a self-intoxicated, stupid and pretentious generation;
a polo-playing and racing and hunting, a yachting and palace-dwelling
and money-scattering generation; a business-despising and
business-neglecting, an old-world aristocracy-imitating generation. He
moved pompously through his two worlds, fashion and business, deceiving
himself completely, every one else except his wife more or less, her
not at all--but that was the one secret she kept.
James was the husband of Herron's daughter by his first wife, and
Herron had induced him to finance the syndicate that had raided and
captured National Woolens.
James was bred to conservatism. His timidity was of that wholesome
strength which so often saves chuckle-heads from the legitimate
consequences of their vanity and folly. But the spectacle of huge
fortunes, risen overnight before the wands of financial magicians whose
abilities he despised when he compared them with his own, was too much
for timidity. He had been born with a large vanity, and it had been
stuffed from his babyhood by all around him until it was become as
abnormal as the liver of a Strasburg goose--and as supersensitive. It
suffered acutely as these Jacks went climbing up their bean-stalk
wealth to heights of magnificence from which the establishments and
equipages of the Fanning-Smiths must seem poor to shabbiness. He
sneered at them as "vulgar new-comers"; he professed abhorrence of
their ostentation. But he--and Gertrude, his wife--envied them, talked
of them constantly, longed to imitate, to surpass them.
In the fullness of time his temptation came. He shivered, shrank,
leaped headlong--his wife pushing.
About ten days before the raid on National Woolens there had drifted in
to Dumont through one of his many subterranean sources of information a
rumor that the Fanning-Smiths had stealthily reduced their holdings of
Great Lakes to twenty-one thousand shares and that the property was not
so good as it had once been. He never permitted any Wall Street
development to pass unexplained--he thought it simple prudence for a
man with the care of a great financial and commercial enterprise to
look into every dark corner of the Street and see what was hatching
there. Accordingly, he sent an inquiry back along his secret avenue.
Soon he learned that Great Lakes was sound, but the Fanning-Smiths had
gone rotten; that they were gambling in the stock of the road they
controlled and were supposed in large part to own; that they were
secretly selling its stock "short"--that is, were betting it would go
down--when there was nothing in the condition of the property to
justify a fall. He reflected on this situation and reached these
conclusions: "James Fanning-Smith purposes to pass the autumn
dividend, which will cause the stock to drop. Then he will take his
profits from the shares he has sold short and will buy back control at
the low price. He is a fool and a knave. Only an imbecile would thus
trifle with an established property. A chance for some one to make a
fortune and win a railroad by smashing the Fanning-Smiths." Having
recorded in his indelible memory these facts and conclusions as to
James Fanning-Smith's plunge from business into gambling, Dumont
returned to his own exacting affairs.
He had himself begun the race for multi-millions as a gambler and had
only recently become ALMOST altogether a business man. But he thought
there was a radical difference between his case and Fanning-Smith's.
To use courageous gambling as means to a foothold in business--he
regarded that as wise audacity. To use a firm-established foothold in
business as a means to gambling--he regarded that as the acme of
reckless folly. Besides, when he marked the cards or loaded the dice
for a great Wall Street game of "high finance," he did it with skill
and intelligence; and Fanning-Smith had neither.
When the banking-house of Fanning-Smith and Company undertook to
finance the raid on National Woolens it was already deep in the Great
Lakes gamble. James was new to Wall Street's green table; and he liked
the sensations and felt that his swindle on other gamblers and the
public--he did not call it by that homely name, though he knew others
would if they found him out--was moving smoothly. Still very, very
deep down his self-confidence was underlaid with quicksand. But Herron
was adroit and convincing to the degree attainable only by those who
deceive themselves before trying to deceive others; and James' cupidity
and conceit were enormous. He ended by persuading himself that his
house, directed and protected by his invincible self, could carry with
ease the burden of both loads. Indeed, the Great Lakes gamble now
seemed to him a negligible trifle in the comparison--what were its
profits of a few hundred thousands beside the millions that would
surely be his when the great Woolens Monopoly, bought in for a small
fraction of its value, should be controlled by a group of which he
would be the dominant personality?
