No sane creature, not even a sane bulldog, will fight simply from love
of fighting. When a man is attacked, he may be sure he has excited
either the fear or the cupidity of his assailants, for men fight
either to protect that which they have or to gain that which they feel
they must have. So far as I could see, it was absurd that cupidity was
inciting Langdon and Roebuck against me. I hadn't enough to tempt
them. Thus, I was forced to conclude that I must possess a strength of
which I was unaware, and which stirred even Roebuck's fears. But what
could it be?
Besides Langdon and Roebuck and me, there were six principals in the
proposed Coal combine, three of them richer and more influential in
finance than even Langdon, all of them except possibly Dykeman, the
lawyer or navigating officer of the combine, more formidable figures
than I. Yet none of these men was being assailed. "Why am I singled
out?" I asked myself, and I felt that if I could answer, I should find
I had the means wholly or partly to defeat them. But I could not even
explain to my satisfaction Langdon's activities against me. I felt
that Anita was somehow the cause; but, even so, how had he succeeded
in convincing Roebuck that I must be clipped and plucked into a
groundling?
"It must have something to do with the Manasquale mines," I decided.
"I thought I had given over my control of them, but somehow I must
still have a control that makes me too powerful for Roebuck to be at
ease so long as I am afoot and armed." And I resolved to take my
lawyers and search the whole Manasquale transaction--to explore it
from attic to underneath the cellar flooring. "We'll go through it,"
said I, "like ferrets through a ship's hold."
As I was finishing breakfast, Anita came in. She had evidently slept
well, and I regarded that as ominous. At her age, a crisis means
little sleep until a decision has been reached. I rose, but her manner
warned me not to advance and try to shake hands with her.
"I have asked Alva to stop with me here for a few days," she said,
formally.
"Alva!" said I, much surprised. She had not asked one of her own
friends; she had asked a girl she had met less than two days before,
and that girl my partner's daughter.
"She was here yesterday morning," Anita explained. And I now wondered
how much Alva there was in Anita's firm stand against her parents.
"I'm glad you like her," said I. "Why don't you take her down to our
place on Long Island? Everything's ready for you there, and I'm going
to be busy the next few days--busy day and night."
She reflected. "Very well," she assented, presently. And she gave me a
puzzled glance she thought I did not see--as if she were wondering
whether the enemy was not hiding a new and deeper plot under an
apparently harmless suggestion.
"Then I'll not see you again for several days," said I, most
business-like. "If you want anything, there will be Monson out at the
stables, where he can't annoy you. Or you can get me on the 'long
distance.' Good-by. Good luck."
And I nodded carelessly and friendlily to her, and went away, enjoying
the pleasure of having startled her into visible astonishment.
"There's a better game than icy hostility, you very young lady," said
I to myself, "and that game is friendly indifference."
Alva would be with her. So she was secure for the present, and my mind
was free for "finance."
* * * * *
At that time the two most powerful men in finance were Galloway and
Roebuck. In Spain I once saw a fight between a bull and a tiger--or,
rather, the beginning of a fight. They were released into a huge iron
cage. After circling it several times in the same direction, searching
for a way out, they came face to face. The bull tossed the tiger; the
tiger clawed the bull. The bull roared; the tiger screamed. Each
retreated to his own side of the cage. The bull pawed and snorted as
if he could hardly wait to get at the tiger; the tiger crouched and
quivered and glared murderously, as if he were going instantly to
spring upon the bull. But the bull did not rush, neither did the tiger
spring. That was the Roebuck-Galloway situation.
