NO GOSPEL GAME
_Elementary lessons in finance--What is a panic?--The snake begins to
show signs of life--An injunction of the court--Inquiries--Ed
Hostetter knows our man--How to deal with a political judge--Slocum
objects--My will prevails--The injunction is dissolved_
Sarah and I were sitting over our coffee one morning, six months after
the Fair had closed its gates for the last time. Our second child, a
little girl, was but a few weeks old, and this was the first morning
that Sarah had breakfasted with me for some weeks. She had been glancing
at the morning paper, and suddenly she looked up from it with wonder on
her face.
"The Tenth National Bank has failed. Isn't that Mr. Cross's bank?"
I nodded.
"Will the Crosses lose all their money?"
"It's likely enough--what's left of it--all his and her folks', too."
"Yesterday some one told me the Kentons were trying to sell their place
at the lake. What does it mean? Why are people growing poor?"
"It's the panic," I answered briefly. "Business has been getting worse
and worse ever since the Fair. Some think it started with the Fair, but
the trouble goes back of that."
She put aside the paper and looked at me seriously.
"Van, what is a panic?"
It seemed strange that she should ask such a question in a simple,
childish way. But she had been shut away from people and things of late,
and it was not her nature to explore what was not right in her path.
"A panic," I replied, finishing my coffee, "is hell! Now I must run and
see what has happened to us."
She looked at me in round-mouthed astonishment, and when I bent over to
kiss her good-by, she said reprovingly:
"You don't mean it could touch us, Van?"
"It might," I smiled, thinking of the troubled waters where I was
swimming.
"We must trust Providence--"
"And me."
"Van!" she kissed me with a bit of reproof. "I wish you would be more
religious."
My wife had been growing very serious of late. Under May's example she
had taken to church work and attended religious classes. She and May had
discovered lately a new preacher, who seemed a very earnest young man.
The Bible class he had formed sometimes met at our house, and Sarah
preferred to go to his church, which was a long way from our house, to
the church near by where we had a pew. It made little difference where I
was taken to church, and I was glad to have Sarah pleased with her young
preacher. So I kissed my wife good-by and hurried off, half an hour late
as it was.
There was trouble brewing. It had shown a hand some months back, darkly
and mysteriously. One day, while I was East, a man had walked into
Slocum's office, introduced himself as a Henry A. Frost, and said that
he represented some minority bondholders of the defunct London and
Chicago Company. We knew that there were a few scattered bonds
outstanding, not more than forty thousand dollars all told, but we had
never looked for trouble from them. Mr. Frost represented to Slocum that
his "syndicate" did not wish to make us trouble, but that before the
property of the London and Chicago concern was finally turned over to
our corporation he wished to effect a settlement. Slocum asked him his
figure for the bonds held by his "syndicate," believing at the worst
that Frost would demand little more than the cash price of fifty. To his
astonishment the man wanted par and interest, and when Slocum laughed at
his proposal, he threw out hints of trouble that might come if his
"syndicate" were not satisfied.
Slocum referred the matter to me, and advised me to seek some compromise
with Frost. "For," he said, "our record is not altogether clear in that
transaction," referring to the sum we had paid for services to the
treasurer of the bankrupt corporation. This move on the part of Frost
and his associates was blackmail, of course, but the lawyer advised
compromise. It would have been the wise thing to do; but having
succeeded so far, I felt my oats too much to be held up in this fashion.
I refused peremptorily to deal with the man, and Slocum intimated to
him, when he called for a reply, that we would not consider giving him
more than the other bondholders had received; namely, fifty per cent of
the par value of the bonds he held in new bonds. Frost went off, and we
had heard nothing more from him.
Meanwhile we had gone our way, making ready to turn over our properties,
rounding up this matter and that, guarding against the tight money
market, and quietly getting things in order for putting out our
securities. Then one day had come, like a thunderbolt from an open sky,
an injunction, restraining the American Meat Products Company from
taking over the properties of the London and Chicago Company, the
petitioners alleging that they held bonds of the latter concern, and
that the sale of its properties to the representatives of the American
Meat Products Company had been tainted with fraud. A Judge Garretson, of
the Circuit Court, had granted the temporary injunction one night at his
house, and the argument for the permanent decree was set for April 10, a
fortnight later. The names of the petitioners, all but Frost's, were
unknown to us.
"There is the trail of the snake!" Slocum muttered when he had read the
injunction. "We had better find Lokes. This will be in the papers
to-night, and in the Eastern papers to-morrow morning--you will hear
from it all over."
Sure enough, the next noon I had a telegram from Farson in Boston:--
"Papers print injunction A.M.P. Co.; charge fraud. Wire explanation."
