Chapter 3

He Listened a moment, then answered, “Stand on it at 80 for 12,000 shares.
I will be there in a second.” He dropped the receiver. “Jim, we have
struck a snag. Arthur Perkins, whom I left on guard at the pole, says
Barry Conant has just jumped in and supplied all the bids. He has it down
to 81 and is offering it in 5,000 blocks and is aggressive. I must get
there quick,” and he shot out of the office.

I sprang for Bob’s telephone: “Perkins, quick!” “What are they doing,
Perkins?” I asked a moment later.

“Conant has almost filled me up. He seems to have a hogshead of it on
tap,” he answered.

“Buy 50,000 shares, 5,000 each point down; and anything unfilled, give to
Bob when he gets there. He is on the way.”

I shut off, and turned to Miss Sands:

“This is no time to stand on ceremony, Miss Sands. Barry Conant is
Camemeyer’s and ‘Standard Oil’s’ head broker. His being on the floor
means mischief. He never goes into a big whirl personally unless they are
out for blood. Bob has exhausted his buying power, and though I tell you
frankly that I never speculate, don’t believe in speculation and am in
this deal only for Bob—and for you—I swear I don’t intend to let them
wipe the floor with him without at least making them swallow some of the
dust they kick up. Please don’t object to my helping out, Miss Sands.
Ordinarily I would defer to your wishes, but I love Bob Brownley only
second to my wife, and I have money enough to warrant a plunge in stock.
If they should turn Bob over in this deal, he—well, they’re not going to,
if I can prevent it,” and I started for the Exchange on the run.

When I got there the scene beggared description. That of the morning was
tame in comparison. A bull market, however terrific, always is tame beside
a bear crash. In the few moments it took me to get to the floor, the
battle had started. The greater part of the Exchange membership was in a
dense mob wedged against the rail behind the Sugar-pole. I could not have
got within yards of the centre of that crowd of men, fast becoming
panic-stricken, if the fate of nations had depended on my errand. I had
witnessed such a scene before. It represented a certain phase of
Stock-Exchange-gambling procedure, where one man apparently has every
other man on the floor against him. I understood: Bob against them
all—he trying to stay the onrushing current of dropping prices; they
bent on keeping the sluice-gates open. He was backed up against
the rail—not the Bob of the morning; not a vestige of that cold,
brain-nerve-and-body-in-hand gambler remained. His hat was gone, his
collar torn and hanging over his shoulder. His coat and waistcoat were
ripped open, showing the full length of his white shirt-front, and his
eyes were fairly mad. Bob was no longer a human being, but a monarch of
the forest at bay, with the hunter in front of him, and closing in upon
him, in a great half-circle, the pack of harriers, all gnashing their
teeth, baring their fangs, and howling for blood. The hunter directly
facing Bob, was Barry Conant—very slight, very short, a marvellously
compact, handsome, miniature man, with a fascinating face, dark olive in
tint, lighted by a pair of sparkling black eyes and framed in jet-black
hair; a black mustache was parted over white teeth, which, when he was
stalking his game, looked like those of a wolf. An interesting man at all
times was this Barry Conant, and he had been on more and fiercer
battle-fields than any other half-score members combined. The scene was a
rare one for a student of animalised men.

While every other man in the crowd was at a high tension of excitement,
Barry Conant was as calm as though standing in the centre of a ten-acre
daisy-field cutting off the helpless flowers’ heads with every swing of
his arm. Switching stock-gamblers into eternity had grown to be a pastime
to Barry Conant. Here was Bob thundering with terrific emphasis “78 for
5,000,” “77 for 5,000,” “75 for 5,000,” “74 for 5,000,” “73 for 5,000,”
“72 for 5,000,” seemingly expecting through sheer power of voice to crush
his opponent into silence. But with the regularity of a trip-hammer Barry
Conant’s right hand, raised in unhurried gesture, and his clear calm
“Sold” met Bob’s every retreating bid. It was a battle royal—a king on
one side, a Richelieu on the other. Though there was frantic buying and
selling all around these two generals, the trading was gauged by the
trend of their battle. All knew that if Bob should be beaten down by this
concentrated modern finance devil, a panic would ensue and Sugar would go
none could say how low. But if Bob should play him to a standstill by
exhausting his selling power, Sugar would quickly soar to even higher
figures than before. It was known that Barry Conant’s usual order from his
clients, the “System” masters, for such an occasion as the present was
“Break the price at any cost.” On the other hand, every one knew that
Randolph & Randolph were usually behind Bob’s big operations; this was
evidently one of his biggest; and every man there knew that Randolph &
Randolph were seldom backed down by any force.

