For one brief dazed moment the stock-market hesitated! Then suddenly
the ticker stopped, as it did in the old days whenever a member's demise
was announced. The ticker's silence, with its suggestion of death,
did in truth strangle bull hopes. Ten thousand gamblers' hearts almost
stopped when the ticker did. Then the storm burst, increasing in
violence as corroboration came from newspaper extras, from the Wall
Street news agencies and the news tickers, from brokers and bankers who
had rushed to the offices of W. H. Garrettson & Company and had rushed
out again to sell stocks. And for one fatal moment the great house of
W. H. Garrettson & Company was guilty of the capital crime--in high
finance--of indecision.
The stock-market at times suggests a reservoir--: the selling-power
is liquefied fear. Like water, all it asks is one tiny crevice--a
beginning!--and it will itself complete the havoc.
Inside support--that is, buying by Garrettson's firm--would have been
the only effective denial of the alarming rumors. Therefore, in the
brief instant that saw absolutely no “support” forthcoming the flood of
selling-orders raged down upon the stock-market, carrying with it big
margins and little margins and minus margins, fortunes and hopes and
reputations.
The price of Con. Steel declined faster and faster as the volume
of selling-orders grew larger. It was the snowball rolling down the
hillside. From sixty-eight it went to sixty-seven; to sixty-six; to
sixty-five by fractions. Then it broke whole points at a time--to sixty;
to fifty-five! In fifteen frightful, unforgetable minutes the capital
stock, of the Consolidated Steel Corporation shrank in value fifteen
million dollars--one million a minute! A psychological statistician
would have figured that this million a minute was the tribute of
the moneyed world to the great Garrettson's reputation for financial
invulnerability; it was the cost of the blow to his prestige, the result
of his partners' inefficiency during the one crucial moment of the
firm's existence. The partners would have understood death and could
have provided against it, stock-marketwise. It is likely that they even
might have capitalized their senior partner's demise had it come from
typhoid, tuberculosis, or taxicab. But the disappearance of the great
Garrettson, the fatal incertitude, the black ignorance, the fearing
and the hoping, paralyzed the faculties of the junior partners of Wall
Street's mighty firm. And the costliness of their indecision was raised
into the millions by the fact that, just as Jenkins, Johnson, and Lane,
the junior partners, agreed that Garrettson, though absent, was well,
and were about to take steps to check the gamblers' panic, the telephone
summoned Jenkins.
“Hello! Is this Mr. Jenkins? Good. This is Dr. Pierson. Come at once to
Mr. Garrettson, Hotel Cressline, Suite D. No, not B--D! Say nothing to
the family! Hurry!” And the speaker rang off.
His face livid with apprehension, visibly tortured by the still
unrelieved uncertainty, Jenkins turned to Walter Johnson, the youngest
and--Wall Street said--the cleverest of Garrettson's partners, and
repeated the message.
“Was it Dr. Pierson's voice?” asked Johnson.
“I don't know--yes; I think it was. He said, 'This is Dr. Pierson,' and
I didn't suspect--yes; I think it was.” After a second's pause, “I know
it was Pierson!”
“Then, for Heaven's sake--” began Lane.
“Your knowledge of Pierson's voice, Jenkins, is vitiated by your obvious
wish. Call up Dr. Pierson's office, of course!” said Johnson.
“Meantime we are losing precious time--” Johnson had already gone to
the desk telephone and asked for Dr. Pierson's office. To his partner he
said, the receiver at his ear:
“We have all eternity before us to solve the problem if--” The emphasis
on the conditional particle indicated so clearly his meaning that there
was no need to say it. “You need not go on a wild-goose chase, and we
hoping and expecting and uncertain if--Hello! Dr. Pierson's office? This
is Mr. Johnson, of W. H. Garrettson & Company. Is the doctor there?
Out? Where did he go? Speak out--I am Mr. Garrettson's partner. Hotel
Cressline, Suite D? Thank you.” Johnson turned and said: “Dr. Pierson
was summoned by telephone to the Cressline, Suite D, to attend Mr.
Garrettson. Hurry call! I'll get the hotel and ask--”
“And meantime,” said Jenkins, excitedly, “he might be dying or dead; and
we--”
“Yes! Go! I'll arrange to have a telephone-line kept for our exclusive
use. Hurry!”
