BOJO OBEYS HIS GENERAL MANAGER
Three months after his entry into Wall Street, Bojo emerged from his
bedroom into the communal sitting-room in a state of tense excitement.
The day before he had taken his first plunge into the world of
speculation and bought a thousand shares of Indiana Smelter on a twenty
per cent. margin. This transaction, which represented to his mind the
inevitable challenge at the gates of fortune, had left him in a turmoil
through all the restless night. He had taken the decision which was to
decide his future only after a long wrestling with his conscience.
At first he had imposed a limit, promising himself that he would not
touch a penny of his $50,000 capital until he should know of his own
knowledge. Gradually this time limit had contracted. Speculation was in
the air, triumphant and insidious. The whole market was sweeping up
irresistibly. The times were dramatic. Golden opportunity seemed within
every one's grasp. Expansion, development, amalgamation were on every
tongue. Roscoe Marsh had made a hundred thousand on paper. Even Fred
DeLancy had won several turns which had netted him handsome profits.
Bojo had resisted stubbornly at first, turning heedless ears to the
excited arguments of his friends, but the fever of speculation had
entered his veins, he dreamed of nothing else, and gradually the thought
of his $50,000, so modestly invested in four per cent. bonds obsessed
him. What was worse was that each time he had refused to follow a tip of
Marsh or DeLancy or a dozen new-found friends, he secretly noted down
the speculation; and the thought of these dollars he had refused, which
could have been his for the asking, rose up before him in a constant
reproach. In the end it was Doris who decided him.
That indefatigable schemer, whom even he now called the General Manager,
had a dozen times summoned him for an excited consultation on some rumor
which she had caught in passage. At first he had laughed her down, then
he had stubbornly refused such an alliance. But Doris, undaunted,
returned to the charge, amazing him at times with the pertinency of her
information, which she picked up from the wives and daughters, from
those who came as suitors, or as mere friends of the family, while just
as industriously and cleverly she commandeered her acquaintance and sent
Bojo a string of customers which had remarkably affected his progress in
the brokerage offices of Hauk, Flaspoller and Forshay.
Finally he had yielded, because for weeks he had been longing to yield
as a spectator tires of watching inactive the spectacle of the shifting
golden combinations on the green cloth of the gambling table. She had
information of the most explicit sort. A great combination of Middle
Western Smelters had been held up for several weeks by the refusal of
two great companies to enter at the price offered--Indiana Smelter and
Rockland Foundry. She knew positively that the matter would be adjusted
in the next fortnight.
"Did your father say so?" he asked, really impressed, for Drake was
reported as directly interested.
"Not in the first place."
"But where did you get your information?"
"Oh, I have my ways," she said, delighted, "and I keep my secrets too.
Just remember if you'd taken my advice what you'd have made."
"It is astounding how right you've been," he said doubtfully.
"Listen, Bojo, this is absolutely correct. I know it. I can't tell you
now--I promised--but if I could you wouldn't have the slightest doubt.
Can't you trust me just this once? Don't you know that I'm working for
you? Oh, it's such an opportunity for us both. Listen, if you won't do
it, buy five hundred shares for me with my own money. Oh, how can I
convince you!"
He looked away thoughtfully; tempted, convinced, suspecting the source
of her information, but wishing to remain ignorant.
"You are determined to buy?" She nodded energetically. "What does your
father say?"
She seized his idea, saving him the embarrassment of a direct
suggestion.
"If Dad says yes, will that convince you? Wait." She thought a moment,
pacing up and down, humming brightly to herself. Suddenly she turned,
her eyes sparkling with the delight of her own machinations. "I'll tell
you how I'll do it. Next week's my birthday. I'll ask him to give me
the tip as a birthday present." She clapped her hands gleefully, adding:
"I'll tell him it's for my trousseau. If he says all right you won't
refuse."
"No, I won't."
She flung herself joyfully into his arms at this victory won, at this
prospect opened.
"Bojo, I do love you and I do want to do so much for you!" she cried,
tightening her arms about his neck, with more genuine demonstration than
she had shown in months.
"After all, I'd be a fool to refuse," he thought, excited too, and aloud
he said, "Yes, Miss General Manager."
"Oh, call me anything you like if you'll only let me manage you!" she
said, laughing. "Now sit down and let me tell you all I've planned out
for you to do."
That night she told him excitedly over the telephone that her little
scheme had succeeded, that her father had given his O. K., but of course
no one must know. The next day he had bought five hundred shares for
her, and after much hesitation a thousand for his own account at
104-1/2. It was a good risk; the stock had been stable for years; even
if the combination did not go through, there was little danger of a
rapid fall; and if it went up there was a chance at a thirty- or
forty-point rise. He kept the injunction of secrecy, as all such
injunctions are kept, to the point of telling only his closest friends,
Marsh and DeLancy, who bought at once.
Nevertheless, no sooner had the transaction been completed than he had a
sudden revulsion. He had been long enough in Wall Street to have heard
a hundred tales of the methods of big manipulators. What if Dan Drake's
endorsement was only a clever ruse to conceal his real intentions, quits
for reimbursing Doris afterward with a check, according to a famous
precedent? Perhaps he even suspected that he, Bojo, had put Doris up to
it and was taking this method to read him the lesson that his methods
were not to be solved along such lines. At any rate, Tom passed a very
bad night, saying to himself that he had plunged ahead on the flimsiest
sort of evidence and fully deserved a shearing.