"Cousin John didn't let the grass grow under him," Slocum grimly
remarked when I handed him this telegram at luncheon. "You had better
let me answer him. Now for Lokes: he denies all knowledge, and it's
plain enough that he isn't interested in having this matter aired. But
some one must have found out pretty accurately what has happened.
Perhaps Lokes when he was drunk let out what he had got from us. Anyhow,
it's blackmail, and the question is what are we going to do about it. It
will cost us a pretty penny to settle now!"
The situation was alarming. Unless we could get that injunction
dissolved, and speedily, our project faced serious danger. The banker
Farson's telegram was only the first. The banks and our backers East and
West would soon call us to account.
"It _is_ blackmail," I said to Slocum, "and if there is a way out we
will not pay those rats. Find out what you can about them."
In a day or two he came over to me with the information he had obtained.
The "syndicate" consisted of three or four cheap fellows, hangers-on of
a broker's office. One of them happened to be a relative of Judge
Garretson, who had issued the midnight injunction.
"I got that last from Ed Hostetter," Slocum explained. "I met him on the
street as I was coming over here. Having heard that this Lucas Smith
lived out Ed's way, in May Park, I asked him if he knew anything about
the man. He said at once: 'You mean the jedge's brother-in-law? He's a
political feller.' Of course this Smith is a bum like the rest."
So we had in Ed, who had come back to work for me, having failed in a
market where I had started him after the sausage plant was sold.
"Ed," I said to him, "we want you to find out all you can about this
brother-in-law of Judge Garretson's. See if you can learn how many of
those London and Chicago bonds he holds."
The next morning Ed brought us the information that Lucas Smith was
willing enough to talk, boasting that he and his friends were going "to
tune up those packers in good style." Ed thought they had got their tip
from one of Lokes's pals. It seems that Smith owned, nominally, only two
of the bonds. And there we were! Slocum rubbed his chin, trying to see
light in a dark place.
"What sort of a man is this Judge Garretson?" I asked the lawyer.
"Good enough for a political judge, I guess. He's up for reƫlection this
fall. There was some talk about his attitude in traction cases, but
nothing positive against him."
"See here, Ed!"--I turned to Hostetter abruptly--"I want you to go
straight out to this Lucas Smith's place and find him. Tell him you know
where he can get twenty-five thousand dollars for those two bonds of his
the day Judge Garretson dissolves that injunction."
"Hold on, Van!" Slocum interposed. "That is too strong! I stuck by you
last time, but I won't stand for this!"
"Go on, Ed!" I called out to Hostetter peremptorily. "Tell him just
that--the day the injunction is dissolved he gets twenty-five thousand
dollars for his bonds, and the other rats don't get a cent!"
Slocum rose without a word and put on his hat. I put my hand on his
shoulder and pushed him back into his chair.
"You aren't going to quit like that, Sloco, after all these years! Think
it over. What else is there for us to do? Can we have this business
aired in court? What will Farson say to that story of Lokes's? Do you
think we could buy the bonds from those _rats_ for any likely
figure?--for any figure, if Carmichael is waiting around the corner to
pick up our cake when we are forced to drop it?"
He sank into the chair rather limp, and we looked at each other for a
minute or two.
"Well," he said slowly, "it might as well come out now as later."
"You have got to sit in the boat with me, Sloco! I need you." I leaned
across the table and looked into his eyes. Slowly, after a time, he
nodded, and gave himself up to me to do my will. In the heat of my
trouble, I scarce realized what that acquiescence cost him: he never
gave another sign. But it cost him, one way and another, more than I
ever could repay,--and now I know it.
We walked out together, and as I turned in the direction of home I said
cheerfully:--
"Once out of this mess, old man, we shall be on easy street, and you can
buy a block of those old brick shanties back in Portland!"
The lawyer smiled at my speech, but turned away without another word.
* * * * *
Judge Garretson dissolved the injunction in due course. What is more, he
roasted the petitioning parties who had entered his court "with flimsy
and fraudulent pretexts." There was a righteous flavor to his eloquence
that would have been worthy of a better cause. Nevertheless, that same
evening Lucas Smith collected his price from Ed and delivered his bonds.
I turned to Slocum, who was with me in court when the decision was
handed down, and said jubilantly:--
"That worked. They can't touch us now! I guess we've seen the end of
this business."
Slocum demurred still.
"Maybe, but I doubt it. You don't think that Frost and his pals are
going to sit quiet after such a roast? They will nose around to find out
who sold them out."
But I did not pay much heed to the lawyer's fears.