As Bob made his bid “72 for 5,000,” and got it, I saw a quick flash of
pain shoot across his face, and realised that it probably meant he was
nearing the end of my last order. I sized it up that there was deviltry of
more than usual significance behind this selling movement; that Barry
Conant must have unlimited orders to sell and smash. My final order of
fifty thousand brought our total up to one hundred and fifty thousand
shares, a large amount for even Randolph & Randolph to buy of a stock
selling at nearly $200 a share. I then and there decided that whatever
happened I would go no further. Just then Bob’s wild eye caught mine, and
there was in it a piteous appeal, such an appeal as one sees in the eye of
the wounded doe when she gives up her attempt to swim to shore and waits
the coming of the pursuing hunter’s canoe. I sadly signaled that I was
through. As Bob caught the sign, he threw his head back and bellowed a
deep, hoarse “70 for 10,000.” I knew then that he had already bought forty
thousand, and that this was the last-ditch stand. Barry Conant must have
caught the meaning too. Instantly, like a revolver report, came his
“Sold!” Then the compact, miniature mass of human springs and wires, which
had until now been held in perfect control, suddenly burst from its
clamps, and Barry Conant was the fiend his Wall Street reputation pictured
him. His five feet five inches seemed to loom to the height of a giant.
His arms, with their fate-pointing fingers, rose and fell with bewildering
rapidity as his piercing voice rang out—“5,000 at 69, 68, 65,” “10,000 at
63,” “25,000 at 60.” Pandemonium reigned. Every man in the crowd seemed
to have the capital stock of the Sugar Trust to sell, and at any price. A
score seemed to be bent on selling as low as possible instead of for as
much as they could get. These were the shorts who had been punished the
day before by Bob’s uplift.

Poor Bob, he was forgotten! An instant after he made his last effort he
was the dead cock in the pit. Frenzied gamblers of the Stock Exchange have
no more use for the dead cocks than have Mexicans for the real birds when
they get the fatal gaff. The day after the contest, or even that same
night at Delmonico’s and the clubs, these men would moan for poor Bob;
Barry Conant’s moan would be the loudest of them all, and, what is more,
it would be sincere. But on battle day away to the dump with the fallen
bird, the bird that could not win! I saw a look of deep, terrible agony
spread over Bob’s face; and then in a flash he was the Bob Brownley who I
always boasted had the courage and the brain to do the right thing in all
circumstances. To the astonishment of every man in the crowd he let loose
one wild yell, a cross between the war-whoop of an Indian and the bay of a
deep-lunged hound regaining a lost scent. Then he began to throw over
Sugar stock, right and left, in big and little amounts. He slaughtered the
price, under-cutting Barry Conant’s every offer and filling every bid. For
twenty minutes he was a madman, then he stopped. Sugar was falling rapidly
to the price it finally reached, 90, and the panic was in full swing, but
panics seemed now to have no interest for Bob. He pushed his way through
the crowd and, joining me, said: “Jim, forgive me. I have dragged you into
an enormous loss, have ruined Beulah Sands, her father, and myself. I
think at the last moment I did the only thing possible. I threw over the
150,000 shares and so cut off some of our loss. Let us go to the office
and see where we stand.” He was strangely, unnaturally calm after that
heart-crushing, nerve-tearing day. I tried to tell him how I admired his
cool nerve and pluck in about-facing and doing the only thing there was
left to do; to tell him that required more real courage and
level-headedness than all the rest of the day’s doings; but he stopped me:

“Jim, don’t talk to me. My conceit is gone. I have learned my lesson
to-day. My plans were all right, and sound, but poor fool that I was, I
did not take into consideration the loaded dice of the master thieves. I
knew what they could do, have seen them scores of times, as you have, at
their slaughter; seen them crush out the hearts of other men just as good
as you or I; seen them take them out and skin and quarter-slice them,
unmindful of the agony of those who were dear to and dependent on their
owners, but it never seemed to strike me home. It was not my heart, and
somehow, I looked at it as a part of the game and let it go at that.
To-day I know what it means to be put on the chopping-block of the
‘System’ butchers. I know what it is to see my heart and the heart of one
I love—and yours, too, Jim—systematically skewered to those of the
hundreds and thousands of victims who have gone before. Jim, we must be
three millions losers, and the men who have our money have so many, many
millions that they can’t live long enough even to thumb them over. Men who
will use our money on the gambling-table, at the race-tracks, squander it
on stage harlots, or in turning their wives and daughters or their
neighbours’ wives and daughters into worse than stage harlots. Men, Jim,
who are not fit, measured by any standard of decency, to walk the same
earth as you and Judge Sands. Men whose painted pets pollute the very air
that such as Beulah Sands must breathe. I’ve learned my lesson to-day. I
thought I knew the game of finance, but I’m suddenly awakened to a
realisation of the dense ignorance I wallowed in. Jim, but for the loading
of the dice, I should now have been taking Beulah Sands to her father with
the money that the hellish ‘System’ stole from him. Later I should have
taken her to the altar, and after, who knows but that I should have had
the happiest home and family in all the world, and lived as her people and
mine have lived for generations, honest, God-fearing, law-abiding,
neighbour-loving men and women, and then died as men should die? But now,
Jim, I see a black, awful picture. No, I’m not morbid, I’m going to make a
heroic effort to put the picture out of sight; but I’m afraid, Jim, I’m
afraid.”

