A DAY IN THE MARKET
The King of the Street stood for a moment staring at me with that
strange and fearsome gaze. What was there in that dynamic glance that
struck a chill to my spirit as though the very fountain of life had
been attacked? Was it the manifestation of the powerful will behind that
mask? Or was it terror or anger that was to be read in the fiery eyes
that gleamed from beneath those bushy brows, and in the play of the
cruel mouth, which from under that yellow-gray mustache gave back the
sign of the Wolf?
“Have you any orders, sir?” I asked in as calm a voice as I could
command.
“Oh, it's you, is it?” said the Wolf slowly, covering his fangs.
It flashed on me that the attack in the Borton den was of his planning,
that Terrill was his tool, and that he had supposed me dead. It was thus
that I could account for his startled gaze and evident discomposure.
“Nine o'clock was the time, you said,” I suggested deferentially. “I
believe it's a minute or two past.”
“Oh, yes,” said Doddridge Knapp, pulling himself together. “Come in
here.”
He looked suspiciously at me as he took a seat at his desk, and motioned
me to another.
“I had a little turn,” he said, eying me nervously; “a vertigo, I
believe the doctor called it. Just reach my overcoat pocket there, will
you?--the left-hand side. Yes, bring me that flask.”
He poured out a small glass of liquor, and the rich odor of brandy rose
through the room. Then he took a vial from an inside pocket, counted a
few drops into the glass, and drank it at a swallow.
I marveled at the actions of the man, and wondered if he was nerving
himself to some deed that he lacked courage to perform.
When he had cleared his throat of the fiery liquor, the Wolf turned to
me with a more composed and kindly expression.
“I never drink during business hours,” he said with a trace of apology
in his tone. “It's bad for business, and for the drink, too. But this
is a little trouble I've had a touch of in the last two months. Just
remember, young man, that I expect you to do your drinking after
business is over--and not too much then. And now to business,” said my
employer with decision. “Take down these orders.”
The King of the Street was himself once more, and I marveled again at
the quickness and clearness of his directions. I was to buy one hundred
shares of this stock, sell five hundred of that stock, buy one thousand
of another in blocks of one hundred, and sell the same in a single block
at the last session.
“And the last thing you do,” he continued, “buy every share of Omega
that is offered. There'll be a big block of it thrown on the market, and
more in the afternoon. Buy it, whatever the price. There's likely to
be a big slump. Don't bid for it--don't keep up the price, you
understand--but get it.”
“If somebody else is snapping it up, do I understand that I'm not to bid
over them?”
“You're not to understand anything of the kind,” he said, with a little
disgust in his tone. “You're to get the stock. You've bought and sold
enough to know how to do that. But don't start a boom for the price. Let
her go down. Sabe?”
I felt that there was deep water ahead.
“Perfectly,” I said. “I think I see the whole thing.”
The King of the Street looked at me with a grim smile.
“Maybe you do, but all the same you'd better keep your money out of this
little deal unless you can spare it as well as not. Well, get back to
your room. You've got your check-book all right?”
Alone once more I was in despair of unraveling the tangle in which I
was involved. I felt convinced that Doddridge Knapp was the mover in the
plots that sought my life. He had, I felt sure, believed me dead, and
was startled into fear at my unheralded appearance. Yet why should
he trust me with his business? I could not doubt that the buying and
selling he had given to my care were important. I knew nothing about the
price of stocks but I was sure that the orders he had given me involved
many thousands of dollars. Yet it might be--the thought struck home to
me--that the credit had not been provided for me, and my checks on the
Nevada Bank would serve only to land me in jail.
The disturbed condition of the books attracted my attention once more.
The volumes were scattered over the desk and thrown about the room
as though somebody had been seeking for a mislaid document. I looked
curiously over them as I replaced them on the shelves. They were
law-books, California Reports, and the ordinary text-books and
form-books of the attorney. All bore on the fly-leaf the name of Horace
H. Plymire, but no paper or other indication of ownership could I find.
I wondered idly who this Plymire might be, and pictured to myself some
old attorney who had fallen into the hands of Doddridge Knapp, and
had, through misfortune, been forced to sell everything for the mess of
pottage to keep life in him. But there was small time for musing, and I
went out to do Doddridge Knapp's bidding in the stock-gambling whirlpool
of Pine Street.