He ventured; he won. He was now secure--was not Dumont dispossessed,
despoiled, dying?
At eleven o'clock on that Monday morning he was seated upon his
embossed leather throne, under his grandfather's portrait, immersed in
an atmosphere of self-adoration. At intervals he straightened himself,
distended his chest, elevated his chin and glanced round with an air of
haughty dignity, though there was none to witness and to be impressed.
In Wall Street there is a fatuity which, always epidemic among the
small fry, infects wise and foolish, great and small, whenever a
paretic dream of an enormous haul at a single cast of the net happens
to come true. This paretic fatuity now had possession of James; in
imagination he was crowning and draping himself with multi-millions,
power and fame. At intervals he had been calling up on the telephone
at his elbow Zabriskie, the firm's representative on 'Change, and had
been spurring him on to larger and more frequent "sales" of Great Lakes.
His telephone bell rang. He took down the receiver--"Yes, it's Mr.
Fanning-Smith--oh--Mr. Fanshaw----" He listened, in his face for the
first few seconds all the pitying amusement a small, vain man can put
into an expression of superiority. "Thank you, Mr. Fanshaw," he said.
"But really, it's impossible. WE are perfectly secure. No one would
venture to disturb US." And he pursed his lips and swelled his fat
cheeks in the look for which his father was noted. But, after
listening a few seconds longer, his eyes had in them the beginnings of
timidity.
He turned his head so that he could see the ticker-tape as it reeled
off. His heavy cheeks slowly relaxed. "Yes, yes," he said hurriedly.
"I'll just speak to our Mr. Zabriskie. Good-by." And he rang off and
had his telephone connected with the telephone Zabriskie was using at
the Stock Exchange. All the while his eyes were on the ticker-tape.
Suddenly he saw upon it where it was bending from under the turning
wheel a figure that made him drop the receiver and seize it in both his
trembling hands. "Great heavens!" he gasped. "Fanshaw may be right.
Great Lakes one hundred and twelve--and only a moment ago it was one
hundred and three."
His visions of wealth and power and fame were whisking off in a gale of
terror. A new quotation was coming from under the wheel--Great Lakes
one hundred and fifteen. In his eyes stared the awful thought that was
raging in his brain--"This may mean----" And his vanity instantly
thrust out Herron and Gertrude and pointed at them as the criminals who
would be responsible if--he did not dare formulate the possibilities of
that bounding price.
The telephone boy at the other end, going in search of Zabriskie, left
the receiver off the hook and the door of the booth open. Into
Fanning-Smith's ear came the tumult from the floor of the
Exchange--shrieks and yells riding a roar like the breakers of an
infernal sea. And on the ticker-tape James was reading the story of
the cause, was reading how his Great Lakes venture was caught in those
breakers, was rushing upon the rocks amid the despairing wails of its
crew, the triumphant jeers of the wreckers on shore. Great Lakes one
hundred and eighteen--tick--tick--tick--Great Lakes one hundred and
twenty-three--tick--tick--tick--Great Lakes one hundred and
thirty--tick--tick--tick--Great Lakes one hundred and thirty-five--
"It can't be true!" he moaned. "It CAN'T be true! If it is I'm
ruined--all of us ruined!"
The roar in the receiver lessened--some one had entered the booth at
the other end and had closed the door. "Well!" he heard in a sharp,
impatient voice--Zabriskie's.
"What is it, Ned--what's the matter? Why didn't you tell me?"
Fanning-Smith's voice was like the shrill shriek of a coward in a
perilous storm. It was in itself complete explanation of Zabriskie's
neglect to call upon him for orders.
"Don't ask me. Somebody's rocketing Great Lakes--taking all offerings.
Don't keep me here. I'm having a hard enough time, watching this crazy
market and sending our orders by the roundabout way. Got anything to
suggest?"
Tick--tick--tick--Commander-in-chief Fanning-Smith watched the crawling
tape in fascinated horror--Great Lakes one hundred and thirty-eight.
