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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Friday, the Thirteenth, by Thomas W. Lawson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Friday, the Thirteenth
+
+Author: Thomas W. Lawson
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2004 [eBook #12345]
+[Most recently updated: January 7, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Distributed Proofreaders
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRIDAY, THE THIRTEENTH ***
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: “I saw there something missing from her great blue eyes.
+I looked; gasped”]
+
+
+
+
+Friday, the Thirteenth
+
+A Novel by
+
+Thomas W. Lawson
+
+Frontispiece in colour by Sigismond de Ivanowski
+
+1907
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1906, 1907.
+Copyright, 1907.
+Published, February, 1907
+
+
+
+
+To Her
+
+I Dedicate This Book
+
+All That Is Good In This Little Waif, Which Is Very
+Dear To Me, I Know A Just God Will Place To
+Her Credit. All That Is Mean And Low And
+Human Could Never Have Been Birthed
+Had She Been Nigh To Guide An
+Ever Wayward Pen.
+
+_The Author._
+
+_The Nest, Dreamwold,
+August, 1906._
+
+
+
+
+Friday, the Thirteenth
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+
+
+“Friday, the 13th; I thought as much. If Bob has started, there will be
+hell, but I will see what I can do.”
+
+The sound of my voice, as I dropped the receiver, seemed to part the mists
+of five years and usher me into the world of Then as though it had never
+passed on.
+
+I had been sitting in my office, letting the tape slide through my fingers
+while its every yard spelled “panic” in a constantly rising voice, when
+they told me that Brownley on the floor of the Exchange wanted me at the
+’phone, and “quick.” Brownley was our junior partner and floor man. He
+talked with a rush. Stock Exchange floor men in panics never let their
+speech hobble.
+
+“Mr. Randolph, it’s sizzling over here, and it’s getting hotter every
+second. It’s Bob—that is evident to all. If he keeps up this pace for
+twenty minutes longer, the sulphur will overflow ‘the Street’ and get
+into the banks and into the country, and no man can tell how much
+territory will be burned over by to-morrow. The boys have begged me to ask
+you to throw yourself into the breach and stay him. They agree you are the
+only hope now.”
+
+“Are you sure, Fred, that this is Bob’s work?” I asked. “Have you seen
+him?”
+
+“Yes, I have just come from his office, and glad I was to get out. He’s on
+the war-path, Mr. Randolph—uglier than I ever saw him. The last time he
+broke loose was child’s play to his mood to-day. Mother sent me word this
+morning that she saw last night the spell was coming. He had been up to
+see her and sisters, and mother thought from his tone he was about to
+disappear again. When she told me of his mood, and I remembered the day, I
+was afraid he might seek his vent here. Also I heard of his being about
+town till long after midnight. The minute I opened his office door this
+morning he flew at me like a panther. I told him I had only dropped in on
+my rounds for an order, as they were running off right smart, and I didn’t
+know but he might like to pick up some bargains. ‘Bargains!’ he roared,
+‘don’t you know the day? Don’t you know it is Friday, the 13th? Go back
+to that hell-pit and sell, sell, sell.’ ‘Sell what and how much?’ I asked.
+‘Anything, everything. Give the thieves every share they will take, and
+when they won’t take any more, ram as much again down their crops until
+they spit up all they have been buying for the last three months!’ Going
+out I met Jim Holliday and Frank Swan rushing in. They are evidently
+executing Bob’s orders, and have been pouring Anti-People’s out for an
+hour. They will be on the floor again in a few minutes, so I thought it
+safer to call you before I started to sell. Mr. Randolph, they cannot take
+much more of anything in here, and if I begin to throw stocks over, it
+will bring the gavel inside of ten minutes; and that will be to announce a
+dozen failures. It’s yet twenty minutes to one and God only knows what
+will happen before three. It’s up to you, Mr. Randolph, to do something,
+and unless I am on a bad slant, you haven’t many minutes to lose.”
+
+It was then I dropped the receiver with “I thought as much!” As I had been
+fingering the tape, watching five and ten millions crumbling from price
+values every few minutes, I was sure this was the work of Bob Brownley.
+No one else in Wall Street had the power, the nerve, and the devilish
+cruelty to rip things as they had been ripped during the last twenty
+minutes. The night before I had passed Bob in the theatre lobby. I gave
+him close scrutiny and saw the look of which I of all men best knew the
+meaning. The big brown eyes were set on space; the outer corners of the
+handsome mouth were drawn hard and tense as though weighted. As I had my
+wife with me it was impossible to follow him, but when I got home I called
+up his house and his clubs, intending to ask, him to run up and smoke a
+cigar with me, but could locate him nowhere. I tried again in the morning
+without success, but when just before noon the tape began to jump and
+flash and snarl, I remembered Bob’s ugly mood, and all it portended.
+
+Fred Brownley was Bob’s youngest brother, twelve years his junior. He had
+been with Randolph & Randolph from the day he left college, and for over a
+year had been our most trusted Stock Exchange man. Bob Brownley, when
+himself, was as fond of his “baby brother,” as he called him, as his
+beautiful Southern mother was of both; but when the devil had possession
+of Bob—and his option during the past five years had been exercised many
+a time—mother and brother had to take their place with all the rest of
+the world, for then Bob knew no kindred, no friends. All the wide world
+was to him during those periods a jungle peopled with savage animals and
+reptiles to hunt and fight and tear and kill.
+
+It is hardly necessary for me to explain who Randolph & Randolph are. For
+more than sixty years the name has spoken for itself in every part of the
+world where dollar-making machines are installed. No railroad is financed,
+no great “industrial” projected, without by force of habit, hat-in-handing
+a by-your-leave of Randolph & Randolph, and every nation when entering the
+market for loans, knows that the favour of the foremost American bankers
+is something which must be reckoned with. I pride myself that at
+forty-two, at the end of the ten years I have had the helm of Randolph &
+Randolph, I have done nothing to mar the great name my father and uncle
+created, but something to add to its sterling reputation for honest
+dealing, fearless, old-fashioned methods, and all-round integrity.
+Bradstreet’s and other mercantile agencies say, in reporting Randolph &
+Randolph, “Worth fifty millions and upward, credit unlimited.” I can take
+but small praise for this, for the report was about the same the day I
+left college and came to the office to “learn the business.” But, as the
+survivor of my great father and uncle, I can say, my Maker as my witness,
+that Randolph & Randolph have never loaned a dollar of their millions at
+over legal rates, 6 per cent, per annum; have never added to their hoard
+by any but fair, square business methods; and that blight of blights,
+frenzied finance, has yet to find a lodging-place beneath the old
+black-and-gold sign that father and uncle nailed up with their own hands
+over the entrance.
+
+Nineteen years ago I was graduated from Harvard. My classmate and chum,
+Bob Brownley, of Richmond, Va., was graduated with me. He was class poet,
+I, yard marshal. We had been four years together at St. Paul’s previous to
+entering Harvard. No girl and lover were fonder than we of each other.
+
+My people had money, and to spare, and with it a hard-headed, Northern
+horse-sense. The Brownleys were poor as church mice, but they had the
+brilliant, virile blood of the old Southern oligarchy and the romantic,
+“salaam-to-no-one” Dixie-land pride of before-the-war days, when Southern
+prodigality and hospitality were found wherever women were fair and men’s
+mirrors in the bottom of their julep-glasses.
+
+Bob’s father, one of the big, white pillars of Southern aristocracy, had
+gone through Congress and the Senate of his country to the tune of “Spend
+and not spare,” which left his widow and three younger daughters and a
+small son dependent upon Bob, his eldest.
+
+Many a warm summer’s afternoon, as Bob and I paddled down the Charles, and
+often on a cold, crispy night as we sat in my shooting-box on the Cape Cod
+shore, had we matched up for our future. I was to have the inside run of
+the great banking business of Randolph & Randolph, and Bob was eventually
+to represent my father’s firm on the floor of the Stock Exchange. “I’d die
+in an office,” Bob used to say, “and the floor of the Stock Exchange is
+just the chimney-place to roast my hoe-cake in.” So when our college days
+were over my able had saddled Bob’s youth with the heavy responsibilities
+of husbanding and directing his family’s slim finances that he took to
+business as a swallow to the air. We entered the office of Randolph &
+Randolph on the same day, and on its anniversary, a year later, my father
+summoned us into his office for a sort of tally-up talk. Neither of us
+quite knew what was coming, and we thrilled with pleasure when he said:
+
+“Jim, you and Bob have fairly outdone my expectations. I have had my eye
+on both of you and I want you to know that the kind of industry and
+business intelligence you have shown here would have won you recognition
+in any banking-house on ‘the Street.’ I want you both in the firm—Jim to
+learn his way round so he can step into my shoes; you, Bob, to take one of
+the firm’s seats on the Stock Exchange.”
+
+Bob’s face went red and then pale with happiness as he reached for my
+father’s hand.
+
+“I’m very grateful to you sir, far more so than any words can say, but I
+want to talk this proposition of yours over with Jim here first. He knows
+me better than any one else in the world and I’ve some ideas I’d like to
+thrash out with him.”
+
+“Speak up here, Bob,” said my father.
+
+“Well, sir, I should feel much better if I could go over there into the
+swirl and smash it out for myself. You see if I could win out alone and
+pay back the seat price, and then make a pile for myself, if you felt
+later like giving me another chance to come into the firm, then I should
+not be laying myself open to the charge of being a mere pensioner on your
+friendship. You know what I mean, sir, and won’t think I am filled with
+any low-down pride, but if you will let me have the price of a Stock
+Exchange seat on my note, and will give me the chance, when I get the hang
+of the ropes, to handle some of the firm’s orders, I shall be just as much
+beholden to you and Jim, sir, and shall feel a lot better myself.”
+
+I knew what Bob meant; so did father, and we were glad enough to do what
+he asked, father insisting on making the seat price in the form of a
+present, after explaining to us that a foundation Stock Exchange rule
+prohibited an applicant from borrowing the seat price. Four years after
+Bob Brownley entered the Stock Exchange he had paid back the forty
+thousand, with interest, and not only had a snug fifty thousand to his
+credit on Randolph & Randolph’s books, but was sending home six thousand a
+year while living up to, as he jokingly put it, “an honest man’s notch.” I
+may say in passing, that a Wall Street man’s notch would make twice six
+thousand yearly earnings cast an uncertain shadow at Christmas time. Bob
+was the favourite of the Exchange, as he had been the pet at school and at
+college, and had his hands full of business three hundred days in the
+year. Besides Randolph & Randolph’s choicest commissions, he had the
+confidential orders of two of the heavy plunging cliques.
+
+I had just passed my thirty-second birthday when my kind old dad suddenly
+died. For the previous six years I had been getting ready for such an
+event; that is, I had grown accustomed to hearing my father say: “Jim,
+don’t let any grass grow in getting the hang of every branch of our
+business, so that when anything happens to me there will be no disturbance
+in ‘the Street’ in regard to Randolph & Randolph’s affairs. I want to let
+the world know as soon as possible that after I am gone our business will
+run as it always has. So I will work you into my directorships in those
+companies where we have interests and gradually put you into my different
+trusteeships.”
+
+Thus at father’s death there was not a ripple in our affairs and none of
+the stocks known as “The Randolph’s” fluttered a point because of that, to
+the financial world, momentous event. I inherited all of father’s fortune
+other than four millions, which he divided up among relatives and
+charities, and took command of a business that gave me an income of two
+millions and a half a year.
+
+Once more I begged Bob to come into the firm.
+
+“Not yet, Jim,” he replied. “I’ve got my seat and about a hundred thousand
+capital, and I want to feel that I’m free to kick my heels until I have
+raked together an even million all of my own making; then I’ll settle down
+with you, old man, and hold my handle of the plough, and if some good girl
+happens along about that time—well, then it will be ‘An ivy-covered
+little cot’ for mine.”
+
+He laughed, and I laughed too. Bob was looked upon by all his friends as a
+bad case of woman-shy. No woman, young or old, who had in any way crossed
+Bob’s orbit but had felt that fascination, delicious to all women, in the
+presence of:
+
+    A soul by honour schooled,
+    A heart by passion ruled—
+
+but he never seemed to see it. As my wife—for I had been three years
+married and had two little Randolphs to show that both Katherine Blair and
+I knew what marriage was for—never tired of saying, “Poor Bob! He’s
+woman-blind, and it looks as though he would never get his sight in that
+direction.”
+
+“Then again, Jim,” he continued in a tone of great seriousness, “there’s a
+little secret I have never let even you into. The truth is I am not safe
+yet—not safe to speak for the old house of Randolph & Randolph. Yes, you
+may laugh—you who are, and always have been, as staunch and steady as the
+old bronze John Harvard in the yard, you who know Monday mornings just
+what you are going to do Saturday nights and all the days and nights in
+between, and who always do it. Jim, I have found since I have been over on
+the floor that the Southern gambling blood that made my grandfather, on
+one of his trips back from New York, though he had more land and slaves
+than he could use, stake his land and slaves—yes, and grandmother’s
+too—on a card-game, and—lose, and change the whole face of the Brownley
+destiny—those same gambling microbes are in my blood, and when they begin
+to claw and gnaw I want to do something; and, Jim”—and the big brown eyes
+suddenly shot sparks—“if those microbes ever get unleashed, there’ll be
+mischief to pay on the floor—sure there will!”
+
+Bob’s handsome head was thrown back; his thin nostrils dilated as though
+there was in them the breath of conflict. The lips were drawn across the
+white teeth with just part enough to show their edges, and in the depths
+of the eyes was a dark-red blaze that somehow gave the impression one gets
+in looking down some long avenue of black at the instant a locomotive
+headlight rounds a curve at night.
+
+Twice before, way back in our college days, I had had a peep at this
+gambling tempter of Bob’s. Once in a poker game in our rooms, when a crowd
+of New York classmates tried to run him out of a hand by the sheer weight
+of coin. And again at the Pequot House at New London on the eve of a
+varsity boat-race, when a Yale crowd shook a big wad of money and taunts
+at Bob until with a yell he left his usually well-leaded feet and
+frightened me, whose allowance was dollars to Bob’s cents, at the sum
+total of the bet-cards he signed before he cleared the room of Yale money
+and came to with a white face streaming with cold perspiration. These
+events had passed out of my memory as the ordinary student breaks that any
+hot-blooded youth is liable to make in like circumstances. As I looked at
+Bob that day, while he tried to tell me that the business of Randolph &
+Randolph would not be safe in his keeping, I had to admit to myself that I
+was puzzled. I had regarded my old college chum not only as the best
+mentally harnessed man I had ever met, but I knew him as the soul of
+honour, that honour of the old story-books, and I could not credit his
+being tempted to jeopardise unfairly the rights or property of another.
+But it was habit with me to let Bob have his way, and I did not press him
+to come into our firm as a full partner.
+
+Five years later, during which time affairs, business and social, had been
+slipping along as well as either Bob or I could have asked, I was
+preparing for another sit-down to show my chum that the time had now come
+for him to help me in earnest, when a queer thing happened—one of those
+unaccountable incidents that God sometimes sees fit to drop across the
+life-paths of His children, paths heretofore as straight and
+far-ahead-visible as highways along which one has never to look twice to
+see where he is travelling; one of those events that, looked at
+retrospectively, are beyond all human understanding.
+
+It was a beautiful July Saturday noon and Bob and I had just “packed up”
+for the day preparatory to joining Mrs. Randolph on my yacht for a run
+down to our place at Newport. As we stepped out of his office one of the
+clerks announced that a lady had come in and had particularly asked to see
+Mr. Brownley.
+
+“Who the deuce can she be, coming in at this time on Saturday, just when
+all alive men are in a rush to shake the heat and dirt of business for
+food and the good air of all outdoors?” growled Bob. Then he said, “Show
+her in.”
+
+Another minute and he had his answer.
+
+A lady entered.
+
+“Mr. Brownley?” She waited an instant to make sure he was the Virginian.
+
+Bob bowed.
+
+“I am Beulah Sands, of Sands Landing, Virginia. Your people know our
+people, Mr. Brownley, probably well enough for you to place me.”
+
+“Of the Judge Lee Sands’s?” asked Bob, as he held out his hand.
+
+“I am Judge Lee Sands’s oldest daughter,” said the sweetest voice I had
+ever heard, one of those mellow, rippling voices that start the
+imagination on a chase for a mocking-bird, only to bring it up at the pool
+beneath the brook-fall in quest of the harp of moss and watercresses that
+sends a bubbling cadence into its eddies and swirls. Perhaps it was the
+Southern accent that nibbled off the corners and edges of certain words
+and languidly let others mist themselves together, that gave it its
+luscious penetration—however that may be, it was the most
+no-yesterday-no-tomorrow voice I had ever heard. Before I grew fully
+conscious of the exquisite beauty of the girl, this voice of hers spelled
+its way into my brain like the breath of some bewitching Oriental essence.
+Nature, environment, the security of a perfect marriage have ever
+combined to constitute me loyal to my chosen one, yet as I stood silent,
+like one dumb, absorbing the details of the loveliness of this young
+stranger who had so suddenly swept into my office, it came over me that
+here was a woman intended to enlighten men who could not understand that
+shaft which in all ages has without warning pierced men’s hearts and
+souls—love at first sight. Had there not been Katherine Blair, wife and
+mother—Katherine Blair Randolph, who filled my love-world as the noonday
+August sun fills the old-fashioned well with nestling warmth and restful
+shade—after this interval, looking back at the past, I dare ask the
+question—who knows but that I too might have drifted from the secure
+anchorage of my slow Yankee blood and floated into the deep waters?
+
+Beauty, the cynic’s scoff, is in the eye of the beholder, or in an angle
+of vision—mere product of lime-light, point of view, desire—but Beulah
+Sands’s was beauty beyond cavil, superior to all analysis, as definite as
+the evening star against the twilight sky. In height medium, girlish, but
+with a figure maturely modelled, charmingly full and rounded, yet by very
+perfection of proportion escaping suggestion of “plumpness.” The head,
+surrounded and crowned with a wealth of dark golden hair, rested on a neck
+that would have seemed short had its slender column sprung less graciously
+from the lovely lines of the breast and shoulders beneath. It was on the
+face, however, and finally on the eyes that one’s glances inevitably
+lingered—the face rose-tinted, with dimples in either of the full cheeks,
+entering laughing protest against the sad droop that brought slightly down
+the corners of a mouth too large perhaps for beauty, if the coral curve of
+the lips had been less exquisitely perfect. The straight, thin-nostriled
+nose, the broad forehead, the square, full jaw almost as low at the points
+where they come beneath the ears as at the chin, suggested dignity and
+high resolve coupled with a power of purpose, rare in woman. The
+combination of forehead, jaw, and nose was seldom seen. Had it been
+possessed by a man it would surely have driven him to the tented field for
+his profession. But the greatest glory of Beulah Sands was her
+eyes—large, full, very gray, very blue, vivid with all the glamour of her
+personality, full of smiles and tears and spirituality and passion; one
+instant, frankly innocent, they illuminated the face of a blonde Madonna;
+the next, seen through the extraordinary, long, jet-black eye-lashes
+underneath the finely pencilled black brows, they caressed, coquetted,
+allured. I afterward found much of this girl’s purely physical fascination
+lay in this strange blending of English fairness with Andalusian tints,
+though the abiding quality of her charm was surely in an exaltation of
+spirit of which she might make the dullest conscious. As she stood looking
+at Bob in my office that long-ago noon, gracefully at ease in a suit of
+gray, with a gray-feathered turban on her head, and tiny lace bands at
+neck and wrist, she was very exquisite, exceedingly dainty, and, though
+Southerner of Southerners, very unlike the typical brunette girl who comes
+out of Dixie land.
+
+This girl who came into our office that July Saturday, just in time to
+interfere with the outing Bob Brownley and I had laid out, and who was
+destined to divert my chum’s heretofore smooth-flowing river of existence
+and turn it into an alternation of roaring rushes and deadly calms, was
+truly the most exquisite creature one could conceive of, I know my
+thought must have been Bob’s too, for his eyes were riveted on her face.
+She dropped the black lashes like a veil as she went on:
+
+“Mr. Brownley, I have just come from Sands Landing. I am very anxious to
+talk with you on a business matter. I have brought a letter to you from my
+father. If you have other engagements I can wait until Monday, although,”
+and the black veiling lashes lifted, showing the half-laughing,
+half-pathetic eyes, “I wanted much to lay my business before you at the
+earliest minute possible.”
+
+There was a faint touch of appeal in the charming voice as she spoke that
+was irresistible, and we were both willing to forget we had lunch waiting
+us on the _Tribesman_.
+
+“Step into my office, Miss Sands, and all my time is yours,” said Bob, as
+he opened the door between his office and mine. After I had sent a note to
+my wife, saying we might be delayed for an hour or two, I settled down to
+wait for Bob in the general office, and it was a long wait. Thirty minutes
+went into an hour and an hour into two before Bob and Miss Sands came out.
+After he had put her in a cab for her hotel, he said in a tone curiously
+intent: “Jim, I have got to talk with you, got to get some of your good
+advice. Suppose we hustle along to the yacht and after lunch you tell Kate
+we have some business to go over. I don’t want to keep that girl waiting
+any longer than possible for an answer I cannot give until I get your
+ideas.” After lunch, on the bow end of the upper deck Bob relieved
+himself. Relieved is the word, for from the minute he had put Miss Sands
+into the carriage until then, it was evident even to my wife that his
+thoughts were anywhere but upon our outing.
+
+“Jim,” he began in a voice that shook in spite of his efforts to make it
+sound calm, “there is no disguising the fact that I am mightily worked up
+about this matter, and I want to do everything possible for this girl. No
+need of my telling you how sacred we have got to keep what she has just
+let me into. You’ll see as I go along that it is sacred, and I know you
+will look at it as I do. Miss Sands must be helped out of her trouble.
+
+“Judge Lee Sands, her father, is the head of the old Sands family of
+Virginia. The Virginia Sands don’t take off their bonnets to another
+family in this country, or elsewhere, for that matter, for anything that
+really counts. They have had brains, learning, money, and fixed position
+since Virginia was first settled. They are the best people of our State.
+It is a cross-road saying in Virginia that a Sands of Sands Landing can go
+to the bench, the United States Senate, the House, or the governor’s chair
+for the starting, and nearly all of the men folks have held one or all of
+these honours for generations. The present judge has held them all. I
+don’t know him personally, although my people and his have been thick from
+away back. Sands Landing on the James is some fifty miles above our home.
+The judge, Beulah Sands’s father, is close on to seventy, and I have heard
+mother and father say is a stalwart, a Virginia stalwart. Being rich—that
+is, what we Virginians call rich, a million or so—he has been very active
+in affairs, and I knew before his daughter told me, that he was the
+trustee for about all the best estates in our part of the country. It
+seems from what she tells, that of late he has been very active in
+developing our coal-mines and railroads, and that particularly he took a
+prominent hand in the Seaboard Air Line. You know the road, for your
+father was a director, and I think the house has been prominent in its
+banking affairs. Now, Jim, this poor girl, who, it seems, has recently
+been acting as the judge’s secretary, has just learned that that coup of
+Reinhart and his crowd has completely ruined her father. The decline has
+swamped his own fortune, and, what is worse, a million to a million and a
+half of his trust funds as well, and the old judge—well, you and I can
+understand his position. Yet I do not know that you just can, either, for
+you do not quite understand our Virginia life and the kind of revered
+position a man like Judge Sands occupies. You would have to know that to
+understand fully his present purgatory and the terrible position of this
+daughter, for it seems that since he began to get into deep water he has
+been relying upon her for courage and ideas. From our talk I gather she
+has a wonderful store of up-to-date business notions, and I am convinced
+from what she lays out that the judge’s affairs are hopeless, and, Jim,
+when that old man goes down it will be a smash that will shake our State
+in more ways than one.
+
+“Up to now the girl has stood up to the blow like a man and has been able
+to steady the judge until he presents an exterior that holds down
+suspicion as to his real financial condition, although she says Reinhart
+and his Baltimore lawyer, from the ruthless way they put on the screws to
+shake out his holdings in the Air Line, must have a line on it that the
+judge is overboard. The old gentleman can keep things going for six months
+longer without jeopardising any of the remaining trust funds, of which he
+has some two millions, and while his wife, who is an invalid, knows the
+judge is in some trouble, she does not suspect his real position. His
+daughter says that when the blow came, that day of the panic, when
+Reinhart jammed the stock out of sight and scuttled her father’s bankers
+and partners in the road, the Wilsons of Baltimore, she had a frightful
+struggle to keep her father from going insane. She told me that for three
+days and nights she kept him locked in their rooms at their hotel in
+Baltimore, to prevent him from hunting Reinhart and his lawyer Rettybone
+and killing them both, but that at last she got him calmed down and
+together they have been planning.
+
+“Jim, it was tough to sit there and listen to the schemes to recoup that
+this old gentleman and this girl, for she is only twenty-one, have tried
+to hatch up. The tears actually rolled down my cheeks as I listened; I
+couldn’t help it; you couldn’t either, Jim. But at last out of all the
+plans considered, they found only one that had a tint of hope in it, and
+the serious mention of even that one, Jim, in any but present
+circumstances, would make you think we were dealing with lunatics. But the
+girl has succeeded in making me think it worth trying. Yes, Jim, she has,
+and I have told her so, and I hope to God that that hard-headed
+horse-sense of yours will not make you sit down on it.”
+
+Bob Brownley had got to his feet; he was slipping the shackles of that
+fiery, romantic, Southern passion that years in college and Wall Street
+had taught him to keep prisoner. His eyes were flashing sparks. His
+nostrils vibrated like a deer buck’s in the autumn woods. He faced me with
+his hands clinched.
+
+“Jim Randolph,” he went on, “as I listened to that girl’s story of the
+terrible cruelty and devilish treachery practised by the human hyenas you
+and I associate with, human hyenas who, when in search of dirty
+dollars—the only thing they know anything about—put to shame the real
+beasts of the wilds—when I listened, I tell you that I felt it would not
+give me a twinge of conscience to put a ball through that slick scoundrel
+Reinhart. Yes, and that hired cur of his, too, who prostitutes a good
+family name and position, and an inherited ability the Almighty intended
+for more honest uses than the trapping of victims on whose purses his
+gutter-born master has set lecherous eyes. And, Jim, as I listened, a
+troop of old friends invaded my memory—friends whom I have not seen since
+before I went to Harvard, friends with whom I spent many a happy hour in
+my old Virginia home, friends born of my imagination, stalwart, rugged
+crusaders, who carried the sword and the cross and the banner inscribed
+‘For Honour and for God.’ Old friends who would troop into my boyhood and
+trumpet, ‘Bob, don’t forget, when you’re a man, that the goal is honour,
+and the code: Do unto your neighbour as you would have your neighbour do
+unto you. Don’t forget that millions is the crest of the groundlings.’
+And, Jim, I thought my friends looked at me with reproachful eyes, as
+they said, ‘You are well on the road, Bob Brownley, and in time your heart
+and soul will bear the hall-mark of the snaky S on the two upright bars,
+and you will be but a frenzied fellow in the Dirty Dollar army.’ Jim, Jim
+Randolph, as I listened to that agonising tale of the changing of that
+girl’s heaven to hell, I did not see that halo you and I have thought
+surrounded the sign of Randolph & Randolph. I did not see it, Jim, but I
+did see myself, and I didn’t feel proud of the picture. My God, Jim, is it
+possible you and I have joined the nobility of Dirty Dollars? Is it
+possible we are leaving trails along our life’s path like that Reinhart
+left through the home of these Virginians, such trails as this girl has
+shown me?”
+
+Bob had worked himself into a state of frenzy. I had never seen him so
+excited as when he stood in front of me and almost shouted this fierce
+self-denunciation.
+
+“For heaven’s sake, Bob, pull yourself together,” I urged. “The captain on
+the bridge there is staring at you wild-eyed, and Katherine will be up
+here to see what has happened. Now, be a good fellow, and let us talk
+this thing over in a sensible way. At the gait you are going we can do
+nothing to help out your friends. Besides, what is there for you and me to
+take ourselves to task for? We are no wreckers and none of our dollars is
+stained with Frenzied Finance. My father, as you know, despised Reinhart
+and his sort as much as we do. Be yourself. What does this girl want you
+to do? If it is anything in reason, call it done, for you know there is
+nothing I won’t do for you at the asking.”
+
+Bob’s hysteria oozed. He dropped on the rail-seat at my side.
+
+“I know it, Jim, I know it, and you must forgive me. The fact, is, Beulah
+Sands’s story has aroused a lot of thoughts I have been a-sticking down
+cellar late years, for, to tell the truth, I have some nasty twinges of
+conscience every now and then when I get to thinking of this dollar game
+of ours.”
+
+I saw that the impulsive blood was fast cooling, and that it would only be
+a question of minutes until Bob would be his clearheaded self.
+
+“Now, what is it she wants you to do?” I persisted. “Is it a case of
+money, of our trying to tide her father over?”
+
+“Nothing of that kind, Jim. You don’t know the proud Virginia blood.
+Neither that girl nor her father would accept money help from any one.