Jenkins rushed madly from the office and Johnson took up the telephone
once more.
“Give me the Hotel Cressline!” And presently, “Hello! Cressline? This is
W. H. Garrettson & Company. Yes--Mr. Johnson, Mr. Garrettson's partner.
Is Mr. Gar--... Yes--yes--I want to talk to him.... Why not? Is it our
Mr. Garrettson... Here! Hold your horses! You will tell me!--or, by
Heaven, I'll... Helloh-Hello! Damn 'em!”
“What did they say, Walter?” asked Mr. Lane, partner and brother-in-law
of Garrettson.
“He said I could go to hell!” growled Johnson, his face brick-red from
anger; people did not talk that way to the partners of the great
Garrettson. “He said a Mr. Garrettson, accompanied by a heavily veiled
lady, took Suite D this morning at nine-forty-five, and left orders not
to be interrupted under any circumstances--no cards sent up, no
telephone connection made, no messages of any kind delivered!”
The two partners looked at each other gravely. In their eyes was
something like a cross between a challenge and an entreaty, as though
each expected the other to say he did not expect a terrible final
chapter. In the veiled woman each feared what was worse than mere
death--scandal! Of course, much would be suppressed, as had been done in
the case of Winthrop Kyle or of Burton Willett, to whom death had come
suddenly and under dubious circumstances.
“William is not that kind!” said Lane, loyally. “He has never--”
“I know that, of course. I don't believe it. I don't! I don't!” repeated
Walter Johnson, vehemently.
“Neither do I,” agreed Lane. “But--” He looked furtively at Walter
Johnson.
Johnson nodded, and said, “Yes, that's the devil of it!” He lost
himself in thoughts of how to suppress the scandal; for these men loved
Garrettson, admired his abilities, gloried in his might, and reverenced
his greatness. They would rather see the firm lose millions than have
posthumous mud flung upon the historic figure of W. H. Garrettson.
That was the explanation of why the ordinary precautions for staving
off a panic were not taken by the partners. That was why they denied
themselves to everybody who brought no news of Mr. W. H. Garrettson; and
such was the discipline of the office that no word was brought to the
palefaced partners in the inner office about the big break in stocks or
of the newspaper extras.
It was the fatal mistake. By the time Walter Johnson, by accident or
force of habit, or possibly subconsciously, moved by the telepathic
message of the ticker, approached the little instrument the slump in
stocks had taken on the proportions of a panic.
“Great Scott! Fifty-eight for steel!”
“No!” incredulously shouted Lane.
“It'll never do!”
“Yes, but--”
Walter Johnson, forgetting that Mr. Garrettson was a man who liked to
do things in his own way, rushed out of the private office and began
to give out buying-orders to the better-known of the Garrettson
brokers--they kept some of these for the effect of obvious “Garrettson
buying.” It was all the firm could do to check the decline. No matter
what had happened, the house of Garrettson must not lie about it!
Silence, yes; untruth, never! And yet silence might be taken as
corroboration of the awful stories. He could not say that the great
Garrettson was alive and could not say he was dead. He must not mention
Hotel Cressline. A trying situation! To the news-agency men, who would
put out the news on the Street, from whom also the daily papers would
get it, he said, very calmly and impressively:
“I know of no reason why anybody should sell Consolidated Steel. The
iron trade is in excellent shape; the company is doing the biggest
business in its history at reasonable but remunerative prices, and we
consider the stock a good investment. We deprecate these violent
speculative movements. They are designed to frighten timid holders. I
advise every man who owns Consolidated Steel stock to hold on to it.
“But about Mr. Gar--”
“Not another word!” he said, firmly, with a smile that was a masterpiece
of will-power.
The newspaper men translated it: “Not a word about W. H. Garrettson!”
And in the Stock Exchange a similar construction was put upon the
message. What was wanted was to know whether the great Garrettson was
dead or not--the kidnapping was by now accepted as a fact!--and if
so what would be done with the enormous Garrettson holdings of Steel.
Wherefore the traders sold more of the same stock--short--and the
bona-fide holders could develop no conviction strong enough as to the
wisdom of holding on, so long as the price continued to go down.
