UNDER THE TICKER'S TYRANNY
During the last month he had had several tentative approaches from
Weldon Forshay, who was what DeLancy called the social scavenger of the
firm, a club man irreproachably connected, amiable and winning in his
ways, who received uptown clients in the outer office, went out to lunch
with the riding set, who lounged in toward midday for what they termed a
whack at the market. Forshay was a thoroughly good fellow who gave his
friends the best of advice, which was no advice at all, and left
business details to his partners, Heinrich Flaspoller and Silas T. Hauk,
shrewd, conservative, self-made men who exchanged one ceremonial family
dinner party a year with their brilliant associate.
Forshay, who was no fool and neglected no detail of social connections,
had been keen to perceive the advantages of an alliance with the
prospective son-in-law of Daniel Drake, keeping in view the voluminous
transactions that flowed monthly from the keys of that daring
manipulator. The transactions of the last days had been noted with more
than usual interest, and Bojo's announcement of the amount of collateral
which he had to offer as security (he did not, naturally, give the
impression that this was the sum of his holdings) had further increased
the growing affection of the firm for an industrious young man, of such
excellent prospects.
When Crocker arrived, excited and keyed to the whirring sound of the
ticker, Forshay, a splendid American imitation of an English aristocrat,
drew him affably into an inner room.
"I say, Crocker," he said, "the firm's been thinking you over rather
seriously. It isn't often a young fellow comes down here and makes his
way as quickly as you. We like your methods, and I think we've been
quick to recognize them--haven't we?"
"You certainly have," said Tom with real enthusiasm.
"You've brought us business and you'll bring us more. Now some evening
soon I want you to come up to the club and sit down over a little dinner
and discuss the whole prospect." He looked at him benignly and added: "I
don't see why an ambitious man like you who has got what you have ahead
of you shouldn't fit into this firm before very long."
"Provided I marry Miss Doris Drake," thought Bojo to himself. The cool
way in which he received the news made a distinct impression on Forshay,
who went a little further. "We realize that with the friends and backing
you've got you're not on the lookout to stay forever on a salary. What
you want is to get a fair share of the business you can swing, and the
only way is to join some firm. Well, I won't say any more now. You know
what we're thinking. We'll foregather later."
"You're very kind, indeed, Mr. Forshay," said Bojo, delightfully
flustered.
"Not at all. You're the kind that goes ahead. Oh, by the way, the firm
wants me to tell you that from next week your salary will be
seventy-five dollars."
This time Bojo gulped down his surprise and shook hands in boyish
delight.
"Mighty glad to give it to you," said Forshay, laughing. "I see you
think well of Indiana Smelter. Now I don't want you to betray any
confidences, but of course I know how you stand in certain quarters.
There is no harm in my saying that, is there? I've watched you. You
haven't been running after every rumor on the block. You're shrewd.
You're too conservative to invest without some pretty solid reason or to
let your friends in unless you're pretty sure."
"I am pretty sure," said Crocker solemnly.
"I thought so," said Forshay meditatively. "I'm rather tempted to try
the thing myself. I've sort of a hunch about you. I liked you, Tom, from
the first. Hope you hit it hard." He glanced in the direction of the
senior partners and lowered his voice confidentially. "Then it's good to
see one of our own kind make good--you understand?"
In five minutes Bojo had told him in the strictest confidence all he
knew. Forshay received the news with thoughtful deliberation.
"I'd like it better if Dan Drake had said it direct to you," he said,
frowning. "Still, it's valuable. There may be a good deal in it. I think
I can get a line on it myself. Jimmie Boskirk is a good pal of mine and
he'll know. You keep me informed and I'll let you know what I find out.
Go a little slow. Dan Drake is up to a good many tricks. He's fooled
the talent many a time before. Suppose we say Friday night for our
little confab. Good."