It had spelled out for him another letter of that hideous word, Ruin.
All the moisture of his body seemed to be on the outside; inside, he
was dry and hot as a desert. If the price went no higher, if it did
not come down, nearly all he had in the world would be needed to settle
his "short" contracts. For he would have to deliver at one hundred and
seven, more than two hundred thousand shares which he had contracted to
sell; and to get them for delivery he would have to pay one hundred and
thirty-eight dollars a share. A net loss of more than six millions!
"You must get that price down--you must! You MUST!" quavered James.
"Hell!" exclaimed Zabriskie--he was the youngest member of the firm, a
son of James' oldest sister. "Tell me how, and I'll do it."
"You're there--you know what to do," pleaded James. "And I order you
to get that price down!"
"Don't keep me here, talking rot. I've been fighting--and I'm going to
keep on."
James shivered. Fighting! There was no fight in him--all his life he
had got everything without fighting. "Do your best," he said. "I'm
very ill to-day. I'm--"
"Good-by--" Zabriskie had hung up the receiver.
James sat staring at the tape like a paralytic staring at death. The
minutes lengthened into an hour--into two hours. No one disturbed
him--when the battle is on who thinks of the "honorary commander"? At
one o'clock he shook himself, brushed his hand over his
eyes--quotations of Woolens were reeling off the tape, alternating with
quotations of Great Lakes.
"Zabriskie is selling our Woolens," he thought. Then, with a blinding
flash the truth struck through his brain. He gave a loud cry between a
sob and a shriek and, flinging his arms at full length upon his desk,
buried his face between them and burst into tears.
"Ruined! Ruined! Ruined!" And his shoulders, his whole body, shook
like a child in a paroxysm.
A long, long ring at the telephone. Fanning-Smith, irritated by the
insistent jingling so close to his ear, lifted himself and
answered--the tears were guttering his swollen face; his lips and
eyelids were twitching.
"Well?" he said feebly.
"We've got 'em on the run," came the reply in Zabriskie's voice,
jubilant now.
"Who?"
"Don't know who--whoever was trying to squeeze us. I had to throw over
some Woolens--but I'll pick it up again--maybe to-day."
Fanning-Smith could hear the roar of the Exchange--wilder, fiercer than
three hours before, but music to him now. He looked sheepishly at the
portrait of his grandfather. When its eyes met his he flushed and
shifted his gaze guiltily. "Must have been something I ate for
breakfast," he muttered to the portrait and to himself in apologetic
explanation of his breakdown.
In a distant part of the field all this time was posted the
commander-in-chief of the army of attack. Like all wise commanders in
all well-conducted battles, he was far removed from the blinding smoke,
from the distracting confusion. He had placed himself where he could
hear, see, instantly direct, without being disturbed by trifling
reverse or success, by unimportant rumors to vast proportions blown.
To play his game for dominion or destruction John Dumont had had
himself arrayed in a wine-colored, wadded silk dressing-gown over his
white silk pajamas and had stretched himself on a divan in his
sitting-room in his palace. A telephone and a stock-ticker within easy
reach were his field-glasses and his aides--the stock-ticker would show
him second by second the precise posture of the battle; the telephone
would enable him to direct it to the minutest manoeuver.
The telephone led to the ear of his chief of staff, Tavistock, who was
at his desk in his privatest office in the Mills Building, about him
telephones straight to the ears of the division commanders. None of
these knew who was his commander; indeed, none knew that there was to
be a battle or, after the battle was on, that they were part of one of
its two contending armies. They would blindly obey orders, ignorant
who was aiming the guns they fired and at whom those guns were aimed.
Such conditions would have been fatal to the barbaric struggles for
supremacy which ambition has waged through all the past; they are ideal
conditions for these modern conflicts of the market which more and more
absorb the ambitions of men. Instead of shot and shell and regiments
of "cannon food," there are battalions of capital, the paper
certificates of the stored-up toil or trickery of men; instead of
mangled bodies and dead, there are minds in the torment of financial
peril or numb with the despair of financial ruin. But the stakes are
the same old stakes--power and glory and wealth for a few, thousands on
thousands dragged or cozened into the battle in whose victory they
share scantily, if at all, although they bear its heaviest losses on
both sides.
