AN INFORMAL MEETING
I
It must surprise those simple folk, Messieurs Washington, Jefferson,
and their like, were they to return to life at this advanced day and
gaze upon the admirable republic which they fancied to be founded on
immutable principles. As in politics to-day those principles would
seem proved to have been not quite immutable, so, in commerce, men and
methods would appear wholly different from those known in that earlier
day. For instance, in commercial matters, the men of that day would
now find in daily application a fourth dimension of affairs once wholly
unknown; the sixth sense of the modern business man, a delicately
differentiated faculty evolved in the holy of holies where events cast
their financial shadows far in advance of themselves. John Jay, or any
financier of Revolutionary time, very likely lacked in that regard, and
had but his five senses.
This keen sense of prophecy, property of modern leaders in finance, was
not lacking in the case of the directors of the International Power
Company, all and several; and more especially several. Capitalists
hunt in packs--but only up to a certain point. The _sauve qui peut_
has small chivalry about it even in the holy of holies.
Within a few days after the turbulent scenes which took place in the
quiet surroundings of Graystone Hall, there was held, quite informally,
indeed on a wholly impromptu basis, a meeting of the greater portion of
the directors of the International Power Company. It was a meeting not
called by the president, and the president knew nothing of it. It was
not set for the usual headquarters in the East; on the contrary, by
merest chance, these keen-witted men met by accident in the western
city where were located the works and central operating offices of the
International Power Company. They made their stopping place, as usual,
at the National Union Club, where they were less certain to become the
prey of prying reporters--a breed detested above all things by these
and their like.
II
There was, this afternoon, casually present, a certain gray-haired,
full-bodied man, of full beard and rather portly body. He was speaking
with President Standley, of St. Louis, who also by merest chance
happened to be in town. To them presently came the former general
traffic manager of Mr. Standley's road, Ackerman, also present by
merest accident. Two or three others, moreover, by mere accident,
joined them, figures which were familiar at the long table in the New
York headquarters. They looked at one another frankly, and laughed
without much reservation.
"Well," said Ackerman, after a time, "let's sit down and have a little
powwow--informally, you know."
The gray-haired man grinned pleasantly again and said nothing, but drew
up a chair.
"Of course, you know," said Standley, as he seated himself, "that our
dissatisfied friend, Van, is here in town to-day?"
The full-bearded man nodded, and an instant later jerked his head
toward the door. "He's here in the club, too," said he, and smiled.
"Just happened in, I suppose." Indeed, as they turned to look they saw
advancing, talking animatedly, a rather slender, youngish man of brown
eyes and pointed beard; none less than the disgruntled director who had
long ago been so summarily handled by John Rawn, president of the
International Power Company.
"Hasn't he got the nose for news, though?" commented Standley
admiringly. "Now, who told him there was anything doing!"
"He didn't need to have anybody tell him," growled Ackerman. "He can
take care of himself. And by Jove! I'm half inclined to think that he
was the lucky one--to get out the way he did, and when he did."
"Yes, he's lucky," said Standley gravely. He turned to see the vast
round belly of the gray-bearded man heaving in silent mirth. The
railway magnate obviously was amused.
"I don't know!" remarked Ackerman suddenly. "_Others_, eh?"
III
"Well, boys, why not admit it?" rejoined the older man. "We all know
the facts. We all know why we're here. As you said, Ack, let's hold a
little informal meeting, and talk over what we had better do!"
"How much did you sell!" demanded Standley casually.
"Twenty thousand last week. You sold about double that."
"Yes, it's leaking out, no use denying that! You don't need to list
this thing--it leaks!"
"Of course, Van's buying it," said Standley, nodding toward the slender
figure of the ex-director. "First time I ever knew him to go out for
revenge. It doesn't very often pay."
"Well, I can't figure it out," ventured Ackerman. "The stock won't do
him any more good than it does us. He can't get the control over that
old bonehead Rawn--I mean our respected president--anyhow, any more
than we can. He's sitting tight, with the papers in his box. I admit
that I let go a little, because I figured it was time we were doing
something better than six per cent. with that stock, and all Rawn has
done is to make one explanation on top of another. He can't keep on
putting that across with me, anyhow. But he can sit there, as I say,
with the control in his hands, looking at those nice pictures of the
Lady of the Lightnings, which he had engraved as our trademark."
"He's awfully gone on her," spoke up one. "Not that I blame him,
either. I hate to sell my stock, because I like the looks of our
engraved goddess so much!"