Jenkins arrived at the Cressline in time to find Dr. Pierson engaged in
a fight with the office force, who would not show Suite D to him or send
up any message. But Jenkins, who in his youth had been a book agent,
succeeded in inducing the management to break open the door after
repeated knocking brought no response from within.
They found nobody in Suite D. Mr. Garrettson had vanished! But they
found on the bureau a long lavender automobile veil.
Jenkins and Dr. Pierson stared at each other in perplexity. At length
Jenkins, red and uncomfortable, said to Dr. Pierson:
“I came up as soon as I got your telephone message; and--”
“I never telephoned you!” interrupted Dr. Pierson.
“Why, you said--”
“I didn't say it. I came up here because I got a message from the
hotel--or so the voice said--to see Mr. Garrettson, who had been taken
suddenly ill in Suite D. His companion, a young lady, was with him.”
“Damn!” said Jenkins, with ah uneasy look. He bethought him of the
office, hastened to the telephone and told Walter Johnson all about the
fake messages and Dr. Pierson's story.
“That was to throw us off the scent. Con. Steel has broken ten points,
and--”
“It's a bear raid then!”
“Yes. But have the bears got W. H. Garrettson? If so, where? Hurry
down!”
Meantime in the office of Richards & Tuttle Mr. Robison was carefully
following the course of the stock-market. The lower Steel went the
higher Robison rose in the estimation of the firm, the customers, and
the office-boys.
In one of the interludes between the slumps George B. Richards asked in
a voice which one might say sweated respect:
“What do you think now, Mr. Robison?”
The office had been doing a great business and the big room with the
quotation-board that took one side was crowded with customers. These
customers, with eyes that shone greedily, drew near and frankly listened
to the colloquy. They were all happy because they were all short of
Steel, and they were all short of Steel because a mysterious stranger
had scented a strange mystery ten minutes ahead of Wall Street.
“Yes?” said Mr. Robison, absently.
“What do you think now?”
“What do I think now?” repeated Mr. Robison, mechanically.
“Yes, sir,” said George B. Richards, in the tone of voice of an
office-boy about to ask for a day off. Robison stared unseeingly at
the broker. Then, with a little start, he said so distinctly that every
listening customer heard very plainly:
“I have not changed my opinion. When I do I'll let you know.”
“It looks to me,” persisted Richards, fishing for information, “that
they can't keep on going down forever.”
“No--not forever,” assented Mr. Robison, calmly.
“Maybe the bottom is not far off.”
“Maybe not.”
“If a man bought now he might do well.”
“Then buy 'em.”
“Still, until we know just what is back of this break it isn't safe to
go long.”
“In that case,” said Mr. Robison, with a polite nod of the head, “don't
buy 'em.”
Richards did not persist, and with an effort subdued the desire to
say “Thank you!” in a most sarcastic tone of voice. The disappointed
customers drifted away. To be told when to begin making money is great,
but any experienced stock speculator will tell you that it is even more
important to be told when to stop making it. The tale of the Untaken
Profit is the jeremiad of the ticker-fiend.
Con. Steel was down to fifty-five and beginning to show “resiliency,”
as financial writers used to say, when an office-boy rushed to Mr.
Robison's side. The lad's face shone with pride at being the bearer of
money-making news to-the most distinguished of the firm's customers,
whose paper profits at that moment were about one hundred thousand
dollars.
“Mr. Robison!” he said in the distinct, low voice of one who is
accustomed to repeating confidential messages in a crowded room. The
other customers, who were still hopeful of getting the tip when to
cover, looked at the boy's lips and listened strainingly to catch his
whispered words.
“Speak up, my boy. I am a little hard of hearing,” said Mr. Robison
through his nose, with a pleasant smile.
The customers, to a man, blessed the catarrh that caused the deafness
which would give them the tip they all expected.
“The photographer says the pictures came out very fine indeed.”
The looking and listening customers, to a man, murmured, “Stung again!”
“Wait a minute my lad. Here!” and he gave the office-boy a five-dollar
bill and a small envelope.