He stopped as we pulled up on the sidewalk in front of Randolph &
Randolph’s office. “Here it is on the bulletin. See what did the trick,
Jim. They held the Sugar meeting last night instead of waiting till
to-morrow, and cut the dividend instead of increasing it. The world won’t
know it until to-morrow. Then they will know it, then they will know it.
They will read it in the headlines of the papers—a few suicides, a few
defaulters, a few new convicts, an unclaimed corpse or two at the morgue;
a few innocent girls, whose fathers’ fortunes have gone to swell
Camemeyer’s and ‘Standard Oil’s’ already uncountable gold, turned into
streetwalkers; a few new palaces on Fifth Avenue, and a few new libraries
given to communities that formerly took pride in building them from their
honestly earned savings. A report or two of record-breaking diamond sales
by Tiffany to the kings and czars of dollar royalty, then front-page news
stories of clawing, mauling, and hair-pulling wrangles among the stage
harlots for the possession of these diamonds. They were not quite sure
that the dividend cut alone would do the trick, and they were taking no
chances, these mighty warriors of the ‘System,’ so their hireling Senate
committee held a session last night and unanimously reported to put sugar
on the free list. The people will read that in the morning, and probably
the day after they’ll be told that the committee held another session
to-night and unanimously reported to take it off the free list. By that
time these honourable statesmen will have loaded up with the stock that
you and I and Beulah Sands sold, and that other poor devils will slaughter
to-morrow after reading their morning papers.”

Bob’s bitterness was terrible. My heart was torn as I listened. He stalked
through the office and into that of Beulah Sands. I followed. She was at
her desk, and when she looked up, her great eyes opened in wonderment as
they took in Bob, his grim, set face, the defiant, sullen desperation of
the big brown eyes, the dishevelled hair and clothes. For an instant she
stood as one who had seen an apparition.

“Look me over, Beulah Sands,” he said, “look me over to your heart’s
content, for you may never again see the fool of fools in all the world,
the fool who thought himself competent to cope with men of brains, with
men who really know how to play the game of dollars as it is played in
this Christian age. Don’t ask me not to call you Beulah; that what I tried
to do was for you is the one streak of light in all this black hell.
Beulah, Beulah, we are ruined, you, your father, and I, ruined, and I’m
the fool who did it.”

She rose from her desk with all the quiet, calm dignity that we had been
admiring for three months, and stood facing Bob. She did not seem to see
me; she saw nothing but the man who had gone out that morning the
personification of hope, who now stood before her the picture of black
despair, and she must have thought, “It was all for me.” Suddenly she took
the lapels of his torn coat in either hand. She had to reach up to do it,
this winsome little Virginia lady. With her big calm blue eyes looking
straight into his, she said:

“Bob.”

That was all, but the word seemed to change the very atmosphere in the
room. The look of desperation faded from Bob’s face, and as though the
words had sprung the hidden catch to the doors of his storehouse of
pent-up misery, his eyes filled with hot, blinding tears. His great chest
was convulsed with sobs. Again—clear, calm, fearless, and tender, came
the one syllable, “Bob.” And at that Bob’s self-control slipped the
leash. With a hoarse cry, he threw his arms around her and crushed her to
his breast. The sacredness of the scene made me feel like an intruder, and
I started to leave the room. But in a moment Beulah Sands was her usual
self and, turning to me, she said: “Mr. Randolph, please forget what you
have seen. For an instant, as I saw Mr. Brownley’s awful misery, I thought
of nothing but what he had done for me, what he had tried to do for my
father, what a penalty he has paid. From what you said when you left and
the fact that I got no word from either of you, I feared the worst and did
not dare look at the tape; I simply waited and hoped and—prayed. Yes, I
prayed as my mother taught me I should pray whenever I was helpless and
could do nothing myself. And I felt that God would not let the noble work
of two such men be overthrown by those you were battling with. In the
midst of a calmness that I took for a good omen, you came. Can you blame
me for forgetting myself? Mr. Brownley,” the voice was now calm and
self-controlled, “tell me what you have done. Where do we stand?” “There
is little to tell,” Bob answered. “Camemeyer and ‘Standard Oil’ have
taken me into camp as they would take a stuck pig. They have made a
monkeyfied ass out of me, and we are ruined, and I have caused Mr.
Randolph a heavy loss. Roughly, I figure that of your four hundred
thousand capital and the million four hundred thousand profit you had this
morning, only your capital remains.”