"There's most always a lady standing around somewhere, with the
lightning in her hands," ventured the gray-bearded man solemnly. They
looked at one another again suggestively, but no one spoke more
definite words than that.
IV
"Well, we've had high-sounding talk put up to us about long enough,"
commented Ackerman, at length. "I was one of the first to go in for
this, and I believe in it yet, but I don't want this thing with Rawn in
control. Why, look at him,--he was just a clerk when he came to us,
and here he's putting on more side than any other man in the town.
He's taken advantage of his situation to play the market in and out,
all the time, which he couldn't have done if it hadn't been for friends
like us. He squeezed us into backing him--after we gave him that first
little flyer in Rubber, and some Oil--that hadn't cost us anything and
didn't look worth anything. In return he's handed us promises and
explanations and hot air, and nothing else. I've just got an idea that
there's a man-sized nigger somewhere around this woodpile. For me, I
prefer being hung as a little lamb rather than as a full-sized goat.
Yes, I let go a little International--to Van--I'll admit. Time enough
to get back into the game when we've put Rawn out!"
Standley nodded slowly. "That's a good deal the way I felt about it,"
he said. "It riles me to see the airs that fellow puts on. I remember
him when he didn't have two suits of hand-me-down clothes to his name,
and now he seems to have a hundred, all done by the best tailors in New
York. He used to tie his drawers with white tape strings, and now he
wears specially shaped silks. Where'd he get it? You talk about the
Keeley motor--this thing has got it beat a mile for mystery. And we
fellows have been standing for that! That is, unless we can stand from
under, somehow."
"Yes, seemingly," ventured the last speaker. "But how is that somehow?
There isn't any market for International."
The gray-bearded man laughed jubilantly at this. "Have you found that
out?"
"Yes, I certainly have found it out. Of course, the market has been
Van yonder. But he won't take on over a certain amount. He wants to
break the control, of course. But he's going to wait until he gets up
to the point and then do something quick. He's not going to hold our
bag for us--oh, no! Not him!"
"Well, I've a suspicion," said the older man finally, "that that secret
we've been after has been in the hands of our superintendent for a long
time."
"Why didn't Rawn tell us, then?" demanded one of his companions. "Has
he sold us out?"
"No, Rawn hasn't sold us out. At least I don't think so."
"Who has, then?"
"I don't know. The young man who made the wheels go for us whenever
Rawn wanted him to--he's the real key to this situation, if I'm a good
guesser. There's your contraband, and you can locate him somewhere in
this particular woodpile, or I'm no judge."
"Rawn's pretty well spread out in the general market," quite
irrelevantly suggested Standley.
"I should say he was!" growled Ackerman. "He's been in on all the good
things in the last two or three years. He must have made millions--I
don't know how much."
"In the general market--not International, of course. He's got all his
holdings in that. He has been spending money, though!" Standley
wagged his head.
"For instance, on the Lady of the Lightnings?" suggested Ackerman,
grinning amiably.
"Yes, on his young wife, and his new house, and his boats, and his
automobiles, and all the regular things. He can't have done it out of
International dividends, that's sure!"
"All the better that he hasn't," ventured Standley. The old man nodded.
"Go over there and call Van," he said simply.
V
The slender man with pointed beard came up pleasantly, his eyes
twinkling. "Well, my fellow sports and department heads!" he said.
"What's the good word this morning?"
"Sit down," said the gray-bearded man. "We know why you're here, and
why you've been hanging around here for the last six months. It's
foolish of you, son, to be out for revenge--nothing in that!"
"I'm not after revenge," smiled the other, his eyes still twinkling.
"I've made my peace!"
"Yes," commented Ackerman. "The friendship of some of you gladiators
is surely a wonderful thing! Rawn hates you, and you hate Rawn. Don't
your ears burn?"
"No, my heart!" He laid a hand on that organ with mock gravity.
"What could you do with the Lady of the Lightnings, Van?" asked
Standley discreetly.
"Nothing, absolutely nothing."
"Hasn't she any social instincts?"
"Plenty, but all gratified; that's the trouble. There isn't anything
those people want that they haven't got. No, I must say his position
is pretty strong."
"But it's not impregnable, Standley," cut in the gray-bearded man,
stopping the twiddling of his fingers above his round-paunched body.
"Now, look here, we're all friends together, when it comes to that.
You belong with us a lot more than you do with that Jasper from the
country. Of course, you split with us, got mad, took your dolls and
all that sort of thing--we're all used to that--and we all sat tight
because it looked good. It looked better than it does now. So, we're
friends again."