It was half-past eight o'clock when Dumont put the receiver to his ear
and greeted Tavistock in a strong, cheerful voice. "Never felt better
in my life," was his answer to Tavistock's inquiry as to his health.
"Even old Sackett admits I'm in condition. But he says I must have no
irritations--so, be careful to carry out orders."
He felt as well as he said. His body seemed the better for its rest
and purification, for its long freedom from his occasional but terrific
assaults upon it, for having got rid of the superfluous flesh which had
been swelling and weighting it.
He made Tavistock repeat all the orders he had given him, to assure
himself he had not been misunderstood. As he listened to the rehearsal
of his own shrewd plans his eyes sparkled. "I'll bag the last----of
them," he muttered, and his lips twisted into a smile at which Culver
winced.
When the ticker clicked the first quotation of Great Lakes Dumont said:
"Now, clear out, Culver! And shut the door after you, and let no one
interrupt me until I call." He wished to have no restraint upon his
thoughts, no eyes to watch his face, no ears to hear what the fortune
of the battle might wring from him.
As the ticker pushed out the news of the early declines and recoveries
in Great Lakes, Tavistock leading the Fanning-Smith crowd on to make
heavier and heavier plunges, Dumont could see in imagination the
battle-field--the floor of the Stock Exchange--as plainly as if he were
there.
The battle began with a languid cannonade between the two seemingly
opposed parts of Dumont's army. Under cover of this he captured most
of the available actual shares of Great Lakes--valuable aids toward
making his position, his "corner," impregnable. But before he had
accomplished his full purpose Zabriskie, nominal lieutenant-commander,
actual commander of the Fanning-Smith forces, advanced to give battle.
Instead of becoming suspicious at the steadiness of the price under his
attacks upon it, Zabriskie was lured on to sell more of those Great
Lakes shares which he did not have. And he beamed from his masked
position as he thought of the batteries he was holding in reserve for
his grand movement to batter down the price of the stock late in the
day, and capture these backers of the property that was supposed to be
under the protection of the high and honorable Fanning-Smiths.
He was still thinking along this line, as he stood aloof and apparently
disinterested, when Dumont began to close in upon him. Zabriskie,
astonished by this sudden tremendous fire, was alarmed when under its
protection the price advanced. He assaulted in force with large
selling orders; but the price pushed on and the fierce cannonade of
larger and larger buying orders kept up. When Great Lakes had mounted
in a dozen bounds from one hundred and seven to one hundred and
thirty-nine, he for the first time realized that he was facing not an
unorganized speculating public but a compact army, directed by a single
mind to a single purpose. "A lunatic--a lot of lunatics," he said,
having not the faintest suspicion of the reason for the creation of
these conditions of frenzy. Still, if this rise continued or was not
reversed the Fanning-Smiths would be ruined--by whom? "Some of those
Chicago bluffers," he finally decided. "I must throw a scare into I
them."
He could have withdrawn from the battle then with a pitiful remnant of
the Fanning-Smiths and their associates--that is, he thought he could,
for he did not dream of the existence of the "corner." But he chose
the opposite course. He flung off his disguise and boldly attacked the
stock with selling orders openly in the name of the Fanning-Smiths.
"When they see us apparently unloading our own ancestral property I
think they'll take to their heels," he said. But his face was pale as
he awaited the effect of his assault.
The price staggered, trembled. The clamor of the battle alarmed those
in the galleries of the Stock Exchange--Zabriskie's brokers selling,
the brokers of the mysterious speculator buying, the speculating public
through its brokers joining in on either side; men shrieking into each
other's faces as they danced round and round the Great Lakes pillar.
The price went down, went up, went down, down, down--Zabriskie had
hurled selling orders for nearly fifty thousand shares at it and Dumont
had commanded his guns to cease firing. He did not dare take any more
offerings; he had reached the end of the ammunition he had planned to
expend at that particular stage of the battle.
