I WALK THE PLANK
Have you ever seen a bunch of school-boys who, having sneaked under a
corner of the circus tent, are prowling furtively round the show in holy
terror lest some one who has seen their entry may be awaiting a chance
to nab them? One minute they are tasting the raptures of being under the
canvas; the next, longing to be safely outside. That is about how Wall
Street felt on the memorable Friday after the Amalgamated flotation. The
same feeling prevailed generally on Saturday, though I was obliged to
buy a few blocks of the stock at 110 from Wall Street men whose sharp
noses had sniffed a carrion scent in the air. Sunday was uncomfortable,
for I realized that I might have to face bad conditions on the morrow.
On Monday an ominous feeling began to rise and pervade "the Street" like
a miasma mist in a tropical swamp. The bacillus of distrust had started
its infection. I had to buy quite a lot of subscriptions and was now
varying the price from 110, for it seemed possible any moment that
something would break loose.
These were the conditions when on Tuesday a telephone call came from Mr.
Rogers asking me to drop round to 26 Broadway, as he had an important
matter to talk over with me. I reported at the appointed time. Mr.
Rogers was evidently full of business.
"Lawson," he said, "we have figured everything up and balanced accounts,
and each member of the different syndicates is to be given his share,
cash and stock, at once."
"All right," I answered. "That suits me."
"I thought so," he continued pleasantly. "Mr. Rockefeller has had Curtis
figure up your account, and while in the rush he may not have got
everything in, he's fairly accurate. From what you said about getting
your affairs into shape to help the market, it occurred to me you might
like to have your balance of this section in hand ready for use. I have
the statement here, and if you find it all right I'll go upstairs and
get all it calls for fixed up at once."
We were in the little glass pen where most of our conferences took
place. I, with my elbows on the small mahogany table, sat looking across
at him leaning back in his chair. Without knowing what was to happen,
but from a certain suppressed eagerness I had detected under his frigid
composure, I had a strong conviction that he was nerving himself for a
coup of some kind. I realized that he and Mr. Rockefeller had talked me
over pretty thoroughly and had decided that they had best run this
gauntlet as soon as possible. Since Mr. Rogers had broached the
substitution of Anaconda for the properties originally intended for the
first section of Amalgamated, I had felt that this balancing of accounts
would be a crucial affair, and after the recent turn of the screw, I
hardly knew what to expect, but was ready for the worst. Now a swift
thrill of apprehension suggested I'd better look for real deviltry.
There was perhaps a minute's delay while he fumbled in his pocket and
drew out letters and papers. My blood steeplechased in my veins as I
waited for him to deal me the hand that might decide my fate. In such
tense moments thoughts flash in and out of the mind like lightning, and
as I watched him rise, the fateful paper in his hand, it came over me
with a sharp exultation that however the trumps fell it was a great
game--great even for this king of gamesters who was about to play his
hand.
Henry H. Rogers looked piercingly into my eyes and said: "There's the
account, Lawson." He laid on the table in front of me an oblong piece of
paper. On it were some lines of words followed by other lines of
figures. That was all. I spread it out carefully between my two hands
and bent over it. Then I looked up. Before I allowed the significance of
the figures to penetrate my mind, I wished to know exactly what they
represented.
"If I understand aright, Mr. Rogers," I asked, "this statement does not
take in our Boston deals nor my loans on the Butte and other affairs,
but is a settlement of this first section only--a final clearing-up
showing just what my twenty-five per cent. of the Amalgamated and the
things connected with it amount to? Am I right?"
My voice was even and calmly business-like, and he answered in exactly
the same tone.
"It shows where you stand on this particular affair, and gives your
balance of stock and cash, which we are ready to pay over in whole or in
part, in case you may want to leave some of it against the loans on the
other section."
I turned to the paper; I leaned over it, letting my two hands with the
elbows resting on the table support my head. Mr. Rogers could see only
the back and top of my head, no part of my face. At the first glance I
caught the balance--it was a little less than two millions and a half.