How to bait tiger Galloway to attack bull Roebuck--that was the
problem I must solve, and solve straightway. If I could bring about
war between the giants, spreading confusion over the whole field of
finance and filling all men with dread and fear, there was a chance, a
bare chance, that in the confusion I might bear off part of my
fortune. Certainly, conditions would result in which I could more
easily get myself intrenched again; then, too, there would be a by no
means small satisfaction in seeing Roebuck clawed and bitten in
punishment for having plotted against me. Mutual fear had kept these
two at peace for five years, and most considerate and polite about
each other's "rights." But while our country's industrial territory is
vast, the interests of the few great controllers who determine wages
and prices for all are equally vast, and each plutocrat is tormented
incessantly by jealousy and suspicion; not a day passes without
conflicts of interest which adroit diplomacy could turn into ferocious
warfare. And in this matter of monopolizing the Coal, despite
Roebuck's earnest assurances to Galloway that the combine was purely
defensive, and was really concerned only with the labor question,
Galloway, a great manufacturer, or, rather, a huge levier of the taxes
of dividends and interest upon manufacturing enterprises, could not
but be uneasy.
Before I rose that morning I had a tentative plan for stirring him to
action. I was elaborating it on the way downtown in my electric. It
shows how badly Anita was crippling my brain, that not until I was
almost at my office did it occur to me: "That was a tremendous luxury
Roebuck indulged his conscience in last night. It isn't like him to
forewarn a man, even when he's sure he can't escape. Though his
prayers were hot in his mouth, still, it's strange he didn't try to
fool me. In fact, it's suspicious. In fact----"
Suspicious? The instant the idea was fairly before my mind, I knew I
had let his canting fool me once more.
I entered my offices, feeling that the blow had already fallen; and I
was surprised, but not relieved, when I found everything calm. "But
fall it will within an hour or so--before I can move to avert it,"
said I to myself.
And fall it did. At eleven o'clock, just as I was setting out to make
my first move toward heating old Galloway's heels for the warpath, Joe
came in with the news: "A general lockout's declared in the coal
regions. The operators have stolen a march on the men, who, so they
allege, were secretly getting ready to strike. By night every coal
road will be tied up and every mine shut down."
Joe knew our coal interests were heavy, but he did not dream his news
meant that before the day was over we should be bankrupt and not able
to pay fifteen cents on the dollar. However, he knew enough to throw
him into a fever of fright. He watched my calmness with terror. "Coal
stocks are dropping like a thermometer in a cold wave," he said, like
a fireman at a sleeper in a burning house.
"Naturally," said I, unruffled, apparently. "What can we do about it?"
"We must do something!" he exclaimed.
"Yes, we must," I admitted. "For instance, we must keep cool,
especially when two or three dozen people are watching us. Also, you
must go and attend to your usual routine."
"What are you going to do?" he cried. "For God's sake, Matt, don't
keep me in suspense."
"Go to your desk," I commanded. And he quieted down and went. I hadn't
been schooling him in the fire drill for fifteen years in vain.
I went up the street and into the great banking and brokerage house of
Galloway & Co. I made my way through the small army of guards, behind
which the old beast of prey was intrenched, and into his private den.
There he sat, at a small, plain table, in the middle of a room without
any article of furniture in it but his table and his chair. On the
table was a small inkstand, perfectly clean, a steel pen, equally
clean, on the rest attached to it. And that was all--not a letter, not
a scrap of paper, not a sign of work or an intention to work. It might
have been the desk of a man who did nothing; in fact, it was the desk
of a man who had so much to do that his only hope of escape from being
overwhelmed was to dispatch and clear away each matter the instant it
was presented to him. Many things could be read in the powerful form,
bolt upright in that stiff chair, and in the cynical, masterful old
face. But to me the chief quality there revealed was that quality of
qualities, decision--the greatest power a man can have, except only
courage. And old James Galloway had both.
He respected Roebuck; Roebuck feared him. Roebuck did have some sort
of a conscience, distorted though it was, and the dictator of
savageries Galloway would have scorned to commit. Galloway had no
professions of conscience--beyond such small glozing of hypocrisy as
any man must put on if he wishes to be intrusted with the money of a
public that associates professions of religion and appearances of
respectability with honesty. Roebuck's passion was wealth--to see the
millions heap up and up. Galloway had that passion, too--I have yet to
meet the millionaire who is not avaricious and even stingy. But
Galloway's chief passion was power--to handle men as a junk merchant
handles rags, to plan and lead campaigns of conquest with his golden
legions, and to distribute the spoils like an autocrat who is careless
how they are divided, since all belongs to him, whenever he wishes to
claim it.
