THE DELUGE
The next day the deluge broke.
On leaving Patsie and her father he had gone down the Avenue in a vain
hope that his father might be in town, hoping to catch him at his hotel.
On his way to his amazement he perceived a long line of curious shapes
stretched along the sidewalk. As he came nearer he saw a file of men and
women, some standing, some seated, camped out for the night. Then he
noticed above all the great white columns of the Atlantic Trust and he
realized that these were the first frightened outposts of the army of
despair and panic which would come storming at the doors on the morrow.
By the morning a dozen banks scattered over the city were besieged by
frantic hordes of depositors, a dozen others hastily preparing against
the impending tide of evil rumor and disaster.
With the opening of the Stock Exchange the havoc began, for with the
threatened collapse of gigantic banking systems orders came pouring in
from all over the country to sell at any price. In the wild hours that
ensued holdings were thrown on the market in such quantities that the
machinery of the Stock Exchange was momentarily paralyzed. Stocks were
selling at half a dozen figures simultaneously, until it became a human
impossibility for the frantic brokers to fulfil the demands that came
pouring in on them to sell at any price. Any rumor was believed and
shouted frantically: receivers were to be appointed for a dozen
institutions: the State Superintendent's investigation was showing
incredible defalcations and misuses of funds. Indictments were to be
returned against the most prominent men in the financial world, and at
the close of the day on top of the wildest fabrications of the
imagination came the supreme horror of fact. Majendie, the president of
the Atlantic Trust, was dead, slain by his own hand. But what happened
this day would be nothing to the morrow.
At Patsie's frantic request Bojo went down in the late forenoon to see
Mr. Swift. He had to wait almost an hour in the outer offices, watching
breathless, frantic men, men of fifty and sixty as panic-stricken as
youngsters of twenty-five, breaking under the strain of their first
knowledge of overwhelming ruin, an indiscriminate convulsive mass
pouring in and out. Then a door opened and a secretary issued him in.
Mr. Swift received him with an agitated clutch of the hand, and valuing
the precious seconds, without waiting for his questions, burst out:
"Mr. Crocker, it's absolutely humanly impossible for me to do what Miss
Drake requested. We disposed yesterday of over forty thousand dollars.
To sell now would be a financial slaughter to which I simply will not
give my permission. Moreover, it's all very well to talk of selling, but
who's going to buy?"
"If you can't sell," said Bojo, gloomily, "Miss Drake would like to
know what you could raise on her holdings as security."
"She wants to know?" said Mr. Swift, on edge with the anxiety of twenty
operations to be safe-guarded, "I'll tell you. Not a hundred thousand
dollars, nor ten thousand. There isn't an institution that would dare
weaken its cash supply to-day on any security offered. Mr. Crocker, say
for me that I absolutely and completely refuse to offer a single
security." A door opened and back of the secretary the faces of two new
visitors were already to be seen. Mr. Swift with scant ceremony seized
his hand and dismissed him. "It can't be done, that's all; it can't be
done."
Bojo went out and telephoned the result. He even tried, though he knew
the futility of the attempt, to place a loan at two banks where he was
known, one his own and the other the depository for the Crocker Mills.
At the first he got no further than a subordinate, who threw up his
hands at the first mention of his plan. At the latter he gained a
moment's opportunity to state his demand to the vice-president, who had
known him from childhood. The refusal was as instantaneous. The banks
were coming to the aid of no one, frightened for their own security. He
even attempted to call up his father on long distance, but after long,
tedious waits he was unable to locate him. What he would have asked of
him he did not quite know, only that he was seeking frantically some
means, some way, to come to the assistance of the girl he loved, even
though in his heart he knew the futility of her attempt; perhaps even
despite his admiration for her unselfishness, glad that the sacrifice
could not be made. He went up later in the afternoon to explain to her
all he had tried to do, to get her to go for a short ride up the river
in order to snatch a little rest and calm, but Patsie refused
obstinately. She was afraid that at any moment her father might return
and call for her, declaring that she must be ready to go to him. Perhaps
she had fears that she did not express even to him, but she remained as
she had remained all day, waiting feverishly. Drake did not come back
until long after midnight. Then there were conferences to be held in his
library far into the gray morning. Everything seemed topsy-turvy. The
night was like the daytime. At every hour an automobile came rustling
up, a hurried ring of the bell followed by a ghostly flitting passage
into the library of strange, hurrying figures. Drake was no longer the
dejected, resigned man, broken in pride and courage, of the night
before. He put them aside hastily with a swift, convulsive hug for his
daughter and a welcoming handshake for Bojo. He would say nothing and
they could guess nothing of all the desperate remedies that were being
discussed and acted upon in the shifting conference within the library.
