It was worth going down into that seething crowd to see the floor of the
exchange at that moment. A thousand men were swaying about one spot of
it, and at the instant of ten they broke into a deafening chorus of
yells.
Transatlantic and Suburban! Transatlantic and Suburban! There was no
other stock thought of that day--there were many of the smaller firms
that had closed their doors, not daring to do business on such a market.
And those who hung over the ticker read nothing but T. &
S.,--157-1/4--157-1/2--157-3/8,--and so on and on. The fluctuating of T.
& S. was the swaying of two monsters that wrestled in a death embrace;
and van Rensselaer, as he fed his eyes upon it, was himself a free man
once more. Horror haunted him no longer; the excitement drove the fumes
of the liquor from his brain, and he was drunk, but with the battle
ecstasy. To him every figure meant a blow, as with a war-axe, at foes of
his; he could fancy that this stroke was his father's, and that his own,
and that Shrike's, and so on. He clenched his hands and muttered
swiftly, as one watching a fight: "Give it to them! Down with them! Down
with them!" And meanwhile the ticker raced on: T. & S. 100--157-1/2; T.
& S. 500--157-5/8; T. & S. 3000--157-3/8; T. & S. 10,000--157-1/4; and
so almost without a pause. Down below in the street shrieked a frantic
mob; it was like looking into a huge well packed full of writhing
bodies.
So half an hour crept by, and T. & S. still stood the onslaught; van
Rensselaer had gotten help, but evidently so had the syndicate. It was
as if Wall Street had divided into two armies, and vowed no quarter. And
they fought on; the time crept along to 10.45; T. & S. was moving at
last--it was 157-3/4, the highest mark of the day! Van Rensselaer took
another great gulp of the liquor and pounded his bell.
"Listen to me," he said swiftly to the breathless clerk. "The crisis has
come--go outside as fast as you can and tell somebody that the Arkansas
legislature has doubled the freight rates on the T. & S. There'll be a
dozen people doing the same. And then wait five minutes--not a second
more, do you hear? and let it out that I am breaking T. & S., and that
the Governor's with me, and Shrike, and the rest of them."
The man nodded and disappeared, and van Rensselaer turned once more to
the ticker. There was a moment's pause, and he went to the window and
stared out. Then it began again--T. & S. still holding. Van Rensselaer
knew that the ticker was some minutes behind the market, and he cursed
with impatience. Then he took a pencil and began figuring, as well as he
could, with his trembling hands.
He had put twenty-seven million dollars into this thing; he had bought
the margins of something like a million and three-quarters shares. That
was more shares than were in existence, actually; but under Wall
Street's systems of speculating that is a common enough state of
affairs. The fact that impressed him was that every point that T. & S.
went down he stood to win a million and three-quarters of dollars from
the men he had been fighting. And if instead it went up, and stayed up
the time limit, he owed the same sum instead. And then suddenly the
ticker clicked again; it was five minutes of eleven, and T. & S. still
holding,--157-5/8--157-3/8--157-1/2. He could bear the thing no more; he
drained the bottle and sprang out of the door. In a few moments more he
was on the street.