A glorious December morning, with a touch of Indian summer, was pouring
through the half-opened window, bearing the distant sounds of steam
riveters. Marsh was busily culling half a dozen newspapers, while Fred
was yawning over the eggs and coffee, when the mail was brought in by
the grinning Oriental who had been dubbed Sweeney. DeLancy, who had the
curiosity of a girl, pounced upon the letters, slinging half a dozen at
Bojo with a grumbled comment.
"Dog ding him if he isn't more popular than me! Important business
letters--Mr. Morgan and Mr. Rockefeller asking your advice--society
invitations--do honor our humble palace, pink envelope, heavily scented.
I say, Bojo, I've gone in deep on your precious stock, two hundred
shares--all I could scrape together. Hope you guess right. Anything I
hate is work, and 10 per cent. margin ought to be bolstered up by divine
revelation."
"Wish the deuce you hadn't," said Bojo, sitting down and opening the
formal announcement of his broker's purchase, which struck his eyes
like a criminal warrant.
"Cheer up," said Marsh, emerging from the litter of papers. "I've got a
tip from another angle, one of the lawyers involved. I'm going in for
another couple of thousand shares. Why so glum, Bojo?"
"Wish I hadn't told you fellows."
"Rats; that's all in the game!" said Marsh, but DeLancy did not look so
philosophical.
Bojo opened several invitations, a notice from the tailor to call for a
fitting, two letters from clients, personal friends, and finally the
pink envelope, which was from Doris.
Bojo dear:
Whatever you do don't tell a soul. Dad questioned me
terrifically and I told a little fib. How many shares did
you buy? Dad made me promise to buy only five hundred, but I
know it's all right from the way he acted. Oh, Bojo, I hope
you make lots and lots of money! Wouldn't Dad be surprised?
He asked me to-night in the funny gruff way he puts on,
'How's that young man of yours getting on? Have they got his
hide yet?' Won't it be a joke on him? By the way, I dined
with the Morrisons (she's an old school chum of mine) and
put in my clever little oar. Don't be surprised if some one
else calls you up soon to place a little order. I'm working
in another direction too. Don't fail to come up for tea.
With much love,
DORIS.
P.S. The Tremaines are _awfully_ influential. Be sure and go
to their dance.
He placed the letter in his pocket thoughtfully, not entirely happy. It
was a fair sample of a score of letters--enthusiasm, solicitude,
ambition, and clever worldly advice, but lacking the one note that
something in him craved despite all the purely mental satisfaction the
prospect held for him.
DeLancy continuing to loiter, he went out, alone, obsessed with the
thought of the opening of the market and the sound of the ticker, and
caught the subway for Wall Street, preoccupied and serious.
It had been three months now since the day when he had first come
downtown to take up service as a broker's runner, and much had changed
within him during that time, much of which he himself was not aware. The
first days he had been rather bewildered and resentful of the menial
beginning. It did not seem quite a man's work--this messenger service,
and the contemplation of those above him, the men at the sheets and the
office clerks, inspired him with a distaste. Often he remembered his
conversation with his father and talks with Granning, the
matter-of-fact; comparing their outlook on the life with his associates
much to the disadvantage of the curiously inconsequential throng of
young men who, like himself, were willing to go scurrying in the rain
and dark on servants' quests, in order to get a peek into the intricate
mysteries of Wall Street that held sudden fortunes for those who could
see.
He had come out of college with a love of manly qualities and the belief
that it was a man's privilege to face difficult and laborious tasks, and
the prevalent type among the beginners was not his type. Then, too, the
magnitude of the Street overpowered him, the skyscrapers without tops
dwarfed him, its jargon mystified him, as the colossal scale of the
operations he saw seemed to rob him of the sense of his own
individuality. But gradually, being possessed of shrewd native sense and
persistence, he began to distinguish in the mob types and among the
types figures that stood out in bold relief. He began to see those who
would pass and those who would persist.
He began to meet the more rugged type, schooled in earlier tests,
shrewd, cautious, and resolved, self-made men who had abrupt ways of
speaking their thoughts, who frankly classed him with other fortunate
youths and assured him that they were there by right, to take away from
them what had been foolishly given and pay them back in experience. He
took their chaffing in good humor, seeking their companionship and their
points of view by preference, gradually disarming their criticism,
secretly resolved that whatever might be the common fate at least he
would not prove a foolish lamb for the shearing.
Steeled in this resolution, he began by setting his face against
speculation, investing his money temporarily in irreproachable bonds,
refusing to listen to all the tips, whispered or openly proffered, which
assailed his ears from morning until night, until the day when he should
know of his own knowledge of men and things. He worked hard, following
Drake's advice, seeking information from men rather than from books,
checking up what each told him by what the next man had to say of his
last informant, mystified often by the glib psychology of finance,
slowly rating men at their just value, no longer lending credulous ear
to the frayed prophets of New Street or thrilling with the excitement of
a thrice confidential tip.
He had advanced rapidly, but underneath all his delight there was an
abiding suspicion that his progress had not been entirely due to his own
glaring accomplishments, but that the name of Crocker, senior, his bank
account, and the magic touch of Daniel Drake had been for much.