A VERY PERPLEXING SITUATION.
Wall Street was in a great flutter that day. A forgery, a defalcation
that to-day would cause but a ripple on the surface, would have at that
day sent the street into a tempest of excitement. A sheriff's deputy
stood at the door of the office of the great Kidd Discovery Company, and
a crowd of anxious and excited people, who had invested their money and
now found they had lost it all, and had been made the victims of an
aggravating fraud, surrounded the building. Threats and imprecations,
enough to have sent a much more respectable house to the bottom of the
sea, were heaped on the firm of Topman & Gusher. Nor indeed would it
have been safe for any one connected with that enterprising firm to have
shown his head in that assembly just at that time.
"Gentlemen will understand that this consolidated establishment is in a
very unconsolidated condition. No further business will be done until
its affairs are compromised;" the sheriff's deputy would announce, in a
loud voice, as he endeavored to keep the crowd back. "There's only an
empty safe, gentlemen, and some handsome office furniture," he would
ejaculate. "You can't have them, you know."
Extravagance had indeed swallowed up all the substance and left only
these insignificant things for the crowd of anxious creditors to feast
their eyes on.
Rumor after rumor rang through Wall Street, each in turn increasing the
amount of Topman's forgeries, and adding new names to the list of his
victims. Bank ledgers were examined to see if the name of the firm
appeared on them, and portly old directors put on their spectacles and
congratulated themselves that the concern did not owe them a shilling.
Groups of excited men stood at street corners discussing in animated
tones the great event of the street. Everybody knew it must come. Nobody
expected it would come so soon.
The strangest thing of all was that no one knew anything of the
antecedents of either member of the firm, or what the great Kidd
Discovery Company was really based upon. Enterprising gentlemen had
bought and sold the stock, and made and lost money by it. That was all
they knew of it. The morning papers had given them an interesting
account about Gusher; now some one was needed to tell them all about
Topman--where he came from, who he was, and where he was to be found.
There was enough to call him rascal now. Even those who had ridden in
his carriage, and enjoyed his dinners, and indeed thought him the best
of fellows a few weeks before, were now ready to give him the hardest of
kicks.
In truth, the firm was a mystery in Wall Street, and its largest
creditors were in the greatest darkness concerning it. Some one has
truly said that in a great commercial city men are known only by their
enterprises and their successes; that their antecedents become lost in
the magnitude and rapidity with which events revolve. This is
particularly so with us. The firm of Topman & Gusher had fixed itself in
Pearl Street, and gone quietly into business without friends,
acquaintances, or endorsers; and in a single year had secured both
credit and respectability. And it had done this on what is too
frequently mistaken for energy and enterprise--show and pretension.
Upon Chapman's shoulders, however, the crushing effect of this great
disaster fell heaviest. Stripped of all he had, ruined, disgraced, he
stood like one amazed at the suddenness of his own fall. He had built
his castles on sand, and now found them tumbling down, and crushing him
under the ruin. His avaricious nature had led him, not only to wrong,
but to bring distress and ruin on the unsuspecting and simple-minded
Dutch settlers. The wheel of fortune was turned now. He had himself been
ruined, betrayed, and disgraced by the very men he had put confidence in
and made partners of his guilt. He also had set a snare and invented a
plot by which he expected to strip honest old Hanz Toodleburg of his
property, and now he had been caught in it himself.
His daughter, Mattie, had already disclosed to him the fact that she had
overheard the conversation between him and Topman, relative to the
manner of entrapping Hanz, and knew the secret of their plot. And she
had appealed to him to save her the pain of bearing testimony that would
conflict with his, to save an honest old man from poverty. The man of
great progressive ideas now found it necessary to invent some way of
escaping from what he saw would be worse than ruin and disgrace--a
criminal's doom. His name had not appeared in the suit Topman & Gusher
brought against Hanz Toodleburg. Oh, no. Chapman was needed as a witness
to prove the signing of the papers, and all the circumstances relating
to the sale of the secret of Kidd's treasure. Poverty and misfortune had
now stepped in to purify and direct a smitten conscience.
He could not see his daughter further disgraced. Nor could he meet her
in a court, giving testimony in conflict with his, and exposing his
crime. He could only escape by coming out boldly, and doing justice to
the old man he had tried so hard to wrong. It would also be to his
advantage to assume this virtue, for if the case were decided against
Hanz he would gain nothing. The creditors would in that case get all the
property, whereas, if he confessed his partnership in, and exposed the
plot, and defeated the creditors, some benefit might result from it--at
some time. The son might still be alive, Chapman said to himself, and if
he should form a connection with the family at some future day, (and
there was no knowing what might happen,) why it was better to protect
Hanz and the property now. He well knew that Mattie had fixed her
affection on the young gentleman, and if he should ever return, nothing
her mother could say hereafter would prevent their marriage.