+They would go to smash and the grave first.”
+
+He paused and then continued impressively:
+
+“This is how she puts it. She and her father have raked together her
+different legacies and turned them into cash, a matter of sixty thousand
+dollars, and she got him to consent to let her come up here to see if
+during the next six months she might not, in a few desperate plunges in
+the market, run it up to enough to at least regain the trust funds. Yes, I
+know it is a wild idea. I told her so at the beginning, but there was no
+need; she knew it, for she is not only bright, but she has the best idea
+of business I ever knew a woman to have. But it is their only chance, Jim,
+and while I listened to her argument I came around to her way of
+thinking.”
+
+“But how did she happen to come to you with this extraordinary scheme?” I
+interrupted.
+
+“It’s this way—her father, who knew Randolph & Randolph through your
+father’s handling of the Seaboard’s affairs, learned of my connection
+with the house, and gave her a letter, asking me to do what I could to
+help his daughter carry out her plans. She wants to get a position with
+us, if possible, in some sort of capacity, secretary, confidential clerk,
+or, as she puts it, any sort of place that will justify her being in the
+office. She tells me she is good at shorthand, on the machine, or at
+correspondence, also that she has been a contributor to the magazines. If
+this can be arranged, she says she will on her own responsibility select
+the time and the stock, and hurl the last of the Sands fortune at the
+market, and, Jim, she is game. The blow seems to have turned this child
+into a wonderfully nervy creature, and, old man, I am beginning to have a
+feeling that perhaps the cards may come so she will win the judge out. You
+and I know where less than sixty thousand has been run up to millions more
+than once, and that, too, without the aid she will have, for I’ll surely
+do all I can to help her steer this last chance into spongy places.”
+
+Bob in his enthusiasm had completely lost sight of the fact that he was
+indorsing a project that but a moment previously he had pronounced insane,
+and with a start I realised what this sudden transformation betokened.
+Inevitably, if the project he outlined were carried out, Bob and the
+beautiful Southern girl would be thrown into close association with each
+other, and further acquaintance could only deepen the startling influence
+Beulah Sands had already won over my ordinarily sane and cool-headed
+comrade. As I looked at my friend, burning with an ardour as unaccustomed
+as it was impulsive, I felt a tug at my heartstrings at thought of the
+sudden cross-roading of his life’s highway. But I, too, was filled with
+the glamour of this girl’s wondrous beauty, and her terrible predicament
+appealed to me almost as strongly as it had to Bob. So, although I knew it
+would be fatal to any chance of his weighing the matter by common sense, I
+burst out:
+
+“Bob, I don’t blame you for falling in with the girl’s plans. If I were in
+your shoes, I should too.”
+
+Tears came to Bob’s eyes as he grabbed my hand and said:
+
+“Jim, how can I ever repay you for all the good things you have done for
+me—how can I!”
+
+It was no time to give way to emotional outbursts, and while Bob was
+getting his grip on himself, I went on:
+
+“Come along down to earth now, Bob; let us look at this thing squarely.
+You and I, with our position in the market, can do lots of things to help
+run that sixty thousand to higher figures, but six months is a short time
+and a million or two a world of money.”
+
+“She knows that,” he said, “and the time is much shorter and the road to
+go much longer than you figure,” he replied. “This girl is as
+high-tensioned as the E string on a Stradivarius, and she declares she
+will have no charity tips or unusual favours from us or any one else. But
+let us not talk about that now or we’ll get discouraged. Let’s do as she
+says and trust to God for the outcome. Are you willing, Jim, to take her
+into the office as a sort of confidential secretary? If you will, I’ll
+take charge of her account, and together we will do all that two men can
+for her and her father.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+
+
+The following week saw Miss Sands, of Virginia, private secretary to the
+head of Randolph & Randolph, established in a little office between mine
+and Bob’s. She had not been there a day before we knew she was a worker.
+She spent the hours going over reports and analysing financial statements,
+showing a sagacity extraordinary in so young a person. She explained her
+knowledge of figures by the hand-work she had done for the judge, all of
+whose accounts she had kept. Bob and I saw that she was bent on smothering
+her memory in that antidote for all ills of heart and soul—work. Her
+office life was simplicity itself. She spoke to no one except Bob, save in
+connection with such business matters of the firm’s as I might send her by
+one of the clerks to attend to. To the others in the banking-house she was
+just an unconventional young literary woman whose high social connections
+had gained her this opportunity of getting at the secrets of finance,
+from actual experience, for use in forthcoming novels. It had got abroad
+that she was the writer of great distinction who, under a _nom de plume_,
+had recently made quite a dent in the world’s literary shell—a suggestion
+that I rightly guessed was one of Bob’s delicate ways of smoothing out her
+path. I had tried in every way to make things easy for her, but it was
+impossible for me to draw her out in talk, and finally I gave it up. Had
+it not been that every time I passed her office door I was compelled by
+the fascination which I had first felt, and which, instead of diminishing,
+had increased with her reticence, to look in at the quiet figure with the
+downcast eyes, working away at her desk as though her life depended on
+never missing a second, I should not have known she was in the building.
+My wife, at my suggestion, had tried to induce her to visit us; in fact,
+after I let her into just enough of Beulah Sands’s story so that she could
+see things on a true slant, she had decided to try to bring her to our
+house to live. But though the girl was sweetly gentle in her appreciation
+of Kate’s thoughtful attentions, in her simple way she made us both feel
+that our efforts would be for naught, that her position must be the same
+as that of any other clerk in the office. We both finally left her to
+herself. Bob explained to me, some three weeks after she came to the
+office, that she received no visitors at her home, a hotel on a quiet
+uptown street, and that even he had never had permission to call upon her
+there.
+
+But from the day she came to occupy her desk in our office, Bob was a
+changed man, whether for better or for worse neither Kate nor I could
+decide. His old bounding elasticity was gone, and with it his rollicking
+laugh. He was now a man where before he had been a boy, a man with a
+burden. Even if I had not heard Beulah Sands’s story, I should have
+guessed that Bob was staggering under a strange load. While before, from
+the close of the Stock Exchange until its opening the next morning, he
+was, as Kate was fond of putting it, always ready to fill in for anything
+from chaperon to nurse, always open for any lark we planned, from a
+Bohemian dinner to the opera, now weeks went by without our seeing him at
+our house. In the office it used to be a saying that outside gong-strikes,
+Bob Brownley did not know he was in the stock business. Formerly every
+clerk knew when Bob came or went, for it was with a rush, a shout, a
+laugh, and a bang of doors; and on the floor of the Stock Exchange no man
+played so many pranks, or filled his orders with so much jolly good-nature
+and hilarious boisterousness. But from the day the Virginian girl crossed
+his path, Bob Brownley was a man who was thinking, thinking, thinking all
+the time. It was only with an effort that he would keep his eyes on
+whomever he was talking with long enough to take in what was said, and if
+the saying occupied much time it would be apparent to the talker that Bob
+was off in the clouds. All his friends and associates remarked the change,
+but I alone, except perhaps Kate, had any idea of the cause. I knew that
+two million dollars and the coming New Year were hurdling like kangaroos
+over Bob’s mental rails and ditches, though I did not know it from
+anything he told me, for after that talk on the upper deck of the
+_Tribesman_ he had shut up like a clam.
+
+He did not exactly shun me, but showed me in many ways that he had entered
+into a new world, in which he desired to be alone. That Beulah Sands’s
+plight had roused into intense activity all the latent romance of my
+friend’s nature, did not surprise me. I foresaw from the first that Bob
+would fall head over heels in love with this beautiful, sorrow-laden girl,
+and it was soon obvious that the long-delayed shaft had planted its point
+in the innermost depths of his being. His was more than love; a fervid
+idolatry now had possession of his soul, mind, and body. Yet its outward
+manifestations were the opposite of what one would have looked for in this
+gay and optimistic Southerner. It was rather priest-like worship, a calm
+imperturbability that nothing seemed to distract or upset, at least in the
+presence of the goddess who was its object. Every morning he would pass
+through my office headed straight for the little room she occupied as if
+it were his one objective point of the day, but once he heard his own
+“Good morning, Miss Sands,” he seemed to round to, and while in her
+presence was the Bob Brownley of old. He would be in and out all day on
+any and every pretext, always entering with an undisguised eagerness,
+leaving with a slow, dreamy reluctance. That he never saw her outside the
+office, I am sure, for she said good-night to him when he or she left for
+the day with the same don’t-come-with-me dignity that she exhibited to
+all the rest of us. I had not attempted to say a word to Bob about his
+feeling for Beulah Sands, nor had he ever brought up the subject to me. On
+the contrary, he studiously avoided it.
+
+Three months of the six had now passed, and with each day I thought I
+noted an increasing anxiety in Bob. He had opened a special account for
+Miss Sands on the books of the house in his name as agent, with a credit
+of sixty thousand dollars, and we both watched it with a painful tenseness
+of scrutiny. It had grown by uneven jerks, until the balance on October
+1st was almost four hundred thousand dollars. On some of the trades Bob
+had consulted me, and on others, two in particular where he closed up
+after a few days’ operations with nearly two hundred thousand dollars
+profit, I did not even know what the trading was based on until the stocks
+had been sold. Then he said:
+
+“Jim, that little lady from Virginia can give us a big handicap and play
+us to a standstill at our own game. She told me to buy all the Burlington
+and Sugar her account would stand, and did not even ask for my opinion. In
+both cases I thought the operations were more the result of a wakeful
+night and an I-must-do-something decision than anything else, and I
+tackled both with a shiver; but when she told me to sell them out at a
+time I thought they looked like going higher and the next day they
+slumped, I could not help thinking about the destiny that shapes our
+ends.”
+
+On my part I tried to help. On one occasion, without consulting her, I put
+her account in on a sure thing underwriting, wherein she stood to make a
+profit of a quarter of a million, but when Bob told her what I had done,
+she insisted with great dignity that her name be withdrawn. After that
+neither of us dared help her to any short cuts. Bob was deeply impressed
+by her principles, and, commenting on them, said: “Jim, if all Wall Street
+had a code similar to Beulah Sands’s to hew to in their gambles, ours
+would be a fairer and more manly game, and many of the multi-millionaires
+would be clerking, while a lot of the hand-to-mouth traders would come
+downtown in a new auto every day in the week. She does not believe in
+stock-gambling. She has worked it out that every dollar one man makes,
+another loses; that the one who makes gives nothing in return for what he
+gets away with; and that the other fellow’s loss makes him and his as
+miserable as would robbery to the same amount. Yet she realises that she
+must get back those millions stolen from her father and is willing to
+smother her conscience to attempt it, provided she takes no unfair
+advantage of the other players. The other day she said to me, ‘I have
+decided, because of my duty to my father, to put away my prejudice against
+gambling, but no duty to him or to any one can justify me in playing with
+marked cards.’ Jim, there is food for reflection for you and me, don’t you
+think so?”
+
+I did not argue it with him, for, after that Saturday’s outburst, I had
+made up my mind to avoid stirring Bob up unnecessarily. Also, I had to
+admit to myself that the things he had then said had raised some
+uncomfortable thoughts in me, thoughts that made me glance less
+confidently now and then at the old sign of Randolph & Randolph and at the
+big ledger which showed that I, an ordinary citizen of a free country, was
+the absolute possessor of more money than a hundred thousand of my fellow
+beings together could accumulate in a lifetime, although each one had
+worked harder, longer, more conscientiously, and with perhaps more ability
+than I.
+
+As to how Beulah Sands’s code had affected my friend, I was ignorant. For
+the first time in our association I was completely in the dark as to what
+he was doing stockwise. Up to that Saturday I was the first to whom he
+would rush for congratulations when he struck it rich over others on the
+exchange, and he invariably sought me for consolation when the boys
+“upper-cut him hard,” as he would put it. Now he never said a word about
+his trading. I saw that his account with the house was inactive, that his
+balance was about the same as before Miss Sands’s advent, and I came to
+the conclusion that he was resting on his oars and giving his undivided
+attention to her account and the execution of his commissions. His
+handling of the business of the house showed no change. He still was the
+best broker on the floor. However, knowing Bob as I did, I could not get
+it out of my mind that his brain was running like a mill-race in search of
+some successful solution to the tremendous problem that must be solved in
+the next three months.
+
+Shortly after the October 1st statements had been sent out, Bob dropped
+in on Kate and me one night. After she had retired and we had lit our
+cigars in the library he said:
+
+“Jim, I want some of that old-fashioned advice of yours. Sugar is selling
+at 110, and it is worth it; in fact it is cheap. The stock is well
+distributed among investors, not much of it floating round ‘the Street.’ A
+good, big buying movement, well handled, would jump it to 175 and keep it
+there. Am I sound?”
+
+I agreed with him.
+
+“All right. Now what reason is there for a good, big, stiff uplift? That
+tariff bill is up at Washington. If it goes through, Sugar will be cheaper
+at 175 than at 110.”
+
+Again I agreed.
+
+“‘Standard Oil’ and the Sugar people know whether it is going through, for
+they control the Senate and the House and can induce the President to be
+good. What do you say to that?”
+
+“O.K.,” I answered.
+
+“No question about it, is there?”
+
+“Not the slightest.”
+
+“Right again. When 26 Broadway[1] gives the secret order to the
+Washington boss and he passes it out to the grafters, there will be a
+quiet accumulation of the stock, won’t there?”
+
+“You’ve got that right, Bob.”
+
+“And the man who first knows when Washington begins to take on Sugar is
+the man who should load up quick and rush it up to a high level. If he
+does it quickly, the stockholders, who now have it, will get a juicy slice
+of the ripening melon, a slice that otherwise would go to those greedy
+hypocrites at Washington, who are always publicly proclaiming that they
+are there to serve their fellow countrymen, but who never tire of
+expressing themselves to their brokers as not being in politics for their
+health.”
+
+“So far, good reasoning,” I commented.
+
+“Jim, the man who first knows when the Senators and Congressmen and
+members of the Cabinet begin to buy Sugar, is the man who can kill four
+birds with one stone: Win back a part of Judge Sands’s stolen fortune;
+increase his own pile against the first of January, when, if the little
+Virginian lady is short a few hundred thousand of the necessary amount,
+he could, if he found a way to induce her to accept it, supply the
+deficiency; fatten up a good friend’s bank account a million or so, and do
+a right good turn for the stockholders who are about to be, for the
+hundredth time, bled out of profit rightfully theirs.”
+
+Bob was afire with enthusiasm, the first I had seen him show for three
+months. Seeing that I had followed him without objection so far, he
+continued:
+
+“Well, Jim, I know the Washington buying has begun. All I know I have dug
+out for myself and am free to use it any way I choose. I have gone over
+the deal with Beulah Sands, and we have decided to plunge. She has a
+balance of about four hundred thousand dollars, and I’m going to spread it
+thin. I am going to buy her 20,000 shares and to take on 10,000 for
+myself. If you went in for 20,000 more, it would give me a wide sea to
+sail in. I know you never speculate, Jim, for the house, but I thought you
+might in this case go in personally.”
+
+“Don’t say anything more, Bob,” I replied. “This time the rule goes by the
+board. But I will do better: I’ll put up a million and you can go as high
+as 70,000 for me. That will give you a buying power of 100,000, and I
+want you to use my last 50,000 shares as a lifter.”
+
+I had never speculated in a share of stock since I entered the firm of
+Randolph & Randolph, and on general, special, and every other principle
+was opposed to stock gambling, but I saw how Bob had worked it out, and
+that to make the deal sure it was necessary for him to have a good reserve
+buying power to fall back on if, after he got started, the “System”
+masters, whose game he was butting in to and whose plans he might upset
+should try to shake down the price to drive him out of their preserves.
+Bob knew how I looked at his proposed deal and ordinarily would not have
+allowed me to have the short end of it, but so changed had he become in
+his anxiety to make that money for the Virginians that he grabbed at my
+acceptance.
+
+“Thank you, Jim,” he said fervently, and he continued: “Of course, I see
+what’s going through your head, but I’ll accept the favour, for the deal
+is bound to be successful. I know your reason for coming in is just to
+help out, and that you won’t feel badly because your last 50,000 shares
+will be used more as a guarantee for the deal’s success than for profit.
+And Miss Sands could not object to the part you play, as she did at the
+underwriting, for you will get a big profit anyway.”
+
+Next day Sugar was lively on the Exchange. Bob bought all in sight and
+handled the buying in a masterly way. When the closing gong struck, Beulah
+Sands had 20,000 shares, which averaged her 115; Bob and I had 30,000 at
+an average of 125, and the stock had closed 132 bid and in big demand.
+Miss Sands’s 20,000 showed $340,000 profit, while our 30,000 showed
+$210,000 at the closing price. All the houses with Washington wires were
+wildly scrambling for Sugar as soon as it began to jump. And it certainly
+looked as though the shares were good for the figures set for them by Bob,
+$175, at which price the Sands’s profits would be $1,200,000. Bob was
+beside himself with joy. He dined with Kate and me, and as I watched him
+my heart almost stopped beating at the thought—“if anything should happen
+to upset his plans!” His happiness was pathetic to witness. He was like a
+child. He threw away all the reserve of the past three months and laughed
+and was grave by turns. After dinner, as we sat in the library over our
+coffee, he leaned over to my wife and said:
+
+“Katherine Randolph, you and Jim don’t know what misery I have been in for
+three months, and now—will to-morrow never come, so I may get into the
+whirl and clean up this deal and send that girl back to her father with
+the money! I wanted her to telegraph the judge that things looked like she
+would win out and bring back the relief, but she would not hear of it. She
+is a marvellous woman. She has not turned a hair to-day. I don’t think her
+pulse is up an eighth to-night. She has not sent home a word of
+encouragement since she has been here, more than to tell her father she is
+doing well with her stories. It seems they both agreed that the only way
+to work the thing out was ‘whole hog or none,’ and that she was to say
+nothing until she could herself bring the word ‘saved’ or ‘lost.’ I don’t
+know but she is right. She says if she should raise her father’s hopes,
+and then be compelled to dash them, the effect would be fatal.”
+
+Bob rushed the talk along, flitting from one point to another, but
+invariably returning to Beulah Sands and to-morrow and its saving
+profits. Finally, he got to a pitch where it seemed as though he must take
+off the lid, and before Kate or I realised what was coming he placed
+himself in front of us and said:
+
+“Jim, Kate, I cannot go into to-morrow without telling you something that
+neither of you suspect. I must tell some one, now that everything is
+coming out right and that Beulah is to be saved; and whom can I tell but
+you, who have been everything to me?—I love Beulah Sands, surely, deeply,
+with every bit of me. I worship her, I tell you, and to-morrow, to-morrow
+if this deal comes out as it must come, and I can put $1,500,000 into her
+hands and send her home to her father, then, then, I will tell her I love
+her, and Jim, Kate, if she’ll marry me, good-bye, good-bye to this hell of
+dollar-hunting, good-bye to such misery as I have been in for three
+months, and home, a Virginia home, for Beulah and me.” He sank into a
+chair and tears rolled down his cheeks Poor, poor Bob, strong as a lion in
+adversity, hysterical as a woman with victory in sight.
+
+The next day Sugar opened with a wild rush: “25,000 shares from 140 to
+152.” That is the way it came on the tape, which meant that the crowd
+around the Sugar-pole was a mob and that the transactions were so heavy,
+quick, and tangled that no one could tell to a certainty just what the
+first or opening price was; but after the first lull, after the gong,
+there were officially reported transactions aggregating 25,000 shares and
+at prices varying from 140 to 152. I was over on the floor to see the
+scramble, for it was noised about long before ten o’clock that Sugar would
+open wild, and then, too, I wanted to be handy if Bob should need any
+quick advice.
+
+A minute before the gong struck, there were three hundred men jammed
+around the Sugar-pole; men with set, determined faces; men with their
+coats buttoned tight and shoulders thrown back for the rush to which, by
+comparison, that of a football team is child’s play. Every man in that
+crowd was a picked man, picked for what was coming. Each felt that upon
+his individual powers to keep a clear head, to shout loudest, to forget
+nothing, to keep his feet, and to stay as near the centre of the crowd as
+possible, depended his “floor honour,” perhaps his fortune, or, what was
+more to him, his client’s fortune. Nearly every man of them was a college
+graduate who had won his spurs at athletics or a seasoned floor man whose
+training had been even more severe than that of the college campus. When
+it is known before the opening of the Exchange that there are to be
+“things doing” in a certain stock, it is the rule to send only the picked
+floor men into the crowd. There may be a fortune to make or to lose in a
+minute or a sliver of a minute. For instance, the man who that morning was
+able to snatch the first 5,000 shares sold at 140 could have resold them a
+few minutes afterward at 152 and secured $60,000 profit. And the man who
+was sent into the crowd by his client to sell 5,000 shares at the
+“opening” and who got but 140, when the price would be 152 by the time he
+reported to his customer, was a man to be pitied. Again, the trader who
+the night before had decided that Sugar had gone up too fast, and who had
+“shorted” (that is, sold what he did not have, with the intention of
+repurchasing at a lower price than he sold it for) 5,000 shares at 140 and
+who, finding himself in that surging mob with Sugar selling at 152, could
+only get out by taking a loss of $60,000, or by taking another chance of
+later paying 162—such a trader was also to be pitied.
+
+No one who scanned the crowd that morning would have believed that the
+calm, set face on that erect Indian figure, occupying the very centre of
+that horde of gamblers who were only awaiting the ringing clang of the
+gong to hurl themselves like madmen at each other, was the hysterical man
+who the night before was wildly praying for this moment. Nearly every man
+in that crowd was calm, but Bob Brownley was the calmest of them all. It’s
+the Exchange code that at any cost of heart or nerve-tear a man must
+retain good form until the gong strikes. Then, that he must be as near the
+uncaged tiger as human mind and body can be made. Only I realised what
+volcano raged inside my chum’s bosom. If any other man of the crowd had
+known, Bob’s chances of success would have been on par with a Canadian
+canoeist short-cutting Niagara for Buffalo. Nine-tenths of the Stock
+Exchange game is not letting your left brain-lobe know what race your
+right is in until the winning numbers and the also-rans are on the board.
+If one of those three hundred chain-lightning thinkers or any of their
+ten thousand alert associates knew in advance the intentions of a fellow
+broker, the word would sweep through that crowd with the sureness of
+uncorked ether, and the other two hundred and ninty nine, at gong-strike,
+would be at each others’ throats for his vitals, and before he knew the
+game had started would have his bones picked to a vulture-finish
+cleanness. Suddenly, as I watched the scene, there rang through the great
+hall the first sharp stroke of the gong. There were no echoes heard that
+morning. The metallic voice was yet shaping its command to “at ’em, you
+fiends” when from three hundred throats burst the wild sound of the Stock
+Exchange yell. No other sound in any of the open or hidden places of all
+nature duplicates the yell of a great Stock Exchange at an exciting
+opening. It not only fills and refills space, for the volume is terrific,
+but it has an individuality all its own, coming from the incisive
+“take-mine-I’ve-got yours,” from the aggressive, almost arrogant
+“you-can’t-you-won’t-have-your-way,” the confident “by-heaven-I-will”
+individual notes that enter into the whole, as they blend with the shrill
+scream of triumph and the die-away note of disappointment, when the floor
+men realise their success or their failure. I picked Bob’s magnificently
+resonant voice from the mass—“40 for any part of 10,000 Sugar.” It was
+this daring bid that struck terror to the bears and filled the bulls[2]
+with a frenzy of encouragement. Again it rang out—“45 for any part of
+25,000”; and a third time—“50 for any part of 50,000.”
+
+The great crowd was surging all over the room. Hats were smashed and coats
+were being stripped from their owners’ backs as though made of paper, and
+now and then a particularly frantic buyer or seller would be borne to the
+floor by the impetus of those who sought to fill his bid or grab his
+offer. Through all the wild whirl, straight and erect and commanding was
+the form of Bob, his face cold and expressionless as an iceberg. In five
+minutes the human mass had worked back to the Sugar-pole and there was the
+inevitable lull while its members “verified.”
+
+I could see by the few entries Bob was making on his pad that he had been
+compelled to buy but little. This meant that his campaign was working
+smoothly, that he was driving the market up by merely bidding, and that
+he had the greater part of my 50,000 yet unbought, which inturn meant he
+could continue to push up the price, or in the event of his opponents’
+attempting to run it down, he would be under the market with big
+supporting orders.
+
+Suddenly the lull was broken. Bob’s voice rang out again—“153 for any
+part of 10,000 Sugar.” Again the gamblers closed in and for another five
+minutes the opening scene was duplicated, with only a shade less
+fierceness. After ten minutes’ mad trading a mighty burst of sound told
+that Sugar was 160 bid. Then Bob worked his way out of the crowd, and
+passing by me fairly hissed, “By heaven, Jim, I’ve got them cinched!”
+
+I went back to the office. In a few minutes Bob without a word strode
+through my office and into the little room occupied by Beulah Sands. He
+closed the door behind him, a thing that he had never done before. It was
+only a minute till he opened it and called to me. In his eyes was a
+strange look, a look that came from the blending of two mighty passions,
+one joy, the other I could not make out, unless it was that soft one,
+which suppressed love, emerging from terrible uncertainty, generates in
+deep natures and which usually finds vent in tears. Beulah Sands was a
+study. Her heart was evidently swaying and tugging with the news Bob had
+brought her. She must have seen the nearness of release from the torture
+that had been filling her soul during the past three months, and yet such
+was the remarkable self-control of the woman, such her noble courage, that
+she refused to show any outward sign of her feelings. She was the
+reserved, dignified girl I had ever seen her. “Jim, Miss Sands and I
+thought it best that we should have a little match up at this stage of our
+deal,” Bob began. “I want to know if you both agree with me on adhering to
+the original plans to close out at 175. I never felt surer of my ground
+than in this deal. The stock is 163 on the tape right now.” He glanced at
+the white paper ribbon whose every foot on certain days spells Heaven or
+Hell to countless mortals, as it rolled out of the ticker in the corner of
+the office. “Yes, there she goes again—3¾, 4, 4¼ and 1,200 at a half.
+There is a tremendous demand from all quarters. Washington’s buying is
+unlimited; the commission-houses are tumbling over one another to get
+aboard and the shorts are scared to a paralysed muteness. They don’t know
+whether to jump in and cover or to stand their present hands, but they
+have no pluck to fight the rise, that is certain. The news bureaus have
+just published the story that I am buying for Randolph & Randolph, and
+they for the insiders; that the new tariff is as good as passed; and that
+at the directors’ meeting to-morrow the Sugar dividend will be increased,
+and that it is agreed on all sides she won’t stop going until she crosses
+200. I’ve been obliged to take on only 18,000 of your 50,000, and at
+present prices there is over two hundred thousand profit in them. I think
+I could go back there and in thirty minutes have it to 180. Then if I
+rested on it until about one o’clock and threw myself at it for real
+fireworks up to the close, I could, under cover of them, let slip about
+half our purchases, and to-morrow open her with a whirl and let go the
+balance. If I’m in luck I’ll average 180-185 for the whole bunch, but I’ll
+be satisfied if I get an average of 175, which would allow me to sell it
+on a dropping scale to 160.”
+
+I agreed that his campaign was perfect, and Beulah Sands said in her
+usual quiet way, “It is entirely in your hands, Mr. Brownley. I don’t see
+how any advice from us can help.”
+
+Bob went back to the Exchange and I into my office. Bob had been right
+again. In ten minutes the tape began to scream Sugar. With enormous
+transactions it ran up in fifteen minutes to 188, in three more it dropped
+to 181, and then steadily mounted to 185½, dulled up, and was healthy
+steady. Presently Bob was back and we sat down again.
+
+“I’ve bought 20,000 more for you, Jim, on that bulge. I’ve 38,000 in all
+of the last 50,000, which leaves me 12,000 reserve. The average is ‘way
+under 75, and there must be $400,000 for you in it now and a strong
+$1,400,000 in Miss Sands’s 20,000, and $1,800,000 in our 30,000. They say
+it’s bad business to count chickens in the shell, but ours are tapping so
+hard to get out I can’t help doing it this once. I’m going to keep away
+from the floor for an hour or so, then I will go over and wind it up
+and—good God, Beulah—Miss Sands—are you ill?”
+
+The girl’s face was ashen gray and she seemed to be gasping for breath. I
+rushed for some water while Bob seized both her hands, but in an instant
+the blood came to her cheeks with a rush and she said, “I was dizzy for a
+moment. It must have been the thought of taking $1,800,000 back to father
+that upset me. With that amount father could make good all the trust
+funds, and have back enough of his own fortune to make us seem, after what
+we have been going through, richer than we were before. Pardon me, Mr.
+Randolph, won’t you, when I say—God bless you and every one whom you hold
+dear, God bless you? What could I or my father have done but for you and
+Mr. Brownley?”
+
+She turned her big eyes full upon Bob, filled with a light such as can
+come only to a woman’s eyes, only to a woman before whom, as she stands on
+the brink of hell, suddenly looms her heaven.