“Thank you very much, sir,” said the boy. He put the five dollars in
his pocket, beamed gratefully on Mr. Robison, gazed pityingly at the
customers, and looked at the envelope. It said, “Mr. Richards.”
He gave the envelope to Mr. Richards, who had retreated into the private
office. The broker opened it. It contained one of Robison's slips, on
which was written:
_Buy twenty thousand Con. Steel at the market._
_J. B. Robison._
Richards rushed the order to the Board Room. It helped to steady the
price. Presently Mr. Richards approached Robison and sat in the
empty place beside him. Feeling that they were not wanted, two polite
customers moved away, ostensibly not to hear; but they tried to listen
just the same.
“Your order is executed, Mr. Robison.” Mr. Richards whispered it out
of a corner of his mouth without turning his head, all the time looking
meditatively at the quotation-board.
“Got the whole twenty?”
“Yes.”
“Good!”
“Do you think--” began the broker in a voice that would make flint turn
to putty.
“I do!” cut in Robison. “I do, indeed! There is no telling what has
happened. The sharpness of the break was intensified by two facts.” He
had unconsciously raised his voice.
A startled look fastened itself on the seventeen faces of the seventeen
customers who were short of Steel. The seventeen owners of the faces
drew nearer to Mr. Robison, who, apparently unaware of having any other
listener than Mr. George B. Richards, went on, nasally but amiably:
“By two things: First, the mystery. What has become of Mr. W. H.
Garrettson? Second: If the great Garrettson has disappeared it must be
because of a worse-than-death. Many things can be worse than death, in
the stock-market--failure, for instance.”
“Oh, but that's out of the question.”
“Yes, it is! So is the disappearance of W. H. Garrettson, one of the
best-known men in America, in broad daylight, in a crowded and very
efficiently policed city thoroughfare.”
“Yes; but a failure--”
“When the Baring Brothers failed Englishmen the world over wouldn't
believe it. They couldn't fail, you know!”
“Do you think--”
“No, I do not. I was merely objecting to the habit of loose assertions
so characteristic of Wall Street. I told you to what two things I
ascribed the sharpness of the break. Mystery is the greatest of all bull
cards, as you all know. It may also be made to work on the bear side.
Now it isn't likely that anything serious has happened to Mr. W. H.
Garrettson. There would be no sense in murdering him--not even by a
stock speculator; but, even if he is dead, the break in the Garrettson
specialties has by now discounted that sad contingency. Therefore I
should say prices ought to be touching bottom; and what ought to be
generally is, in the stock-market. I fancy we'll hear, one way or
another, very soon now. If the news is good the price of Steel will
rebound smartly. If it is bad we'll at least know what to look to, and
with the elimination of the mystery there should be a cessation of the
selling. There will follow a rush to cover and then--There you are! I
believe it's begun already. Fifty-nine; and a half; sixty; sixty-two!
Get 'em back!”
The seventeen shorts in the room rushed to give their orders to cover
and gloomily watched the massacre of the bears as melodramatized in
figures on the quotation-board.
Sixty-three! Sixty-five! Sixty-seven! Higher than it had been before
the newspaper extras came out! Big blocks were changing hands. W. H.
Garrettson & Co. were buying the stock aggressively, even recklessly
now. Somebody must pay---and it wouldn't be the firm.
Amos Kidder rushed into the office. “He's found!” he yelled, excitedly,
addressing Mr. Robison.
“Where was he?” asked Mr. Robison, very calmly.
“At home--damn 'im!”
“Why that, my boy?”
“He won't talk--says he was in his library all the time.”
“We know better than that. Don't we, Kidder?” said Robison, with a
smile.
“Yes; but you don't have to print the official statement as though it
were the truth, and I have. How can I say he lied when I can't prove
that he wasn't in his library? If I knew the whole truth--”
“The whole truth?” echoed Mr. Robison, with the shade of a smile.
“Don't you know it?” Amos Kidder shot this at Mr. Robison suspiciously.
“Don't make me laugh, Kidder! Nobody knows the whole truth about
anything. Take dinner with me to-morrow night--will you?”
“Yes.” There was a smoldering defiance--it wasn't suspicion exactly--in
the newspaper man's voice and eyes.
“Good for you! Mr. Richards, please sell my Steel.”