"Of course," nodded the slight man. "I understand that."
"Sure you do! Now, it's plain that when it comes to being on the
inside, you're there as an ex-director just as much as we are as real
directors--maybe more so, for all I know."
"Maybe more, yes, that's so," smiled the slender man, his brown eyes
twinkling yet more.
"How much more, then?"
"Why, a whole lot more!"
"What do you know?"
"I know what I've learned for myself and by myself. Gentlemen, it's on
the table! Play the game! I did. I've had some of those college
professors at work for me--they're the people that first got us locoed,
anyhow. Rawn, or rather his son-in-law, got his first notion from his
own professor in his college."
VI
"The real trouble with business to-day," interrupted the gray-bearded
man, reverting to his universal and invariable grievance, "is that
things are all going wrong with the American people. These
Progressives down there at Washington have set this whole country by
the ears--not even the Supreme Court can square things any more. The
suspiciousness of the average man is getting to be almost criminal,
that's what it is. The public thinks every man with money is a rascal.
The public is damnably ungrateful. Look what we have done for this
country, this little set of men sitting right here--what we've built
for them, what we've paid out to them for wages! What are we getting
in return? They envy us our daily bread, and by the Eternal! they'll
come near putting us where we can't get that much longer! Look at the
railway rate cases--it's robbery of the railways. Capital hasn't any
chance any more! The public seems to be getting ready for anarchy;
that's all."
"Isn't it the truth?" remarked the slender man sympathetically.
"Still, we have to handle men as we find them, my friends. In my own
case, I've been fighting the devil with a little of his own fire."
"How's that?"
"Well, for instance, I went out to see if I couldn't land that little
secret of the receiving motor myself, as I just told you. If
International doesn't want to take me in, or if I can't break in, maybe
there can be another company formed--there's considerable corporation
room left in New Jersey. You folks on the International have been
having your own troubles with labor, haven't you?"
"Well, rather!" growled Ackerman. "We put that up to old Colonel J. R.
Bonehead, our president! He seems to have got in about as nearly wrong
as any one could with our esteemed friends of the labor unions!"
"Naturally; well, I'll make a confession, since we're all friends
together--I've had men conferring with your horny-handed citizens and
suggesting that the International Power Company was 'unfair,' and a bad
outfit to work for!"
"That was nice of you!" growled Ackerman, getting red in the face.
"_Fine_ business, for you to come snooping around our works."
The slender man smiled at him pleasantly. "How else could I get
information?" he inquired. "You must remember that I'm no longer on
the board! But you must remember, also, that of late I have picked up
an occasional dollar's worth of International. I wanted to know how
about certain things!"
"Well, how about them, then?" demanded Standley fiercely. "Where do we
stand?"
"You want me to incriminate myself!"
"Oh, fiddlesticks about incrimination! Cut out that part of it!"
"All right, I will," said the other grimly. "Well, then, I've tried my
best to bribe your people, and I've got little out of it. I've tried
the foreman, the night watchman, and everybody else. I've had a dozen
of your workmen slugged for scabbing, and four or five of them shot,
one or two at least, for a good, permanent funeral. And I paid the
funeral expenses! You didn't know that? Well, that's the truth of it!"
"Well, _what_ do you know about that!" gasped Standley, aghast.
"I know a good deal about it, my Christian friend," said the slender
man relentlessly. "I can tell you what you already know, that your
motors are dismantled to-day. I can tell you also that there's a very
good chance that the secret we've been after is in the hands of one
man, and he's holding it up for some reason best known to himself.
We've got nothing on him! I can also tell you that if he won't give
up--though _why_ he won't, I can't imagine--it's possible we can work
out a receiver of our own elsewhere, without him."
VII
"Well, what does he want?" This from the old man.
"That's the everlasting mystery and puzzle of it. He doesn't want
anything, so far as I can learn. There's some factor in him that I
can't get my hands on, try the best that I can. Not that I don't
expect to break you wide open eventually, my friends."
"Now why do you want to do that?" asked the older financier. "Why not
join in with us and break the bonehead?"
"Fine! But how can we do that? He's sitting pretty tight. The man's
played in fine luck. I admit I rather admire him."
"Bah, that's the way with all the new ones; they all play in luck for a
time. Each Napoleon has his boom, but after a time boom values
shrink--they always do. This chap'll find his level when we get ready
to tell him."
"For instance?"