+
+Sharp and shrill rang Bob’s Exchange telephone. The ring seemed shriller;
+it certainly was longer than usual. Bob jumped for the receiver.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+
+
+The following week Bob returned to the office. He had not changed, and yet
+he had changed greatly. Rest had apparently done much for him. His colour
+was good, his step elastic as of old, and his head was thrown back as if
+he were buckled up for the fray and wanted all to know it. Yet there was
+something in the eye, in the setness of the jaw, in the hair-trigger calm,
+yet fiercely savage grip in which he closed his strong hands on the arms
+of his chair, that told me more plainly than words that this was not the
+optimistic, soft-hearted Bob Brownley I had known and loved. I could not
+help feeling that if I had been a leader of the Russian terrorists, and
+this man who now sat before me had come to my ken when I was selecting
+bomb-throwers, I should have seized upon him of all men as the one to
+stalk the Czar or his marked minions. Surely the iron that had entered
+Bob’s soul a week before had affected his whole being. I think Beulah
+Sands had some such thoughts. For I saw a shadow of perplexity cross her
+broad, low forehead after her first meeting with him, a shadow that had
+not been there before.
+
+For days after Bob’s return I saw little of him. I think Beulah Sands saw
+less. During Stock Exchange hours he spent most of his time on the floor,
+but he executed few of our orders. He merely looked them over and handed
+them out to his assistants. As far as I could learn, he spent much of his
+time there yesterdaying through hope’s graveyards, a not uncommon pastime
+for active Exchange members whose first through specials have been
+open-switched by the “System” towerman. So strong had become this habit of
+going about from pole to pole with bent head and a far-off gaze that his
+fellow members began to humour and respect it. They all knew that Bob had
+gone up against the Sugar panic hard. No one knew how hard, but all
+guessed from his changed appearance and habits that it must have been a
+bone-smashing blow. Nothing so quickly and so deeply stirs a Stock
+Exchange man’s feelings for his brother member as to know that “They” have
+ditched his El Dorado flyer—that is, if he has been a good the books
+showed no change in Beulah Sands’s account. There was the poor little
+$30,000 balance; no other entries. One afternoon Beulah Sands had asked
+for a meeting between Bob and myself in her office. She could hardly have
+asked Bob to come without me, but I knew it was Bob she wanted to see, and
+I felt that the best thing I could do for them was to leave them alone. So
+I made some excuse for a moment’s delay at my desk, telling Bob to go on
+into her office, and promising to follow shortly. He went in, leaving the
+door partly open. I think that from the moment he entered the room both of
+them utterly forgot my existence. From her desk Beulah could not see me,
+and Bob sat so that his back was half toward me. “I dislike to trouble you
+about my account,” I heard her begin in a voice a trifle uneven, “but as I
+must go back to Father Christmas week, I wanted to get your advice as to
+the advisability of writing him that, though there is still a chance for
+doing wonders, I do not think we shall be able to save him. Of course I
+won’t put it in just that blunt way, but it seems to me I should begin to
+prepare him for the blow. I have not talked over any more plunging with
+you, Mr. Brownley, since the unlucky one in Sugar, and——”
+
+“Miss Sands, I understand what you mean,” Bob broke in, “and I should
+apologise for not having consulted with you about your business affairs.
+The fact is, I have not been quite clear as to the best thing to do. I
+hope you don’t think I have forgotten. Never for a moment since I took
+charge of your affairs have I forgotten my promise to see that they were
+kept active. Truly I have been trying to think out some successful plunge,
+but—but”—there was a hoarseness in his voice—“I have not had my old
+confidence in myself since that day in Sugar when I killed your hopes and
+destroyed the chance of saving your father—no, I have not had that
+confidence a man must have in himself to win at this game.”
+
+There was a silence, and then I heard an indescribable fluttering rush
+that told as plainly as sight could have done that a woman had answered
+her heart’s call. Looking up involuntarily, I saw a sight that for a long
+moment held my eyes as if I had been fascinated. It was Bob bowed forward
+with his face hidden in his hands and beside him, on her knees, Beulah
+Sands, her arms about his neck, his head drawn down to her bosom. “Bob,
+Bob,” she said chokingly, “I cannot stand it any longer. My heart is
+breaking for you. You were so happy when I came into your life, and the
+happiness is changed to misery and despair, and all for me, a stranger. At
+first I thought of nothing but father and how to save him, but since that
+day when those men struck at your heart, I have been filled with, oh! such
+a longing to tell you, to tell you, Bob——”
+
+“What? Beulah, what? For the love of God, don’t stop; tell me, Beulah,
+tell me.” He had not lifted his head. It was buried on her breast, his
+arms closed around her. She bent her head and laid her beautiful, soft
+cheek, down which the tears were now streaming, against his brown hair.
+“Bob, forgive me, but I love you, love you, Bob, as only a woman can love
+who has never known love before, never known anything but stern duty. Bob,
+night after night when all have left I have crept into your office and sat
+in your chair. I have laid my head on your desk and cried and cried until
+it seemed as though I could not live till morning without hearing you say
+that you loved me, and that you did not mind the ruin I had brought into
+your life. I have patted the back of your chair where your dear head had
+rested. I have covered the arms of your chair, that your strong, brave
+hands had gripped, with kisses. Night after night I have knelt at your
+desk and prayed to God to shield you, to protect you from all harm, to
+brush away the black cloud I brought into your life. I have asked Him to
+do with me, yes, with my father and mother, anything, anything if only He
+would bring back to you the happiness I had stolen. Bob, I have suffered,
+suffered, as only a woman can suffer.”
+
+She was sobbing as though her heart would break, sobbing wildly,
+convulsively, like the little child who in the night comes to its mother’s
+bed to tell of the black goblins that have been pursuing it. Long before
+she had finished speaking—and it took only a few heart-beats for that
+rush of words—I had broken the power of the fascination that held me, had
+turned away my eyes, and tried not to listen. For fear of breaking the
+spell, I did not dare cross the room to close Beulah’s door or to reach
+the outer door of my office, which was nearer hers than it was to my desk.
+I waited—through a silence, broken only by Beulah’s weeping, that seemed
+hour-long. Then in Bob’s voice came one low sob of joy:
+
+“Beulah, Beulah, my Beulah!”
+
+I realised that he had risen. I rose too, thinking that now I could close
+the door. But again I saw a picture that transfixed me. Bob had taken
+Beulah by both shoulders and he held her off and looked into her eyes long
+and beseechingly. Never before nor since have I seen upon human face that
+glorious joy which the old masters sought to get into the faces of their
+worshippers who, kneeling before Christ, tried to send to Him, through
+their eyes, their soul’s gratitude and love. I stood as one enthralled.
+Slowly and as reverently as the living lover touches the brow of his dead
+wife, Bob bent his head and kissed her forehead. Again and again he drew
+her to him and implanted upon her brow and eyes and lips his kisses. I
+could not stand the scene any longer. I started to the corridor-door, and
+then, as though for the first time either had known I was within hearing,
+they turned and stared at me. At last Bob gave a long deep sigh, then one
+of those reluctant laughs of happiness yet wet with sobs.
+
+“Well, Jim, dear old Jim, where did you come from? Like all
+eavesdroppers, you have heard no good of yourself. Own up, Jim, you did
+not hear a word good or bad about yourself, for it is just coming back to
+me that we have been selfish, that we have left you entirely out of our
+business conference.”
+
+We all laughed, and Beulah Sands, with her face a bloom of burning
+blushes, said: “Mr. Randolph, we have not settled what it is best to do
+about father’s affairs.”
+
+After a little we did begin to talk business, and finally agreed that
+Beulah should write her father, wording her letter as carefully as
+possible, to avoid all direct statements, but showing him that she had
+made but little headway on the work she had come North to accomplish. Bob
+was a changed being now; so, too, was Beulah Sands. Both discussed their
+hopes and fears with a frankness in strange contrast to their former
+manner. But there was one point on which Bob showed he was holding back. I
+finally put it to him bluntly: “Bob, are you working out anything that
+looks like real relief for Miss Sands and her father?”
+
+“I don’t know how to answer you, Jim. I can only say I have some ideas,
+radical ones perhaps, but—well, I am thinking along certain lines.”
+
+I saw he was not yet willing to take us into his confidence. We parted,
+Bob going along in the cab with Miss Sands.
+
+Two days afterward she sent for us both as soon as we got to the office.
+
+“I have this telegram from father—it makes me uneasy: ‘Mailed to-day
+important letter. Answer as soon as you receive.’”
+
+The following afternoon the letter came. It showed Judge Sands in a very
+nervous, uneasy state. He said he had been living a life of daily terror,
+as some of his friends, for whose estates he was trustee, had been
+receiving anonymous letters, advising them to look into the judge’s trust
+affairs; that the Reinhart crowd had been using renewed pressure to make
+him let go all his Seaboard stock, which they wanted to secure at the low
+prices to which they had depressed it, in order that they might reorganise
+and carry out the scheme they had been so long planning. Judge Sands went
+on to say that the day he was compelled to sell his Seaboard stock he
+would have to make public an announcement of his condition, as there
+could be no sale without the court’s consent. His closing was:
+
+   “My dear daughter, no one knows better than I the almost hopelessness
+   of expecting any relief from your operations. But so hopeless have I
+   become of late, so much am I reliant upon you, my dear child, and
+   eternal hope so springs in all of us when confronted with great
+   necessities, that I have hoped and still hope that you are to be the
+   saviour of your family; that you, only a frail child, are through God’s
+   marvellous workings to be the one to save the honour of that name we
+   both love more than life; the one to keep the wolf of poverty from that
+   door through which so far has come nothing but the sunshine of
+   prosperity and happiness; the one, my dear Beulah, who is to save your
+   old father from a dishonoured grave. Dear child, forgive me for placing
+   upon your weak shoulders the additional burden of knowing I am now
+   helpless and compelled to rely absolutely upon you. After you have read
+   my letter, if there is no hope, I command you to tell me so at once,
+   for although I am now financially and almost mentally helpless, I am
+   still a Sands, and there has never yet been one of the name who shirked
+   his duty, however stern and painful it might be.”
+
+When I handed the letter back to Miss Sands, she said:
+
+“Mr. Randolph, let me tell you and Mr. Brownley a little about my father
+and our home, that you may see our situation as it is. My father is one of
+the noblest men that ever lived. I am not the only one who says that—if
+you were to ask the people of our State to name the one man who had done
+most for the State as a State, most for her progressive betterment, most
+for her people high and low, white and black, they would answer, ‘Judge
+Lee Sands.’ He has been, and is, the idol of our people. After he was
+graduated from Harvard, he entered the law office of my grandfather,
+Senator Robert Lee Sands. Before he was thirty he was in Congress and was
+even then reputed the greatest orator of our State, where orators are so
+plentiful. He married my mother, his second cousin, Julia Lee, of
+Richmond, at twenty-five, and from then until the attack of that ruthless
+money-shark, led a life such as a true man would map out for himself if
+his Maker granted him the privilege. You would have to visit at our home
+to appreciate my father’s character and to understand how terrible this
+sorrow is to him. Every morning of his life he spends an hour after
+breakfast with my dear mother, who is a cripple from hip disease. He takes
+her in his arms and brings her down from her room to the library as if she
+were a child. He then reads to her—and he knows good books as well as he
+knows his friends. After he takes mother back to her room, he gives an
+hour to our people, the blacks of the plantation and his white tenants
+throughout the county. He is a father to them all. He settles all their
+troubles, big and little. Then for hours he and I go over his business
+affairs. Every afternoon from four to five he devotes to his estates and
+the men and women for whom he acts as trustee. He has often said to me:
+‘We have a clear million of money and property, and that is all any man
+should have in America. It is all he is entitled to under our form of
+government. Any more than that an honest man should in one way or another
+return to the people from whom he has taken it. I never want my family to
+have more than a million dollars.’ When he went into the Seaboard affair,
+he explained to me that it was to assist the Wilsons—they were old
+friends, and he has acted as their solicitor for years—in building up the
+South. He discussed with me the right and advisability of putting in the
+trust funds. He said he considered it his duty to employ them as he did
+his own in enterprises that would aid the whole people of the South,
+instead of sending them to the North to be used in Wall Street as belting
+for the ‘System’ grinder. These fortunes were made in the South by men who
+loved their section of the country more than they did wealth, and why
+should they not be employed to benefit that part of the country which
+their makers and owners loved? I remember vividly how perplexed he was
+when, at the beginning, the Wilsons would show him that the investments
+were returning unusually large profits.
+
+“‘It is not right, Beulah,’ he said to me one morning after receiving a
+letter from Baltimore to the effect that Seaboard stock and bonds had
+advanced until his investment showed over fifty per cent, profit, ‘it is
+not right for us to make this money. No man in America should make over
+legal rates of interest and a fair profit on an investment, that is, an
+investment of capital pure and simple, particularly in a transportation
+company, where every dollar of profit comes from the people who patronise
+the lines. I have worked it out on every side, and it is not right; it
+would not be legal if the people, who make the laws for their own
+betterment, understood their affairs as they should.’
+
+“He was always writing to the Wilsons to conduct the affairs of the
+Seaboard so that there would be remaining each year only profits enough
+to keep the road up and the wharves in good condition and to pay the
+annual interest and a fair dividend. And when the Wilsons came to our
+house to lay before him the offer of Reinhart and his fellow plunderers to
+pay enormous profits for the control of the Seaboard, he was indignant and
+argued with them that the offer was an insult to honest men. It was he who
+advised the trusteeship control of the Seaboard stock to prevent Reinhart
+from securing control. I sat in the library when he talked to the elder
+Wilson and the directors.
+
+“He appealed directly to John Wilson to make an effort to stop the growing
+tendency to use the people as pawns to enslave themselves and their
+children. He said some man of undoubted probity, standing, and wealth,
+someone whom the people trusted, must start the fight against these New
+York fiends, whose only thought is to roll up wealth. And he told John
+Wilson he was the man, since he had great wealth, honestly got by his
+father and grandfather; no one would accuse him of being a hypocrite,
+seeking notoriety, and his standing in the financial world was so old and
+solid that it would have to listen to him. I remember-how emphatically
+father said: ‘I tell you, John, _even the discussion_ of such a
+proposition as that scoundrel Reinhart makes is degrading to an American’s
+honour.’ He said it didn’t make the least difference if Reinhart counted
+his millions by the score, and was director in thirty or forty great
+institutions, and gave a fortune every year for charity and to the
+church—that he was a blackleg just the same. And so is any man, he said,
+who dares to say he will take the stock of a transportation company, which
+represents a certain amount of money invested, and double or multiply it
+by five and ten, simply because he can compel the people to pay exorbitant
+fares and freight-rates and so get profits on this fraudulently increased
+capital.
+
+“It was the decision arrived at by father and the Wilsons at this meeting,
+a decision to refuse in any circumstances to allow our Southern people to
+be bled by the Wall Street ‘System,’ that started Reinhart and his
+dollar-fiends on the war-path. You can see from what I tell you of my
+father the terrible condition he is in now. At night, when I get to
+thinking of him, hoping against hope, with no one to help him, no one with
+whom he can talk over his affairs, when I think of his nobleness in
+devoting his time to mother and by sheer will-power concealing from her
+his awful suffering, it nearly drives me mad.”
+
+“Miss Sands, why will you not let me lend you the money necessary to tide
+your father over for a while?” I asked.
+
+“You are so good, Mr. Randolph, but you don’t quite understand my father
+in spite of what I have said. He would not relieve his suffering at the
+expense of another, not if it were a hundred times more acute. You cannot
+understand the old-fashioned, deep-rooted pride of the Sands.”
+
+“But can you not, at least temporarily, disguise from him just how you
+have arranged the relief?”
+
+Her big blue eyes stared at me in bewilderment.
+
+“Mr. Randolph, I could not deceive father. I could not tell him a lie even
+to save his life. It would be impossible. My father abhors a lie. He
+believes a man or woman who would lie the lowest of the low things on
+earth. When I go back to my father he will say, ‘Tell me what you have
+done.’ I can just see him now, standing between the big white pillars at
+the end of the driveway. I can hear him say calmly, ‘Beulah, my daughter,
+welcome. Your mother is waiting for you in her room. Do not lose a moment
+getting to her.’ Afterward he’ll take me over the plantation to show me
+all the familiar things, and not one word will he allow me to say about
+our affairs until dinner is over, until the neighbours have left, for no
+Sands returns from long absence without a fitting home welcome. When I
+have said good night to mother and sister and he has drawn up my rocker in
+front of his big chair in the library alcove and I’ve lighted his cigar
+for him, he will look me in the eye and say, ‘Daughter, tell me all you
+have done.’ I would no more think of holding anything back than I would of
+stabbing him to the heart. No, Mr. Randolph, there is no possibility of
+relief except in fairly using that $30,000, and fairly winning back what
+Wall Street has stolen from father. Even that will cause both of us many
+twinges of conscience, and anything more is impossible. If this cannot be
+done, father must, all of us must, pay the penalty of Reinhart’s ruthless
+act.”
+
+Bob had listened, but made no comment until she was through; then he said,
+“It looks to me as though the market is shaping up so that we may be able
+to do something soon.” It was evident to both of us that he had some plan
+in mind.
+
+Later we learned that that night Beulah wrote her father a long letter,
+telling him what she had done; that she had made almost two millions
+profit from her operations, that they had been lost, and that the outlook
+was not reassuring. She begged him to prepare himself for the final
+calamity; promising that if there were no change for the better by
+December 1st, she would come home to be with him when the blow fell. She
+begged him to prepare to meet it like a Sands, and assured him that if
+worse came to worst she would earn enough to keep poverty away. Judge
+Sands would receive this letter the second day following, Friday, the 13th
+day of November. My God! how well I know the date. It is seared into my
+brain as though with a white-hot iron.
+
+After our talk with Beulah Sands I begged Bob to dine with me and go over
+matters at length to see if we could not find a way out to relief.
+
+“No, Jim, I have work to do to-night, worn that won’t wait. That Tariff
+Bill was buttoned up to-day, and it has just been announced that the
+Sugar directors have declared a big extra stock dividend. Things have come
+out just about as I told you they would, and the stock is climbing to-day.
+They say it will touch 200 to-morrow and ‘the Street’ is predicting 250
+for it in ten days. Barry Conant has been a steady buyer all day and the
+news bureaus announced that Camemeyer and the ‘Standard Oil’ are twenty
+millions winners. They say the Washington gamblers, the Congressmen,
+Senators, and Cabinet members with their heelers and lobbyists have made a
+killing. About every one seems to have fattened up, Jim, but you and me
+and Beulah Sands and the public. The public gets the axe both ways as
+usual. They have been shaken out of their stock, and they will be
+compelled to pay millions more each year for their sugar than they would
+if this law had not been made for their benefit. Jim, there is no
+disguising the fact that the American people are as helpless in the hands
+of these thugs of the ‘System’ as though they lived in the realm of the
+Sultan, where a few cutthroat brigands are licensed to rob and oppress to
+their heart’s content. Jim Randolph, you know this game of finance. You
+know how it is worked and the men who work it. Tell me if there is any
+consideration due Wall Street and its heart-and-soul butchers at the hands
+of honest men.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean, Bob. What are you driving at?”
+
+“Never mind what I am driving at. I ask you whether, if an honest man knew
+how to beat Wall Street at its own game, he should hesitate to beat
+it—hesitate because of anything connected with conscience or morals? You
+saw what Barry Conant was able to do to us that day simply by standing on
+the floor of the Stock Exchange and outstaying me in opening and closing
+his mouth. You saw he was able to sell Sugar to a point so low that I was
+obliged to let go of our 150,000 shares at eight to ten million dollars
+less than we could have got for them if we could have held them until
+to-day. Because of this trick his clients, the ‘System,’ instead of us,
+make five to seven millions.”
+
+“I don’t follow you, Bob. I know that Barry Conant was able to do this
+because he had more money behind him than you.”
+
+“You think so, do you, Jim? That is the way it looks to you, but I tell
+you money had nothing to do with it. Nothing had to do with it but the
+fiendish system of fraud and trickery upon which the whole stock-gambling
+structure is reared. Nothing entered into the whole business but the
+trickery of stock-gambling as conducted to-day. It was only a question,
+Jim, of a man’s opening and closing his mouth and spitting out words. From
+the minute Barry Conant came into that crowd until he left and we were
+ruined, he showed no money, no anything that I did not show. From the very
+nature of the business he could not. He simply said ‘Sold’ oftener and
+longer than I said ‘Buy.’ He may have had money back of him, or he may
+only have had nerve. God Almighty is the only one who can tell, for when
+Conant was through he was able to buy back at 90 the 50,000 shares he sold
+me at 175, the 50,000 that broke my back. Jim, if I had known as much that
+day as I do now I would have stood in that crowd and bought all the stock
+he sold at 180 and I would have stood there buying until hell froze over
+or he quit; then I would have made him rebuy it at 280 or 2,080, and I
+would have broken him and all his Camemeyer and ‘Standard Oil’ backers;
+broken them to their last crime-covered dollar.”
+
+“Bob, what are you talking about? It is all Chinese to me. I cannot get
+head or tail of what you are driving at.”
+
+“I know you can’t, Jim, neither could Wall Street if it were listening to
+me. But you will, and Wall Street will too, before many days go by. Now I
+must be off. I have work to do.”
+
+He put on his hat and left me trying to puzzle out just what he meant.
+
+Next day the Sugar bulls had the centre of the Stock Exchange stage. All
+day long they tossed Sugar from one to another as though each thousand
+shares had been a wisp of hay instead of $200,000—for soon after the
+opening it soared to 200. The “System’s” cohorts were in absolute control,
+with Barry Conant never a minute away from the Sugar-pole, always on the
+alert to steer the course of prices when they threatened to run away on
+the up or the down side. It was evident to the expert readers of the tape
+that the “System” was currying its steed for an exceptionally brilliant
+run. Ike Bloomstein, the Average Fiend, who for forty years had kept close
+track of every movement on the floor, and who would bet anything, from his
+Fifth Avenue mansion to his overripe boardroom straw hat, that all stocks
+and movements were as strictly subject to the law of averages as are the
+tides to the moon and sun, remarked to Joe Barnes, the loan expert:
+
+“‘Cam’ unt de Keroseners are pudding up egstra dop rails to dot wool-pen
+deh haf ben pilding since deh took Pop Prownlee and deh Rantolphs into
+gamp. Unless my topesheet goes pack on me, for deh first dime in forty
+years dere vill pe a record clip pefore a veek from to-tay.”
+
+“I am with you there, Ike,” answered Joe. “If Barry Conant’s knife-edged
+teeth ever spelt a killin’, they do to-day. I just got orders from
+somewhere to drop call money from four to two and a half per cent., and
+they have given me ten millions to drop it with and the order is to favour
+Sugar as ‘collat.’ Some one is anxious to make it easy for the bleaters to
+get the coin to buy all the Sugar they want. Ike, you and I might make
+turkey money for Thanksgiving if we only knew whether Barry and his bunch
+were going to shoot her up thirty or forty points before they turned the
+bag upside down, or whether they will bury them from 200 to 150. What do
+you think?”
+
+“I gant make out, aldo I haf vatched dem sharp all day. Dey certainly haf
+deh lambs lined up right now for any vey dey vont to twist id. I nefer see
+a petter market for a deluge. From Barry’s movements all day I should say
+dey vould keep hoistin’ her until apout noon to-morrow, unt dat deh might
+get her up to two-tirty or even to deh two-fifty. Put dere are von or two
+topes on deh sheet vhat run deh uder vay. First der is dey fact you gant
+run out, dat dere is alreaty on deh Sugar vagon deh piggest load of chuicy
+suckers dat efer game in from deh suppurbs. Sharley Pates says if any von
+hat tapped his Vashington vire er any utter Capitol vire dis veek he vould
+haf tought dere vas a Senate, House, unt Kabinet roll-gall on. Deh topes
+say ‘Cam’ vill nefer led dat fat punch off grafters slite out mit real
+money if he gan help id unt deh game iss endirely in his hands.”
+
+“I agree with you, Ike. If I had the steering of this killing I don’t
+think I would take any chance of tempting them to dump and grab the
+profits by carrying it much over 200. But you can’t tell what ‘Cam’ and
+those four-eyed dentists at 26 Broadway will do.”
+
+“Yes, put der iss anudder t’ing, Cho, dat makes me sit up unt plink about
+her goin’ ofer two hundred. To-morrow’s Friday der t’irteenth.”
+
+“Of course, Ike, that is something to be reckoned with, and every man on
+the floor and in the Street as well has his eye on it. Friday, the 13th,
+would break the best bull market ever under way. You and I know that, Ike,
+and the dope shows it too, but you have got to stack this up against it on
+this trip: no man on the floor knows what Friday the 13th, means better
+than Barry Conant. He has worked it to the queen’s taste many a time. Why,
+Barry would not eat to-day for fear the food would get stuck in his
+windpipe. He’s never left the pole for a minute; but suppose, Ike, Barry
+has tipped off ‘Cam’ that all the boys will let go their fliers, and most
+of them will take one on the short side over to-night for a superstition
+drop at the opening; and suppose ‘Cam’ has told him to take them all into
+camp and give her a rafter-scraper at the opening, where would old Friday,
+13th, land on to-morrow’s dope-sheets? Bring up the average, wouldn’t it,
+for five years to come? I tell you, Ike, she’s too deep for me this run,
+and I’m goin’ to let her alone and pay for the turkey out of loan
+commissions or stick to plain workday food.”
+
+“Zame here, Cho. Say, Cho, haf you noticed Pop Prownlee to-tay? He has
+frozen to deh fringe off dat Sugar crowd ess t’ough some von hat nipped
+‘is scarf-pin unt he vos layin’ for him ass he game out. He hasn’t made a
+trade to-tay unt yet he sticks like a stamp-tax. I ben keeping my eyes on
+him for I t’ought he hat someding up his sleeve dat might raise tust ven
+he tropt id. I dink Parry has hat deh same itear. He never loses sight of
+him, yet Pop hasn’t made a trade to-tay, unt here id iss twenty minutes of
+der glose unt dere iss Parry in deh centre again whooping her up ofer two
+hundred unt four.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+
+
+Thursday, November 12th, was a memorable day in Wall Street. As the gong
+pealed its the-game’s-closed-till-another-day, the myriad of tortured
+souls that are supposed to haunt the treacherous bogs and quicksands of
+the great Exchange, where lie their earthly hopes, must have prayed with
+renewed earnestness for its destruction before the morrow. Never had the
+Stock Exchange folded its tents with surer confidence of continuing its
+victorious march. Sugar advanced with record-breaking total sales to
+207½ and in the final half-hour carried the whole list of stocks up
+with it. In that time some of the railroads jumped ten points. Sugar
+closed at the very top amid great excitement, with Barry Conant taking all
+offered. During the last thirty minutes it had become evident to all that
+the boardroom traders and plungers, together with many of the
+semi-professional gamblers, who operated through commission houses, were
+selling out their long stock and going short over the opening of the Wall
+Street hoodoo-day, Friday, the thirteenth of the month. But it was also
+evident, with the heavy selling at the close and the stiffness of the
+price, which had never wavered as block after block was thrown on the
+market, that some powerful interest as well had taken cognisance of the
+fact that the morrow was hoodoo-day. At the close, most of the sellers,
+had they been granted another five minutes, would have repurchased, even
+at a loss, what they had sold, for it looked as though they had sold
+themselves into a trap. Their anxiety was intensified by the publication,
+a few minutes later, of this item:
+
+   “Barry Conant in coming from the Sugar crowd after the close remarked
+   to a fellow broker, ‘By three o’clock to-morrow, Friday, the 13th, will
+   have a new meaning to Wall Street.’ This was interpreted as pointing to
+   a terrific jump in Sugar to-morrow.”
+
+“The Street” knew that the news bureau that sent out this item was
+friendly to Barry Conant and the “System,” and that it would print nothing
+displeasing to them. Therefore, this must be, a foreword of the coming
+harvest of the bulls and the slaughter of the bears.
+
+Others than Ike Bloomstein remarked upon the fact that Bob Brownley had
+hung close to the Sugar-pole all day, but when the close had come and gone
+without his having anything to do with the Sugar skyrockets, he dropped
+out of his fellow-brokers’ minds. Wall Street has no use for any but the
+“doer.” The poet and the mooner would be no more secure from interruption
+in the centre of the Sahara than in Wall Street between ten and three
+o’clock. Some sage has said that the human mind, like the well-bucket, can
+carry only its fill. The Wall Street mind always has its fill of budding
+dollars. In consequence, there is never room for those other interests
+that enter the normal mind.
+
+Friday, the 13th of November, drifted over Manhattan Island in a drear
+drizzle of marrow-chilling haze, which just missed being rain—one of
+those New York days that give a hesitating suicide renewed courage to cut
+the mortal coil. By ten o’clock it had settled down on the Stock Exchange
+and its surrounding infernos with a clamminess that damped the spirits of
+the most rampant bulls. No class in the world is so susceptible to
+atmospheric conditions as stock-gamblers. Many a stout-hearted one has
+been known to postpone the inauguration of a long-planned coup merely
+because the air filled his blood with the dank chill of superstition.