At once the other lines upon the sheet became a crimson blur. Into my
mind rushed an avalanche of figures and facts which seemed to prove
irresistibly that I should have read nine millions in place of the
numbers that were burning themselves into my brain. But what if it were
rightly but two and a half millions, and the great sum on which all my
market movements had been predicated was a hideous miscalculation on my
part? Then inevitably was I hopelessly bankrupt, or saved from that only
to find my neck irrevocably caught in the "Standard Oil" noose. I strove
fiercely to steady my nerves, to arrest the stampeding terrors that had
broken loose in my brain. There came to me a feverish memory of the
hideous procession of Thursday's midnight vigil. I desperately
asseverated to myself, "I must be cool, I must, I must." But all my
resolutions went as goes the powder when touched by the match. In an
instant more nothing in the world mattered; I sprang to my feet, kicked
over the chair, and with an exclamation which was half yell, half
imprecation, I stuck the paper under Mr. Rogers' eyes. On the balance
line I beat a tattoo with my trembling forefinger. Heaven knows what I
said, for all barriers were down and a flood-tide of rage, overwhelming,
terrific, swept my being. There was no chance for Mr. Rogers to answer
or to interrupt me. Suddenly I became conscious that I was asking, "Am I
to understand that this is final? Is this what I get for all I have
stood for?" My voice as I heard it was strange--a hoarse hiss--and the
words fell on my ear like a death sentence. "No, by God, no!" I sprang
between him and the door.
"Lawson, in the name of Heaven, stop for a second; there is some
mistake; I see there is some mistake, some terrible blunder that they
have made upstairs. Don't say another word. Give me that paper and I'll
take it to Mr. Rockefeller. He will see what is wrong; he and I'll go
over it together and you shall have what's right. I will be back in a
few minutes and I swear to you you shall have your full share. Yes, I
swear to you you shall have what you say is right, even if it takes
every dollar of the profits, every dollar."
I handed him the paper without a word and he was out of the room. I
heard gates bang and knew he had, as he promised, "gone upstairs." I
locked the door and waited. I shall never forget the racking torture of
that period of inaction. To make real all the terrors I was suffering it
would be necessary for me to enter into elaborate details of the
wide-spread financial commitment into which I had been led by my
relationship with the Consolidation. I was staggering under immense
lines of Boston "Coppers," which were to be included in the second
section of Amalgamated, but had been purchased to make part of the first
section. Some of these Mr. Rockefeller was carrying for me; the rest
were portioned among two dozen banks, trust companies, and brokers. With
a portion of the profits I had legitimately calculated upon, I had
proposed to lighten my burden and to devote the balance to carrying
through the contract I had taken on my shoulders of protecting
Amalgamated stock in the market. To do so on this showing would be out
of the question; more than ever should I be at "Standard Oil's" mercy.
The dangers that threatened me assumed cyclopean proportions as I
marshalled them. Suddenly another possibility flashed across my brain,
"What if they should tell you that having refused what was fair, you
should have nothing--that you could go to the devil and fight? Then
where would you be?" That meant ruin, crushing, irrevocable, complete; a
series of disasters, so portentously realistic, began a cinematographic
procession across my disordered brain, that I found myself shivering in
anticipation, when suddenly the door-knob clicked and I jumped to my
feet to admit Mr. Rogers. In his hand was the paper. I had eyes for it
alone. I took it from his outstretched fingers and devoured its
contents. It was the same sheet, the same word "balance," but underneath
the old figures was a line below which appeared a new set of ciphers,
showing just a fraction under five millions of dollars. In the brief
interval of minutes my balance had doubled. Before I could utter a word,
with his hand on my arm to arrest my attention, Mr. Rogers was
exclaiming:
"Lawson, one word before you open your mouth. Remember I said you should
be satisfied. Mr. Rockefeller agrees with me. He is convinced these
figures now are right, but wants me to tell you if you believe they are
not, to make your own and you'll have what they call for."
As I said before, Henry H. Rogers knows the human animal, and in the
intimate intercourse of preceding years he had had ample opportunity to
learn those very human characteristics which go to the blending of my
individuality. It is a weakness of which I am intensely conscious, yet
cannot altogether regret, to be easily moved by any show of generosity
and fairness, however specious. When I saw the new figures and realized
that all the hell I had conjured up was no more than a nightmare, a very
rapture of gratitude and relief seized me. It was not that I lost sight
of the fact that this new balance was far below what I knew was my
right, for according to the lowest computation my proper share was nine
millions; nor that I failed to realize that I was in the power of this
man whose greed, callousness, and brutal obstinacy in the face of
opposition no one knew better than I. Still, though his unusual
deference convinced me that by continued, fiery insistence I could force
from him the remaining four millions (for the one thing Standard Oil
never lets get into court is a dispute over a division of profits on a
joint stock deal), the first shock had been so awful, and the reaction
was so sudden, that my whole being revolted at the idea of further
wrangle. Indeed, I was in the same condition as the man whose runaway
horse suddenly stops just as the children in the roadway seemed doomed
to be crushed and beaten to death beneath its iron heels. He condones
the running away in gratitude for the timely halt. A glad voice within
me seemed to be saying, "It's all right, all right--that's money enough
to fight him out with--that's ammunition for victory--victory for
yourself, for the friends who have banked on your ability to protect
them."