There was already a confused murmur of voices about the rival exchanges
that were the battlegrounds of millionaires. The “curbstone boards”
were in session. The buyers who traded face to face, and the brokers who
carried their offices under their hats, were noisily bargaining,
raising as much clamor over buying and selling a few shares as the most
important dealer in the big boards could raise over the transfer of as
many thousands.
It was easy to find Bockstein and Eppner, and there could be no
mistaking the prosperity of the firm. The indifference of the clerks to
my presence, and the evident contempt with which an order for a hundred
shares of something was being taken from an apologetic old gentleman
were enough to assure me of that.
Bockstein and Eppner were together, evidently consulting over the
business to be done. Bockstein was tall and gray-haired, with a stubby
gray beard. Eppner was short and a little stooped, with a blue-black
mustache, snapping blue-black eyes, and strong blue-black dots over his
face where his beard struggled vainly against the devastating razor.
Both were strongly marked with the shrewd, money-getting visage. I set
forth my business.
“You wand to gif a larch order?” said Bockstein, looking over my
memoranda. “Do you haf references?”
“Yes,” echoed Eppner. “References are customary, you know.” He spoke in
a high-keyed voice that had irritating suggestions in it.
“Is there any reference better than cash?” I asked.
The partners looked at each other. “None,” they replied.
“How much will secure you on the order?”
They named a heavy margin, and the sum total took my heart into my
mouth. How large a balance I could draw against I had not the faintest
idea. Possibly this was a trap to throw me into jail as a common
swindler attempting to pass worthless checks. But there was no time to
hesitate. I drew a check for the amount, signed Henry Wilton's name, and
tossed it over to Bockstein.
“All ridt,” said the senior partner. “Zhust talk it ofer vit Misder
Eppner. He goes on der floor.”
I knew well enough what was wanted. My financial standing was to be
tested by the head of the firm, while the junior partner kept me amused.
Eppner was quick to take my ideas. A few words of explanation, and he
understood perfectly what I wanted.
“You have not bought before?” It was an interrogation, not an assertion.
“Oh, yes,” I said carelessly, “but not through you, I believe.”
“No, no, I think not. I should have remembered you.”
I thought this might be a favorable opportunity to glean a little
information of what was going on in the market.
“Are there any good deals in prospect?” I ventured.
I could see in the blue-black depths of his eyes that an unfavorable
opinion he had conceived of my judgment was deepened by this question.
There was doubtless in it the flavor of the amateur.
“We never advise our customers,” was the high-keyed reply.
“Certainly not,” I replied. “I don't want advice--merely to know what is
going on.”
“Excuse me, but I never gossip. It is a rule I make.”
“It might interfere with your opportunities to pick up a good bargain
now and then,” I suggested, as the blue-black man seemed at a loss for
words.
“We never invest in stocks,” was the curt reply.
“Excellent idea,” said I, “for those who know too much or too little.”
Eppner failed to smile, and could think of nothing to say. I was a
little abashed, notwithstanding the tone of haughty indifference I took.
I began to feel very young before this machine-like impersonation of the
market.
Bockstein relieved the embarrassment of the situation by coming in out
of breath, with a brave pretense of having been merely consulting a
customer in the next room.
“You haf exblained to Misder Eppner?” he inquired. “Den all is done.
Here is a card to der Board Room. If orders you haf to gif, Eppner vill
dake dem on der floor. Zhust gif him der check for margin, and all is
vell.”
At the end of this harangue I found myself outside the office, with
Bockstein's back waddling toward the private room where the partners
were to have their last consultation before going to the Board.
My check had been honored, then, and Bockstein had assured himself of
my solvency. In the rebound from anxiety, I swelled with the pride of a
capitalist--on Doddridge Knapp's money.
In the Board Room of the big Exchange the uproar was something
astonishing. The confusion outside had given me a suggestion that the
business of buying and selling stocks was carried on in a somewhat less
conventional manner than the trade in groceries. But it had not quite
prepared me for the scene in the Exchange.
The floor was filled with a crowd of lunatics, howling, shaking fists,
and pushing and scrambling from one place to another with the frenzy of
a band of red men practising the scalp dance by the bright glow of the
white man's fire-water. A confused roar rose from the mob, and whenever
it showed signs of flagging a louder cry from some quarter would renew
its strength, and a blast of shouts and screams, a rush of struggling
men toward the one who had uttered the cry, and a waving of fists, arms,
and hats, suggested visions of lynching and sudden death.