The mention of Jimmie Boskirk cast a damper over the delights the
interview had brought Bojo. He did not at once realize how easily
Forshay had played him for the information he desired and how really
valuable he believed it. He was lost in a new irritation. Young Boskirk
had been conspicuously assiduous in his attentions to Doris; and, while
this fact aroused in him no jealousy, he had an uncomfortable feeling
that Boskirk was in fact the source of her information.
But the opening of the market completely drove all other thoughts out of
his mind. For the first time he came under the poignant tyranny of the
flowing tape. Do what he would he could not keep away from it. Indiana
Smelter opened at 104-1/2, went off the fraction, and then advanced to
106 on moderate strength in buying orders.
"A point and a half--$1500--I've made $1500--just like that," he said to
himself, stupefied. He went to his desk, but ten minutes later on the
pretext of getting a glass of water he returned to the tape to make sure
that his eyes had not deceived him. There it was again and no
mistake--200 Indiana Smelter, 106. He sat down at his desk in a turmoil.
Fifteen hundred dollars! Five times what he had made in three months. If
he had bought two thousand shares, as he could have easily, at a safe
twenty per cent. margin, he would have made three thousand. He felt
angry at himself, defrauded, and, drawing a paper before him, he began
to figure out his profits if the stock should go to 140 or 150, as
every one said it must if the combination went through.
Then, in order to realize himself his colossal earnings, he called up
Doris on the telephone to hear the sound of such figures. At one, when
he went out to snatch a mouthful at a standing lunch, he consulted three
tickers, impatient that no further sales had been recorded. When
Ricketts, who was still on the sheets, came up to him with his daily
budget of gossip, he listened avidly. Every tip interested him, fraught
with a new dramatic significance. He felt like taking him aside and
whispering in his ear:
"Listen, Ricketts, if you want a good thing buy Indiana Smelter: it'll
go to 140. I've made fifteen hundred dollars on it in a couple of
hours."
But he did nothing of the sort. He looked very wise and bored, feeling
immensely superior as a capitalist and future member of the firm of
Hauk, Flaspoller and Forshay, over Ricketts, who had started when he had
started and was still on the sheets at fifteen dollars a week.
"Whispering Bill" Golightly, who had the hypnotic art of inducing
clients to buy and sell and buy again all in the same day, on artfully
fluctuating rumors (to no disparagement of his commission account), came
sidling up, and he hailed him regally.
"Hello, Bill, what do you know?"
"Buy Redding," said Golightly softly, with a confidential flutter of the
near eyelid.
"You're 'way behind. I know something better than that. Come around next
week."
He left Golightly smiling incredulously and ambled slowly through the
motley group of New Street, that tragic anteroom to Wall Street, where
fallen kings of finance retell the glories of the past and wager a few
miserable dollars on a fugitive whisper.
"If they only knew what I know," he said to himself, smiling as he
passed on in confident youth, through these wearied old men who in their
misfortune still preferred to be last in the Street if only to be near
Rome. At the offices, high on Exchange Place, looking down on the
huddled group of the curb below in sheepskins and mufflers, flinging
fingered signals in the air to waiting figures in windows above, he
found a new order from Roscoe Marsh and hurriedly had it executed. He
felt like calling up all his friends and asking them to follow his lead
blindly.
He wanted every one to be making money as easily as he could. Before the
market closed Indiana Smelter receded to 105-1/4 and he felt as though
some one had bodily lifted $500 from his pocket. Still he had made a
thousand dollars for the day. He caught the subway with the crowd of
stockbrokers who came romping out of the stock exchange like released
schoolboys after the day's tension, pommeling and shoving each other
with released glee. His first action was to turn to the financial
columns of his newspaper, to make sure there had been no error, to see
in cold print that he had actually made no mistake. During the week
Indiana Smelter climbed irregularly to 111-1/4, broke three points, and
ended at 109 amid a sudden concentration of public interest.
On Saturday, when he came back to his blazing windows in the mellow
half-lights of the court, preparatory to dressing for a party in the
wake of Fred DeLancy, he took the flight two steps at a time, bursting
with the need of pouring out his tale of good fortune to responsive
ears. He found only George Granning, snug in the big armchair, sunk in
the beatific contemplation of an immense ledger.