It was after four o'clock when Bojo left, after persuading Patsie of the
uselessness of further vigil. He felt too tremulously awake for need of
sleep. He went down the Avenue and in the convalescing gray of the weak
and sickly dawn passed the growing lines of depositors still obstinately
clinging to their posts, feeling as though he were walking a world of
nightmares and alarms. About seven o'clock he came back to the Court for
a tub and a cup of coffee. There he received news of Fred DeLancy, who
had been in frantically the night before begging for loans to back up
his disappearing margins. Neither Marsh nor Granning could come to his
assistance and he had left absolutely unnerved, vowing that he would be
wiped out if he could not raise only ten thousand dollars before the
morrow. Bojo shook his head. He had no desire to help him. The few
thousands he still retained seemed to him something miraculously solid
and precious in the whirling evaporation of fictitious values. There was
nothing he could do before the arrival of Doris and her husband, if
anything could be done then. He went down again to Wall Street merely as
a matter of curiosity and entered the spectators' gallery in the Stock
Exchange. The panic there had become a delirium. He stood leaning over
the railing gazing profoundly down into this frenzy which had once been
his life. Removed from its peril--judging it. What he saw was ugly to
look upon. A few figures stood out grim, game and defiant to the last,
meeting the crisis as sportsmen facing the last chance. But for the
rest, the element of the human seemed to have disappeared in the animal
madness of beasts trapped awaiting destruction. These shifting,
struggling, contending clumps of men, shrieking and hoarse, all strength
cast to the winds, fighting for the last disappearing rung of financial
security, gave him a last final distaste of the life he had renounced.
He went out and passed another howling group of savages on the curb,
feeling all at once the high note of tragedy that lies in the
manifestation of obliterating rage of a great people disposing finally
of all the shallow horde of petty parasites that are eliminated by the
cleansing force of a great panic.
Doris arrived in the late afternoon and there was a family consultation,
at which he was not present. Whatever might have been done the week
before the issue had been decided. Drake's fate was in the hands of
Gunther, to whose house he had been summoned that night to learn the
terms which would be accorded him by the group of financial leaders who
had been hastily organized to save the country from the convulsion which
now threatened to overwhelm every industry and every institution.
At midnight Drake returned a ruined man, stripped of every possession, a
bankrupt. Only Patsie and Bojo were there when he came in. A certain
calm seemed to have replaced the unnatural febrile activity of the last
forty-eight hours, the calm of accepted defeat, the end of hopes, the
certainty of failure.
"It's over," he said with a nod of recognition. "They got me. I'm rather
hungry; let's have something to eat."
"What do you mean by it's over?" said Patsie, coming towards him. "You
lost?" He nodded. "How much?"
"Stripped clean."
"You mean that there's nothing left, not a cent?"
For the first time the old hunted look came back to his eyes. "It's
worse than that," he said. "It's what's got to be made good. Your Daddy
is a bankrupt, Patsie, one million and a half to the bad."
"You owe that?"
"Pretty close to it."
"But what will you do? They can't put you to prison."
"Oh, no," he said grimly, "there's nothing to be ashamed of in it; that
is, so far." He stopped a moment and watching him closely they both
divined that he was thinking of his wife. "If worse comes to worse," he
added moodily, "I've got to find some way of paying that over, every
cent of it."
"But, Mr. Drake," said Bojo hastily, "surely there is no reason why you
should feel that way. Others have met misfortune--been forced into
bankruptcy. Every one will know that it could not be helped, that
conditions were against you, that you were forced into it."