+Because of the expected Sugar pyrotechnics, Stock Exchange members had
+gathered early; the brokers’ offices were crowded to overflowing before
+ten; the morning papers, not only in New York but in Boston, Philadelphia,
+and other centres, were filled with stories of the big rise that was to
+take place in Sugar. The knowing ones saw the ear-marks of the “System’s”
+press-agent in these stories; and they knew that this industrious
+institution had not sat up the night before because of insomnia. All the
+signs pointed to a killing, and a terrific one—pointed so plainly that
+the bears and Sugar shorts found no hope in the atmosphere or the date.
+
+Bob had not been near the office the afternoon before, and as he had not
+come in by five minutes to ten I decided to go over to the Exchange and
+see if he were going to mix up in the baiting of the Sugar bears. I had no
+specific reasons for thinking he was interested except his recent queer
+actions, particularly his hanging to the Sugar-pole, yet doing nothing,
+the day before. But it is one of the best-established traditions of
+stock-gambledom that when an operator has been bitten by a rabid
+stock he is invariably attracted to it every time afterward that it
+shows signs of frothing. More than all, I had one of those strong
+nowhere-born-nowhere-cradled intuitions common to those living in the
+stock-gambling world, which made me feel the creepy shadow of coming
+events.
+
+As on that day a few weeks before, the crowd was at the Sugar-pole, but
+its alignment was different. There in the centre were Barry Conant and his
+trusted lieutenants, but no opposing rival. None of those hundreds of
+brokers showed that desperate resolve to do or die that is born of a
+necessity. They were there to buy or sell, but not to put up a life or
+death, on-me-depends-the-result fight. Those who were long of stock could
+easily be distinguished by their expressions of joy from the shorts, who
+had seen the handwriting on the wall and were filled with uncertainty,
+fear, terror. The demeanour of Barry Conant and his lieutenants expressed
+confidence: they were going to do what they were there to do. They showed
+by their tight-buttoned coats, and squared shoulders that they expected
+lots of rush, push, and haul work, but apparently they anticipated no
+last-ditch fighting. The gong pealed and the crowd of brokers sprang at
+one another, but only for blood, not flesh, bone, heart, and soul; just
+blood. The first price on Sugar was 211 for 3,000 shares. Someone sold it
+in a block. Barry Conant bought it. It did not require three eyes to see
+that the seller was one of his lieutenants. This meant what is known as a
+“wash” sale, a fictitious one arranged in advance between two brokers to
+establish the basis for the trades that are to follow—one of those minor
+frauds of stock-gambling by which the public is deceived and the traders
+and plungers are handicapped with loaded dice. In principle, it is a
+device older than stock exchanges themselves, and is put to use elsewhere
+than on the floor. For instance, four genuine buyers want a particular
+animal worth $200 at a horse auction. Its owner’s pal starts the bidding
+at $400, and the four, not being up in horse values, are thereby induced
+to reach for it at between $400 to $500. But human nature, whether at
+horse sales or at stock-gambling, loves to be “hinky-dinked” as much as
+the moth loves to play tag with the candle flame. In five minutes Sugar
+was selling at 221, and the frantic shorts were grabbing for it as though
+there never was to be another share put on sale, while Barry Conant and
+his lieutenants were most industriously pushing it just beyond their
+reaching finger-tips, either by buying it as fast as it was offered by
+genuine sellers or by taking what their own pals threw in the air.
+
+I was not surprised to see Bob’s tall form wedged in the crowd about
+two-thirds of the way from the centre. Every other active floor member was
+there too. Even Ike Bloomstein and Joe Barnes, who seldom went into the
+big crowds, were on hand, perhaps to catch a flier for their Thanksgiving
+turkey money, perhaps to get as near the killing as possible. Bob was not
+trading, although, as on the day before, he never took his eye off Barry
+Conant. I said to myself, “He is trying to fathom Barry Conant’s
+movements,” but for what purpose puzzled me. The hands of the big clock on
+the wall showed that trading had been thirty minutes under way and still
+Barry Conant was pushing up the price. His voice had just rung out “25 for
+any part of 5,000” when, like an echo, sounded through the hall, “Sold.”
+It was Bob. He had worked his way to the centre of the crowd and stood in
+front of Barry Conant. He was not the Bob who had taken Barry Conant’s
+gaff that afternoon a few weeks before. I never saw him cooler, calmer,
+more self-possessed. He was the incarnation of confident power. A cold,
+cynical smile played around the corners of his mouth as he looked down
+upon his opponent.
+
+The effect upon Barry Conant was different from that of Bob’s last bid on
+the day when Beulah Sands’s hopes went skyward in dust. It did not rouse
+him to the wild, furious desire for the onslaught that he showed then, but
+seemed to quicken his alert, prolific mind to exercise all its cunning. I
+think that in that one moment Barry Conant recalled his suspicions of the
+day before, when he had wondered what Bob’s presence in the crowd meant,
+and that he saw again the picture of Bob on the day when he himself had
+ditched Bob’s treasure-train. He hesitated for just the fraction of a
+second, while he waved with lightning-like rapidity a set of finger
+signals to his lieutenants. Then he squared himself for the encounter. “25
+for 5,000,” Cold, cold as the voice of a condemning judge rang Bob’s
+“Sold.” “25 for 5,000.” “Sold.” “25 for 5,000.” “Sold.” Their eyes were
+fixed upon each other, in Barry’s a defiant glare, in Bob’s mingled pity
+and contempt. The rest of the brokers hushed their own bids and offers
+until it could have truthfully been said that the floor of the Stock
+Exchange was quiet, an almost unheard-of thing in like circumstances.
+Again Barry Conant’s voice, “25 for 5,000.” “Sold.” “25 for 5,000.”
+“Sold.” Barry Conant had met his master. Whether it was that for the first
+time in all his wonderful career he realised that the “System” was to meet
+its Nemesis, or what the cause, none could tell, perhaps not even Barry
+Conant himself, but some emotion caused his olive face for an instant to
+turn pale, and gave his voice a tell-tale quiver. Once more pealed forth
+“25 for 5,000.” That Bob saw the pallor, that he caught the quiver, was
+evident to all, for the instant his “Sold” rang out, he followed it with
+“5,000 at 24, 23, 22, 20.” Neither Barry Conant nor any of his lieutenants
+got in a “Take it”; although whether they wanted to or not was an open
+question until Bob allowed his voice to dwell just a pendulum swing of
+time on the 20. It was as if he were tantalising them into sticking by
+their guns. By the time he paused, Barry Conant’s nerve was back, for his
+piercing “Take it” had linked to it “20 for any part of 10,000.” The bid
+was yet on his lips when Bob’s deep voice rang out “Sold.” “Any part of
+25,000 at 19, 18, 15, 10.” Hell was now loose. Back and forth, up against
+the rail, around the room and back and around again, the crowd surged for
+fifteen of the wildest, craziest minutes in the history of the New York
+Stock Exchange, a history replete with records of wild and crazy scenes.
+
+At last from sheer exhaustion there came a ten minutes’ lull, which was
+used in comparing trades. At the beginning of the respite Sugar was
+selling at 155, for in that quarter-hour of madness it had broken from 210
+to 155, but when the ten minutes had elapsed, the stock had worked back to
+167. Barry Conant had again taken the centre of the crowd after hastily
+scanning the brief notes handed him by messenger-boys and giving orders to
+his lieutenants. He had evidently received reinforcements in the form of
+renewed orders from his principals. Many of the faces that fringed the
+inner circle of that crowd were frightful to look upon, some white as
+though just lifted from hospital pillows, others red to the verge of
+apoplexy—all strained as though awaiting the coming of the jury with a
+life or death verdict. They all knew that Bob had sold more than a hundred
+thousand shares of Sugar upon which the profits must be more than four
+million dollars. Would he resume selling or was he through? Was it short
+stock, which must be bought back, or long stock; and if long, whose stock?
+Were the insiders selling out on one another, or were they all selling
+together, and under cover of Barry Conant’s movements were Camemeyer and
+“Standard Oil” emptying their bag preparatory to the slaughter of the
+Washington contingent? All these questions were rushing through the heads
+of that crowd of brokers like steam through a boiler, now hot, now cold,
+but always at high pressure, for upon the correctness of the answers
+depended the fortune of many who breathlessly awaited the renewal or the
+suspension of the contest. Even Barry Conant’s usually impassive face wore
+a tinge of anxiety.
+
+Indeed, Bob’s was the only one in the centre of that throng that showed no
+sign of what was going on behind it. The same cynical smile that had been
+there since the opening still played around the corners of his mouth as he
+squared himself in front of his opponent. All knew now that he was not
+through. Barry Conant had evidently decided to force the fighting,
+although more cautiously than before. “67 for a thousand.” One of his
+lieutenants bid 67 for 500, another 67 for 300, and as Bob had not yet
+shown his intention of meeting their bids, 67 for different amounts was
+heard all over the crowd. Bob might have been tossing a mental coin to
+decide the advisability of buying back what he had sold; he might have
+been adding up the bids as they were made. He said nothing for a fraction
+of a minute, which to those tortured men must have seemed like an age.
+Then with a wave of his hand, as though delivering a benediction, he swept
+the circle with a cold-blooded, “Sold the lots. 5,600 in all.”
+
+“Sixty-seven for a thousand”—again Barry Conant’s bid. “Sold.” “67 for
+5,000.” “Sold.” “66 for a thousand.” “Sold.” The drop from five thousand
+to one thousand and a dollar a share in Barry Conant’s bids was the
+mortally wounded but still game general’s “Sound the retreat.” Bob heard
+it. “Any part of 10,000 at 65, 64, 62, 60.” The din was now as fierce as
+before. The entire crowd, all but Barry Conant and his lieutenants, seemed
+to have concluded that Bob’s renewal of attack meant that his was the
+winning side, and those who had been hanging on to their stock, hoping
+against hope, and those who were short and had been undecided whether to
+cover or to hold on and sell more for greater profits, vied with one
+another in a frantic effort to sell. All could now feel the coming panic.
+All could see that it was to be a bad one, as the least informed on the
+floor knew that there was a tremendous amount of Sugar stock in the hands
+of Washington novices at speculation and of others who had bought it at
+high prices. Sugar was now dropping two, three, five dollars a share
+between trades, and the panic was spreading to the other poles, as is
+always the case, for when there are sudden large losses in one stock, the
+losers must throw over the other stocks they hold to meet this loss, and
+thus the whole structure tumbles like a house of cards. Sugar had just
+crossed 110 when the loud bang of the president’s gavel resounded through
+the room. Instantly there was a silence as of death. All knew the meaning
+of the sound, the most ominous ever heard in a stock exchange, calling for
+the temporary suspension of business while the president announces the
+failure of some member or house.
+
+    Perkins, Blanchard & Company
+
+    Announce that They Cannot Meet Their Obligations
+
+This statement that one of the oldest houses had been swamped in the crash
+Bob had started caused further frantic selling, and, as though every
+member had employed the lull to refill his lungs, a howl arose that pealed
+and wailed to the dome.
+
+I watched Bob closely; in fact, it was impossible for me to take my eyes
+off him; he seemed absolutely unmindful of the agonised shrieks about him,
+for the frenzied brokers were no longer crying their bids or offers, but
+screaming them. He still continued relentlessly to hammer Sugar, offering
+it in thousand and tens of thousand lots.
+
+Again and again the gavel fell, and again and again an announcement of
+failure was followed by blood-curdling howls. When Sugar struck 80—not
+180, but plain 80—it seemed that the last day of stock speculation was
+at hand. Announcements were being made every few minutes of the failure of
+this bank, the closing of the doors of that trust company. Where would it
+end? What power could stop this Niagara of molten dollars? Suddenly above
+the tumult rose Bob Brownley’s voice. He must have been standing on his
+tiptoes. His hands were raised aloft. He seemed to tower a head above the
+mob. His voice was still clear and unimpaired by the terrible strain of
+the past two hours. To that mob it must have sounded like the trumpet of
+the delivering angel. “80 for any part of 25,000 Sugar.” Instantly Sugar
+was hurled at him from all sides of the crowd. He was the only buyer of
+moment who had appeared since Sugar broke 125. Barry Conant and his
+lieutenants had disappeared like snowflakes at the opening of the door of
+the firebox of a locomotive speeding through the storm. In a few seconds
+Bob had been sold all the 25,000 he had bid for. Again his voice rang out:
+“80 for 25,000.” The sellers momentarily halted. He got only a few
+thousands of his twenty-five. “85 for 25,000.” A few thousands more. “90
+for 25,000.” Still fewer thousands. His bidding was beginning to tell on
+the mob. A cry ran through the room into the crowds around the other
+poles—“Brownley has turned!”—and taking renewed courage at the report,
+the bulls rallied their forces and began to bid for the different stocks,
+which a moment before it had seemed that no one wanted at any price.
+
+In a chip of a minute the whole scene changed; there was almost as wild a
+panic on the up side as there had been on the down. Bob Brownley continued
+buying Sugar until he had pushed it above 150. He then went about tallying
+up his trades. At the end of ten minutes’ calculation he returned to the
+centre and bought 11,000 shares more; coming out, his eye caught mine.
+
+“Jim, have you been here long?”
+
+“An eternity. I was here at the opening and I pray God never to put me
+through another two hours like the past two. It seems a hideous dream, a
+nightmare. Bob, in the name of God what have you been doing?”
+
+He gave me a wild, awful look of exultation. Sublime triumph shone in
+those blazing brown orbs, triumph such as I had never seen in the eyes of
+man.
+
+“Jim Randolph, I have been giving Wall Street and its hell ‘System’ a
+dose of its own poison, a good full-measure dose. They planned by
+harvesting a fresh crop of human hearts and souls on the bull side to give
+Friday the 13th a new meaning. Tradition says Friday the 13th is bear
+Saints’ day. I believe in maintaining old traditions, so I harvested their
+hearts instead. I will tell you about it some time, Jim, but now I must
+see Beulah Sands. Jim Randolph, I’ve saved her and her father. I’ve made
+them a round three millions and a strong seven millions for myself.”
+
+He almost yelled it as he rushed away and left me dazed, stupefied. A
+moment, and I came to. Something urged me to follow him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+
+
+As I passed through my office a few minutes later I heard Bob’s voice in
+Beulah Sands’s office. It was raised in passionate eloquence.
+
+“Yes, Beulah, I have done it single-handed. I have crucified Camemeyer,
+‘Standard Oil,’ and the ‘System’ that spiked me to the cross a few weeks
+ago. You have three millions, and I have seven. Now there is nothing more
+but for you to go home to your father, and then come back to me. Back to
+me, Beulah, back to me to be my wife!”
+
+He stopped. There was no sound. I waited; then, frightened, I stepped to
+the door of Beulah Sands’s office. Bob was standing just inside the
+threshold, where he had halted to give her the glad tidings. She had risen
+from her desk and was looking at him with an agonised stare. He seemed to
+be transfixed by her look, the wild ecstasy of the outburst of love yet
+mirrored in his eyes. She was just saying as I reached the door:
+
+“Bob, in mercy’s name tell me you got this money fairly, honourably.”
+
+Bob must have realised for the first time what he had done. He did not
+speak. He only stared into her eyes. She was now at his side.
+
+“Bob, you are unnerved,” she said; “you have been through a terrible
+ordeal. For an hour I have been reading in the bulletins of the banks and
+trust companies that have failed, of the banking-houses that have been
+ruined. I have been reading that you did it; that you have made
+millions—and I knew it was for me, for father, but in the midst of my
+joy, my gratitude, my love—for, oh, Bob, I love you,” she interrupted
+herself passionately; “it seems as though I love you beyond the capacity
+of a human heart to love. I think that for the right to be yours for one
+single moment of this life I would smilingly endure all the pains and
+miseries of eternal torture. Yes, Bob, for the right to have you call me
+yours for only while I heard the word, I would do anything, Bob, anything
+that was honourable.”
+
+She had drawn his head down close to her face, and her great blue eyes
+searched his as though they would go to his very soul. She was a child in
+her simple appeal for him to allow her to see his heart, to see that there
+was nothing black there.
+
+As she gazed, her beautiful hands played through his hair as do a mother’s
+through that of the child she is soothing in sickness.
+
+“Bob, speak to me, speak to me,” she begged, “tell me there was no
+dishonour in the getting of those millions. Tell me no one was made to
+suffer as my father and I have suffered. Tell me that the suicides and the
+convicts, the daughters dragged to shame and the mothers driven to the
+madhouse as a result of this panic, cannot be charged to anything unfair
+or dishonourable that you have done. Bob, oh, Bob, answer! Answer no, or
+my heart will break; or if, Bob, you have made a mistake, if you have done
+that which in your great desire to aid me and my father seemed
+justifiable, but which you now see was wrong, tell it to me, Bob dear, and
+together we will try to undo it. We will try to find a way to atone. We
+will give the millions to the last, last penny to those upon whom you have
+brought misery. Father’s loss will not matter. Together we will go to him
+and tell him what we have done, what we have lived through, tell him of
+our mistake, and in our agony he will forget his own. For such a horror
+has my father of anything dishonourable that he will embrace his misery as
+happiness when he knows that his teachings have enabled his daughter to
+undo this great wrong. And then, Bob, we will be married, and you and I
+and father and mother will be together, and be, oh, so happy, and we will
+begin all over again.”
+
+“Beulah, stop; in the name of God, in the name of your love for me, don’t
+say another word. There is a limit to the capacity of a man to suffer,
+even if he be a great, strong brute like myself, and, Beulah, I have
+reached that limit. The day has been a hard one.”
+
+His voice softened and became as a tired child’s.
+
+“I must go out into the hustle of the street, into the din and sound, and
+get down my nerves and get back my head. Then I shall be able to think
+clear and true, and I will come back to you, and together we will see if I
+have done anything that makes me unfit to touch the cheek and the hands
+and the lips of the best and most beautiful woman God ever put upon earth.
+Beulah, you know I would not deceive you to save my body from the fires
+of this world, and my soul from the torture of the damned, and I promise
+you that if I find that I have done wrong, what you call wrong, what your
+father would call wrong, I will do what you say to atone.”
+
+He took her head between his hands, gently, reverently, and touching his
+lips to her glorious golden hair, he went away.
+
+Beulah Sands turned to me. “Please, Mr. Randolph, go with him. He is
+soul-dazed. One can never tell what a heart sorely perplexed will prompt
+its owner to do. Often in the night when I have got myself into a fever
+from thinking of my father’s situation, I have had awful temptations. The
+agents of the devil seek the wretched when none of those they love are by.
+I have often thought some of the blackest tragedies of the earth might
+have been averted if there had been a true friend to stand at the wrung
+one’s elbow at the fatal minute of decision and point to the sun behind,
+just when the black ahead grew unendurable. Please follow Mr. Brownley
+that you may be ready, should his awakening to what he has done become
+unbearable. Tell him the dreaded morrows are never as terrible actually as
+they seem in anticipation.”
+
+I overtook Bob just outside the office. I did not speak to him, for I
+realised that he was in no mood for company. I dropped in behind,
+determined that I would not lose sight of him. It was almost one o’clock.
+Wall Street was at its meridian of frenzy, every one on a wild rush. The
+day’s doing had packed the always-crowded money lane. The newsboys were
+shouting afternoon editions. “Terrible panic in Wall Street. One man
+against millions. Robert Brownley broke ‘the Street.’ Made twenty millions
+in an hour. Banks failed. Wreck and ruin everywhere. President Snow of
+Asterfield National a suicide.” Bob gave no sign of hearing. He strode
+with a slow, measured gait, his head erect, his eyes staring ahead at
+space, a man thinking, thinking, thinking for his salvation. Many hurrying
+men looked at him, some with an expression of unutterable hatred, as
+though they wanted to attack him. Then again there were those who called
+him by name with a laugh of joy; and some turned to watch him in
+curiosity. It was easy to pick the wounded from those who shared in his
+victory, and from those who knew the frenzied finance buzz-saw only by its
+buzz. Bob saw none. Where could he be going? He came to the head of the
+street of coin and crime and crossed Broadway. His path was blocked by the
+fence surrounding old Trinity’s churchyard. Grasping the pickets in either
+hand he stared at the crumbling headstones of those guardsmen of Mammon
+who once walked the earth and fought their heart battles, as he was
+walking and fighting, but who now knew no ten o’clock, no three, who
+looked upon the stock-gamblers and dollar-trailers as they looked upon the
+worms that honeycombed their headstones’ bases. What thoughts went through
+Bob Brownley’s mind only his Maker knew. For minutes he stood motionless,
+then he walked on down Broadway. He went into the Battery. The benches
+were crowded with that jetsam and flotsam of humanity that New York’s
+mighty sewers throw in armies upon her inland beaches at every sunrise:
+Here a sodden brute sleeping off a prolonged debauch, there a lad whose
+frankness of face and homespun clothes and bewildered eyes spelt, “from
+the farm and mother’s watchful love.” On another bench an Italian woman
+who had a half-dozen future dollar kings and social queens about her, and
+whose clothes told of the immigrant ship just into port. Bob Brownley
+apparently saw none. But suddenly he stopped. Upon a bench sat a
+sweet-faced mother holding a sleeping babe in her arms, while a
+curly-pated boy nestled his head in her lap and slept through the magic
+lanes and fairy woods of dreamland. The woman’s face was one of those that
+blend the confidence of girlhood with the uncertainty of womanhood. ’Twas
+a pretty face, which had been plainly tagged by its Maker for a
+light-hearted trip through this world, but it had been seared by the iron
+of the city.
+
+“Mr. Brownley—” She started to rise.
+
+He gently pushed her back with a “hush,” unwilling to rob the sleepers of
+their heaven.
+
+“What are you doing here, Mrs.——?” He halted.
+
+“Mrs. Chase. Mr. Brownley, when I went away from Randolph & Randolph’s
+office I married John Chase; you may remember him as delivery clerk. I had
+such a happy home and my husband was so good; I did not have to typewrite
+any longer. These are our two children.”
+
+“What are you doing here?”
+
+The tears sprang to her eyes; she dropped them, but did not answer.
+
+“Don’t mind me, woman. I, too, have hidden hells I don’t want the world to
+see. Don’t mind me; tell me your story. It may do you good; it may do me
+good; yes, it may do me good.”
+
+I had dropped into a seat a few feet away. Both were too much occupied
+with their own thoughts to notice me or any one else. I could not overhear
+their conversation, but long afterward, when I mentioned our old
+stenographer, Bessie Brown, to Bob, he told me of the incident at the
+Battery. Her husband, after their marriage, had become infected with the
+stock-gambling microbe, the microbe that gnaws into its victim’s mind and
+heart day and night, while ever fiercer grows the “get rich, get rich”
+fever. He had plunged with their savings and had drawn a blank. He had
+lost his position in disgrace and had landed in the bucket-shop, the
+sub-cellar pit of the big Stock Exchange hell. From there a week before he
+had been sent to prison for theft, and that morning she had been turned
+into the street by her landlord. I saw Bob take from his pocket his
+memorandum-book, write something upon a leaf, tear it out and hand it to
+the woman, touch his hat, and before she could stop him, stride away. I
+saw her look at the paper, clap her hands to her forehead, look at the
+paper again and at the retreating form of Bob Brownley. Then I saw her,
+yes, there in the old Battery Park, in the drizzling rain and under the
+eyes of all, drop upon her knees in prayer. How long she prayed I do not
+know. I only know that as I followed Bob I looked back and the woman was
+still upon her knees. I thought at the time how queer and unnatural the
+whole thing seemed. Later, I learned to know that nothing is queer and
+unnatural in the world of human suffering; that great human suffering
+turns all that is queer and unnatural into commonplace. Next day Bessie
+Brown came to our office to see Bob. Not being able to get at him she
+asked for me.
+
+“Mr. Randolph, tell me, please, what shall I do with this paper?” she
+said. “I met Mr. Brownley in the Battery yesterday. He saw I was in
+distress and he gave me this, but I cannot believe he meant it,” and she
+showed me an order on Randolph & Randolph for a thousand dollars. I cashed
+her check and she went away.
+
+From the Battery Bob sought the wharves, the Bowery, Five Points, the
+hothouses of the under-worldlings of America. He seemed bent on picking
+out the haunts of misery in the misery-infested metropolis of the new
+world. For two hours he tramped and I followed. A number of times I
+thought to speak to him and try to win him from his mood, but I refrained.
+I could see there was a soul battle waging and I realised that upon its
+outcome might depend Bob’s salvation. Some seek the quiet of the woods,
+the soothing rustle of the leaves, the peaceful ripple of the brook when
+battling for their soul, but Bob’s woods appeared to be the shadowy places
+of misery, his rustling leaves the hoarse din of the multitude, and his
+brook’s ripple the tears and tales of the man-damned of the great city,
+for he stopped and conversed with many human derelicts that he met on his
+course. The hand of the clock on Trinity’s steeple pointed to four as we
+again approached the office of Randolph & Randolph. Bob was now moving
+with a long, hurried stride, as though consumed with a fever of desire to
+get to Beulah Sands. For the last fifteen minutes I had with difficulty
+kept him in sight. Had he arrived at a decision, and if so, what was it? I
+asked myself over and over again as I plowed through the crowds.
+
+Bob went straight to Beulah Sands’s office, I to mine. I had been there
+but a moment when I heard deep, guttural groans. I listened. The sound
+came louder than before. It came from Beulah Sands’s office. With a bound
+I was at the open door. My God, the sight that met my gaze! It haunts me
+even now when years have dulled its vividness. The beautiful, quiet, gray
+figure that had grown to be such a familiar picture to Bob and me of late,
+sat at the flat desk in the centre of the room. She faced the door. Her
+elbows rested on the desk; in her hand was an afternoon paper that she had
+evidently been reading when Bob entered. God knows how long she had been
+reading it before he came. Bob was kneeling at the side of her chair, his
+hands clasped and uplifted in an agony of appeal that was supplemented by
+the awful groans. His face showed unspeakable terror and entreaty; the
+eyes were bursting from their sockets and were riveted on hers as those of
+a man in a dungeon might be fixed upon an approaching spectre of one whom
+he had murdered. His chest rose and fell, as though trying to burst some
+unseen bonds that were crushing out his life. With every breath would come
+the awful groan that had first brought me to him. Beulah Sands had half
+turned her face until her eyes gazed into Bob’s with a sweet, childish
+perplexity. I looked at her, surprised that one whom I had always seen so
+intelligently masterful should be passive in the face of such anguish.
+Then, horror of horrors! I saw that there was something missing from her
+great blue eyes. I looked; gasped. Could it possibly be? With a bound I
+was at her side. I gazed again into those eyes which that morning had been
+all that was intelligent, all that was godlike, all that was human. Their
+soul, their life was gone. Beulah Sands was a dead woman; not dead in
+body, but in soul; the magic spark had fled. She was but an empty shell—a
+woman of living flesh and blood; but the citadel of life was empty, the
+mind was gone. What had been a woman was but a child. I passed my hand
+across my now damp forehead. I closed my eyes and opened them again. Bob’s
+figure, with clasped, uplifted hands, and bursting eyes, was still there.
+There still resounded through the room the awful guttural groans. Beulah
+Sands smiled, the smile of an infant in the cradle. She took one beautiful
+hand from the paper and passed it over Bob’s bronzed cheek, just as the
+infant touches its mother’s face with its chubby fingers. In my horror I
+almost expected to hear the purling of a babe. My eyes in their perplexity
+must have wandered from her face, for I suddenly became aware of a great
+black head-line spread across the top of the paper that she had been
+reading:
+
+   “FRIDAY, THE 13TH.”
+
+And beneath in one of the columns:
+
+   “TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN VIRGINIA”
+
+   “THE MOST PROMINENT CITIZEN OF THE STATE, EX-UNITED STATES SENATOR AND
+   EX-GOVERNOR, JUDGE LEE SANDS OF SANDS LANDING, WHILE TEMPORARILY INSANE
+   FROM THE LOSS OF HIS FORTUNE AND MILLIONS OF THE FUNDS FOR WHICH HE WAS
+   TRUSTEE, CUT THE THROAT OF HIS INVALID WIFE, HIS DAUGHTER’S, AND THEN
+   HIS OWN. ALL THREE DIED INSTANTLY.”
+
+In another column:
+
+   “ROBERT BROWNLEY CREATES THE MOST DISASTROUS PANIC IN THE HISTORY OF
+   WALL STREET AND SPREADS WRECK AND RUIN THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY.”
+
+A hideous picture seared its every light and shade on my mind, through my
+heart, into all my soul. A frenzied-finance harvest scene with its gory
+crop; in the centre one living-dead, part of the picture, yet the ghost
+left to haunt the painters, one of whom was already cowering before the
+black and bloody canvas.
+
+Well did the word-artist who wrote over the door of the madhouse, “Man can
+suffer only to the limit, then he shall know peace,” understand the
+wondrous wisdom of his God. Beulah Sands had gone beyond her limit and was
+at peace.
+
+The awful groaning stopped and an ashen pallor spread over Bob Brownley’s
+face. Before I could catch him he rolled backward upon the floor as dead.