"What the deuce are you grinning at, you old rhinoceros?" said Bojo,
stopping surprised.
"I'm casting up accounts," said Granning. "I'm twelve hundred and
forty-two dollars ahead of the game. To-morrow you can buy me my first
bond and make me a capitalist. Bojo, congratulate me. I've got my
raise--forty a week from now on--assistant superintendent! What do you
think of that?"
"No!" exclaimed Bojo, who had been dreaming in hundreds of thousands. He
shook hands with all the enthusiasm he could force. Then a genuine pity
seized him for the inequalities of opportunity. He seized a chair and
drew it excitedly near his friend. "Granny, listen to me. Do you know
what I have made in ten days? Almost five thousand dollars! Now you know
nothing in this world would let me get you in wrong, unless I knew.
Well, Granny, I know! I'll guarantee you--do you understand--that if
you'll let me take your thousand and invest it as I want, I'll double
your capital in a month."
"Thank you, no," said Granning in a way that admitted no discussion.
"The gilt-edged kind is my ambition. Look here, how much money have you
put up?"
"Only twenty thousand."
"Then give me the rest and let me bury it for you."
"I tell you I can sell it now and make $4500. What do you say to that?"
"I'm damned sorry to hear it."
"You're a nice friend."
"Lecturing isn't my strong point," said Granning imperturbably, "but
since you insist, the first lesson in life to my mind is a wholesome
respect for the difficulty of making money."
"You act as though you think I've robbed some old widow, you anarchist!"
"Twelve times 30 is 360, add 12 times 150 times 30," said Granning,
taking up his pencil.
"What the deuce are you figuring out?"
"I'm calculating that at the rate I'm living I can buy another bond in
about ten and three quarter months," said Granning blissfully.
"Oh, go to the devil," said Bojo, retreating into his room.
As he started to dress for the evening he began to moralize, glancing
out at Granning, who continued his figuring, a picture of rugged
happiness.
"Suppose he's thinking of that forty-five dollar a year income now,"
thought Bojo, who began to indulge in many worldly speculations of which
he would have been incapable three months before. After all, if some
people only knew it, it was just as easy to make a hundred thousand as a
thousand. All it required was to recognize that the world was unequal
and always would remain unequal, and toward the top of society, when one
had the opportunity of course, it was all a question of knowledge and
influence.
"Poor old Granny," he said, shaking his head. "In four years I'll be
worth a million and he'll be plodding on, working like a slave,
gloating over a ten-dollar raise." But as he was withal honest in his
values he added: "And the old fellow's worth ten times what I am too!"
He remembered his own raise in salary, but for certain reasons
determined not to risk an ethical comparison.
"Well, Capitalist, good night," he said, arrayed in top hat, fur coat,
and glowing linen.
Granning grunted complacently and called him back as he was
disappearing.
"Hi, there!"
"What?"
"Come over to the factory with me some day and see what real work is."
Bojo slammed the door and went laughing down the stairs.
* * * * *
The buying orders multiplied in Indiana Smelter, the air was full of
rumors, the financial columns accepted as a fact that the combination
was decided, and the stock went soaring in the third week, despite one
day of horrible uncertainty, when the report was spread that all
negotiations were off and Indiana Smelter dropped twelve points. When
135 was reached, Bojo became bewildered. In less than a month he had
cleared over thirty thousand dollars. He could not believe his own
reason. Where had it come from? Did it actually exist or would he wake
up some morning and find it evaporated?
The spinning tack-tack of the ticker was always in his ears. At night
when he started to go to sleep, the room was always full of diabolical
instruments, and great curling streams of thin paper fell over his bed
and Indiana Smelter was kiting up into impossible figures or abruptly
crumbling to nothing. One morning the necessity of actually holding in
his own hands these enormous sums which he had been incredulously
contemplating all these weeks was so imperious that he sold out as the
stock reached 138-1/4.