“Now that Garrettson is--”
“Yes, now--at the market, carefully. Have I doubled my money in a week?”
“Yes.”
“I told you I would.”
“An accident is not a fair test of--”
“An accident is not a fair test of anything, because there is no such
thing in the stock-market as an accident! The sooner you let that fact
seep in the better it will be for the bank account of your children. I
must be going up-town now. Good night, gentlemen.”
As early as practicable the next day, after the interest had been
figured out to the ultimate penny, Mr. James Burnett Robison was
informed by Mr. George B. Richards that he had to his credit the sum of
$268,537.71 with the firm.
“I've won my bet!” murmured Mr. Robison, staring absently at the broker.
“You have indeed, Mr. Robison.” Richards spoke deferentially.
“H'm! I hope I can induce Ethel to--Mr. Richards, I'll thank you to sign
this paper. There is a notary public up-stairs.”
This was the document:
_To WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:_
_This is to certify that on July 18, 1912, Mr. James B. Robison opened
an account with the firm of Richards & Tuttle, bankers and brokers,
members of the New York Stock Exchange, by depositing with them the
sum of $100,000. On July 23d he closed this account, which showed a net
profit of $168,537.71._
_A copy of the itemized statement, showing purchases and sales of stocks
and prices paid and received, will be given to any one upon an order
from Mr. James B. Robison._
_For Richards & Tuttle:_ _George B. Richards._
When Mr. George B. Richards had signed this certificate Mr. Robison
said, amiably:
“If you wish I'll give you, in return, a letter testifying to the
pleasure it has given me to trade in an office where they let customers
more than double their money in one week.”
“Thank you. I hope you are not going to withdraw your account.”
“And I hope you will send and get me a hundred thousand dollars in new,
clean hundred-dollar bills to give to the beneficiary of my wager. I
told you it was easy to make money in Wall Street. You wouldn't have
given me a certificate of sanity a week ago. What?”
“Oh yes, I would. But if you don't think my curiosity impertinent--”
“All curiosity in a stock-broker is a sign of intelligence; and
intelligence, my dear Mr. George B. Richards, is never impertinent.” Mr.
Robison smiled with such amiable sincerity that Richards felt flattered
enough to blush.
“Thank you. But there is one thing I don't understand--” The broker
paused; he was about to inquire into the personal affairs of a
profitable customer. He did not wish commissions to stop.
Mr. Robison bowed his head acquiescingly and, as though it were his turn
to speak, said:
“It is always wise for a man to have a number of things he doesn't
understand. It affords occupation during idle moments, gives the mind
healthy exercise, and, indeed, maintains a salutary interest in
life. Humanity loves knowledge, but is fascinated by mystery. Is life
interesting to you? Yes. Why? Because it is so important and you know so
little about it. Is death interesting to you? Yes. Why? Because of death
you know only the first letter of the first word of the first line of
the first chapter of a big, black book--Mystery!”
“Yes,” murmured the dazed broker.
Robison continued, cheerfully: “My dear Mr. Richards, by all means
don't understand! I'll drop in later in the day for the hundred thousand
dollars. Meanwhile pray continue to be mystified and unhappy, but
interested, and believe me your sincere friend and well-wisher, James
Burnett Robison.” With these words the man who looked like a Paris dude
and talked like an actor with the voice of a down-east farmer, whose
speech suggested insanity but whose deeds yielded him twenty-five
thousand dollars a day, walked out of the office of his brokers.
A few hours later he received ten bundles of hun-dred-dollar bills,
which he carelessly stuffed into his coat pocket, and then asked for a
check for his balance. When George B. Richards regretfully complied and
lachrymosely hoped Mr. Robison would reconsider his decision to close
the account, Mr. Robison answered, very impressively:
“My dear Mr. Richards, if you were Rockefeller, would you work in a
glue-factory for the pleasure of it? I don't need money and I hate the
marketplace. If ever I decide that humanity needs more money than I
personally possess I'll come back and take it out of Wall Street through
Richards & Tuttle, at one-eighth of one per cent, commission and the
state tax. Good day, sir!” And he left, Mr. Richards remembered just
afterward and wondered, without shaking hands.