+Bob Brownley, too, had gone beyond his limit. I bent over him and lifted
+his head, while the sweet woman-child knelt and covered his face with
+kisses, calling in a voice like that of a tiny girl speaking to her doll,
+“Bob, my Bob, wake up, wake up; your Beulah wants you.” As I placed my
+hand upon Bob’s heart and felt its beats grow stronger, as I listened to
+Beulah Sands’s childish voice, joyously confident, as it called upon the
+one thing left of her old world, some of my terror passed. In its place
+came a great mellowing sense of God’s marvellous wisdom. I thought
+gratefully of my mother’s always ready argument that the law of all laws,
+of God and nature, is that of compensation. I had allowed Bob’s head to
+sink until it rested in Beulah’s lap, and from his calm and steady
+breathing I could see that he had safely passed a crisis, that at least he
+was not in the clutches of death, as I had at first feared.
+
+Bob slept. Beulah Sands ceased her calling and with a smile raised her
+fingers to her lips and softly said, “Hush, my Bob’s asleep.” Together we
+held vigil over our sleeping lover and friend, she with the happiness of a
+child who had no fear of the awakening, I with a silent terror of what
+should come next. I had seen one mind wafted to the unknown that day. Was
+it to have a companion to cheer and solace it on its far journey to the
+great beyond? How long we waited Bob’s awakening I could not tell. The
+clock’s hands said an hour; it seemed to me an age. At last his
+magnificent physique, his unpoisoned blood and splendid brain pulled him
+through to his new world of mind and heart torture. His eyelids lifted. He
+looked at me, then at Beulah Sands, with eyes so sad, so awful in their
+perplexed mournfulness, that I almost wished they had never opened, or had
+opened to let me see the childlike look that now shone from the girl’s.
+His gaze finally rested on her and his lips murmured “Beulah.”
+
+“There, Bob, I thought you would know it was time to wake up.” She bent
+over and kissed him on the eyes again and again with the loving ardour a
+child bestows upon its pets.
+
+He slowly rose to his feet. I could see from his eyes and the shudder that
+went over him as he caught sight of the paper on the desk that he was
+himself; that memory of the happenings of the day had not fled in his
+sleep. He rose to his full height, his head went up, and his shoulders
+back, but only from habit and for an instant. Then he folded Beulah Sands
+to his breast and dropped his head upon her shoulder. He sobbed like a
+father with the corpse of his child.
+
+“Why, Bob, my Bob, is this the way you treat your Beulah when she’s let
+you sleep so your beautiful eyes would be pretty for the wedding? Is this
+the way to act before this kind man who has come to take us to the church?
+Naughty, naughty Bob.”
+
+I looked at her, at Bob, in horror. I was beginning to realise the
+absolute deadness of this woman. From the first look I had known that her
+mind had fled, but knowledge is not always realisation. She did not even
+know who I was. Her mind was dead to all but the man she loved, the man
+who through all those long days of her suffering she had silently
+worshiped. To all but him she was new-born.
+
+At the sound of “wedding,” “church,” Bob’s head slowly rose from her
+shoulder. I saw his decision the instant I caught his eye; I realised the
+uselessness of opposing it, and, sick at heart and horrified, I listened
+as he said in a voice now calm and soothing as that of a father to his
+child, “Yes, Beulah, my darling, I have slept too long. Bob has been
+naughty, but we will make up for lost time. Get your hat and cloak and
+we’ll hurry to the church or we will be late.”
+
+With a laugh of joy she followed him to the closet where hung the little
+gray turban and the pretty gray jacket. He took them from their peg and
+gave them to her.
+
+“Not a word, Jim,” he bade me. “In the name of God and all our friendship,
+not a word. Beulah Sands will be my wife as soon as I can find a minister
+to marry us. It is best, best. It is right. It is as God would have it, or
+I am not capable of knowing right from wrong. Anyway, it is what will be.
+She has no father, no mother, no sister, no one to protect and shield her.
+The ‘System’ has robbed her of all in life, even of herself, of
+everything, Jim, but me. I must try to win her back for herself, or to
+make her new world a happy one—a happy one for her.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+
+
+An old gambler, whose life had been spent listening to the rattle of the
+drop-in-bound-out little roulette ball, was told by a fellow victim, as
+his last dollar went to the relentless tiger’s maw, that the keeper’s foot
+was upon an electric button which enabled him to make the ball drop where
+his stake was not. He simply said, “Thank God. I thought that prince of
+cheats, Fate, who all through life has had his foot on the button of my
+game, was the one who did the trick.” Long suffering had driven the old
+gambler to the loser’s bible, Philosophy! Cheated by man’s device, he knew
+he had some chance of getting even; but Fate he could not combat.
+
+Bob Brownley had thought himself in hard luck when his eyes opened to the
+fact that he had been robbed by means of dice loaded by man, but when Fate
+pressed the button he saw that his man-made hell was but a feeble
+imitation, and—was satisfied, as whoever knows the game of life is
+satisfied, because—he must be. Bob’s strong head bowed, his iron will
+bent, and meekly his soul murmured, “Thy will be done.”
+
+That night he married Beulah Sands. The minister who united the grown-up
+man and the woman who was as a new-born babe saw nothing extraordinary in
+the match. He murmured to me, who acted as best man to the groom, maid of
+honour to the bride, and father and mother to both, “We see strange
+sights, we ministers of the great city, Mr. Randolph. The sweet little
+lady appears to be a trifle scared.” My explanation that she and Mr.
+Brownley were the only survivors of the awful tragedies of the day was
+sufficient. He was satisfied when he got no other response to his
+question, “Do you take this man to be your wedded husband?” than a sweet
+childish smile as she snuggled closer to Bob.
+
+Bob and his bride went South to his mother and sisters the next day. He
+left to me the settlement of his trades. He instructed me to set aside
+$3,000,000 profits for Beulah Sands-Brownley, and insisted that I pay from
+the balance the notes he had given me a few weeks before. There remained
+something over $5,000,000 for himself.
+
+The leading Wall Street paper, in its preachment on the panic, wound up
+with:
+
+   “Wall Street has lived through many black Fridays. Some of them have
+   been thirteenth-of-the-month Fridays, but no Friday yet marked from the
+   calendar, no Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday yet
+   garnered to the storehouse of the past was ever more jubilantly
+   welcomed by his Satanic Majesty than yesterday. We pray heaven no
+   coming day may be ordained to go against yesterday’s record for
+   tigerish cruelty and awful destruction. It is rumoured that Mr.
+   Brownley of Randolph & Randolph, either for himself or his clients
+   cleared twenty-five millions of profit. We believe that this estimate
+   is low. The losses coming through Robert Brownley’s terrible onslaught
+   must have run over five hundred millions. Wall Street and the country
+   will do well to take the moral of yesterday’s market to their heart. It
+   is this: The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few Americans is
+   a menace to our financial structure. It is the unanimous opinion of
+   ‘the Street’ that Robert Brownley could never have succeeded in
+   battering down the price of Sugar in the very teeth of the Camemeyer
+   and Standard Oil support as he did yesterday, without a cash backing of
+   from fifty to one hundred millions. If a vast aggregation of money
+   owners deliberately place themselves behind an onslaught such as was so
+   successfully made yesterday, why can that slaughter not be repeated at
+   any time, on any stock, and against the support of any backing?”
+
+When I read this and listened to talk along the same lines, I was puzzled.
+I could not for the life of me see where Bob Brownley could have got five
+to ten millions’ backing for such a raid, much less fifty to a hundred.
+Yet I was forced to confess that he must have had some tremendous backing;
+else how could he have done what I had seen him do?
+
+Bob left his wife at his mother’s house while he went to Sands Landing to
+the funeral. After the old judge and his victims had been laid away and
+the relatives had gathered in the library of the great white Sands
+mansion, he explained their kinswoman’s condition and told them that she
+was his wife. He insisted upon paying all Judge Sands’s debts, over
+$500,000 of which was owed to members of the Sands family for whom he had
+been trustee. Before he went back to his mother’s, Bob had turned a great
+calamity into an occasion for something near rejoicing. Judge Sands and
+his family were very dear to the people of the section, but his misfortune
+had threatened such wide-spread ruin that the unlooked-for recovery of a
+million and a half was a godsend that made for happiness.
+
+Two days after the funeral Bob’s dearest hope fled. He had ordered all
+things at the Sands plantation put in their every-day condition. Beulah
+Sands’s uncles, aunts, and cousins had arranged to welcome her and to try
+by every means in their power to coax back her lost mind. They assured Bob
+that, barring the absence of Beulah’s father, mother, and sister, there
+would not be a memory-recaller missing. Bob and his wife landed from the
+river packet at the foot of the driveway, which led straight from the
+landing to the vine-covered, white-pillared portico. Bob’s agony must have
+been awful when his wife clapped her hands in childish joy as she
+exclaimed, “Oh, Bob, what a pretty place!” She gave no sign that she had
+ever seen the great entrance, through which she had come and gone from her
+babyhood. Bob took her to the library, to her mother’s room, to her own,
+to the nursery where were the dolls and toys of her childhood, but there
+came no sign of recognition, nothing but childish pleasure. She looked at
+her aunts and uncles and the cousins with whom she had spent her life,
+bewildered at finding so many strangers in the otherwise quiet place. As a
+last hope, they led in her old black foster-mother, who had nursed her in
+babyhood, who was the companion of her childhood and the pet of her
+womanhood. There was not a dry eye in the library when she met the old
+mammy’s outburst of joy with the puzzled gaze of the child who does not
+understand. The grief of the old negress was pitiful as she realised that
+she was a stranger to her “honey bird.” The child seemed perplexed at her
+grief. It was plain to all that the Sands home meant nothing to the last
+of the judge’s family.
+
+Bob brought her back to New York and besought the aid of the medical
+experts of America and of the Old World to regain that which had been
+recalled by its Maker. The doctors were fascinated with this new phase of
+mind blight, for in some particulars Beulah’s case was unlike any known
+instances, but none gave hope. All agreed that some wire connecting heart
+and brain had burned out when the cruel “System” threw on a voltage beyond
+the wire’s capacity to transmit. All agreed that the woman-child wife
+would never grow older unless through some mental eruption beyond human
+power to produce. Some of the medical men pointed to one possibility, but
+that one was too terrible for Bob to entertain.
+
+The first anniversary of their marriage found Bob and his wife settled in
+their new Fifth Avenue mansion. He had bought and torn down two old
+houses between Forty-second and Forty-third Streets and had erected a
+palace, the inside of which was unique among all New York’s unusual
+structures. The first and second floors were all that refined taste and
+unlimited expenditure of money could produce. Nothing on those splendid
+floors told of the strange things above. A sedate luxury pervaded the
+drawing-rooms, library, and dining-room. Bob said to me, in taking me
+through them, “Some day, Jim, Beulah may recover, may come back to me, and
+I want to have everything as she would wish, everything as she would have
+had it if the curse had never come.” The third floor was Beulah’s. A
+child’s dainty bedroom; two nurses’ rooms adjoining; a nursery, with a
+child’s small schoolroom and a big playroom, with dolls and doll houses,
+child’s toys of every description in abandon, as though their owner were
+in fact but a few years old. Across the hall were three offices, exact
+duplicates of mine, Bob’s, and Beulah Sands’s at Randolph & Randolph’s.
+When I first saw them it was with difficulty that I brought myself to
+realise that I was not where the gruesome happenings of a year before had
+taken place. Bob had reproduced to the minutest details our down-town
+workshop. Standing in the door of Beulah Sands’s office I faced the flat
+desk at which she had sat the afternoon when I first saw that hideous
+result of the work of the “System.” I could almost see the little gray
+figure holding the afternoon paper. In horror my eyes sought the floor at
+the side of the chair in search of Bob’s agonised face and uplifted hands.
+As I stood for the first time in the middle of Bob’s handiwork, I seemed
+to hear again those awful groans.
+
+“Jim,” Bob said, “I have a haunting idea that some day Beulah will wake
+and look around and think she has been but a few minutes asleep. If she
+should, she must have nothing to disabuse her mind until we break the news
+to her. I have instructed her nurses, one or the other of whom never loses
+sight of her night or day, to win her to the habit of spending her time at
+her old desk; I have told them always to be prepared for her awakening,
+and when it comes they are instantly to shut off the rest of the floor and
+house until I can get to her. Here comes Beulah now.”
+
+Out of the nursery came a laughing, happy child-woman. In spite of her
+finely developed, womanly figure, which had lost nothing of its wonderful
+beauty, and the exquisite face and golden-brown hair and great blue eyes,
+which were as fascinating as on the day she first entered the offices of
+Randolph & Randolph; in spite of the close-fitting gray gown with dainty
+turned-over lace collar, I could hardly bring myself to believe that she
+was anything but a young child. With an eager look and a happy laugh she
+went to Bob and throwing her arms about his neck, covered his face with
+kisses.
+
+“Good Bob has come back to play with Beulah,” she said, “She knew he
+would. They told Beulah Bob had gone away to the woods to gather pretty
+flowers. Beulah knew if Bob had gone to the woods he would have taken
+Beulah with him. Now Bob must play school with Beulah.” She sat at her
+desk and opened her child’s school-book. With mock severity she said,
+“Bob, c-a-t. What does it spell?” For half an hour Bob sat and played
+scholar and teacher by turns with all the patience of a fond father. With
+difficulty I kept back the tears the sad sight brought to my eyes.
+
+For the first year of Bob’s marriage we saw but little of him at the
+office. The Exchange saw less. He had wandered in upon the floor two or
+three times, but did no business and seemed to take but little interest.
+
+“The Street” knew Bob had married the daughter of Judge Lee Sands, the
+victim of Tom Reinhart’s cold-blooded Seaboard Air Line deal. Otherwise it
+knew nothing of the affair. His friends never met his wife. Occasionally
+they would pass the Brownley carriage on the avenue or in the park and,
+taking it for granted that the beautiful woman was Mrs. Brownley, they
+thought Bob a lucky fellow. It seemed quite natural that his wife should
+choose seclusion after the awful tragedy at her home in Virginia. But they
+could not understand why, with such cause for mourning, the exquisite
+figure beside Bob in the victoria should always be garbed in gray. After a
+while it was whispered that there was something wrong in Bob’s household.
+Then his friends and acquaintances ceased to whisper or to think of his
+affairs. With all New York’s bad points—and they are as plentiful as her
+church spires and charity bazaars—she has one offsetting virtue. If a
+dweller in her midst chooses to let New York alone, New York is willing to
+reciprocate. In her most crowded fashionable districts a person may come
+and go for a lifetime, and none in the block in which he dwells will know
+when his coming and going ceases. When a New Yorker reads in his newspaper
+of the man who lives next door to him, “murdered and his body discovered
+by the gas man” or the tax collector, the butcher or the baker, as the
+case may be, he never thinks he may have been remiss in his neighbourly
+duties. There is no such word as “neighbour” in the New York City
+dictionary. It may have been there once, but, if so, it was long
+ago used as a stake for the barbed-wire fence of exclusive
+keep-your-distance-we-keep-our-distance-until-we-know-youness. It is told
+of a minister from the rural districts, an old-fashioned American, who
+came to New York to take charge of a parish, that he started out to make
+his calls and was seized in the hall of what in civilisation would have
+been his next-door neighbour. He was rushed away to Bellevue for
+examination as to sanity. The verdict was: “Insane. Had no letter of
+introduction and was not in the set.”
+
+Shortly after the first anniversary of his wedding Bob gave up his office
+with Randolph & Randolph and opened one for himself. He explained that he
+was giving up his commission business to devote all his time to personal
+trading. With the opening of his new office he again became the most
+active man on the floor. His trading was intermittent. For weeks he would
+not be seen at the Exchange or on “the Street.” Then he would return and,
+after executing a series of brilliant trades, which were invariably
+successful, he would again disappear. He soon became known as the luckiest
+operator in Wall Street, and the beginning of his every new deal was the
+signal for his fast-growing following to tag on.
+
+From time to time I learned that Beulah Sands was making no real
+improvement, though in some details she had learned as a child learns. But
+there was no indication that she would ever regain her lost mind.
+
+Strange stories of Bob’s doings began to seep into my office. For long
+periods he would disappear. Neither the nurses in charge of his wife, nor
+his brother, mother, and sisters, for whom he had purchased a mansion a
+few blocks above his own, would hear a word from him. Then he would
+return as suddenly as he had disappeared, and his wild eyes and haggard
+face would tell of a prolonged and desperate soul struggle. He drank often
+now, a habit he had never before indulged in.
+
+For ten days before the second anniversary of his marriage he had been
+missing. On the morning of the anniversary he appeared at the Exchange,
+wild-eyed and dare-devil reckless. The market had been advancing for weeks
+and was at a high level. Tom Reinhart and his branch of the “System” were
+working out a new fleecing of the public in Union and Northern Pacific. At
+the strike of the gong Bob took possession of the Union Pacific pole and
+in thirty minutes had precipitated a panic by his merciless selling. Our
+house was heavily interested in the Pacifics, although not in connection
+with Reinhart and his crowd. As soon as I got word that Bob was the cause
+of the slaughter, I rushed over to the Exchange and working my way into
+the crowd, I begged a word with him. He had broken both stocks over fifty
+points a share and the panic was raging through the room. He glared at me,
+but finally followed me out into the lobby. At first he would not heed my
+appeal, but finally he said, “Jim, it is too bad to let up. I had
+determined to rub this devilish institution off the map, but if it really
+is a case of injury to the house, it’s my opportunity to do something for
+you who have done so much for me, so here goes.” He threw himself into the
+Union Pacific crowd, first giving an order to a group of his brokers, who
+jumped for a number of other poles. Almost instantly the panic was stayed
+and stocks were bounding upward two to five points at a leap. Bob
+continued buying Union Pacific and his brokers other stocks in unlimited
+quantities. Nothing like such a quick turn of the market had been seen
+before. His power to absorb stocks seemed to be boundless. It was
+estimated that personally and through his brokers he bought over half a
+million shares before he joined me and left the Exchange.
+
+I looked at him in wonderment. “Bob, I cannot understand you,” I said at
+last as we turned out of Broad Street into Wall. “It seems as if you work
+with magic. Everything you touch turns to gold.”
+
+He wheeled on me. “Yes, Jim, you are right. Gold, heartless, soulless
+gold. But what is the dross good for? What is it good for to me? To-day I
+suppose I have made the biggest one-man killing in the history of ‘the
+Street.’ I must be an easy twenty-five millions richer in gold than I was
+this morning, and I had enough then to dam the East River and a good
+section of the North. But tell me, Jim, tell me, what can it buy in this
+world that I have not got? I had health and happiness, perfect health,
+pure happiness, when I did not have a thousand all told. Now I have fifty
+millions, and I know how to get fifty or five hundred and fifty more any
+time I care to take them, and I have only physical and mental hell. No
+beggar in all the world is so poor in happiness as I. Tell me, tell me,
+Jim, in the name of God, if there is one—for already the game of gold is
+robbing me of my faith in God—where can I buy a little, just a little
+happiness with all this cursed yellow dirt? What will it get me in the
+next world, Jim Randolph, what will it get me? If I had died when I was
+poor, I think you will agree with me that, if there is a heaven, I should
+have stood an even chance of getting there. Now on a day like to-day, when
+you see the results of my work, the results of my handling of unlimited
+gold, you must agree that if I were taken off I should stand more than an
+even show of landing in hell where the sulphur is thickest and the flames
+are hottest.”
+
+We were at the entrance of Randolph & Randolph’s office as he poured out
+this terrible torrent of bitterness. He glared at me as a dungeon prisoner
+might glare at his keeper for his answer to “Where can I find liberty?” I
+had no words to answer him. As I noted the awful changes his new life was
+making in every line of his face, the rigid hardness, the haunted, nervous
+look of desperation, which seemed a forerunner of madness, I could not
+see, either, where his millions brought any happiness. His hair, which
+once was smooth and orderly, hung over his forehead in an unparted mass of
+tangled curls, and here and there showed a streak of white. Bob Brownley
+was still handsome, even more fascinating than before the mercury entered
+his soul, but it was that wild, awful beauty of the caged lion, lashing
+himself into madness with memories of his lost freedom.
+
+“Jim,” he went on, when he saw I could not answer, “I guess you don’t know
+where I can swap the yellow mud for balm of Gilead. I won’t bother you
+with my troubles any longer. I will go up-town and see the little girl
+whose happiness Tom Reinhart needed in his business. I will go up and show
+her the pictures in this week’s _Collier’s_ of the fine hospital for
+incurables that Reinhart has so generously and nobly built at a cost of
+two and a half millions! The little girl may think better of Reinhart when
+she knows that her father’s money was put to such good use. Who knows but
+the great finance king may dedicate it as the ‘Judge Lee Sands Home’ and
+carve over the entrance a bas-relief of her father, mother, and sister
+with Hope, Faith, and Charity coming from the mouths of their hanging
+severed heads?”
+
+Bob Brownley laughed a horrible ringing laugh as he uttered these awful
+words. Then he beat his hand down on my shoulders as he said in a hoarse
+voice, “Jim, but for you I should have had crimps in that jackal
+philanthropist’s soul by now and in the souls of his kind. But never mind.
+He will keep; he will surely keep until I get to him. Every day he lives
+he will be fitter for the crimping. Within the short two years since he
+finished grilling Judge Sands’s soul, he has put himself in better form
+to appreciate his reward. I see by the press that at last his aristocratic
+wife has gold-cured Newport of its habit of dating back the name Reinhart
+to her scullionhood, and it has taken her into the high-instep circle. I
+read the other day of his daughter’s marriage to some English nob, and of
+the discovery of the ancient Reinhart family tree and crest with the
+mailed hand and two-edged dirk and the vulture rampant, and the motto,
+‘Who strikes in the back strikes often.’”
+
+He left me with his laugh still ringing in my ears. I shuddered as I
+passed under the old black-and-gold sign my uncle and my father had nailed
+over the office entrance in an age now dead, an age when Wall Street men
+talked of honour and gold, not gold and more gold.
+
+In telling my wife of the day’s happenings I could not refrain from giving
+vent to the feelings that consumed me. “Kate, Bob will surely do something
+awful one of these days. I can see no hope for him. He grows more and more
+the madman as he broods over his horrible situation. The whole thing seems
+incredible to me. Never was a human being in such perpetual living
+purgatory—unlimited, absolute power on the one hand, unfathomable,
+never-cool-down hell on the other.”
+
+“Jim, how does he do what he does? I cannot make out from anything I have
+read or you have told me, how he creates those panics and makes all that
+money.”
+
+“No one has ever been able to figure it out,” I answered. “I understand
+the stock business, but I cannot for the life of me see how he does it. He
+has none of the money powers in league with him, that’s sure, for in the
+mood he has been in during the past two years it would be impossible for
+him to work with them, even if his salvation depended on it. The mention
+of any of the big ‘System’ men drives him to a fury. He has to-day made
+more money than any one man ever made in a day since the world began, and
+he had only commenced his work when he quit to please me. As I stand in
+the Exchange and watch him do it, it seems commonplace and simple.
+Afterward it is beyond my comprehension. At the gait he is going, the
+Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Gould fortunes combined will look tiny in
+comparison with the one he will have in a few years. It is beyond my power
+of figuring out, and it gives me a headache every time I try to see
+through it.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+
+
+A number of times during the following year, and finally on the
+anniversary of the Sands tragedy, Bob carried the Exchange to the verge of
+panic, only to turn the market and save “the Street” in the end. His
+profits were fabulous. Already his fortune was estimated to be between two
+and three hundred millions, one of the largest in the world. His name had
+become one of terror wherever stocks were dealt in. Wall Street had come
+to regard his every deal, from the moment that he began operations, as
+inevitably successful. Now and again he would jump into the market when
+some of the plunging cliques had a bear raid under way, and would put them
+to rout by buying everything in sight and bidding up prices until it
+looked as though he intended to do as extraordinary work on the up-side as
+he was wont to do on the down. At such times he was the idol of the
+Exchange, which worships the man who puts prices up as it hates him who
+pulls them down. Once when war news flashed over the wires from Washington
+and rumour had the Cabinet members, Senators, and Congressmen selling the
+market short on advance information, when the “Standard Oil” banks had put
+up money rates to 150 per cent, and a crash seemed inevitable, Bob
+suddenly smashed the loan market by offering to lend one hundred millions
+at four per cent.; and by buying and bidding up prices at the same time,
+he put the whole Washington crowd and its New York accomplices to
+disastrous rout and caused them to lose millions. He continued his
+operations with increasing violence and increasing profits up to the
+fourth anniversary of the tragedy. On the intervening anniversary I had
+been compelled by self-interest and fear that he would really pull down
+the entire Wall Street structure, to rush in and fairly drag him off. But
+with his growing madness my influence was waning. Each raid it was with
+greater difficulty that I got his ear.
+
+Finally, on the fourth anniversary, in a panic that seemed to be running
+into something more terrible than any previous, he savagely refused to
+accede to my appeal, telling me that he would not stop, even if Randolph
+& Randolph were doomed to go down in the crash. It had become known on the
+floor that I was the only one who could do anything with him in his
+frenzies, and my pleading with him in the lobby was watched by the members
+of the Exchange with triple eyed suspense. When it was clear from his
+emphatic gestures and raised voice—for he was in a reckless mood from
+drink and madness and took no pains to disguise his intentions—that I
+could not prevail upon him, there was a frantic rush for the poles to
+throw over stocks in advance of him. Suddenly, after I had turned from him
+in despair, there flashed into my mind an idea. The situation was
+desperate. I was dealing with a madman, and I decided that I was justified
+in making this last try. I rushed back to him. “Bob, good-bye,” I
+whispered in his ear, “good-bye. In ten minutes you will get word that Jim
+Randolph has cut his throat!” He stopped as though I had plunged a knife
+into him, struck his forehead a resounding blow, and into his wild brown
+eyes came a sickening look of fear.
+
+“Stop, Jim, for God’s sake, don’t say that to me. My cup is full now.
+Don’t tell me I am to have that crime on my soul.” He thought a moment.
+“I don’t know whether you mean it, Jim, but I can take no chances, not for
+all the money in the world, not even for revenge. Wait here, Jim.” He
+yelled for his brokers, and several rushed to him from different parts of
+the room. He sent them back into the crowd while he dashed for the
+Amalgamated-pole. The day was saved.
+
+Presently he came back to me. “Jim, I must have a talk with you. Come over
+to my office.” When we got there he turned the key and stood in front of
+me. His great eyes looked full into mine. In college days, gazing into
+their brown depths, by some magic I seemed to see the heroes and heroines
+of always happy-ending tales, as the child sees enchanted creatures far
+back in the burning Yule log flames. But there were no joyous beings in
+the haunted depths of Bob’s eyes that day.
+
+“Jim, you gave me an awful scare,” he said brokenly. “Don’t ever do it
+again. I have little left to live for. To be sure I have some feeling for
+mother, Fred, and sisters. But for you I have a love second only to that I
+should have felt for Beulah had I been allowed to have her. The thought,
+Jim, that I had wrecked your life, with all you have to live for, would
+have been the last straw. My life is purgatory. Beulah is only an
+ever-present curse to me—a ghost that rends my heart and soul, one minute
+with a blind frenzy to revenge her wrongs, the next with an icy remorse
+that I have not already done so. If I did not have her, perhaps in time I
+could forget; perhaps I might lay out some scheme to help poor devils
+whose poverty makes life unendurable, and with the millions I have taken
+from that main shaft of hell I might do things that would at least bring
+quiet to my soul; but it is impossible with the living corpse of Beulah
+Sands before me every minute and that devil machinery whirling in my brain
+all the time the song, ‘Revenge her and her father, revenge yourself.’ It
+is impossible to give it up, Jim. I must have revenge. I must stop this
+machinery that is smashing up more American hearts and souls each year
+than all the rest of earth’s grinders combined. Every day I delay I become
+more fiendish in my desires. Jim, don’t think I do not know that I have
+literally turned into a fiend. Whenever of late I see myself in the
+mirror, I shudder. When I think of what I was when your father stood us up
+in his office and started us in this heart-shrivelling, soul-callousing
+business, and what I am now, I cannot keep the madness down except with
+rum. You know what it means for me to say this, me who started with all
+the pride of a Brownley; but it is so, Jim. The other night I went home
+with my soul frozen with thoughts of the past and with my brain ablaze
+with rum, intending to end it all. I got out my revolver, and woke Beulah,
+but as I said, ‘Bob is going to kill Beulah and himself,’ she laughed that
+sweet child’s laugh and clapping her hands said, ‘Bob is so good to play
+with Beulah,’ and then I thought of that devil Reinhart and the other
+fiends of the ‘System’ being left to continue their work unhindered and I
+could not do it. I must have revenge; I must smash that heart-crushing
+machinery. Then I can go, and take Beulah with me. Now, Jim, let us have
+it clearly understood once and for all.”
+
+Remorse and softness were past; he was the Indian again. “I am going to
+wreck that hell-annex some day, and that some day will be the next time I
+start in. Don’t argue with me, don’t misunderstand me. To-day you stopped
+me. I don’t know whether you meant what you threatened; I don’t care now.
