INTRODUCING T. B. SMITH
In the month of May the market, that unfailing barometer of public
nerves, moved slowly in an upward direction.
If the "House" was jubilant, the "Street" was no less gratified, for
since the "Baggin Failure" and financial cataclysm, which dragged
down the little investors to ruin, there had been a sad flatness in
the world of shares. There are many places of public resort where
the "Street" people meet--those speculators who daily, year in and
out, promenade the pavement of Throgmorton Street, buying and selling
on an "eighth" margin.
To them, from time to time, come the bare-headed clerks with news of
this or that rise or fall, to receive instructions gravely imparted,
and as gravely accepted, and to retire to the mysterious deeps of the
"House" to execute their commissions.
The market was rising, steadily as the waters of a river rise; that
was the most pleasant knowledge of all. It did not jump or leap or
flare; it progressed by sixteenths, by thirty-seconds, by
sixty-fourths; but all down the money columns in the financial papers
of the press were tiny little plus marks which brought joy to the
small investor, who is by nature a "bull."
Many people who are not directly interested in finance regarded the
signs with sympathy. The slaves of the street, 'busmen, cabmen, the
sellers of clamorous little financial papers, all these partook in
the general cheeriness.
Slowly, slowly climbed the market.
"Like old times!" said a hurrying clerk; but the man he spoke to
sniffed contemptuously, being by nature one of that sour class from
which all beardom is recruited.
"Like old times!" chuckled a man standing at the Bodega bar, a little
dazed with his prosperity. Somebody reminded him of the other booms
that had come and undergone sudden collapse, but the man standing at
the counter twiddled the stem of the glass in his hand and smiled
indulgently.
"Industrials are the feature," said an evening paper, and indeed the
biggest figures behind the tiny plus marks were those against the
famous commercial concerns best known in the city. The breweries,
the bakeries, the cotton corporations, the textile manufacturing
companies enjoying quotation in the share list--all these
participated in the upward rush; nay, led the van.
Into Old Broad Street, on one day at the height of the boom, came a
man a little above middle height, clean-shaven, his face the
brick-tan of one who spends much of his life in the open air. He
wore a suit of blue serge, well-cut but plain, a spotless grey Tirai
hat, broad-brimmed, white spats over his patent shoes, and a thin
cane in his hand. "A fellow in the Kaffir market" guessed one of the
group about the corner of 'Change Alley, but somebody better informed
turned hastily when he saw the quick, striding figure approaching,
and dived down a side court.
A showily attired young man, standing on the edge of the pavement
chewing a quill toothpick thoughtfully, did not see the newcomer
until he was close on him, then started and changed colour. The man
in the wide-brimmed hat recognised him and nodded. He checked his
walk and stopped.
"Here's Moss," he said. He had a snappy, curt delivery and a
disconcerting habit of addressing one in the third person. "How is
Moss? Straight now? Straight as a die, I'll swear. He's given up
rigging, given up Punk Prospectuses for Petty Punters. Oh, Moss!
Moss!"
He shook his head with gentle melancholy, though a light twinkled in
his humorous grey eyes.
"I don't know why you're so 'ard on me, Mister Smith," said the
embarrassed Moss; "we've all got our faults----"
"Not me, Mr. Moss," said T. B. Smith promptly.
"I dessay even you, sir," insisted the other. "I've 'ad my flutter;
and I failed. There's lots of people who've done more than I ever
done, worse things, and crookeder things, who are livin' in what I
might call the odour of sanctity.
"There's people in the 'Ouse," Moss wagged an admonitory finger
towards 'Change, and his tone was bitter but envious, "who've robbed
by the million, an' what do we see?"
T. B. Smith shook his head.
"We see," said the indignant young man, "motor-cars, an' yachts, an'
race-horses--because they 'aven't been found out!"
"Moral," mused T. B. Smith: "don't allow yourself----"
"I know, I know." Moss loftily waved aside the dubious morality of
Mr. Assistant-Commissioner Smith. "But I was found out. Twelve
months in the second division. Is that justice?"
"It all depends," cautiously, "what you mean by justice. I thought
the sentence was rather light."
"Look here, Mr. Smith," said Mr. Moss firmly; "let's put the matter
another way round. Here's Baggin's case, an' Grayson's case. Now, I
ask you, man to man, are these chaps dead?"
T. B. Smith was discreetly silent.
"Are they dead?" again demanded Moss, with emotion. "You know jolly
well they ain't. You know as well as I do who's at the bottom of
these bear raids to send the market into the mud. I know them
raids!" In his excitement Mr. Moss got farther and farther away from
the language of his adoption. "They smell o' Baggin, George T.
Baggin; he's operatin' somewhere. I recognise the touch. George T.