The alarm spread and, although Zabriskie ceased selling, the price
continued to fall under the assaults of the speculating public, mad to
get rid of that which its own best friends were so eagerly and so
frankly throwing over. Down, down, down to one hundred and twenty, to
one hundred and ten, to one hundred and five----
Zabriskie telephoned victory to his nominal commander, lifting him,
weak and trembling, from the depths into which he had fallen, to an at
least upright position upon his embossed leather throne. Then
Zabriskie began stealthily to cover his appallingly long line of
"shorts" by making purchases at the lowest obtainable prices--one
hundred and four--one hundred and three--one hundred and
one--ninety-nine--one hundred and six!
The price rebounded so rapidly and so high that Zabriskie was forced to
stop his retreat. Dumont, noting the celerity with which the enemy
were escaping under cover of the demoralization, had decided no longer
to delay the move for which he had saved himself. He had suddenly
exploded under the falling price mine after mine of buying orders that
blew it skyward. Zabriskie's retreat was cut off.
But before he had time to reason out this savage renewal of the assault
by that mysterious foe whom he thought he had routed, he saw a new and
more dreadful peril. Brackett, his firm's secret broker, rushed to him
and, to make himself heard through the hurly-burly, shouted into his
ear:
"Look what's doing in Woolens!"
Dumont had ordered a general assault upon his enemies, front, rear and
both flanks. His forces were now attacking not only through Great
Lakes but also through Woolens. Two apparently opposing sets of his
brokers were trading in Woolens, were hammering the price down, down, a
point, an eighth, a half, a quarter, at a time. The sweat burst out
all over Zabriskie's body and his eyes rolled wildly. He was caught
among four fires:
To continue to sell Great Lakes in face of its rising price--that was
ruin. To cease to sell it and so let its price go up to where he could
not buy when settlement time came--that was ruin. To sell Woolens, to
help batter down its price, to shrink the value of his enormous
investment in it--ruin again. To buy Woolens in order to hold up its
price, to do it when he would need all obtainable cash to extricate him
from the Great Lakes entanglement--ruin, certain ruin.
His judgment was gone; his brute instinct of fighting was dominant; he
began to strike out wildly, his blows falling either nowhere or upon
himself.
At the Woolens post he was buying in the effort to sustain its price,
buying stock that might be worthless when he got it--and that he might
not be able to pay for. At the Great Lakes post he was selling in the
effort to force the price down, selling more and more of a stock he did
not have and---- At last the thought flashed into his befuddled brain:
"There may be a corner in Great Lakes. What if there were no stock to
be had?"
He struck his hands against the sides of his head. "Trapped!" he
groaned, then bellowed in Brackett's ear. "Sell Woolens--do the best
you can to keep the price up, but sell at any price! We must have
money--all we can get! And tell Farley"--Farley was Brackett's
partner--"to buy Great Lakes--buy all he can get--at any price.
Somebody's trying to corner us!"
He felt--with an instinct he could not question--that there was indeed
a corner in Great Lakes, that he and his house and their associates
were caught. Caught with promises to deliver thousands upon thousands
of shares of Great Lakes, when Great Lakes could be had only of the
mysterious cornerer, and at whatever price he might choose to ask!
"If we've got to go down," he said to himself, "I'll see that it's a
tremendous smash anyhow, and that we ain't alone in it." For he had in
him the stuff that makes a man lead a forlorn hope with a certain joy
in the very hopelessness of it.
The scene on the day of Dumont's downfall was a calm in comparison with
the scene which Dumont, sitting alone among the piled-up coils of
ticker-tape, was reconstructing from its, to him, vivid
second-by-second sketchings.
The mysterious force which had produced a succession of earthquakes
moved horribly on, still in mystery impenetrable, to produce a
cataclysm. In the midst of the chaos two vast whirlpools formed--one
where Great Lakes sucked down men and fortunes, the other where Woolens
drew some down to destruction, flung others up to wealth. Then Rumor,
released by Tavistock when Dumont saw that the crisis had arrived, ran
hot foot through the Exchange, screaming into the ears of the brokers,
shrieking through the telephones, howling over the telegraph wires, "A
corner! A corner! Great Lakes is cornered!" Thousands besides the
Fanning-Smith coterie had been gambling in Great Lakes, had sold shares
they did not have. And now all knew that to get them they must go to
the unknown, but doubtless merciless, master-gambler--unless they could
save themselves by instantly buying elsewhere before the steel jaws of
the corner closed and clinched.