+It is just as well that I stopped, for the ‘System’s’ machine will be
+there whenever I start in again. It loses nothing of its fiendishness,
+none of its destructive powers by grinding, but, on the contrary, as you
+know, it increases its speed every day it runs. Now, Jim Randolph, I want
+to tell you that you must get yours and the house’s affairs in such shape
+that you won’t be hurt when I go into that human rat-pit the next time,
+for when I come from it the New York Stock Exchange and the ‘System’ will
+have had their spines unjointed. Yes, and I’ll have their hearts out, too.
+Neither will ever again be able to take from the American people their
+savings and their manhood and womanhood and give them in exchange
+unadulterated torment. I am going to be fair with you, Jim; this is the
+last time I will discuss the subject. After this you must take your chance
+with the rest of those who have to do with the cursed business. When I
+strike again, none will be spared. I will wreck ‘the Street’, and the
+innocent will go down with the guilty, if they have any stocks on hand at
+that time.
+
+“My power, Jim, is unlimited; nothing can stay it. I am not going to
+explain any further. You have seen me work. You must know that my power is
+greater than the ‘System’s,’ and you and I and ‘the Street’ have always
+known that the ‘System’ is more powerful than the Government, more
+powerful than are the courts, legislatures, Congress, and the President of
+the United States combined, that it absolutely controls the foundation on
+which they rest—the money of the nation. But my power is greater, a
+thousand, yes, a million times greater than theirs. Jim, they say that I
+have made more money than any man in the world. They say that I have five
+hundred millions of dollars, but the fools don’t keep track of my
+movements. They only know that I have pulled five hundred millions from my
+open whirls, the ones they have had an opportunity to keep tab on. But I
+tell you that I have made even more in my secret deals than the amount
+they have seen me take. I have had my agents with my capital in every
+deal, every steal the ‘System’ has rigged up. The world has been throwing
+up its hands in horror because Carnegie, the blacksmith of Pittsburgh,
+pulled off three hundred millions of swag in the Steel hold-up—yes,
+swag, Jim. Don’t scowl as though you wanted to read me a lecture on the
+coarseness of my language. I have learned to call this game of ours by its
+right name. It is not business enterprise with earned profits as results,
+but pulled-off tricks with bags of loot—black-jack swag—for their end.
+
+“I got away with three hundred millions when Steel slumped from 105 to 50
+and from 50 to 8, and no one knew I’d made a dollar. You and ‘the Street’
+read every morning last year the ‘guesses’ as to who could be rounding up
+the hundreds of millions on the slump. The papers and the market letters
+one morning said it was ‘Standard Oil’; the next, that it was Morgan; then
+it was Frick, Schwab, Gates, and so on down through the list. Of course,
+none of them denied; it is capital to all these knights of the road to be
+making millions in the minds of the world, even though they never get any
+of the money. Dick Turpin and Jonathan Wild never were fonder of having
+the daring hold-ups that other highwaymen perpetrated laid to their doors,
+than are these modern bandits of being credited with ruthless deeds that
+they did not commit. But Jim, ’twas I, ’twas I who sold Pennsylvania
+every morning for a year, while the selling was explained by the press as
+‘Cassatt cutting down Gould’s telegraph poles. Gould and old man
+Rockefeller selling Pennsylvania to get even.’ Jim Randolph, I have to-day
+a billion dollars, not the Rockefeller or Carnegie kind, but a real
+billion. If I had no other power but the power to call to-morrow for that
+billion in cash, it would be sufficient to lay in waste the financial
+world before to-morrow night. You are welcome, Jim, to any part of that
+billion, and the more you take the happier you will make me, but when I
+strike in again, don’t attempt to stay me, for it will do no good.”
+
+Shortly after this talk Bob left for Europe with Beulah. A great German
+expert on brain disorders had held out hope that a six month’s treatment
+at his sanitarium in Berlin might aid in restoring her mind. They returned
+the following August. The trip had been fruitless. It was plain to me that
+Bob was the same hopelessly desperate man as when he left, more hopeless,
+more desperate if anything than when he warned me of his determination.
+
+When he left for Europe “the Street” breathed more freely, and as time
+went by and there was no sign of his confidence-disturbing influence in
+the market, the “System” began to bring out its deferred deals. Times were
+ripe for setting up the most wildly inflated stock lamb-shearing traps. It
+had been advertised throughout the world that Tom Reinhart, now a
+two-hundred-time millionaire, was to consolidate his and many other
+enterprises into one gigantic trust with twelve billions of capital. His
+Union and Southern Pacific Railroads, his coal and Southern lines,
+together with his steamship company and lead, iron, and copper mines, were
+to be merged with the steel, traction, gas, and other enterprises he owned
+jointly with “Standard Oil.” Some of the railroads owned by Rockefeller
+and his pals, in which Reinhart had no part, were to go in too, and with
+these was to unite that mother hog of them all, “Standard Oil” itself. The
+trust was to be an enormous holding company, the like of which had until
+then not even been dreamed of by the most daring stock manipulators. The
+“System’s” banks, as well as trust and insurance companies throughout the
+country, had for a long time been getting into shape by concentrating the
+money of the country for this monster trust. It was newspaper and news
+bureau gossip that Reinhart and his crowd had bought millions of shares of
+the different stocks involved in the deal, and it was common knowledge
+that upon its successful completion Reinhart’s fortune would be in the
+neighbourhood of a billion. On October 1st the certificate of the
+Anti-People’s Trust, $12,000,000,000 capital, 120,000,000 shares, were
+listed upon the New York, London, and Boston Stock Exchanges, and the
+German and French Bourses, and trading in them started off fast and
+furious at 106. The claim that one billion of the twelve billions capital
+had been set aside to be used in protecting and manipulating the stock in
+the market, had been so widely advertised that even the most daring
+plunger did not think of selling it short.
+
+It was evident to all in the stock-gambling world that this was to be the
+“System’s” grand coup, that at its completion the masses would be rudely
+awakened to a realisation that their savings were invested in the combined
+American industries at vastly inflated values, that the few had all the
+real money, and that any attempt upon the people’s part to regulate and
+control the new system of robbery, would be fraught with unparalleled
+disaster—not to the “System,” but to the people.
+
+Since Bob’s return from Europe I had seen him but a few times. Up to
+October 1st he had not been near the Stock Exchange or “the Street.”
+Shortly after the listing of the “People Be Damned,” as “the Street” had
+dubbed the new trust, he began to show up at his office regularly. This
+was the condition of affairs when Fred Brownley called me up on the
+telephone, as I related at the beginning of my story, which I did not
+realise I had been so long in telling.
+
+My thoughts had been chasing each other with lightning-like rapidity back
+over the last five years and the fifteen before them, and each thought
+deepened the black mist over my present mental vision. In the midst of my
+reflections my telephone rang again.
+
+“Mr. Randolph, for Heaven’s sake have you done nothing yet?” It was Fred
+Brownley’s voice. “Things are frightful here. Bob’s brokers are selling
+stocks at five and ten thousand-lot clips. Barry Conant is leading
+Reinhart’s forces. It is said he has the pool’s protection order in
+Anti-People’s and that it is unlimited, but Bob has the Reinhart crowd
+pretty badly scared. Swan has just finished giving Conant a hundred
+thousand off the reel in 10,000 lots, and he told me a moment ago he was
+going over to get Bob himself to face Barry Conant. They’re down twenty
+points on the average, although they haven’t let Anti-People’s break an
+eighth yet. They have it pegged at 106, but there is an ugly rumour just
+in that Bob, under cover of a general attack, is unloading Anti-People’s
+on to the Reinhart wing for Rogers and Rockefeller, and the rumour is
+getting in its work. Even Barry Conant is growing a bit anxious. The
+latest talk is that Reinhart is borrowing hundreds of millions on
+Anti-People’s, and that his loans are being called in all directions. Do
+you know Reinhart is at his place in Virginia and cannot get here before
+to-morrow night? If Bob breaks through Anti-People’s peg, it will be the
+worst crash yet.”
+
+“All right, Fred,” I answered. “I will go over to Bob’s right now. I hate
+to do it, but there is no other hope.”
+
+I dropped the receiver and started for Bob’s office. As I went through his
+counting-room one of the clerks said, “They have just broken Anti-People’s
+to 90 on a bulletin that Tom Reinhart’s wife and only daughter have been
+killed in an automobile accident at their place in Virginia. They first
+had it that Reinhart himself was killed. That has been corrected, although
+the latest word is that he is prostrated.”
+
+I rapped on Bob’s private-office door. I felt the coming struggle as I
+heard his hoarse bellow, “Come in.” He stood at the ticker, with the tape
+in one hand, while with the other he held the telephone receiver to his
+ear. My God, what a picture for a stage! His magnificent form was erect,
+his feet were as firmly planted as if he were made of bronze, his
+shoulders thrown back as if he were withstanding the rush of the Stock
+Exchange hordes, his eyes afire with a sullen, smouldering blaze, his jaw
+was set in a way that brought into terrible relief the new, hard lines of
+desperation that had recently come into his face. His great chest was
+rising and falling as though he were engaged in a physical struggle; his
+perfect-fitting, heavy black Melton cutaway coat, thrown back from the
+chest, and a low, turned-down, white collar formed the setting for a
+throat and head that reminded one of a forest monarch at bay on the
+mountain crag awaiting the coming of the hounds and hunters.
+
+I hesitated at the threshold to catch my breath, as I took in the
+terrific figure. Had Bob Brownley been an enemy of mine I should have
+backed out in fear, and I do not confess to more than my fair share of
+cowardice. Inwardly I thanked God that Bob was in his office instead of on
+the floor of the Exchange. His whole appearance was frightful. He showed
+in every line and lineament that he was a man who would hesitate at
+nothing, even at killing, if he should find a human obstacle in his road
+and his mind should suggest murder. He was the personification of the most
+awful madness. Even when he caught sight of me, he hardly moved, although
+my coming must have been a surprise.
+
+“So it is you, Jim Randolph, is it? What brings _you_ here?” His voice was
+hoarse, but it had a metallic ring that went to my marrow. Bob Brownley in
+all the years of our friendship had never spoken to me except in kind and
+loving regard. I looked at him, stunned. I must have shown how hurt I was.
+But if he saw it, he gave no sign. His eyes, looking straight into mine,
+changed no more than if he had been addressing his deadliest enemy.
+
+Again his voice rang out, “What brings you here? Do you come to plead
+again for that dastard Reinhart after the warning I gave you?”
+
+I clenched both hands until I felt the nails cut the flesh of my palms. I
+loved Bob Brownley. I would have done anything to make him happy, would
+willingly have sacrificed my own life to protect his from himself or
+others, but this madman, this wild brute, was no more Bob Brownley as I
+had known him than the howling northeast gale of December is the gentle,
+welcome zephyr of August; and I felt a resentment at his brutal speech
+that I could hardly suppress. With a mighty effort I crushed it back,
+trying to think of nothing but his awful misery and the Bob of our college
+days.
+
+I said in a firm voice, “Bob, is this the way to talk to me in your own
+office?” At any time before, my words and tone would have touched his
+all-generous Southern chivalry, but now he said harshly—“To hell with
+sentiment. What——” He did not take his eyes from mine, but they told me
+that he was listening to a voice in the receiver. Only for a second; then
+he let loose a wild laugh, which must have penetrated to the outer office.
+
+“Eighty and coming like a spring freshet,” he said into the mouthpiece,
+“and the boys want to know if I won’t let up now that Reinhart is down?
+Go back and smother them with all they will take down to 60. That’s my
+answer. Tell them if Reinhart had ten more wives and daughters and they
+were all killed, I’d rend his bastard trust to help him dull his sorrow.
+Give the word at every pole that I will have Reinhart where he will curse
+his luck that he was not in the automobile with the rest of his tribe——
+
+“To hell with sentiment!” He was speaking to me again. “What do you want?
+If you are here to beg for Reinhart and his pack of yellow curs, you’ve
+got your answer. I wouldn’t let up on that fiendish hyena, not if his wife
+and daughter and all the dead wives and daughters of every ‘System’ man
+came back in their grave clothes and begged. I wouldn’t let up a share.” I
+gasped in horror.
+
+“When did those robbers of men and despoilers of women and children ever
+let up because of death? When were they ever known to wait even till the
+corpse stiffened to pluck out the hearts of the victims? It is my turn
+now, and if I let up a hair may I, yes, and Beulah, too, be damned,
+eternally damned.”
+
+I could not stand it. If I stayed, I, too, should become mad. I reached
+for the doorknob, but before I could swing the door open Bob was upon me
+like a wolf. He grasped me by the shoulders and with the strength of a
+madman hurled me half across the room. I sank into a chair.
+
+“No, you don’t, Jim Randolph, no, you don’t. You came here for something
+and, by heaven, you will tell me what it is! You know me; you are the only
+human being who does. You know what I was, you see what I am. You know
+what they did to me to make me what I am. You know, Jim Randolph, you know
+whether I deserved it. You know whether in all my life up to the day those
+dollar-frenzied hounds tore my soul, I had done any man, woman, or child a
+wrong. You know whether I had, and now you are going to sneak off and
+leave me as though I were a cur dog of the Reinhart-‘Standard Oil’ breed
+gone mad!”
+
+He was standing over me, a terrible yet a magnificent figure. As he hurled
+these words at me, I was sure he had really lost his mind; that I was in
+the presence of a man truly mad. But only for an instant; then my horror,
+my anger turned to a great, crushing, all-consuming agony of pity for
+Bob, and I dropped my head on my hands and wept. It is hard to admit it,
+but it is true—I wept uncontrollably. In an instant the room was quiet
+except for the sound of my own awful grief. I heard it, was ashamed of it,
+but I could not stop. The telephone rang again and again, wildly, shrilly,
+but there was no answer. The stillness became so oppressive that even my
+own sobs quieted. I gasped as the lump in my throat choked me, then I
+slowly raised my eyes.
+
+Bob’s towering figure was in front of me. His head had fallen forward, and
+his arms were folded across his breast. But that he stood erect I should
+have thought him dead, so still was he. I jumped to my feet and looked
+into his face, down which great tears were dropping silently. I touched
+him on the shoulder.
+
+“Bob, my dear old chum, Bob, forgive me. For God’s sake, forgive me for
+intruding on your misery.”
+
+I looked at him. I will never forget his face. No heartbroken woman’s
+could have been sadder. He slowly raised his head, then staggered and
+grasped the ticker-stand for support.
+
+“Don’t, Jim, don’t—don’t ask me to forgive you. Oh, Jim, Jim, my old
+friend, forgive me for my madness; forget what I said to you, forget the
+brute you just saw and think of me as of old, when I would have plucked
+out my tongue if I had caught it saying a harsh word to the best and
+truest friend man ever had. Jim, forget it all. I was mad, I am mad, I
+have been mad for a long time, but it cannot last much longer. I know it
+can’t, and, Jim, by all our past love, by the memories of the dear old
+days at St. Paul’s and at Harvard, the dear old days of hope and
+happiness, when we planned for the future, try to think of me only as you
+knew me then, as you know that I should now be, but for the ‘System’s’
+curse.”
+
+The clerks were pounding on the door; through the glass showed many forms.
+They had been gathering for minutes while Bob talked in his low, sad tone,
+a tone that no one could believe came from the same mouth that a few
+moments before had poured forth a flood of brutal heartlessness.
+
+Bob went to the door. The office was in an uproar. Twenty or thirty of
+Bob’s brokers were there, aghast at not getting a reply to their calls.
+Many more were pouring in through the outer office. Bob looked at them
+coldly. “Well, what is the trouble? Is it possible we are down to a point
+where the Stock Exchange rushes over to a man’s office when his wire
+happens to break down?”
+
+They saw his bluff. You cannot deceive Stock Exchange men, at least not
+the kind that Bob Brownley employed on panic days, but his coolness
+reassured them, and when they saw me it was odds-on that they guessed to a
+man why Bob had ignored his wires—guessed that I had been pleading for
+the life of “the Street.”
+
+“Well, where do you stand?”
+
+Frank Swan answered for the crowd: “The panic is in full swing. She’s a
+cellar-to-ridge-pole ripper. They’re down 40 or over on an average.
+Anti-People’s is down to 35, and still coming like sawdust over a broken
+dam. Barry Conant’s house and a dozen other of Reinhart’s have gone under.
+His banks and trust companies are going every minute. The whole Street
+will be overboard before the close. The governing committee has just
+called a meeting to see whether it will not be best to adjourn the
+Exchange over to-day and to-morrow.”
+
+Bob listened as if he had been a master at the wheel in a gale, receiving
+reports from his mates.
+
+There was no trace now of the scene he had just been through. He was cool,
+masterful, like the seasoned sea-dog who knows that in spite of the
+ocean’s rage and the wind’s howl, the wheel will answer his hand and the
+craft its rudder. “Jim, come over to the Exchange.” The crowd followed
+along. “We have but a minute and I want to have you say you forgive me,”
+he said to me. “I know, Jim, you understand it all, but I must tell you
+how sorrowful I am that in my madness I should have so forgotten my
+admiration, respect, and love for you, yes, and my gratitude to you, as to
+say what I did. I’ll do the only thing I can to atone. I will stop this
+panic and undo as much as possible of my work; and now that I have wrecked
+Reinhart I am through with this game forever, yes, through forever.”
+
+He pressed my hand in his strong, honest one and strode into the Exchange
+ahead of the crowd. All was chaos, although the trading had toned down to
+a sullen desperation. So many houses, banks, and trust companies had
+failed that no man knew whether the member he had traded with early in
+the day would on the morrow be solvent enough to carry out his trades. The
+man who had been “long” in the morning, and had sold out before the crash,
+and who thought he now had no interest in the panic, found himself with
+his stock again on hand, because of the failure of the one to whom he had
+sold, and the price cut in two. The man who was “short” and who a few
+minutes before had been eagerly counting his profits now knew that they
+had been turned to loss, because the man from whom he had borrowed his
+short stocks for delivery would be in no condition to repay for them, the
+next day, when they should be returned to him. The “short” man was
+himself, therefore, “long” stocks he had bought to cover his “short” sale.
+In depressing the price he had been working against his own pocket instead
+of against the bulls he had thought he was opposing. All was confusion and
+black despair. There is, indeed, no blacker place than the floor of the
+Stock Exchange after a panic cyclone has swept it, and is yet lingering in
+its corners, while the survivors of its fury do not know whether or not it
+will again gather force.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+
+
+The Governing Committee was holding a meeting in its room. Bob rushed in
+unceremoniously.
+
+“One word, gentlemen,” he called. “I have more trades outstanding, both
+buys and sells, than any other member or house. Before deciding whether to
+adjourn in an attempt to save ‘the Street’, I ask your consideration of
+this proposition: If the Exchange will suspend operations for thirty
+minutes, and allow me to address the members on the floor, I will agree to
+buy stocks all around the room, until they have regained at least half
+their drop—all of it, if possible. I will buy until I have exhausted to
+the last hundred my fortune of a billion dollars. This should make an
+adjournment unnecessary. I know that this is a most extraordinary request,
+but you are confronted with a most extraordinary situation, the most
+remarkable in the history of the Stock Exchange. Already, if what they say
+on the floor is correct, over two hundred banks and trust companies
+throughout the country have gone under, and new failures are being
+announced every minute. Half the members of this and the Boston and
+Philadelphia Exchanges are insolvent and have closed their doors, or will
+close them before three o’clock, and the shrinkage in values so far
+reported runs over fifteen billions. Unless something is done before the
+close, there will be a similar panic in every Exchange and Bourse in
+Europe to-morrow.”
+
+The committee instantly voted to lay the proposition before the full
+board. In another minute the president’s gavel sounded, and the floor was
+still as a tomb. All eyes were fixed on the president. Every man in that
+great throng knew that upon the announcement they were about to hear,
+might depend, at least temporarily, the welfare, not only of Wall Street,
+but of the nation, perhaps even of the civilised world. The president
+spoke:
+
+“Members of the New York Stock Exchange:
+
+“The Governing Committee instructs me to say that Mr. Robert Brownley has
+asked that operations be suspended for thirty minutes, in order that he be
+allowed to address you. Mr. Brownley has agreed, if this request be
+granted, he will upon resumption of operations purchase a sufficient
+amount of stock to raise the average price of all active shares at least
+one-half their total drop—all of it, if possible. He agrees to buy to the
+limit of his fortune of a billion dollars. I now put Mr. Brownley’s
+request to a vote. All those in favour of granting it will signify the
+same by saying ‘Yes.’”
+
+A mighty roof-lifting “Yes” sounded through the room.
+
+“All those opposed, ‘No.’”
+
+There was a deathly hush.
+
+“Mr. Brownley will please speak from this platform, and remember, in
+thirty minutes to the second, I will sound the gavel for the resumption of
+business.”
+
+Bob Brownley strode to the place just vacated by the president. The crowd
+was growing larger every minute. The ticker was already hissing a tape
+biograph of this extraordinary situation in brokerage shops, hotels, and
+banks throughout the country, and in a few minutes the news of it would be
+in the capitals of Europe. Never before in history did man have such an
+audience—the whole civilised world. Already arose from Wall, Broad, and
+New Streets, which surround the Exchange, the hoarse bellow of the
+gathering hordes. Before the ticker should announce the resumption of
+business these would number hundreds of thousands, for the financial
+district for more than an hour had been a surging mob.
+
+For once at least the much-abused phrase, “He looked the part,” could be
+used in all truthfulness. As Robert Brownley threw back his head and
+shoulders and faced that crowd of men, some of whom he had hurt, many of
+whom he had beggared, and all of whom he had tortured, he presented a
+picture such as a royal lion recently from the jungles and just freed from
+his cage might have made. Defiance, deference, contempt, and pity all
+blended in his mien, but over all was an I-am-the-one-you-are-the-many
+atmosphere of confidence that turned my spinal column into a mercury tube.
+He began to speak:
+
+“Men of Wall Street:
+
+“You have just witnessed a record-breaking slaughter. I have asked
+permission to talk to you for the purpose of showing you how any member of
+a great Stock Exchange may at any time do what I have done to-day. Weigh
+well what I am about to say to you. During the last quarter of a century
+there has grown up in this free and fair land of ours a system by which
+the few take from the many the results of their labours. The men who take
+have no more license, from God or man, to take, than have those from whom
+they filch. They are not endowed by God with superior wisdom, nor have
+they performed for their fellow-men any labour or given to them anything
+of value that entitles them to what they take. Their only license to
+plunder is their knowledge of the system of trickery and fraud that they
+themselves have created. No man can gainsay this, for on every side is the
+evidence. Men come into Wall Street at sunrise without dollars; before
+that same sun sets they depart with millions. So all-powerful has grown
+the system of oppression that single men take in a single lifetime all the
+savings of a million of their fellows. To-day the people, eighty millions
+strong, are slaving for the few, and their pay is their board and keep. I
+saw this robbery. I felt the robbers’ scourge. I sought the secret. I
+found it here, here in this gambling-hell. I found that the stocks we
+bought and sold were mere gambling chips; that the man who had the
+biggest stack could beat his opponent off the board; that his opponent was
+the world, because all men directly or indirectly played the
+stock-gambling game. To win, it was but necessary to have unlimited chips.
+If chips were bought and sold, on equal terms, by all, no one could buy
+more than he could pay for, and the game, although still a gambling one,
+would be fair. A few master tricksters, dollar magicians, long ago seeing
+this condition, invented the system by which the people are ruthlessly
+plundered. The system they invented was simple, so simple that for a
+quarter of a century it has remained undiscovered by the world at
+large—and even by you, who profess to be experts. No man thought that a
+free people who had intended to allow all the equal use of every avenue
+for the attainment of wealth, and who intended to provide for the
+safeguarding of wealth after it was secured, could be such dolts as to
+allow themselves to be robbed of all their accumulated wealth by a device
+as simple as that by which children play at blindman’s buff. The process
+was no more complex than that employed by the robber of old, who took the
+pebbles from the beach, marked them money, and with the money bought the
+labour of his fellows, and by the manipulation of that labour and by
+turning pebbles into money he took away from the labourer the money which
+he had paid them for the labour until all in the land were slaves of the
+moneymaker. These few tricksters said: We will arbitrarily manufacture
+these chips—stocks. After we have manufactured them, we will sell the
+world what the world can pay for, and then by the use of the unlimited
+supply we still have we will win away from the world what it has bought,
+and repeat the operation, until we have all the wealth, and the people are
+enslaved. To do this there was one thing besides the manufacturing of the
+chips—stocks—that was absolutely necessary—a gambling-hell, the working
+of whose machinery would place a selling value upon such chips; a hell
+where, after selling the chips, they could be won back. I saw that if
+these tricksters were to be routed and their ‘System’ was to be destroyed,
+it must be through the machinery of this Stock Exchange. I studied the
+machinery, and presently I marvelled that men could for so long have been
+asses.
+
+“From the very nature of stock-gambling it is necessary, absolutely
+necessary, that it be conducted under certain rules, unchangeable,
+unbreakable rules, to attempt to change or break which would destroy
+stock-gambling. The foundation rule, the rule absolutely necessary for the
+existence of stock-gambling is: Any member of the Stock Exchange can buy,
+or sell, between the opening and the closing of the Exchange as many
+shares of stock as he cares to. With this rule in force his buying and
+selling cannot be restricted to the amount he can take and pay for, or
+deliver and receive pay for, because there is not money enough in the
+world to pay for what under this same rule can be bought and sold in a
+single session. This is because there have been arbitrarily created by
+these few tricksters many times more stocks than there is money in
+existence. The amount of stock that any man can sell in one session of the
+Exchange is limited only by the amount that he can offer for sale, and he
+can offer any amount his tongue can utter; and he is not compelled and
+cannot be compelled to show his ability to deliver what he has offered for
+sale until after he has finished selling, which is the following day. You
+will ask as I did: Can this be possible? You will find the answer I
+found. It is so, and must continue to be so, or there will be no
+stock-gambling. Mark me, for this statement is weighted with the greatest
+import to you all. A member of this Exchange can sell as many shares of
+stock at one session as he cares to offer. If any attempt is made at the
+session he sells at to compel him either before or after he offers to sell
+to show his ability to deliver, away goes the stock-gambling structure,
+because from the very nature of the whole structure of stock-gambling the
+same shares are sold and resold many times in each session and the seller
+cannot know, much less show, that he can deliver until he first adjusts
+with the buyer and the buyer cannot adjust until after he has become such
+by buying. If a rule were made compelling a seller to show his
+responsibility before selling, every member would have every other member
+at his mercy and there could be no stock-gambling. When I had worked this
+out, I saw that while the few tricksters of the ‘System’ had a perfect
+device for taking from the people their wealth, I had discovered as
+perfect a means of taking away from the few the wealth they had secured
+from the many. With this knowledge came a conviction that my way was as
+honest as the ‘System’s,’ in fact more honest than theirs. They took from
+the innocent, I took from the guilty what had already been dishonestly
+secured. I determined to put my discovery into practice.
+
+“I might never have done so but for that Sugar panic in which I was robbed
+of millions by the ‘System’ through Barry Conant. In that panic the
+‘System,’ with its unlimited resources, filched from the people by the
+arbitrary manufacture of stocks, and by their manipulation did to me what
+I afterward discovered I could do to them, without any resources other
+than my right to do business on the floor of this Exchange. You saw the
+outcome, in the second Sugar panic, of my first experiment. In a few
+minutes I cleared a profit of ten million dollars. I could have made it
+fifty millions, or one hundred and fifty, but I was not then on familiar
+terms with my new robber-robbing device, and I had yet a heart. To make
+this ten millions of money, all that was necessary for me to do was to
+sell more Sugar than Barry Conant could buy. This was easy, because Barry
+Conant, not knowing of my newly invented trick, could buy only what he
+could pay for on the morrow, or, at least, what he believed his clients
+could pay for; while I, not intending to deliver what I sold—unless by
+smashing the price to a point where I could compel those who had bought to
+resell to me at millions less than I sold at—could sell unlimited
+amounts—literally unlimited amounts. When Barry Conant had bought all
+that he thought he could pay for, he was obliged to beat a retreat in
+front of my offerings, and I was able to smash, and smash, until the price
+was so low that he could not by the use of what he had bought, as
+collateral, borrow sufficient to pay me for what I had sold him. Then he
+was compelled to turn about and sell what he had bought from me, and when
+I had rebought it, for ten millions less than I had sold it for, the trick
+had been turned. I had sold him 100,000 shares say at 220. He had sold
+them back to me say at 120, and he stood where he had stood at the
+beginning. He had none of the 100,000 shares. Both of us stood, so far as
+stock was concerned, where we had stood at the beginning, but as to
+profits and losses there was this difference: I had ten millions of
+dollars profits, while Barry Conant’s clients, the ‘System,’ were ten
+millions losers—and all by a trick. The trick did not differ in
+principle from the one in constant practice by the ‘System.’ When the
+‘System,’ after manufacturing Sugar stock, sell 100,000 shares to the
+people for $10,000,000, they so manipulate the market by the use of the
+$10,000,000 that they have taken from the people as to scare them into
+selling the 100,000 shares back to them for $5,000,000. After they have
+bought they again manipulate the market until the people buy back for
+$10,000,000 what they sold for $5,000,000. The ‘System’ commits no legal
+crime. I committed no legal crime. I had not even infringed any rule of
+the Exchange, any more than had the ‘System’ when they performed their
+trick. Since my experimental panic I have repeatedly put the trick in
+operation, and each time I have taken millions, until to-day I have in my
+control, as absolutely as though I had honestly earned them, as the
+labourer earns his week’s wages, or the farmer the price of his crops,
+over $1,000,000,000, or sufficient to keep enslaved the rest of their
+lives a million people.