For a day a feeling of sublime liberation came to him, as though the
clicking tyranny were forever vanished from his ears. In his pocket was
certainty, incredible but tangible, a check to his order for over
thirty-three thousand dollars. When once this certainty had impressed
itself upon him he had a quick revulsion. It seemed to him that what he
had done was grossly immoral, as though he had thrown his money on a
gambling table and won fabulously with a beginner's luck. Some
providence must have protected him, but he resolved firmly never to
repeat the test.
He informed Granny of this decision, admitting frankly all the appetite
for gain, the reckless, dangerous excitement it had roused in him. He
spoke with such profound conviction, being for the moment convinced
himself, that Granny's skepticism was conquered, and they shook hands
upon Bojo's sudden enlightenment.
But the next day, when he had gone up to the Drakes and exhibited the
check for the delectation of Doris, his good intentions began to waver
in the flush of triumph.
"Now, aren't you glad you listened to a wise little person who is going
to make your fortune?" she said, thrilled at the sight of the check.
"Who gave you the tip, Doris?" he said uneasily. "You can tell me now."
"Ask me no questions--"
"A man or a woman?" he persisted, seeking a subterfuge, for the thought
of asking pointblank if he owed his fortune to Boskirk was repugnant.
She hesitated a moment, divining his qualms.
"Promise to ask no more questions."
"If you'll tell me."
"A woman, then."
He pretended to himself a great satisfaction, immensely relieved in his
pride, willing to be convinced. Dan Drake came in and Doris, glad of the
interruption, displayed the check in triumph.
"So that's it, is it?" said Drake, glancing up at Bojo, who looked
sheepishly happy. And assuming an angry air, he caught Doris by the ear.
"A traitor in my own household, eh?"
"What do you mean?" she said, defending herself.
"I mean the next time you wheedle such inside information out, just
remember you've got a daddy."
"Now, Dad, don't be horrid and take away all my fun. Isn't it glorious!"
"Very," said Drake with a grimace. "I congratulate you, young scamps.
Your getting in and spreading the good news among the bosom friends--"
he glanced at Bojo, who flushed--"cost me a couple of hundred thousand
more than I intended to pay. I guess, young man, it'll be cheaper for me
to have you inside my office than out!"
"I didn't realize, sir--"
"No reason you should, but I want to tell you and your General Manager
so that you won't get any mistaken ideas of your Napoleonic talents,
that there was a moment ten days ago when the whole combination came
near a cropper, wherever you got your information." He stopped, looked
at his daughter severely, and said: "By the way, where _did_ you get
your information, young lady?"
Doris laughed mischievously, not at all deceived by his assumed anger.
"I have my own sources of information," she said, imitating his manner.
The father looked at her shrewdly, amused at the intrigue he divined.
"Well, this is my guess--"
But Doris, flinging herself, laughing, at him, closed his lips with her
pretty hand.
"She used Boskirk to help me," thought Bojo, perceiving her start of
fear and the shrewd smile on the face of the father.
He did not pursue the matter, but the conviction remained with him.
Despite his new-found resolutions he was surprised to find that the
obsession of the ticker still held him. With the announcement of the
completion of the Smelter merger, Indiana Smelter rose as high as
142-3/4, and the thought of these thousands which he might have had as
easily as not began to annoy him. He forgot that he had condemned
speculation in the contemplation of what might have been.
Looking back, it seemed to him that what he had made was ridiculously
small. If he had played the stock as other resolute spirits conducting
such campaigns for fortune, he should have thrown the rest of his
capital behind the venture once he was playing on velvet. He figured out
a dozen ways by which he might have achieved a master stroke and
trebled, even quadrupled, his profits, and the more his mind dwelt upon
it the more eager he became to embark into a fresh venture. Dan Drake
had hinted at taking him into his office. He began to long for the time
when the proposition would be again offered to him, to accept, to be
privileged to play the game as others played it--with marked cards.