He pierced me with his blue eyes, keen as a youth's, though his face
was seamed with the scars of seventy tumultuous years. He extended
toward me over the table his broad, stubby white hand--the hand of a
builder, of a constructive genius. "How are you, Blacklock?" said he.
"What can I do for you?" He just touched my hand before dropping it,
and resuming that idol-like pose. But although there was only repose
and deliberation in his manner, and not a suggestion of haste, I, like
everyone who came into that room and that presence, had a sense of an
interminable procession behind me, a procession of men who must be
seen by this master-mover, that they might submit important and
pressing affairs to him for decision. It was unnecessary for him to
tell anyone to be brief and pointed.
"I shall have to go to the wall today," said I, taking a paper from my
pocket, "unless you save me. Here is a statement of my assets and
liabilities. I call to your attention my Coal holdings. I was one of
the eight men whom Roebuck has got round him for the new combine--it
is a secret, but I assume you know all about it."
He laid the paper before him, put on his nose-glasses and looked at
it.
"If you will save me," I continued, "I will transfer to you, in a
block, all my Coal holdings. They will be worth double my total
liabilities within three months--as soon as this lockout is settled
and the reorganization is announced. I leave it to your sense of
justice to decide whether I shall have any part of them back when this
storm blows over."
"Why didn't you go to Roebuck?" he asked, without looking up.
"Because it is he that has stuck the knife into me."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I suspect the Manasquale properties, which I brought
into the combine, have some value, which no one but Roebuck, and
perhaps Langdon, knows about--and that I in some way was dangerous to
them through that fact. They haven't given me time to look into it."
A grim smile flitted over his face. "You've been too busy getting
married, eh?" And I then thought that the grim smile was associated
with his remark. I was soon to know that it was an affirmation of my
shrewd guess about Manasquale.
"Exactly," said I. "It's another case of unbuckling for the wedding
feast and getting assassinated as a penalty. Do you wish me to explain
anything on that list--do you want any details of the combine--of the
Coal stocks there?"
"Not necessary," he replied. As I had thought, with that enormous
machine of his for drawing in information, and with that enormous
memory of his for details, he probably knew more about the combine and
its properties than I did.
"You have heard of the lockout?" I inquired--for I wished him to know
that I had no intention of deceiving him as to the present market
value of those stocks.
"Roebuck has been commanded by his God," he said, "to eject the free
American labor from the coal regions and to substitute importations of
coolie Huns and Bohemians. Thus the wicked American laborers will be
chastened for trying to get higher wages and cut down a pious man's
dividends; and the downtrodden coolies will be brought where they can
enjoy the blessings of liberty and of the preaching of Roebuck's
missionaries."
I laughed, though he had not smiled, but had spoken as if stating
colorless facts. "And righteousness and Roebuck will prevail," said I.
He frowned slightly, a sardonic grin breaking the straight, thin,
cruel line of his lips. He opened his table's one shallow drawer, and
took out a pad and a pencil. He wrote a few words on the lowest part
of the top sheet, folded it, tore off the part he had scribbled on,
returned the pad and pencil to the drawer, handed the scrap of paper
to me. "I will do it," he said. "Give this to Mr. Farquhar, second
door to the left. Good-morning." And in that atmosphere of vast
affairs, speedily dispatched, his consent without argument did not
stir suspicion in me.
I bowed. Though he had not saved me as a favor to me, but because it
fitted in with his plans, whatever they were, my eyes were dimmed. "I
shan't forget this," said I, my voice not quite steady.
"I know it," said he, curtly. "I know you."
I saw that his mind had already turned me out. I said no more, and
withdrew. When I left the room it was precisely as it had been when I
entered it--except the bit of paper torn from the pad. But what a
difference to me, to the thousands, the hundreds of thousands,
directly and indirectly interested in the Coal combine and its strike
and its products, was represented by those few, almost illegible
scrawlings on that scrap of paper.