"Well, for instance, then! He's sitting there with a small margin of
control in the International. That gave him his start, and he's wise
enough to hang on to that. But it didn't give him his money--he's only
made dividend money out of that; and who cares for dividend money? He
doesn't own control in the Guatemala Oil Company, does he? He's made a
lot out of Arizona and Utah coppers, but he doesn't own control in a
single company there, does he? He's in with the L.P., but he borrowed
to get in. He's made a big killing in Rubber, but he doesn't own any
Rubber control of his own, does he? Now, you follow him out in every
deal he's made---iron, copper, steel, oil, rails, timber, irrigation,
utilities, industrials--and you'll find he's simply been banking on his
inside information and his outside credit. Who gave him both of those
things?--Why, we did, didn't we? All right! Suppose we withdraw our
credit. What happens?"
VIII
They went silent now, and grouped a little closer about the tabouret
which stood between them. The old man's voice went on evenly, with no
excitement. Their conversation attracted the attention of none in the
wide lounging room, where large affairs more than once had been
discussed--even the making of Senators to order.
"I'll tell you what happens," the old man resumed. "He quits using us
for a stalking horse, and he comes down to his own system. He's spread
out. Banks are all polite, but--well, he has to put up collateral; and
then some more. If he doesn't want to put up International, he's apt
to find that a bunch of automobiles is poor property when sold at
twenty per cent. their cost. He turns off two or three butlers, but
still that doesn't serve for margins. The market doesn't suit his book
any more.
"He's discovering now the great truth of something any old friend Emory
Storrs used to say--Emory always was in debt, or wanted to be, and says
he: 'There's no trouble about prosperity in this country; there's
plenty of money--the only trouble is in the confounded scarcity in
_collateral_.' Well, he goes over to this young man, who is standing
out for some reason best known to himself, and he tries to get him to
come through, and he doesn't come through. What's left? Why, the
diamond lightnings of the Lady of the Lightnings--and his International
Power stock.
"Meantime, all this thing can't be kept entirely secret; that is to
say, the market part of it can't be. But we sit tight, all of us. We
hold our regular directors' meetings of the International board, and we
smile, and look pleasant. We don't know a thing about his hot water
experiences in the open market. He explains to us why this and that
happens, or doesn't happen, in International; and we smile and look
pleasant, and we don't know a thing. After a time it's up to him and
the Lady of the Lightnings. Something pops! He's up against it, all
except his International Power. Then Van, and you, Standley, and you,
Ack, and you, and you and I, and all of us--why we're still pleasant as
pie to him and we say, 'Well, Mr. John Rawn, if you'd only sell us two
or three shares of International, we'd pay you twenty times what it's
worth--but it's very much cheaper now--by reason of Van's competing
company!'
"That's about all, I think!"
The others nodded silently. The game was not new to them, and even in
its most complicated features might have been called simple, with
resources such as theirs. If these resources had made Rawn, they could
unmake him. It was all in the day's work for them.
"So I'll tell you what we'll do," concluded the old financier after a
time. "We'll just let you and Van look around here a little bit and
see what more you can learn. You're one of the real directors of
International Power to-day, Van. Mr. Rawn is on the minority and the
toboggan list, or is going to be there. We'll take the first steps
when we see the boys down East. The country's getting right now for a
little speculation--things have been dead long enough. There'll be a
market. When the market starts, I think you know which way it will go
for a certain person I needn't name."
IX
They rose, stood about loungingly for a time, and at length slowly
separated, the older man and the ex-director with the pointed beard
falling back of the others for just an instant.
"What's the truth about the row, Van?" demanded the old man, laying a
large, pudgy hand on the other's shoulder.
"I don't know, honestly, what it is. I can tell you this much--your
factory is closed. Your superintendent, Halsey, has quit his work and
left his old residence. Didn't Rawn tell you _that_?"
"No! What's up now--some trouble with a woman? Wasn't he married to
Rawn's daughter?"
"Yes, and she went to live with Papa. Papa had the coin."
"And the superintendent is going the chorus girl route here or in New
York?"
"No, sir, not in the least,--nothing of the sort. You can't guess
where he's gone."
The other shook his head.
"Well, I'll tell you then, since you are one of the directors of the
International and I'm not! He's gone and taken his other pair of pants
and his celluloid collar, and moved over to the North Shore! He's
living in the same house with Papa J. Rawn right now;--that is to say,
he has been for two or three weeks."
"Well, what do you know about that, too!" commented his friend.
"I don't know much about it. As I told you, there's something in here
I don't understand. I can't for the life of me figure out that chap
Halsey's motives or his moves. But I don't care about him. It's Rawn
I'm after--and I'm going to get him!"