I said to Mr. Rogers: "Tell Mr. Rockefeller I thank him for his
fairness. I thank you both. I'm satisfied and this is settled." I put my
finger on the account which lay on the table.
Yes, I positively thanked these men who had tried to rob me of
seventy-five per cent. of all the millions that I had earned by all the
laws _of the game_, and that I so urgently needed to protect those whom
I had lured to probable destruction; needed as a mother in the desert
needs milk to keep life in her babe. I thanked these men in heartfelt
terms because they had returned me an additional third of my own money.
Idiot, you say. I went further; I shook Mr. Rogers by the hand, and as
the tears gathered in his eyes I said, and it was from the heart, too:
"Don't think, Mr. Rogers, that I shall ever lay up this day against you
and Mr. Rockefeller, or that I shall resent not getting all I believed I
should have had. I want you both to understand that I do know I am
entitled to more, but it ends here. I will cherish no ill-feeling, for
this balance is amply sufficient to enable me to do what I intended to
do, and--there is more on earth than millions."
We were both emotionally excited; I from relief at escaping the clutches
of that dread hell of which for certain moments I had felt the flaming
grasp; he because of a sudden degrading realization that he had
attempted to practise on a faithful comrade in arms a cowardly and
contemptible piece of treachery. My impulsive gratitude for the measure
of justice granted me made his avaricious greed seem even to him
despicable, and for an instant Henry H. Rogers was honestly ashamed.
Some years have elapsed since this episode, but a thousand times I
suppose the scene has arisen to rack Henry H. Rogers with bitter
memories of his baseness. The severest punishments are not those that we
mortals inflict on our fellows whom for violations of our little earthly
laws we clap in striped suits and shackle with steel bracelets. What are
striped suits which imprint no mark on the body of the wearer, or
handcuffs that any blacksmith can strike off at a blow, in comparison
with the ever-recurring torture of the white-hot iron with which God
sears the hearts and brains of those sinners whose wrong-doing is beyond
human retribution? What memories of prison and disgrace are comparable
with the exquisite suffering of the undetected criminal who in the dark
watches of the night pores over the bitter scroll of his delinquencies?
When Henry H. Rogers reads the record set down here of this faithless
and degrading action, he will suffer infinitely more than ever I did for
the loss of the gold he and his associates so meanly filched. Nor will
the knowledge of the seven and a half score of millions marshalled ready
at his nod, abate one jot or tittle of the measure of his humiliation
and shame.
Peace having been established, Mr. Rogers sent "upstairs" for the checks
and stocks to complete the settlement, and while we waited we talked,
and, as was inevitable after so strenuous a session, we found ourselves
back on the sincere and frankly friendly footing of our earlier
intercourse. A knock-down and attempted drag-out which at the end is
declared a draw invariably promotes cordiality between the principals,
and ours was no exception to the rule. Evidently Mr. Rogers had been
doing considerable thinking since our last conversation and had
accumulated troublesome ideas which had to be worked off. My mood at the
moment seemed made to order for the purpose, and he ran over our
affairs, one after another, until he thought it safe to explode his
bomb. He rang for a clerk, and instructed that Mr. Stillman be called up
and asked to send over "that paper if it was ready." Soon afterward the
messenger returned with a big, square package. Mr. Rogers opened it.
"Lawson," he said, "here's the whole story. Stillman has been steadily
at work and has just finished two copies of the entire subscription. I
think you ought to look it over."
"Look it over," I repeated. "Why, it is of the utmost importance to the
whole enterprise that I study every name. I alone can tell just what
that list means. After I've been over it I'll know pretty thoroughly who
will hold, who will want to sell, who must sell, and who will need
encouragement."
"That's just what I thought," he answered, with an air of high approval.
Then, dropping to his most friendly and confidential key, the tone of
voice that never fails to persuade an associate that he is in on the
bottom floor and that all others are outsiders, he went on: "And more
than that, Lawson, why cannot you get in touch with all those
subscribers who are disappointed at the amounts they received and sell
them what they want?"
Mr. Rogers leaned back to appraise the effect of this startling
proposition on me. At any other moment I should inevitably have broken
loose again, but the fascination of his personality was upon me and I
let him spin his webs. Any man, and there are scores adrift, who falls
under the spell of Henry H. Rogers, invariably, as did the suitors of
Circe, pays the penalty of his indiscretion. Some he uses and
contemptuously casts aside useless; others he works, plays, and
pensions; still others serve as jackals or servitors and proudly flaunt
his livery; a few, the strong, independent souls, tempted with great
rewards and beguiled by the man's baleful, intellectual charm into his
clutches, preserve a semblance of freedom; but let the boldest of these
turn restive--he is maimed or garroted with sickening promptitude.