“In addition to the stock of this concern that I hold in my own name,” said
I, “I hold five shares in the name of a man whom nobody knows that I even
know. If you don't let me have the money, that man goes to the district
attorney with information that lands you in the penitentiary, that puts
your company out of business and into bankruptcy before to-morrow noon.
I saved you three years ago, and got you this job against just such an
emergency as this, Bob Corey. And, by God, you'll toe the mark!”
“But we haven't done anything that every bank in town doesn't do every
day--doesn't have to do. If we didn't lend money to dummy borrowers
and over-certify accounts, our customers would go where they could get
accommodations.”
“That's true enough,” said I. “But I'm in a position for the moment where I
need my friends--and they've got to come to time. If I don't get the money
from you, I'll get it elsewhere--but over the cliff with you and your
bank! The laws you've been violating may be bad for the practical banking
business, but they're mighty good for punishing ingratitude and treachery.”
He sat there, yellow and pinched, and shivering every now and then. He
made no reply. He was one of those shells of men that are conspicuous as
figureheads in every department of active life--fellows with well-shaped,
white-haired or prematurely bald heads, and grave, respectable faces;
they look dignified and substantial, and the soul of uprightness; they
coin their looks into good salaries by selling themselves as covers for
operations of the financiers. And how those operations, in the nude, as it
were, would terrify the plodders that save up and deposit or invest the
money the financiers gamble with on the big green tables!
Presently I shook his arm impatiently. His eyes met mine, and I fixed them.
“I'm going to pull through,” said I. “But if I weren't, I'd see to it that
you were protected. Come, what's your answer? Friend or traitor?”
“Can't you give me any security--any collateral?”
“No more than I took from you when I saved you as you were going down with
the rest in the Dumont smash. My word--that's all. I borrow on the same
terms you've given me before, the same you're giving four of your heaviest
borrowers right now.”
He winced as I thus reminded him how minute my knowledge was of the
workings of his bank.
“I didn't think this of you, Matt,” he whined. “I believed you above such
hold-up methods.”
“I suit my methods to the men I'm dealing with,” was my answer. “These
fellows are trying to push me off the life raft. I fight with every weapon
I can lay hands on. And I know as well as you do that, if you get into
serious trouble through this loan, at least five men we could both name
would have to step in and save the bank and cover up the scandal. You'll
blackmail them, just as you've blackmailed them before, and they you.
Blackmail's a legitimate part of the game. Nobody appreciates that better
than you.” It was no time for the smug hypocrisies under which we people
down town usually conduct our business--just as the desperadoes used to
patrol the highways disguised as peaceful merchants.
“Send round in the morning and get the money,” said he, putting on a
resigned, hopeless look.
I laughed. “I'll feel easier if I take it now,” I replied. “We'll fix up
the notes and checks at once.”
He reddened, but after a brief hesitation busied himself. When the papers
were all made up and signed, and I had the certified checks in my pocket,
I said: “Wait here, Bob, until the National Industrial people call you
up. I'll ask them to do it, so they can get your personal assurance that
everything's all right. And I'll stop there until they tell me they've
talked with you.”
“But it's too late,” he said. “You can't deposit to-day.”
“I've a special arrangement with them,” I replied.
His face betrayed him. I saw that at no stage of that proceeding had I been
wiser than in shutting off his last chance to evade. What scheme he had in
mind I don't know, and can't imagine. But he had thought out something,
probably something foolish that would have given me trouble without saving
him. A foolish man in a tight place is as foolish as ever, and Corey was
a foolish man--only a fool commits crimes that put him in the power of
others. The crimes of the really big captains of industry and generals of
finance are of the kind that puts others in their power.
“Buck up, Corey,” said I. “Do you think I'm the man to shut a friend in the
hold of a sinking ship? Tell me, who told you I was short on Textile?”
“One of my men,” he slowly replied, as he braced himself together.
“Which one? Who?” I persisted. For I wanted to know just how far the news
was likely to spread.
He seemed to be thinking out a lie.
“The truth!” I commanded. “I know it couldn't have been one of your men.
Who was it? I'll not give you away.”
“It was Tom Langdon,” he finally said.
I checked an exclamation of amazement. I had been assuming that I had been
betrayed by some one of those tiny mischances that so often throw the best
plans into confusion.
“Tom Langdon,” I said satirically. “It was he that warned you against me?”
“It was a friendly act,” said Corey. “He and I are very intimate. And he
doesn't know how close you and I are.”
“Suggested that you call my loans, did he?” I went on.
“You mustn't blame him, Blacklock; really you mustn't,” said Corey
earnestly, for he was a pretty good friend to those he liked, as friendship
goes in finance. “He happened to hear. You know the Langdons keep a sharp
watch on operations in their stock. And he dropped in to warn me as a
friend. You'd do the same thing in the same circumstances. He didn't say a
word about my calling your loans. I--to be frank--I instantly thought of it
myself. I intended to do it when you came, but”--a sickly smile--“you
anticipated me.”
“I understand,” said I good-humoredly. “I don't blame him.” And I didn't
then.
After I had completed my business at the National Industrial, I went back
to my office and gathered together the threads of my web of defense. Then
I wrote and sent out to all my newspapers and all my agents a broadside
against the management of the Textile Trust--it would be published in
the morning, in good time for the opening of the Stock Exchange. Before
the first quotation of Textile could be made, thousands on thousands of
investors and speculators throughout the country would have read my letter,
would be believing that Matthew Blacklock had detected the Textile Trust
in a stock-jobbing swindle, and had promptly turned against it, preferring
to keep faith with his customers and with the public. As I read over my
pronunciamiento aloud before sending it out, I found in it a note of
confidence that cheered me mightily. “I'm even stronger than I thought,”
said I. And I felt stronger still as I went on to picture the thousands on
thousands throughout the land rallying at my call to give battle.