"And every one," he said quickly, speaking without reserve for the first
time, "will say that Dan Drake knew how to fail at the right time and in
the right way." He gave a wave of his hand as though to indicate the
great house of which he was thinking, and added bitterly: "What will
they think of this, when this goes on? They'll think just one
thing--that I worked a crooked, double-crossing game and salted away my
fortune behind a petticoat! By God, that's what hurts!" He brought down
his fist with an outburst of anger such as they had never seen in him
before and sprang up trembling and heavy. "No, by Heavens, if I fail she
can't go on with her millions." The rage that possessed him made him
seemingly oblivious to their presence. "Oh, what a fool, a blind,
contemptible fool I've been! If she is worth a cent she is worth four
millions to-day, and every cent I made for her, I gave to her. Talk
about business heads, there is not a one of us can touch her. Oh, she's
known all right what she has been doing all these years. She took no
chances. She knew when to work me and how to work me. Clever? Yes, she's
clever and as cold as they make 'em. Under all her pretense of being
weak and sickly, tears and hysterics, you can't beat her."
"Oh, Daddy, Daddy," said Patsie, laying her hand on his arm to calm him,
"she can't, she won't refuse to come to your help now when it's a
question of honor, our honor and her honor. I know, I promise you, we
will pay over every cent of what you owe."
"You think so? Try!"
"Daddy," said Patsie quietly, "I have $500,000 you gave me. Bojo and I
tried our best to sell them and raise money for you. If you had only let
me know sooner perhaps we could have. Every cent of that will go to you.
Doris, too, I know, will give her third. We will only ask my mother for
what we are giving ourselves. That she will not refuse, she cannot, she
won't dare. Daddy, there is one thing you must not worry about. We won't
let any one say a single word against you. Every cent you owe shall be
paid. I'll promise you that."
At the first mention of what she had done, Drake turned and stared at
her, deaf to what had followed. When she ended tears were in his eyes.
For a moment he could not control his voice.
"You did that?" he said at last. "You would have done that?"
"Why, Dad," she said, smiling, "I couldn't do anything else."
He took her suddenly in his arms and the touch of kindness broke him
down where everything else had failed. Bojo turned hastily away, not to
intrude on the sanctity of the scene. When a long moment afterwards
Patsie called him back from the window where he had been standing Drake
seemed to have grown suddenly old and feeble.
"I want you to wait here, Bojo dear," she said as determined as her
father seemed without will or energy. "I am going to settle this now. I
am going to see my mother. Don't worry."
She went out after bending lightly for a last kiss and a touch of her
hand, over the weak shoulders.
Left alone, there was a long silence. Finally Drake arose and began to
pace the floor, talking to himself, stopping from time to time with
sudden contractions of the arms, clutches of the fists, to take a long
breath and shake his head. When Bojo was least expecting it, he came to
him abruptly and said:
"Tom, I tell you this, and you may believe I mean it--that it's going to
be. Not one cent will I take from that child. With all that I provided
for the others she's not going to be left a pauper. It's got to be my
wife who stands by me in this." In his excitement he seized the young
man by the wrist so that the fingers cut into his flesh. "It's got to be
her and only her, do you understand, or else--" He stopped with a wild
glance, with a disorder that left Bojo cold with apprehension, and
suddenly as though afraid to say too much Drake dropped the young man's
wrist roughly and went and sat down, covering his face with his hands.
"I mean it," he said, and several times he repeated the phrase as though
to himself.
They spoke no more. Bojo on the edge of his chair sat staring at the
older man, turning over what he had heard, not daring to think. At the
end of a long wait a maid knocked and came in.
"Mr. Crocker, please. Miss Drake would like you to come to her mother's
room."
Bojo, startled, sprang up hastily, saying: "All right, right away." He
turned, striving to find a word of encouragement, hesitated, and went
out.
When he came into the little sitting room which gave on to Mrs. Drake's
private apartments he found the two confronting each other, Patsie erect
and scornful, with flashing, angry eyes, and her mother, in a hastily
donned wrapper and bedroom cap, clutching a sort of blue lace quilt,
sunk hysterically in the depths of a great armchair. At the first glance
he guessed the scene of cries and reproaches which had just ended. At
his entrance Mrs. Drake burst out furiously:
"I won't have it; I won't be insulted like this. Mr. Crocker, I desire
you, I command you, to leave the room. It's enough that my daughter
should take advantage of me. I will not be shamed before strangers."
"Lock the door," said Patsie quietly, "and keep the key."
He did so and came back to her side.
"Don't mind what she says," said Patsie scornfully. "She's not ill,
she's not hysterical, it's all put on: she knows just what she's doing."