Wishing to spare Bob, I interrupted and myself gave the girl briefly the
details of what had happened. She listened intently and seemed to take in
all the trickery of the “System” masters; seemed to see just what it meant
to us and to her. But she made no comment, showed by no outward sign that
she suffered. As soon as I was through she turned to Bob, who had stood
with his eyes fastened upon her face, as though somewhere out of its soft
beauty must come an assurance that this was all a bad dream.

“Mr. Brownley,” she said, “let us figure up just where we stand, so that
we may know what to do to recoup. You have said so many times, since I
have been here, that Wall Street is magic land; that no man may tell
twenty-four hours ahead what will happen to him. You have said it so many
times that I believe it. We know that this morning we were at the goal,
that we were millions ahead, and all from twenty-four hours’ effort. We
have yet almost three months left, and I do not see why we have not just
as much chance as we had day before yesterday. Yes, and more, because we
know more now. Next time we will include the dividend cuts and the Senate
duplicity in our figuring.”

We both dumbly stared in wondering admiration at this marvellous woman.
Was it possible that a girl could have such nerve, such courage? Or had
woman’s hope, so persistent where her loved ones are concerned, made
Beulah Sands blind to the awfulness of the situation? As I looked at her I
could not doubt that she fully realised our position, that she was really
suffering more than either of us, that she was only acting to ease Bob’s
anguish. Bob brought out his memoranda, and in half an hour we had the
figures. The total loss was nearly three millions. As Beulah Sands’s
20,000 shares had cost less than ours and Bob figured to leave her capital
of $400,000 intact, we felt some comfort. Beulah Sands had watched the
figuring with the keenness of an expert, and when Bob announced the final
figures, which showed that she still had what she started with, she drew
the sheet containing the totals to her. “I was willing to accept your
assistance,” she said, “when the deal promised a profit to all of us,
because I appreciated your goodness and knew how much it would hurt your
feelings if I were churlish about the division; but now that we all lose I
must stand my fair share; I must.” She said this in a way that we both
knew precluded the possibility of argument. “We owned together 150,000
shares. I was to have had the profits on 20,000 shares. Our total loss is
$2,775,000, of which I must bear my just proportion. Mr. Brownley, you
will see that $370,000 is charged to my account. I shall have $30,000
left. If our cause is as just as we think, God in his goodness will make
this ample for our purposes.”

Though Bob and I were in despair at her determination to strip herself of
what Bob had worked so hard to accumulate, we could not help feeling a
reverence for her faith and her sturdy independence. She now showed us in
her delicate way that she wished to be alone; as we went she held out her
hand to Bob. “Mr. Brownley, please, for the sake of the work we have to
do, look on the bright side of this calamity, for it has a bright side.
You wanted me to send word to my father that we were about to grasp
victory. Think if we had sent it—then you will know that God is good,
even when we think he is chastening us beyond endurance.”

Bob took me into his office. “Jim, you see what a woman can do, and we are
taught women are the weaker sex. Now listen to what you must do. Accept my
notes for the whole loss, less one hundred thousand which I have to my
credit, and which I will pay on account. I won’t listen to any objection.
The deal was mine; you came in only to help us out, and I ought never to
have tempted you. If I remain in my present busted condition, the notes
will be blank paper. Therefore you do me no harm in taking them. If I
should strike it rich, I should never feel like a man until I made up the
loss.”

It was no use arguing with him in his inflexible mood, so I took his
demand notes for $2,405,000. I begged him to go home with me to dinner,
but he insisted that he could not face my wife with his last night’s
break still fresh in her mind. Next day he did not turn up. Along in the
afternoon I received a telegram from him, saying that he was on his way to
Virginia, that he needed a rest and would be back in a week. I was
worried, nervous. It takes until the next day and the day after, and the
week after that, to get down to the deepest misery of an upset such as we
had been through. I did not feel easy with Bob out of sight while he was
sounding for a new footing. I went to Beulah Sands in hope we might talk
over the affair, but when I told her that Bob was to be gone for a week
and that I was uneasy, she said in her calm, confident manner: “I don’t
think there is anything to worry about, Mr. Randolph. Mr. Brownley is too
much of a man to allow an affair of dollars to do anything more than annoy
him. He will be back all the better for his rest.” She dropped her long
lashes in a this-conversation-is-closed way that we had come to know meant
going time.