Reason fled, and self-control. The veneer of civilization was torn
away to the last shred; and men, turned brute again, gave themselves up
to the elemental passions of the brute.
In the quiet, beautiful room in upper Fifth Avenue was Dumont in his
wine-colored wadded silk dressing-gown and white silk pajamas. The
floor near his lounge was littered with the snake-like coils of
ticker-tape. They rose almost to his knees as he sat and through
telephone and ticker drank in the massacre of his making, glutted
himself with the joy of the vengeance he was taking--on his enemies, on
his false or feeble friends, on the fickle public that had trampled and
spat upon him. His wet hair was hanging in strings upon his forehead.
His face was flushed and his green-gray eyes gleamed like a mad dog's.
At intervals a jeer or a grunt of gratified appetite ripped from his
mouth or nose. Like a great lean spider he lay hid in the center of
that vast net of electric wires, watching his prey writhe helpless.
Pauline, made uneasy by his long isolation, opened his door and
looked--glanced, rather. As she closed it, in haste to shut from view
that spectacle of a hungry monster at its banquet of living flesh,
Culver saw her face. Such an expression an angel might have, did it
chance to glance down from the battlements of heaven and, before it
could turn away, catch a glimpse of some orgy in hell.
But Dumont did not hear the door open and close. He was at the climax
of his feast.
Upon his two maelstroms, sucking in the wreckage from a dozen other
explosions as well as from those he had directly caused, he could see
as well as if he were among the fascinated, horrified spectators in the
galleries of the Exchange, the mangled flotsam whirling and descending
and ascending. The entire stock list, the entire speculating public of
the country was involved. And expression of the emotions everywhere
was by telegraph and telephone concentrated in the one hall, upon the
faces and bodies of those few hundred brokers. All the passions which
love of wealth and dread of want breed in the human animal were there
finding vent--all degrees and shades and modes of greed, of hate, of
fear, of despair. It was like a shipwreck where the whole fleet is
flung upon the reefs, and the sailors, drunk and insane, struggle with
death each in his own awful way. It was like the rout where frenzied
victors ride after and among frenzied vanquished to shoot and stab and
saber.
And while this battle, precipitated by the passions of a few "captains
of industry," raged in Wall Street and filled the nation with the
clamor of ruined or triumphant gamblers, ten-score thousand toilers in
the two great enterprises directly involved toiled tranquilly
on--herding sheep and shearing them, weaving cloths and dyeing them,
driving engines, handling freight, conducting trains, usefully busy,
adding to the sum of human happiness, subtracting from the sum of human
misery.
At three o'clock Dumont sank back among his cushions and pillows. His
child, his other self, his Woolens Monopoly, was again his own; his
enemies were under his heel, as much so as those heaps and coils of
ticker-tape he had been churning in his excitement. "I'm dead tired,"
he muttered, his face ghastly, his body relaxed in utter exhaustion.
He closed his eyes. "I must sleep--I've earned it. To-morrow"--a smile
flitted round his mouth--"I'll hang their hides where every coyote and
vulture can see."
Toward four o'clock in came Doctor Sackett and Culver. The room was
flooded with light--the infinite light of the late-spring afternoon
reflected on the white enamel and white brocade of walls and furniture.
On the floor in the heaps and coils of ticker-tape lay Dumont.
In his struggles the tape had wound round and round his legs, his arms,
his neck. It lay in a curling, coiling mat, like a serpent's head,
upon his throat, where his hands clutched the collar of his pajamas.
Sackett knelt beside him, listening at his chest, feeling for his pulse
in vain. And Culver stood by, staring stupidly at the now worthless
instrument of his ambition for wealth and power.