+
+“What do you intelligent men think of this situation? You know, because
+you know the stock-gambling game, that the American people, with their
+boasted brains and courage, come year after year with their bags of gold,
+the result of their prosperous labours, and dump them, hundreds of
+millions, into this gambling-inferno of yours. You know that they are
+fools, these silly millions of people whom you term lambs and suckers. You
+chuckle as, year after year, having been sent away shorn, they return for
+new shearing. You marvel that the merchants, manufacturers, miners,
+lawyers, farmers, who have sufficient intelligence to gather such surplus
+legitimately, would bring it to our gambling-hell, where upon all sides is
+plain proof that we who conduct the gambling, and who produce nothing, are
+obliged to take from those who do produce, hundreds of millions each year
+for expenses, and hundreds of millions each year for profits—for you know
+that we have nothing to give them in return for what they bring to us. You
+know that every dollar of the billions lost in Wall Street means higher
+prices for steel rails, for lumber and cars, and that this means higher
+passenger and freight rates to the people. You know that when the
+manufacturer brings his wealth to Wall Street and is robbed of it, he
+will add something to the price of boots and shoes, cotton and woollen
+clothes, and other necessities that he makes and that he sells to the
+people. You know that when the copper, lead, tin, and iron miners part
+with their surplus to the ‘System,’ it means higher prices to the people
+for their copper pots and gutters, for the water that comes through lead
+pipes, for their tin dippers and wash boilers, and for their rents, and
+all those necessities into which machinery, lumber, and other raw and
+finished material enters. You know that every hundred millions dropped by
+real producers to the brigands of our world means lower wages or less of
+the necessities and luxuries for all the people, and especially for the
+farmer. You know that it is habit with us of Wall Street to gloat over the
+doctrine of the ‘System,’ which the people parrot among themselves, the
+doctrine that the people at large are not affected by our gambling,
+because they, the people, having no surplus to gamble with, never come
+into Wall Street. And yet, knowing all this, you never thought, with all
+your wisdom and cynicism, that right here in this institution, which you
+own and control, was the open sesame, for each or all of you, to those
+great chests of gold that your clients, the ‘System,’ have filled to
+bursting from the stores of the people. What, I ask, do you wise men think
+of the situation as you now see it?”
+
+There was an oppressive stillness on the floor. The great crowd, which now
+contained nearly all the members of the Exchange, listened with bulging
+eyes and open mouths to the revelations of their fellow member. From time
+to time, as Bob Brownley poured forth his shot and shell of deadly logic,
+from the vast mob that now surrounded the Exchange rose a hoarse bellow of
+impatience, for few in that dense throng outside could understand the
+silence of the gigantic human crusher, which between the hours of ten and
+three was never before known to miss a revolution except while its
+victims’ hearts and souls were being removed from its gears and meshes.
+
+Bob Brownley paused and looked down into the faces of the breathless
+gamblers with a contempt that was superb. He went on:
+
+“Men of Wall Street, it is writ in the books of the ancients that every
+evil contains within itself a cure or a destroyer. I do not pretend that
+what I am revealing to you is to you a cure for this hideous evil, but I
+do say that what I am giving you is a destroyer for it, and that while it
+will be to the world a cure, it may leave you in a more fiery hell than
+the one of which you now feel the flames. I do not care if it does. When I
+am through, any member of the New York Stock Exchange who feels the iron
+in his soul can get instant revenge and unlimited wealth. You who are
+turning over in your minds the consideration that your great body can make
+new rules to render my discovery inoperative, are dealing with a shadow.
+There is no rule or device that can prevent its working. There are one
+thousand seats in the New York Stock Exchange. They are worth to-day
+$95,000 apiece, or $95,000,000 in all. Their value is due to the fact that
+this Exchange deals in between one and three million shares a day. Were
+any attempt made to prevent the operation of my invention, transactions
+would because of such attempt drop to five or ten thousand shares per day,
+or to such transactions as represent stock that will be actually delivered
+and actually paid for. To make my invention useless it must be made
+impossible to buy or sell the same share of stock more than once at one
+session, and short selling, which is now, as you know, the foundation of
+the modern stock-gambling structure, must likewise be made impossible. If
+this could be done the $95,000,000 worth of seats in the Exchange would be
+worth less than five millions, and, what is of far greater import to all
+the people, the financial world would be revolutionised. Men of Wall
+Street, do not fool yourselves. My invention is a sure destroyer of the
+greatest curse in the world, stock-gambling.”
+
+A sullen growl rose from the gamblers. Robert Brownley glared down his
+defiance.
+
+“Let me show you the impossibility of preventing in the future anyone’s
+doing what I have done to you so many times during the past five years.
+All the capital required to work my invention is nerve and desperation, or
+nerve without desperation. It is well known to you that there are at all
+times Exchange members who will commit any crime, barring perhaps murder,
+to gain millions. Your members have from time to time shown nerve or
+desperation enough to embezzle, raise certificates, give bogus checks,
+counterfeit stocks and bonds, and this for gain of less than millions, and
+when detection was probable. All these are criminal offences and their
+detection is sure to bring disgrace and State prison. Yet members of this
+Exchange desperate enough to take the chance, when confronted with loss of
+fortune and open bankruptcy, have always been found with nerve enough to
+attempt the crimes. I repeat that there are at all times Exchange members
+who will commit any crime, barring perhaps murder, to gain millions. That
+you may see that my successors will surely come from your midst from time
+to time during the future existence of the Exchange, I will enumerate the
+different classes of members who will follow in my footsteps:
+
+“First, the ‘In Gold We Trust’ schemer who is of the ‘System’ type, but
+who is outside the magic circle. A man of this class will reason: I know
+scores of men, who stand high on ‘the Street’ and in the social world, who
+have tens of millions that they have filched by ‘System’ tricks, if not by
+legal crimes. If I perform this trick of Brownley’s, the trick of selling
+short until a panic is produced, I shall make millions and none will be
+the wiser. For all I know, many of the multi-millionaires whom I have seen
+produce panics and who were applauded by ‘the Street’ and the press for
+their ability and daring, and whose standing, business and social, is now
+the highest, were only doing this same thing, and having been successful,
+they have never been detected or suspected. But even suppose I fail, which
+can only be through some extraordinary accident happening while I am
+engaged in selling, I shall have committed no crime, and, in fact, shall
+have done no one any great moral wrong, for if I fail to carry out my
+contract to deliver the stock I have sold in trying to produce a panic,
+the men to whom I have sold will be no worse off for not receiving what
+they bought; in fact they will stand just where they stood before I
+attempted to bring on a panic.
+
+“Second, if an Exchange member for any reason should find himself
+overboard and should realise that he must publicly become bankrupt and
+lose all, he surely would be a fool not to attempt to produce a panic,
+when its production would enable him to recoup his losses and prevent his
+failure, and when if by accident he should fail in his attempt to produce
+a panic, the penalty would simply be his bankruptcy, which would have
+taken place in any event.
+
+“The third class is that large one that always will exist while there is
+stock-gambling, a class of honest, square-dealing-play-the-game-fair-Exchange
+men who would take no unfair advantage of their fellow-members until they
+become awakened to the knowledge that they are about to be ruined by their
+fellow-members’ trickery.
+
+“Next, let us consider further whether it is possible for our Exchange to
+prevent my device from being worked, now that it is known to all. Suppose
+the Governing Committee was informed in advance that the attempt to work
+the trick was to be made. If, at any session, after gong-strike, the
+Governing Committee, or any Exchange authority, could for any reason
+compel a member to cease operating, even for the purpose of showing that
+his transactions were legitimate, the entire structure of stock-gambling
+would fall. Think it through: Suppose a man like Barry Conant or myself,
+or any active commission broker, begins the execution of a large order for
+a client, one, say, who has advance information of a receivership, a fire
+at a mine, the death of a President, a declaration of war, or any of the
+hundred and one items of information that must be acted upon instantly,
+where a delay of a minute would ruin the broker, or his house, or its
+clients. If the Governing Committee could thus call the broker to account,
+the professional bear or the schemer, who desired to prevent him from
+selling, would have but to pass the word to the president of the Exchange
+that the broker in question was about to work Brownley’s discovery and he
+could be taken from the crowd and before he returned his place could be
+taken by others and he could be ruined.
+
+“Men of Wall Street, it is impossible to prevent the repetition of those
+acts by which in five years I have accumulated a billion dollars,
+impossible so long as a short sale or a repurchase and resale, is allowed.
+When short sales, and repurchases and resales, are made impossible, stock
+speculation will be dead. When stock speculation is dead, the people can
+no longer be robbed by the ‘System.’ In leaving you, the Exchange, and
+stock-gambling forever, as I shall when I leave this platform, I will say
+from the depth of a heart that has been broken, from the profoundity of a
+soul that has been withered by the ‘System’s’ poison, with a full sense
+of my responsibility to my fellow-man and to my God, that I advise every
+one of you to do what I have done and to do it quickly, before the doing
+of it by others shall have made it impossible, before the doing of it by
+others shall have blown up the whole stock-gambling structure. In
+accepting my advice you can quiet your conscience, those of you who have
+any, with this argument: ‘If I start, I am sure of success. If I succeed,
+no one will be the wiser. The millions I secure I will take from men who
+took them from others, and who would take mine. The more I and others
+take, the sooner will come the day when the stock-gambling structure will
+fall.’
+
+“The day on which the stock-gambling structure falls is the day for which
+all honest men and women should pray.”
+
+Bob Brownley paused and let his eyes sweep his dumfounded audience. There
+was not a murmur. The crowd was speechless.
+
+Again his eyes swept the room. Then he slowly raised his right hand with
+fist clenched, as though about to deal a blow.
+
+“Men of Wall Street”—his voice was now deep and solemn—“to show that
+Robert Brownley knew what was fitting for the last day of his career, he
+has revealed to you the trick—and more.
+
+“Many of you are desperate. Many of you by to-morrow will be ruined. The
+time of all times for such to put my trick in practice is now. The victim
+of victims is ready for the experiment. I am he. I have a billion dollars.
+With this billion dollars I am able to buy ten million shares of the
+leading stocks and to pay for them, even though after I have bought they
+fall a hundred dollars a share. Here is your chance to prevent your ruin,
+your chance to retrieve your fortune, your chance to secure revenge upon
+me, the one who has robbed you.”
+
+He paused only long enough for his astounding advice to connect with his
+listener’s now keenly sensitive nerve centres; then deep and clear rang
+out, “Barry Conant.” The wiry form of Bob’s old antagonist leaped to the
+rostrum.
+
+“I authorise you to buy any part of ten million shares of the leading
+stocks at any price up to fifty points above the present market. There is
+my check-book signed in blank, and I authorise you to use it up to a
+billion dollars, and I agree to have in bank to-morrow sufficient funds to
+meet any checks you draw. You have failed to-day for seven millions, and,
+therefore, cannot trade, but I herewith announce that I will pay all the
+indebtedness of Barry Conant and his house. Therefore he is now in good
+standing.” Bob had kept his eye on the great clock; as the last word
+passed his lips, the President’s gavel descended.
+
+With a mighty rush the gamblers leaped for the different poles. Barry
+Conant with lightning rapidity gave his orders to twenty of his
+assistants, who, when Bob Brownley called for Conant, had gathered around
+their chief. In less than a minute the dollar-battle of the age was on, a
+battle such as no man had ever seen before. It required no supernatural
+wisdom for any man on the floor to see that Bob Brownley’s seed had fallen
+in superheated soil, that his until now secret hellite was about to be
+tested. It needed no expert in the mystic art of deciphering the wall
+hieroglyphics of Old Hag Fate to see that the hands on the clock of the
+“System” were approaching twelve. It needed no ear trained to hear human
+heart and soul beats to detect the approaching sound of onrushing doom to
+the stock-gambling structure. The deafening roar of the brokers that had
+broken the stillness following Robert Brownley’s fateful speech had
+awakened echoes that threatened to shake down the Exchange walls. The
+surging mob on the outside was roaring like a million hungry lions in an
+Arbestan run at slaughter time.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+
+
+The instant after the gong sounded Bob Brownley was alone on the floor at
+the foot of the president’s desk. His form was swaying like a reed on the
+edge of the cyclone’s path. I jumped to his side. His brother, who had
+during Bob’s harangue been vainly endeavouring to beat his way through the
+crowd, was there first. “For God’s sake, Bob, hear me. Word came from your
+house half an hour ago of the miracle: Beulah has awakened to her past.
+Her mind is clear; the nurses are frantic for you to come to her.”
+
+He got no further. With a mad bellow and a bound, like a tortured bull
+that sees the arena walls go down, Bob rushed out through the nearest
+door, which, I thanked God, was a side one leading to the street where the
+crowd was thinnest. He cast a wild look around. His eyes lighted on an
+empty automobile whose chauffeur had deserted to the crowd. It was the
+work of a second to crank it; of another to jump into the front seat.
+Quick as had been his movement, I was behind him in the rear seat. With a
+bound the great machine leaped through the crowd.
+
+“In the name of Christ, Bob, be careful,” I yelled, as he hurled the iron
+monster through the throng, scattering it to the right and left as the
+mower scatters the sheaves in the wheat fields. Some were crushed beneath
+its wheels. Bob Brownley heard not their screams, heard not the curses of
+those who escaped. He was on his feet, his body crouched low over the
+steering-wheel, which he grasped in his vise-like hands. His hatless head
+was thrust far out, as though it strove to get to Beulah Sands ahead of
+his body. His teeth were set, and as I had jumped into the machine I had
+noted that his eyes were those of a maniac, who saw sanity just ahead if
+he could but get to it in time. His ears were deaf not only to the howl of
+the terrified throng and the curses of the teamsters who frantically
+pulled their horses to the curb, but to my warnings as well. He swung the
+machine around the corner at New Street and into Wall as though it had
+been the broadest boulevard in the park. He took Wall Street at a bound I
+was sure would land us through the fence into Trinity’s churchyard. But
+no. Again he turned the corner, throwing the Juggernaut on its outside
+wheels from Wall Street into Broadway as the crowds on the sidewalk held
+their breath in horror. I, too, was on my feet, but crouching as I hung to
+the sides. Thank God, that usually crowded thoroughfare was free from
+vehicles as far up as I could see, on beyond the Astor House. What could
+it mean? Was that divinity which ’tis said protects the drunkard and the
+idiot about to aid the mad rush of this love-frenzied creature to his
+long-lost but newly returned dear one? I heard the frantic clang of gongs,
+and as we shot by the World Building, I saw ahead of us two plunging
+automobiles filled with men. ’Twas from them the gong clamour sounded. As
+we drew nearer. I saw that these were the cars of the fire chiefs
+answering a call. I thanked God again and again as I yelled into Bob’s
+ear, “For Beulah’s sake, Bob, don’t pass; if you do, we’ll run into a
+blockade. If we keep in the rear they’ll clear our way, and we may get to
+her alive.” I do not know whether he heard, but he held the machine in the
+rear of the other cars and did not try to pass. Away we went on our mad
+rush through crowded Broadway. At Union Square we lost our way-clearers.
+As our automobile jumped across Fourteenth Street into Fourth Avenue, Bob
+must have opened her up to the last notch, for she seemed to leap through
+the air. We sent two wagons crashing across the sidewalks into the
+buildings. Cries of rage arose above the din of the machine, and seemed to
+follow in our wake. Bob was dead to all we passed. His entire being seemed
+set on what was ahead. I knew he was an expert in the handling of the
+automobile, for since his misfortune, automobiling with Beulah Sands had
+been his favourite pastime, but who could expect to carry that plunging,
+swaying car to Forty-second Street! Bob seemed to be performing the
+wondrous task. We shot from curb to curb and around and in front of
+vehicles and foot passengers as though the driver’s eyes and hands were
+inspired.
+
+Across the square at last and on up Fourth Avenue to Twenty-sixth Street.
+Then a dizzying whirl into Madison. Was he going to keep to it until he
+got to Forty-second Street and try to make Fifth Avenue along that
+congested block with its crush of Grand Central passengers and lines upon
+lines of hacks and teams? No. His head must be clear. Again he threw the
+great machine around the corner and into Fortieth Street. For a part of
+the block our wheels rode the sidewalk, and I awaited the crash. It did
+not come. Surely the new world Bob was speeding to must be a kind one,
+else why should Hag Fate, who had been at the steer-wheel of his life-car
+during the last five years, carry him safely through what looked a dozen
+sure deaths? Without slacking speed a jot we swung around the corner of
+Fortieth into Fifth Avenue. The road was clear to Forty-second; there a
+dense jam of cars, teams, and carriages blocked the crossing. Bob must
+have seen the solid wall for I heard his low muttered curse. Nothing else
+to indicate that we were blocked with his goal in sight. He never touched
+the speed controller, but took the two blocks as though shot from a
+catapult. The two? No, one, and three-quarters of the next, for when
+within a score of yards of the black wall he jammed down the brakes, and
+the iron mass ground and shook as though it would rend itself to atoms,
+but it stopped with its dasher and front wheels wedged in between a car
+and a dray. It had not stopped when Bob was off and up the avenue like a
+hound on the end-in-sight trail. I was after him while the astonished
+bystanders stared in wonder. As we neared Bob’s house I could see people
+on the stoop. I heard Bob’s secretary shout, “Thank God, Mr. Brownley, you
+have come. She is in the office. I found her there, quiet and recovered.
+She did not ask a question. She said, ‘Tell Mr. Brownley when he comes
+that I should like to see him.’ Then she ordered me to get the afternoon
+paper. I handed it to her an hour ago. I think she believes herself in her
+old office. I shut off the floor as you instructed. I did not dare go to
+her for fear she would ask questions. I have”—but Bob was up the stairs
+two and three steps at a time.
+
+My breath was almost gone and it took me minutes to get to the second
+floor. My feet touched the top stair, when, O God! that sound! For five
+long years I had been trying to get it out of my ears, but now more
+guttural, more agonised than before, it broke upon my tortured senses. I
+did not need to seek its direction. With a bound I was at the threshold of
+Beulah Sands-Brownley’s office. In that brief time the groans had
+stilled. For one instant I closed my eyes, for the very atmosphere of
+that hall moaned and groaned death. I opened them. Yes, I knew it. There
+at the desk was the beautiful gray-clad figure of five years ago. There
+the two arms resting on the desk. There the two beautiful hands holding
+the open paper, but the eyes, those marvellous gray-blue doors to an
+immortal soul—they were closed forever. The exquisitely beautiful face
+was cold and white and peaceful. Beulah Sands was dead. The hell-hounds of
+the “System” had overtaken its maimed and hunted victim; it had added her
+beautiful heart to the bags and barrels and hogsheads stored away in its
+big “business-is-business” safe-deposit vaults. My eyes in sick pity
+sought the form of my old schoolmate, my college chum, my partner, my
+friend, the man I loved. He was on his knees. His agonised face was turned
+to his wife. His clasped hands had been raised in an awful, heart-crushing
+prayer as his Maker touched the bell. Bob Brownley’s great brown eyes were
+closed, his clasped hands had dropped against his wife’s head, and in
+dropping had unloosed the glorious golden-brown waves until in fond
+abandon they had coiled around his arms and brow as though she for whom
+he had sacrificed all was shielding his beloved head from the chills and
+dark mists of the black river that laps the brink of the eternal rest. The
+“System” had skewered Robert Brownley’s heart too. I staggered to his
+side. As I touched his now fast-icing brow my eyes fell upon the great
+black headlines spread across the top of the paper that Beulah Sands had
+been reading when the all-kind God had cut her bonds:
+
+   FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH
+
+And beneath in one column:
+
+   TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN VIRGINIA
+
+   THE RICHEST MAN IN THE STATE, THOMAS REINHART, MULTI-MILLIONAIRE, WHILE
+   TEMPORARILY INSANE FROM THE LOSS OF HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER, AND OF HIS
+   ENORMOUS FORTUNE, WHICH WAS SHATTERED IN TO-DAY’S AWFUL PANIC, CUT HIS
+   THROAT. HIS DEATH WAS INSTANTANEOUS.
+
+In another column:
+
+   ROBERT BROWNLEY CREATES THE MOST AWFUL PANIC IN HISTORY, AND SPREADS
+   WRECK AND RUIN THROUGHOUT THE CIVILISED WORLD.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Publisher’s Note
+
+
+
+_The following are fac-similes of a few of the letters received by the
+author during the serial publication of “Friday, the Thirteenth.”_
+
+
+
+
+RESIDENCE OF
+THE PAULIST FATHERS
+2158 PINE STREET
+
+San Francisco, CA
+21 October 1906
+
+
+My Dear Mr. Dawson
+
+Kindly allow one of your countless admirers to express his extreme
+gratification with the announcement that you will add fiction to your
+distinguished literary achievements. Your gifts as a writer are so
+wonderful and fascinating that I look forward eagerly to your work in this
+new field—and I pray God to prosper you in all good.
+
+Sincerely,
+John Marus Haudly
+
+
+
+
+70 Kirkland St., Cambridge
+Dec. 26, 1906.
+
+Mr. T. W. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+My Dear Sir: Allow me to congratulate you on your last move and on your
+story, “Friday, the Thirteenth”.
+
+It is the best yet, not merely as a story but as an eye opener. I can
+begin to see daylight in spots, where it looks like a remedy and a real
+one. I can’t see how you will work it; but I think I do get a hint, and it
+holds me tightly.
+
+That story ought to be issued in a cheap (25¢) edition in paper, and every
+man in American ought to read it. The third part is yet to come; but, if I
+mistake not, it will make us all say “Hurrah!” In this form the facts go
+home. They were too abstract before. Now they live and palpitate.
+Sincerely yours,
+
+[Illegible: H. W. Majorson]
+
+
+
+
+Dowagiac, Mich., Dec 26, 1906.
+
+Mr. T. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir—
+
+I have just finished reading your second installment of “Friday the 13th.”
+It is one of the greatest stories I ever read. Your previous articles are
+good, but this is a wonder. I believe you are sincere and cannot help
+admiring your wonderful courage + grit in going up against big odds. I
+have no axe to grind with you, simply think that no matter how big you may
+be you like to know that what you write is appreciated by the majority of
+good american citizens. So Here’s to you Mr Lawson + I back you to
+eventually win. Smash ’em good.
+
+Yours Truly
+A. J. Hill.
+
+
+
+
+Grinnell, Iowa, Nov. 3 1906
+
+Thomas Lawson
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+What did “Bob” hear when he picked up the receiver. Impossible to wait one
+month to find out.
+
+Yours truly,
+A. W. Talbott
+
+
+
+
+103 Stedman Street
+Brookline Mass.
+
+Dear Mr. Lawson:—
+
+I have hit just read the first instalment of your serial “Friday the
+13th.”
+
+I was so interested, aroused and stirred, I felt I must express to you
+some of the appreciation I feel for the work you have done and are doing.
+
+The army of those who suffer is so great the human spoilers so strong;
+that one’s heart goes out in gratitude to a champion who comes around and
+able willing to do better for the oppressed.
+
+Would it be an intrusion to extend sympathy to one bereft of the beautiful
+gift of loving companionship? I hope that it is sincerely felt.
+
+Many admire and rejoice in your work—may it go forward bringing the
+knowledge which is power to ever increasing numbers of American people.
+
+Most Sincerely
+Marion E. Major
+
+December 14th, 1906
+
+
+
+
+L. GUY DENNETT
+ATTORNEY AT LAW
+48 TREMONT ST., BOSTON
+TELEPHONE CONNECTION
+
+Nov. 21/06
+
+Thomas W. Lawson Esq.
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+I take it for granted that you want to know how the “Public” is going to
+take to your latest writing “fiction” and how are you to know unless your
+unknown friends write you?
+
+I have read every thing you have ever written because I believe in you and
+admire the work you have done and are doing and allow me to say that I
+finaly believe that you will one day be recognized as one of the greatest
+story writers of the age. The first section of “Friday the Thirteenth” has
+convinced me that you will be a sure winner.
+
+Yours very truly,
+L. Guy Dennett
+
+
+
+Angola Tulare Co. Cal.
+Dec. 29, 1906
+
+W. T. Lawson,
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+I wanted to thank you for the first number of “Friday the 13th”, but did
+not know your address. “Everybody’s” contains some letters written you to
+Boston so hope this may reach its destination.
+
+I live in the wildest of the wooley west + such a god send as in
+“Everybody’s” (sent me by a sister in Oakland Cal.) + containing the first
+number of your story, words inadequately suffices. Friday the 13th made an
+impression on me which I could not easily shake off if I would. I was so
+sorry it ended where it did that I wanted to cry out + could hardly wait
+for the Jan. number. Yesterday I bought one in Hanford Cal. rode 30 miles
+north to get it. I live a mile from the recently filled in basin of old
+Tulare Lake. The snowfall on the mountains argue that our part of the Wild
++ Wooley may soon be a fishing station instead of an alfalfa ranch.
+
+Perhaps you don’t understand how much your story is appreciated.
+
+You are Bob Brownley, _I know_. Can you really _feel_ what you write as
+you make us do? Your characters appeal to me so that I live with them,
+every nerve alert to the straining point (but with pleasure). You are
+certianly the idol of the American people. I’ve heard you discussed by
+rich + poor, monopolist + antimonopolist during the publication of
+“Frenzied Finance” + the worst a monopolist could say was that you were as
+bad as the Standard Oil, but wanted to get even. “What is that but a
+virtue,” exclaimed I. “Couldn’t he have made millions by staying in, but
+_he_ recognized his past failings and exposed [them] S.O. to uphold a
+nation. May honor attend him. Isn’t that being a man and a gentleman?”
+
+People read “Frenzied Finance” to a man + would loan the magazine one to
+another so those who felt the 15¢ impossible could get the good of your
+revelations.
+
+I’m glad you believe in sentiment—the heart-lasting sentiment (instead of
+dollars and desire) which I feared was becoming a thing of the past; There
+are still splendid men in America. God bless them.
+
+O happy New Year may the weight of your pen sway millions. Amen.
+
+Respectfully,
+Louise D. Tennent
+
+See 14 Kings
+
+Angola P.O.
+Ca.
+
+
+
+
+Spokane, Wash.,
+December 28. 1906.
+
+Mr. Thomas W. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+I have lived nine years in Anaconda, Montana, and therefore become
+somewhat familiar with amalgamated copper, etc. I want to say I have
+followed your writings with lively interest and have sworn by all the
+statements you have made. It is, therefore, with the greatest regret that
+I am compelled to state that my faith in you has been shattered.
+
+When you state in your story of “Friday the 13th” that the heroine walked
+in to an office in New York in the middle of July with a feather turban on
+her head I simply cannot swallow it. That a lady of refinement and good
+taste with $30,000 in the bank, and anxious to make a good appearance,
+should walk into an office in New York with a winter hat taxes my
+credulity to the breaking point. However, be that as it may, I want to say
+that you have made a big fight against great odds and that I admire your
+pluck and genius, and I hope you will keep right on fighting for the
+right.
+
+By the way, I might as well admit that it was my wife by the way is a
+superior woman who called my attention to the turban when I was reading
+your story aloud to her. I am,
+
+Very truly yours,
+John Ortson
+
+
+
+
+O’Fallon, Ill. Nov. 22nd, 1906
+
+Thos W. Lawson
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+It has afforded me great pleasure to just have finished your first
+installment to “Friday the 13th,” as have also your previous writings,
+from which I learned a great deal,—although from a financial standpoint,
+following what I thought to be your advice, I am several thousand dollars
+looser,—and I take this means of contributing my mite of encouragement,
+firmly believing that your work is doing a great good, and trusting that
+success on the lines you have mapped out, will be your reward.
+
+Very respectfully, Wm. A. Staney.
+
+(I’m awaiting your next installment)
+
+
+
+
+Dear sir:
+
+I have only had the pleasure of meeting you once—in your private car,
+with Thayer, when you were returning from your western trip—but I hope
+you will not consider me presuming if I take a moment of your valuable
+time to thank you for your masterpiece just begun in Everybody’s.
+
+Such magic has not flowed from a pen for many a year.
+
+Yours Truly
+John O Powers
+
+206 North 34th Street
+Philadelphia
+
+
+
+
+Des Moines, Iowa, 11/20, 1906
+
+Mr. Thos. Lawson
+Boston.
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+I like your story “Friday the Thirteenth.” For the information and added
+knowledge your previous writing has given me I thank you.
+
+—“for the crow that is in him and the spurs that are on him to back up
+the crow with.” You certainly are a game and competant old fighter.