At this Mrs. Drake burst into exaggerated sobs and shrank down into the
chair, covering her face with the quilt she clung to, without
perception of the grotesqueness of her act.
"Now, you're going to listen to me," said Patsie, striving to remain
calm through her anger. "You don't fool me the least bit, so you might
just as well listen quietly. I know just how much money you have and
every cent of it has been given to you by my father. You are worth over
four million dollars, I know that."
"It's not true, that's a lie," said Mrs. Drake with a scream.
"It is true," continued Patsie calmly, "and you know it's true. This
house is yours and everything in it. Do you want me to tell you exactly
what stocks and bonds you have at the present moment? Shall I have my
father come in, too, and tell us in detail just what he has given you
all these years? Do you want that?" She waited a moment and added
scornfully: "No, I rather guess that is not what you want. I asked you
before to help raise a loan to save him from losing what he had. You
could have done it: you refused. Now I am asking you to give exactly
what I shall give and what Doris will give, $500,000, so there will be
nothing, not the slightest reproach against his good name, against the
name you bear and I bear. Will you do it or not?"
"You don't know what you are talking about," cried the mother wildly.
"It's $500,000 now, it's $500,000 to-morrow and then it's everything.
You want me to ruin myself. You think just because he's gone on risking
everything, just because he never could be satisfied, that I should
suffer, too. You want me to make a pauper of myself. Well, I won't.
What right had he to risk money that didn't belong to him? What right
have you to reproach me, abuse me?"
Bojo attempted to burst in on the stream of meaninglessness and repeated
phrases. He, too, saw through the assumption of hysteria, shielding
behind a cloak of weakness a cold and covetous woman.
"My dear Mrs. Drake," he said icily, "you are proud of your position in
society. Let me put this to you. Don't you realize that if your husband
fails for a million and a half and you continue living as you have lived
that it will be a public scandal? Don't you realize what people will
say?"
"No, I don't," she cried: "I don't admit any such ridiculous nonsense. I
know that I have a right to my life, to my existence. I know what is
mine is mine. If he has lost money, other people have lost money in the
same way who gamble just as he has. They should take their losses, too,
without coming to people who are not responsible, who don't believe in
such things. And then what good will it do? The money's mine. Why throw
good money after bad? I tell you that he has never had a thought about
the duties and responsibilities to his family; I have. I won't
impoverish myself, I won't impoverish my family, I won't, I won't, and I
won't be badgered and brow-beaten in this brutal way. You're a bad
daughter, you've always been a disobedient, wicked daughter. You've
always been this way to me from the first. Now you think you can force
me into this, but you shan't."
"Mother," started Patsie stonily, but she was interrupted by a fresh
torrent of words.
"No, no, I can't, I won't, I'm ill, I have been ill for days. Do you
want to kill me? I suppose that's what you want. Go on. Put me down,
make me ill. Oh, my God, my God, I can't stand it, I can't stand it. I
can't. Ring for the doctor, the doctor or some one."
"Come away," said Bojo, taking Patsie by the arm as Mrs. Drake went into
the paroxysm which she knew was perfectly assumed. "It's useless trying
to say anything more to her. To-morrow perhaps Doris and her husband may
have more effect."
They went out without even looking back.
Patsie was in such a rage of indignation, shaking from head to foot,
that he had to take her in his arms and quiet her.
"What shall we say to Daddy?" she said at last in despair.
"Lie," he said. "Tell him that it will be done."
But when they came back into the library Drake was gone. He didn't
return all that night. Afterwards from what they learned he must have
spent the night hours in wandering about the city.
The next morning Mrs. Drake locked her doors, sent word by a doctor that
she was too ill to see any one, that seeing them might have disastrous
effects. Despite which they forced an entrance and with Doris and her
husband present went over again the same shameful and degrading scene of
the night before. Nothing could shake Mrs. Drake, neither remonstrances
nor scorn nor tears. Drake returned haggard and wild-eyed towards noon
to learn the result, which they were unable to conceal from him. He went
out immediately. At five o'clock he was taken to a hospital, having been
run over by an autobus. Various stories as to how this happened were
circulated. The insurance company which carried his life insurance
attempted to prove suicide in vain. The testimony of witnesses all
seemed to point to an accident. He had started across the street, had
lost his hat and in stooping to pick it up slipped and fallen underneath
the wheels.
Death resulted a few hours later.