Baggin, I tell you, an', as the good book says, his right hand hath
not lost its cunnin'."
"And," said T. B. Smith, blandly ignoring the startling hypothesis;
"what is Mr. Moss doing now to earn the bread, butter, and _et
ceteras_ of life?"
"Me? Oh, I'm in the East mostly," said the other moodily; "got a
client or two; give a tip an' get a tip now an' again. Small money
an' small profits."
He dropped his eyes under the steady and pseudo-benevolent gaze of
the other.
"No companies?" said the detective softly. "No companies, Mr. Moss?
No Amalgamated Peruvian Concessions, eh? No Brazilian Rubber and
Exploitation Syndicate?"
The young man shifted his feet uneasily.
"Genuine concerns, them," he said doggedly; "an', besides, I'm only a
shareholder."
"Not promoter. Mr. Moss is not a promoter?"
In desperation the badgered shareholder turned.
"How in 'Eaven's name you get hold of things I don't know," he said
in helpless annoyance. "An' all I can say--excuse me."
T. B. Smith saw his expression undergo a sudden change.
"Don't look round, sir," said the other breathlessly; "there's one o'
my clients comin' along; genuine business, Mr. Smith; don't crab the
deal."
In his agitation he grew a little incoherent.
T. B. Smith might have walked on discreetly, leaving Moss to transact
his business in quiet and peace. Indeed, the young man's light-blue
eyes pleaded for this indulgence; but the gentleman from Scotland
Yard was singularly obtuse this morning.
"You don't want to meet him," urged Mr. Moss. "He's not in your
line, sir; he's a gentleman."
"I think you're very rude, Mr. Moss," said T. B. Smith, and waited,
whilst Moss and client met.
"Permit me," said Moss, with all the grace he could summon at a
moment's notice, "to introduce you to a friend of mine--name of
Smith--in the Government."
The stranger bowed and offered a gloved hand.
"Er----" said T. B., hesitant. "I did not quite catch your name?"
"Count Poltavo," said Mr. Moss defiantly; "a friend of mine an' a
client."
"Delighted to make your acquaintance, count. I have met you
somewhere."
The count bowed.
"It is ver' likely. I have been in England before."
T. B. Smith surveyed the imperturbable foreigner with interest. Of
Count Poltavo's connection with Baggin and with Grayson he knew from
his men's reports, though, as far as recollection served, he had
never seen the man. But a haunting resemblance troubled him.
He nodded briefly to Moss, and turned away, and five minutes later
had dismissed the incident from his mind.
He continued in the direction of the Mansion House. A famous banker,
passing in his motor brougham, waved his hand in salute; a city
policeman stolidly ignored him.
Along Cheapside, with the deliberate air of a sightseer, the man in
the grey felt hat strolled, turning over in his mind the problem of
the boom.
For it was a problem.
If you see, on one hand, ice forming on a pool, and, on the other, a
thermometer rising slowly to blood-heat, you may be satisfied in your
mind that something is wrong somewhere. Nature cannot make mistakes.
Thermometers are equally infallible. Look for the human agency at
work on the mercury bulb for the jet of hot air directed to the
instrument. In this parable is explained the market position, and T.
B. Smith, who dealt with huge, vague problems like markets and wars
and national prosperity, was looking for the hot-air current.
The market rises because big people buy big quantities of shares; it
falls because these same people sell, and T. B. Smith happened to
know that nobody was buying. That is, nobody of account--Eckhardts,
Tollingtons, or Bronte's Bank. You can account for the rise of a
particular share by some local and favourable circumstance, but when
the market as a whole moves up----?
"We can trace no transactions," wrote Mr. Louis Vell, of the firm of
Vell, Vallings & Boys, Brokers, "carried out by or on behalf of the
leading jobbers. The market improvement in Industrial Stocks is due,
as far as we can gather, to Continental buying--an unusual
circumstance."
Who was the "philanthropist" who was making a market in stagnant
stocks? Whoever it was, he or they repented long before T. B. Smith
had reached the Central Criminal Court, which was his objective.
He was a witness in the Gildie Bank fraud case, and his
cross-examination at the hands of one of the most relentless of
counsel occupied three hours. This concluded to everybody's
satisfaction, save counsel's, T. B. Smith, who hated the law courts,
walked out into Old Bailey to find newsboys loudly proclaiming,
"Slump on the Stock Exchange!"
"Thank Heaven, that bubble's burst!" said T. B. piously, and walked
back to Scotland Yard, whistling.
He did not doubt that the artificial rise had failed, and that the
market had gone back to normal.
At the corner of the Thames Embankment he bought a paper, and the
first item of news he read was:
"Consols have fallen to 84."
Now, Consols that morning had stood at 90, and T. B. Smith stopped
whistling.