After a little I was able to discover a method in the outbreaks of
apparent lunacy, and found that the shouts and yells and screams, the
shaking of fists, and the waving of arms were merely a more or less
energetic method of bidding for stocks; that the ringing of gongs and
the bellow of the big man who smiled on the bear-garden from the high
desk were merely the audible signs that another stock was being called;
and that the brazen-voiced reading of a roll was merely the official
announcement of the record of bargains and sales that had been going on
before me.
It was my good fortune to make out so much before the purchase of the
stocks on my order list was completed. The crisis was at hand in which
I must have my wits about me, and be ready to act for myself. Eppner
rushed up and reported the bargains made, handing me a slip with the
figures he had paid for the stocks. He was no longer the impassive
engine of business that he had appeared in the back room of his
office. He was now the embodiment of the riot I had been observing. His
blue-black hair was rumpled and on end. His blue-black eyes flashed with
animation. The blue-black dots that showed where his beard would be if
he had let it were almost overwhelmed by the glow that excitement threw
into his sallow cheeks.
“Any more orders?” he gasped. He was trembling with excitement and
suppressed eagerness for the fray.
“Yes,” I shouted above the roar about me. “I want to buy Omega.”
He gave a look that might have been a warning, if I could have read
it; but it was gone with a shrug as though he would say, “Well, it's no
business of mine.”
“How much?” he asked. “Wait!”
He started away at a scream from the front, but returned in a moment. He
had bought or sold something, but I had not the least idea what it was,
or which he had done.
“It's coming!” he yelled in my ear.
The gong rang. There was a confused cry from the man at the big desk.
And pandemonium let loose.
I had thought the riot that had gone before as near the climax of noise
as it was possible to get. I was mistaken. The roar that followed the
call was to the noise that had gone before as is the hurricane to the
zephyr. There was a succession of yells, hoots, cries and bellows; men
rushed wildly at each other, swung in a mad dance, jumped up and down;
and the floor became a frantic sea of fists, arms, hats, heads, and all
things movable.
“Omega opens at sixty-five,” shouted Eppner.
“Bid sixty,” I shouted in reply, “but get all you can, even if you have
to pay sixty-five.”
Eppner gave a bellow, and skated into a group of fat men, gesticulating
violently. The roar increased, if such a thing were possible.
In a minute Eppner was back, perspiring, and I fancied a trifle worried.
“They're dropping it on me,” he gasped in my ear. “Five hundred at
sixty-two and one thousand at sixty. Small lots coming fast and big ones
on the way.”
“Good! Bid fifty-five, and then fifty, but get them.”
With a roar he rushed into the midst of a whirling throng. I saw twenty
brokers about him, shouting and threatening. One in his eagerness jumped
upon the shoulders of a fat man in front of him, and shook a paper under
his nose.
I could make out nothing of what was going on, except that the
excitement was tremendous.
Twice Eppner reported to me. The stock was being hammered down stroke by
stroke. There was a rush to sell. Fifty-five--fifty-three--fifty, came
the price--then by leaps to forty-five and forty. It was a panic. At
last the gong sounded, and the scene was over. Men staggered from
the Exchange, white as death, some cursing, some angry and red, some
despairing, some elate. I could see that ten had lost for one who had
gained.
Eppner reported at the end of the call. He had bought for me twelve
thousand five hundred shares, over ten thousand of them below fifty. The
total was frightful. There was half a million dollars to pay when the
time for settlement came. It was folly to suppose that my credit at the
Nevada was of this size. But I put a bold face on it, gave a check for
the figure that Eppner named, and rose.
“Any more orders?” he asked.
“Not till afternoon.”
As I passed into the street I was astonished at the swift transformation
that had come over it. The block about the Exchange was crowded with a
tossing throng, hundreds upon hundreds pushing toward its fateful doors.
But where cheerfulness and hope had ruled, fear and gloom now vibrated
in electric waves before me. The faces turned to the pitiless, polished
granite front of the great gambling-hall were white and drawn, and on
them sat Ruin and Despair. The men were for the most part silent, with
here and there one cursing; the women, who were there by scores, wept
and mourned; and from the multitudes rose that peculiar whisper of
crowds that tells of apprehension of things worse to come. And this, I
must believe, was the work of Doddridge Knapp.