Not until I had gone over the situation with Farquhar, and we had
signed and exchanged the necessary papers, did I begin to relax from
the strain--how great that strain was I realized a few weeks later,
when the gray appeared thick at my temples and there was in my crown
what was for such a shock as mine a thin spot. "I am saved!" said I to
myself, venturing a long breath, as I stood on the steps of Galloway's
establishment, where hourly was transacted business vitally affecting
the welfare of scores of millions of human beings, with James
Galloway's personal interest as the sole guiding principle. "Saved!" I
repeated, and not until then did it flash before me, "I must have paid
a frightful price. He would never have consented to interfere with
Roebuck as soon as I asked him to do it, unless there had been some
powerful motive. If I had had my wits about me, I could have made far
better terms." Why hadn't I my wits about me? "Anita," was my instant
answer to my own question. "Anita again. I had a bad attack of family
man's panic." And thus it came about that I went back to my own office
feeling as if I had suffered a severe defeat, instead of jubilant over
my narrow escape.
Joe followed me into my den. "What luck?" asked he, in the tone of a
mother waylaying the doctor as he issues from the sick room.
"Luck?" said I, gazing blankly at him.
"You've seen the latest quotation, haven't you?" In his nervousness
his temper was on a fine edge.
"No," replied I, indifferently. I sat down at my desk and began to
busy myself. Then I added: "We're out of the Coal combine, I've
transferred our holdings. Look after these things, please." And I gave
him the checks, notes and memoranda of agreement.
"Galloway!" he exclaimed. And then his eye fell on the totals of the
stock I had been carrying. "Good God, Matt!" he cried. "We were
ruined!"
And he sat down, and buried his face and cried like a child--and it
was then that I measured the full depth of the chasm I had escaped. I
made no such exhibition of myself, but when I tried to relight my
cigar my hand trembled so that the flame scorched my lips. I
registered a vow never to gamble again--not with stocks, not with
cards, not at all. And I've kept faith with myself.
"Ruined?" I said to Joe, easily enough. "Not at all. We're back in the
road, going smoothly ahead--only, at a bit less stiff a pace. Think,
Joe, of all those poor devils down in the mining districts. They're
out--clear out--and thousands of 'em don't know where their families
will get bread. And though they haven't found it out yet, they've got
to leave the place where they've lived all their lives, and their
fathers before them--have got to go wandering about in a world that's
as strange to them as the surface of the moon, and as bare for them as
the Sahara desert."
"That's so," said Joe. "It's hard luck." But I saw he was thinking
only of himself and his narrow escape from having to give up his big
house and all the rest of it; that, soft-hearted and generous though
he was, to those poor chaps and their wives and children he wasn't
giving a thought. Wall Street never does--they're too remote, too
vague. It deals with columns of figures and slips of paper. It never
thinks of those abstractions as standing for so many hearts and so
many mouths, just as the bank clerk never thinks of the bits of metal
he counts so swiftly as money with which things and men could be
bought. I read somewhere once that Voltaire--I think it was
Voltaire--asked a man what he would do if, by pressing a button on his
table, he would be enormously rich and at the same time would cause
the death of a person away off at the other side of the earth, unknown
to him, and probably no more worthy to live, and with no greater
expectation of life or of happiness, than the average sinful,
short-lived human being. I've often thought of that dilemma as I've
watched our great "captains of industry." Voltaire's dilemma is
theirs. And they don't hesitate; they press the button. I leave the
morality of the performance to moralists; to me, its chief feature is
its cowardice, its sneaking, slimy cowardice.
"You've done a grand two hours' work," said Joe.
"Grander than you think," replied I. "I've set the tiger on to fight
the bull."
"Galloway and Roebuck?"
"Just that," said I. And I laughed. Then I started up--and sat down
again. "No, I'll deny myself the pleasure," said I. "I'll let Roebuck
find out when the claws catch in that tough old hide of his."