+
+Sincerely, with best wishes
+[Illegible signature: A. S. Goodman]
+
+
+
+
+St. Paul, Minn.,
+November 26, 1906.
+
+Mr. Thomas W. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+I wish to congratulate you on the good story you wrote in Everybody’s
+Magazine this month. It is the beat story I ever read and the best I ever
+saw published in any magazine.
+
+I am well posted on the “Brokers” business and enjoyed your story very
+much. I hope you will continue to write them. I know they are taken more
+from real life than immagination. I am sure they will be appreciated as
+much as “Frenzied Finance”. I have taken the liberty to send a good word
+to Ridgway’s.
+
+With best wishes, I remain
+Yours respectfully,
+
+Western Union Telegraph Co.
+R.A. Kelly
+
+
+
+
+Los Angeles, Calif.,
+December 11, 1906.
+
+Mr. Thomas W. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+My dear Sir:
+
+It was indeed a pleasure to read your novel in this month’s Everybody’s.
+Being an old trader myself, I have appreciated every word of it and look
+forward for the continuation with much interest.
+
+I just want to say this too—that anyone who says that you cannot write
+anything else but “Street” gossip had better cover his “shorts”.
+
+Wishing you all kinds of success, and with congratulations on your
+splendid work, I am
+
+Very sincerely,
+
+Nancy Brown
+214 Citizens Nat’l Bank Bldg.
+
+
+
+
+Washington, D.C.,
+December 1, 1906.
+
+Thos. W. Lawson, Esq.,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+I have just read with very great pleasure and edification the first
+installment of your excellent story “Friday the 13th”. It is so far a
+masterpiece.
+
+Congratulating you. I remain
+Very truly,
+M. H. Ramaze
+
+
+
+
+Cleburn, Texas, Dec 3 1906
+
+Mr. Thos. W. Lawson
+Boston
+
+Dear Sirs:
+
+I have just your first installment of “Friday 13th.” It is OK + if the
+balance of the story is as good (+ I have no doubts on that score) you are
+“It” when it comes to writting fiction as well as tricking the Insurance
+Thief + Standard Oil Grafters.
+
+Wishing you success
+I am yours very truly
+S. F. Welch
+
+
+
+
+Rumford Falls, Maine,
+November 20, 1906.
+
+Mr. Tom Lewson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+I have read all your writings in Everybody’s, including the first
+installment of your story in the December number, and I must say that I am
+more than pleased with it. As a writer of fiction you are sure to make
+another big hit.
+
+Yours truly,
+W. I. White.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes
+
+
+[1] “26 Broadway” is the Wall Street figure of speech for “Standard Oil,”
+which has its home there.
+
+[2] Those who seek to depress the price of a stock are known as bears, and
+those who oppose them by trying to raise the price are bulls.
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Friday, the Thirteenth, by Thomas W. Lawson</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Friday, the Thirteenth</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Thomas W. Lawson</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: May 14, 2004 [eBook #12345]<br />
+[Most recently updated: January 7, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Distributed Proofreaders</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRIDAY, THE THIRTEENTH ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:100%;">
+<img src="images/img01.jpg" width="372" height="600" alt="[Illustration]" />
+<p class="caption"><a href="#frontisref">&ldquo;I saw there something missing from her great blue eyes. I looked; gasped&rdquo;</a></p>
+</div>
+
+<h1>Friday, the Thirteenth</h1>
+
+<h3>A Novel by</h3>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">Thomas W. Lawson</h2>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>Frontispiece in colour by Sigismond de Ivanowski</i>
+</p>
+
+<h3>1907</h3>
+
+<p class="center">
+Copyright, 1906, 1907.<br />
+Copyright, 1907.<br />
+Published, February, 1907
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>To Her</h2>
+
+<h3>I Dedicate This Book</h3>
+
+<p class="center">
+All That Is Good In This Little Waif, Which Is Very<br />
+Dear To Me, I Know A Just God Will Place To<br />
+Her Credit. All That Is Mean And Low And<br />
+Human Could Never Have Been Birthed<br />
+Had She Been Nigh To Guide An<br />
+Ever Wayward Pen.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<i>The Author.</i>
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+<i>The Nest, Dreamwold,<br />
+August, 1906.</i>
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Table of Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#ch01">Chapter I.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#ch02">Chapter II.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#ch03">Chapter III.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#ch04">Chapter IV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#ch05">Chapter V.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#ch06">Chapter VI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#ch07">Chapter VII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#ch08">Chapter VIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#ch09">Chapter IX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#ch10">Chapter X.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>Friday, the Thirteenth</h2>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="ch01"></a>Chapter I.</h2>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Friday, the 13th; I thought as much. If Bob has started, there will be
+hell, but I will see what I can do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The sound of my voice, as I dropped the receiver, seemed to part the mists
+of five years and usher me into the world of Then as though it had never
+passed on.</p>
+
+<p>I had been sitting in my office, letting the tape slide through my fingers
+while its every yard spelled &ldquo;panic&rdquo; in a constantly rising voice, when
+they told me that Brownley on the floor of the Exchange wanted me at the
+&rsquo;phone, and &ldquo;quick.&rdquo; Brownley was our junior partner and floor man. He
+talked with a rush. Stock Exchange floor men in panics never let their
+speech hobble.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Randolph, it&rsquo;s sizzling over here, and it&rsquo;s getting hotter every
+second. It&rsquo;s Bob&mdash;that is evident to all. If he keeps up this pace for
+twenty minutes longer, the sulphur will overflow &lsquo;the Street&rsquo; and get
+into the banks and into the country, and no man can tell how much
+territory will be burned over by to-morrow. The boys have begged me to ask
+you to throw yourself into the breach and stay him. They agree you are the
+only hope now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you sure, Fred, that this is Bob&rsquo;s work?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;Have you seen
+him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I have just come from his office, and glad I was to get out. He&rsquo;s on
+the war-path, Mr. Randolph&mdash;uglier than I ever saw him. The last time he
+broke loose was child&rsquo;s play to his mood to-day. Mother sent me word this
+morning that she saw last night the spell was coming. He had been up to
+see her and sisters, and mother thought from his tone he was about to
+disappear again. When she told me of his mood, and I remembered the day, I
+was afraid he might seek his vent here. Also I heard of his being about
+town till long after midnight. The minute I opened his office door this
+morning he flew at me like a panther. I told him I had only dropped in on
+my rounds for an order, as they were running off right smart, and I didn&rsquo;t
+know but he might like to pick up some bargains. &lsquo;Bargains!&rsquo; he roared,
+&lsquo;don&rsquo;t you know the day? Don&rsquo;t you know it is Friday, the 13th? Go back
+to that hell-pit and sell, sell, sell.&rsquo; &lsquo;Sell what and how much?&rsquo; I asked.
+&lsquo;Anything, everything. Give the thieves every share they will take, and
+when they won&rsquo;t take any more, ram as much again down their crops until
+they spit up all they have been buying for the last three months!&rsquo; Going
+out I met Jim Holliday and Frank Swan rushing in. They are evidently
+executing Bob&rsquo;s orders, and have been pouring Anti-People&rsquo;s out for an
+hour. They will be on the floor again in a few minutes, so I thought it
+safer to call you before I started to sell. Mr. Randolph, they cannot take
+much more of anything in here, and if I begin to throw stocks over, it
+will bring the gavel inside of ten minutes; and that will be to announce a
+dozen failures. It&rsquo;s yet twenty minutes to one and God only knows what
+will happen before three. It&rsquo;s up to you, Mr. Randolph, to do something,
+and unless I am on a bad slant, you haven&rsquo;t many minutes to lose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was then I dropped the receiver with &ldquo;I thought as much!&rdquo; As I had been
+fingering the tape, watching five and ten millions crumbling from price
+values every few minutes, I was sure this was the work of Bob Brownley.
+No one else in Wall Street had the power, the nerve, and the devilish
+cruelty to rip things as they had been ripped during the last twenty
+minutes. The night before I had passed Bob in the theatre lobby. I gave
+him close scrutiny and saw the look of which I of all men best knew the
+meaning. The big brown eyes were set on space; the outer corners of the
+handsome mouth were drawn hard and tense as though weighted. As I had my
+wife with me it was impossible to follow him, but when I got home I called
+up his house and his clubs, intending to ask, him to run up and smoke a
+cigar with me, but could locate him nowhere. I tried again in the morning
+without success, but when just before noon the tape began to jump and
+flash and snarl, I remembered Bob&rsquo;s ugly mood, and all it portended.</p>
+
+<p>Fred Brownley was Bob&rsquo;s youngest brother, twelve years his junior. He had
+been with Randolph &amp; Randolph from the day he left college, and for over a
+year had been our most trusted Stock Exchange man. Bob Brownley, when
+himself, was as fond of his &ldquo;baby brother,&rdquo; as he called him, as his
+beautiful Southern mother was of both; but when the devil had possession
+of Bob&mdash;and his option during the past five years had been exercised many
+a time&mdash;mother and brother had to take their place with all the rest of
+the world, for then Bob knew no kindred, no friends. All the wide world
+was to him during those periods a jungle peopled with savage animals and
+reptiles to hunt and fight and tear and kill.</p>
+
+<p>It is hardly necessary for me to explain who Randolph &amp; Randolph are. For
+more than sixty years the name has spoken for itself in every part of the
+world where dollar-making machines are installed. No railroad is financed,
+no great &ldquo;industrial&rdquo; projected, without by force of habit, hat-in-handing
+a by-your-leave of Randolph &amp; Randolph, and every nation when entering the
+market for loans, knows that the favour of the foremost American bankers
+is something which must be reckoned with. I pride myself that at
+forty-two, at the end of the ten years I have had the helm of Randolph &amp;
+Randolph, I have done nothing to mar the great name my father and uncle
+created, but something to add to its sterling reputation for honest
+dealing, fearless, old-fashioned methods, and all-round integrity.
+Bradstreet&rsquo;s and other mercantile agencies say, in reporting Randolph &amp;
+Randolph, &ldquo;Worth fifty millions and upward, credit unlimited.&rdquo; I can take
+but small praise for this, for the report was about the same the day I
+left college and came to the office to &ldquo;learn the business.&rdquo; But, as the
+survivor of my great father and uncle, I can say, my Maker as my witness,
+that Randolph &amp; Randolph have never loaned a dollar of their millions at
+over legal rates, 6 per cent, per annum; have never added to their hoard
+by any but fair, square business methods; and that blight of blights,
+frenzied finance, has yet to find a lodging-place beneath the old
+black-and-gold sign that father and uncle nailed up with their own hands
+over the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>Nineteen years ago I was graduated from Harvard. My classmate and chum,
+Bob Brownley, of Richmond, Va., was graduated with me. He was class poet,
+I, yard marshal. We had been four years together at St. Paul&rsquo;s previous to
+entering Harvard. No girl and lover were fonder than we of each other.</p>
+
+<p>My people had money, and to spare, and with it a hard-headed, Northern
+horse-sense. The Brownleys were poor as church mice, but they had the
+brilliant, virile blood of the old Southern oligarchy and the romantic,
+&ldquo;salaam-to-no-one&rdquo; Dixie-land pride of before-the-war days, when Southern
+prodigality and hospitality were found wherever women were fair and men&rsquo;s
+mirrors in the bottom of their julep-glasses.</p>
+
+<p>Bob&rsquo;s father, one of the big, white pillars of Southern aristocracy, had
+gone through Congress and the Senate of his country to the tune of &ldquo;Spend
+and not spare,&rdquo; which left his widow and three younger daughters and a
+small son dependent upon Bob, his eldest.</p>
+
+<p>Many a warm summer&rsquo;s afternoon, as Bob and I paddled down the Charles, and
+often on a cold, crispy night as we sat in my shooting-box on the Cape Cod
+shore, had we matched up for our future. I was to have the inside run of
+the great banking business of Randolph &amp; Randolph, and Bob was eventually
+to represent my father&rsquo;s firm on the floor of the Stock Exchange. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d die
+in an office,&rdquo; Bob used to say, &ldquo;and the floor of the Stock Exchange is
+just the chimney-place to roast my hoe-cake in.&rdquo; So when our college days
+were over my able had saddled Bob&rsquo;s youth with the heavy responsibilities
+of husbanding and directing his family&rsquo;s slim finances that he took to
+business as a swallow to the air. We entered the office of Randolph &amp;
+Randolph on the same day, and on its anniversary, a year later, my father
+summoned us into his office for a sort of tally-up talk. Neither of us
+quite knew what was coming, and we thrilled with pleasure when he said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim, you and Bob have fairly outdone my expectations. I have had my eye
+on both of you and I want you to know that the kind of industry and
+business intelligence you have shown here would have won you recognition
+in any banking-house on &lsquo;the Street.&rsquo; I want you both in the firm&mdash;Jim to
+learn his way round so he can step into my shoes; you, Bob, to take one of
+the firm&rsquo;s seats on the Stock Exchange.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob&rsquo;s face went red and then pale with happiness as he reached for my
+father&rsquo;s hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m very grateful to you sir, far more so than any words can say, but I
+want to talk this proposition of yours over with Jim here first. He knows
+me better than any one else in the world and I&rsquo;ve some ideas I&rsquo;d like to
+thrash out with him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Speak up here, Bob,&rdquo; said my father.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir, I should feel much better if I could go over there into the
+swirl and smash it out for myself. You see if I could win out alone and
+pay back the seat price, and then make a pile for myself, if you felt
+later like giving me another chance to come into the firm, then I should
+not be laying myself open to the charge of being a mere pensioner on your
+friendship. You know what I mean, sir, and won&rsquo;t think I am filled with
+any low-down pride, but if you will let me have the price of a Stock
+Exchange seat on my note, and will give me the chance, when I get the hang
+of the ropes, to handle some of the firm&rsquo;s orders, I shall be just as much
+beholden to you and Jim, sir, and shall feel a lot better myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I knew what Bob meant; so did father, and we were glad enough to do what
+he asked, father insisting on making the seat price in the form of a
+present, after explaining to us that a foundation Stock Exchange rule
+prohibited an applicant from borrowing the seat price. Four years after
+Bob Brownley entered the Stock Exchange he had paid back the forty
+thousand, with interest, and not only had a snug fifty thousand to his
+credit on Randolph &amp; Randolph&rsquo;s books, but was sending home six thousand a
+year while living up to, as he jokingly put it, &ldquo;an honest man&rsquo;s notch.&rdquo; I
+may say in passing, that a Wall Street man&rsquo;s notch would make twice six
+thousand yearly earnings cast an uncertain shadow at Christmas time. Bob
+was the favourite of the Exchange, as he had been the pet at school and at
+college, and had his hands full of business three hundred days in the
+year. Besides Randolph &amp; Randolph&rsquo;s choicest commissions, he had the
+confidential orders of two of the heavy plunging cliques.</p>
+
+<p>I had just passed my thirty-second birthday when my kind old dad suddenly
+died. For the previous six years I had been getting ready for such an
+event; that is, I had grown accustomed to hearing my father say: &ldquo;Jim,
+don&rsquo;t let any grass grow in getting the hang of every branch of our
+business, so that when anything happens to me there will be no disturbance
+in &lsquo;the Street&rsquo; in regard to Randolph &amp; Randolph&rsquo;s affairs. I want to let
+the world know as soon as possible that after I am gone our business will
+run as it always has. So I will work you into my directorships in those
+companies where we have interests and gradually put you into my different
+trusteeships.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Thus at father&rsquo;s death there was not a ripple in our affairs and none of
+the stocks known as &ldquo;The Randolph&rsquo;s&rdquo; fluttered a point because of that, to
+the financial world, momentous event. I inherited all of father&rsquo;s fortune
+other than four millions, which he divided up among relatives and
+charities, and took command of a business that gave me an income of two
+millions and a half a year.</p>
+
+<p>Once more I begged Bob to come into the firm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not yet, Jim,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got my seat and about a hundred thousand
+capital, and I want to feel that I&rsquo;m free to kick my heels until I have
+raked together an even million all of my own making; then I&rsquo;ll settle down
+with you, old man, and hold my handle of the plough, and if some good girl
+happens along about that time&mdash;well, then it will be &lsquo;An ivy-covered
+little cot&rsquo; for mine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, and I laughed too. Bob was looked upon by all his friends as a
+bad case of woman-shy. No woman, young or old, who had in any way crossed
+Bob&rsquo;s orbit but had felt that fascination, delicious to all women, in the
+presence of:</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+A soul by honour schooled,<br />
+A heart by passion ruled&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+but he never seemed to see it. As my wife&mdash;for I had been three years
+married and had two little Randolphs to show that both Katherine Blair and
+I knew what marriage was for&mdash;never tired of saying, &ldquo;Poor Bob! He&rsquo;s
+woman-blind, and it looks as though he would never get his sight in that
+direction.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then again, Jim,&rdquo; he continued in a tone of great seriousness, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s a
+little secret I have never let even you into. The truth is I am not safe
+yet&mdash;not safe to speak for the old house of Randolph &amp; Randolph. Yes, you
+may laugh&mdash;you who are, and always have been, as staunch and steady as the
+old bronze John Harvard in the yard, you who know Monday mornings just
+what you are going to do Saturday nights and all the days and nights in
+between, and who always do it. Jim, I have found since I have been over on
+the floor that the Southern gambling blood that made my grandfather, on
+one of his trips back from New York, though he had more land and slaves
+than he could use, stake his land and slaves&mdash;yes, and grandmother&rsquo;s
+too&mdash;on a card-game, and&mdash;lose, and change the whole face of the Brownley
+destiny&mdash;those same gambling microbes are in my blood, and when they begin
+to claw and gnaw I want to do something; and, Jim&rdquo;&mdash;and the big brown eyes
+suddenly shot sparks&mdash;&ldquo;if those microbes ever get unleashed, there&rsquo;ll be
+mischief to pay on the floor&mdash;sure there will!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob&rsquo;s handsome head was thrown back; his thin nostrils dilated as though
+there was in them the breath of conflict. The lips were drawn across the
+white teeth with just part enough to show their edges, and in the depths
+of the eyes was a dark-red blaze that somehow gave the impression one gets
+in looking down some long avenue of black at the instant a locomotive
+headlight rounds a curve at night.</p>
+
+<p>Twice before, way back in our college days, I had had a peep at this
+gambling tempter of Bob&rsquo;s. Once in a poker game in our rooms, when a crowd
+of New York classmates tried to run him out of a hand by the sheer weight
+of coin. And again at the Pequot House at New London on the eve of a
+varsity boat-race, when a Yale crowd shook a big wad of money and taunts
+at Bob until with a yell he left his usually well-leaded feet and
+frightened me, whose allowance was dollars to Bob&rsquo;s cents, at the sum
+total of the bet-cards he signed before he cleared the room of Yale money
+and came to with a white face streaming with cold perspiration. These
+events had passed out of my memory as the ordinary student breaks that any
+hot-blooded youth is liable to make in like circumstances. As I looked at
+Bob that day, while he tried to tell me that the business of Randolph &amp;
+Randolph would not be safe in his keeping, I had to admit to myself that I
+was puzzled. I had regarded my old college chum not only as the best
+mentally harnessed man I had ever met, but I knew him as the soul of
+honour, that honour of the old story-books, and I could not credit his
+being tempted to jeopardise unfairly the rights or property of another.
+But it was habit with me to let Bob have his way, and I did not press him
+to come into our firm as a full partner.</p>
+
+<p>Five years later, during which time affairs, business and social, had been
+slipping along as well as either Bob or I could have asked, I was
+preparing for another sit-down to show my chum that the time had now come
+for him to help me in earnest, when a queer thing happened&mdash;one of those
+unaccountable incidents that God sometimes sees fit to drop across the
+life-paths of His children, paths heretofore as straight and
+far-ahead-visible as highways along which one has never to look twice to
+see where he is travelling; one of those events that, looked at
+retrospectively, are beyond all human understanding.</p>
+
+<p>It was a beautiful July Saturday noon and Bob and I had just &ldquo;packed up&rdquo;
+for the day preparatory to joining Mrs. Randolph on my yacht for a run
+down to our place at Newport. As we stepped out of his office one of the
+clerks announced that a lady had come in and had particularly asked to see
+Mr. Brownley.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who the deuce can she be, coming in at this time on Saturday, just when
+all alive men are in a rush to shake the heat and dirt of business for
+food and the good air of all outdoors?&rdquo; growled Bob. Then he said, &ldquo;Show
+her in.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Another minute and he had his answer.</p>
+
+<p>A lady entered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Brownley?&rdquo; She waited an instant to make sure he was the Virginian.</p>
+
+<p>Bob bowed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am Beulah Sands, of Sands Landing, Virginia. Your people know our
+people, Mr. Brownley, probably well enough for you to place me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of the Judge Lee Sands&rsquo;s?&rdquo; asked Bob, as he held out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am Judge Lee Sands&rsquo;s oldest daughter,&rdquo; said the sweetest voice I had
+ever heard, one of those mellow, rippling voices that start the
+imagination on a chase for a mocking-bird, only to bring it up at the pool
+beneath the brook-fall in quest of the harp of moss and watercresses that
+sends a bubbling cadence into its eddies and swirls. Perhaps it was the
+Southern accent that nibbled off the corners and edges of certain words
+and languidly let others mist themselves together, that gave it its
+luscious penetration&mdash;however that may be, it was the most
+no-yesterday-no-tomorrow voice I had ever heard. Before I grew fully
+conscious of the exquisite beauty of the girl, this voice of hers spelled
+its way into my brain like the breath of some bewitching Oriental essence.
+Nature, environment, the security of a perfect marriage have ever
+combined to constitute me loyal to my chosen one, yet as I stood silent,
+like one dumb, absorbing the details of the loveliness of this young
+stranger who had so suddenly swept into my office, it came over me that
+here was a woman intended to enlighten men who could not understand that
+shaft which in all ages has without warning pierced men&rsquo;s hearts and
+souls&mdash;love at first sight. Had there not been Katherine Blair, wife and
+mother&mdash;Katherine Blair Randolph, who filled my love-world as the noonday
+August sun fills the old-fashioned well with nestling warmth and restful
+shade&mdash;after this interval, looking back at the past, I dare ask the
+question&mdash;who knows but that I too might have drifted from the secure
+anchorage of my slow Yankee blood and floated into the deep waters?</p>
+
+<p>Beauty, the cynic&rsquo;s scoff, is in the eye of the beholder, or in an angle
+of vision&mdash;mere product of lime-light, point of view, desire&mdash;but Beulah
+Sands&rsquo;s was beauty beyond cavil, superior to all analysis, as definite as
+the evening star against the twilight sky. In height medium, girlish, but
+with a figure maturely modelled, charmingly full and rounded, yet by very
+perfection of proportion escaping suggestion of &ldquo;plumpness.&rdquo; The head,
+surrounded and crowned with a wealth of dark golden hair, rested on a neck
+that would have seemed short had its slender column sprung less graciously
+from the lovely lines of the breast and shoulders beneath. It was on the
+face, however, and finally on the eyes that one&rsquo;s glances inevitably
+lingered&mdash;the face rose-tinted, with dimples in either of the full cheeks,
+entering laughing protest against the sad droop that brought slightly down
+the corners of a mouth too large perhaps for beauty, if the coral curve of
+the lips had been less exquisitely perfect. The straight, thin-nostriled
+nose, the broad forehead, the square, full jaw almost as low at the points
+where they come beneath the ears as at the chin, suggested dignity and
+high resolve coupled with a power of purpose, rare in woman. The
+combination of forehead, jaw, and nose was seldom seen. Had it been
+possessed by a man it would surely have driven him to the tented field for
+his profession. But the greatest glory of Beulah Sands was her
+eyes&mdash;large, full, very gray, very blue, vivid with all the glamour of her
+personality, full of smiles and tears and spirituality and passion; one
+instant, frankly innocent, they illuminated the face of a blonde Madonna;
+the next, seen through the extraordinary, long, jet-black eye-lashes
+underneath the finely pencilled black brows, they caressed, coquetted,
+allured. I afterward found much of this girl&rsquo;s purely physical fascination
+lay in this strange blending of English fairness with Andalusian tints,
+though the abiding quality of her charm was surely in an exaltation of
+spirit of which she might make the dullest conscious. As she stood looking
+at Bob in my office that long-ago noon, gracefully at ease in a suit of
+gray, with a gray-feathered turban on her head, and tiny lace bands at
+neck and wrist, she was very exquisite, exceedingly dainty, and, though
+Southerner of Southerners, very unlike the typical brunette girl who comes
+out of Dixie land.</p>
+
+<p>This girl who came into our office that July Saturday, just in time to
+interfere with the outing Bob Brownley and I had laid out, and who was
+destined to divert my chum&rsquo;s heretofore smooth-flowing river of existence
+and turn it into an alternation of roaring rushes and deadly calms, was
+truly the most exquisite creature one could conceive of, I know my
+thought must have been Bob&rsquo;s too, for his eyes were riveted on her face.
+She dropped the black lashes like a veil as she went on:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Brownley, I have just come from Sands Landing. I am very anxious to
+talk with you on a business matter. I have brought a letter to you from my
+father. If you have other engagements I can wait until Monday, although,&rdquo;
+and the black veiling lashes lifted, showing the half-laughing,
+half-pathetic eyes, &ldquo;I wanted much to lay my business before you at the
+earliest minute possible.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was a faint touch of appeal in the charming voice as she spoke that
+was irresistible, and we were both willing to forget we had lunch waiting
+us on the <i>Tribesman</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Step into my office, Miss Sands, and all my time is yours,&rdquo; said Bob, as
+he opened the door between his office and mine. After I had sent a note to
+my wife, saying we might be delayed for an hour or two, I settled down to
+wait for Bob in the general office, and it was a long wait. Thirty minutes
+went into an hour and an hour into two before Bob and Miss Sands came out.
+After he had put her in a cab for her hotel, he said in a tone curiously
+intent: &ldquo;Jim, I have got to talk with you, got to get some of your good
+advice. Suppose we hustle along to the yacht and after lunch you tell Kate
+we have some business to go over. I don&rsquo;t want to keep that girl waiting
+any longer than possible for an answer I cannot give until I get your
+ideas.&rdquo; After lunch, on the bow end of the upper deck Bob relieved
+himself. Relieved is the word, for from the minute he had put Miss Sands
+into the carriage until then, it was evident even to my wife that his
+thoughts were anywhere but upon our outing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim,&rdquo; he began in a voice that shook in spite of his efforts to make it
+sound calm, &ldquo;there is no disguising the fact that I am mightily worked up
+about this matter, and I want to do everything possible for this girl. No
+need of my telling you how sacred we have got to keep what she has just
+let me into. You&rsquo;ll see as I go along that it is sacred, and I know you
+will look at it as I do. Miss Sands must be helped out of her trouble.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Judge Lee Sands, her father, is the head of the old Sands family of
+Virginia. The Virginia Sands don&rsquo;t take off their bonnets to another
+family in this country, or elsewhere, for that matter, for anything that
+really counts. They have had brains, learning, money, and fixed position
+since Virginia was first settled. They are the best people of our State.
+It is a cross-road saying in Virginia that a Sands of Sands Landing can go
+to the bench, the United States Senate, the House, or the governor&rsquo;s chair
+for the starting, and nearly all of the men folks have held one or all of
+these honours for generations. The present judge has held them all. I
+don&rsquo;t know him personally, although my people and his have been thick from
+away back. Sands Landing on the James is some fifty miles above our home.
+The judge, Beulah Sands&rsquo;s father, is close on to seventy, and I have heard
+mother and father say is a stalwart, a Virginia stalwart. Being rich&mdash;that
+is, what we Virginians call rich, a million or so&mdash;he has been very active
+in affairs, and I knew before his daughter told me, that he was the
+trustee for about all the best estates in our part of the country. It
+seems from what she tells, that of late he has been very active in
+developing our coal-mines and railroads, and that particularly he took a
+prominent hand in the Seaboard Air Line. You know the road, for your
+father was a director, and I think the house has been prominent in its
+banking affairs. Now, Jim, this poor girl, who, it seems, has recently
+been acting as the judge&rsquo;s secretary, has just learned that that coup of
+Reinhart and his crowd has completely ruined her father. The decline has
+swamped his own fortune, and, what is worse, a million to a million and a
+half of his trust funds as well, and the old judge&mdash;well, you and I can
+understand his position. Yet I do not know that you just can, either, for
+you do not quite understand our Virginia life and the kind of revered
+position a man like Judge Sands occupies. You would have to know that to
+understand fully his present purgatory and the terrible position of this
+daughter, for it seems that since he began to get into deep water he has
+been relying upon her for courage and ideas. From our talk I gather she
+has a wonderful store of up-to-date business notions, and I am convinced
+from what she lays out that the judge&rsquo;s affairs are hopeless, and, Jim,
+when that old man goes down it will be a smash that will shake our State
+in more ways than one.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Up to now the girl has stood up to the blow like a man and has been able
+to steady the judge until he presents an exterior that holds down
+suspicion as to his real financial condition, although she says Reinhart
+and his Baltimore lawyer, from the ruthless way they put on the screws to
+shake out his holdings in the Air Line, must have a line on it that the
+judge is overboard. The old gentleman can keep things going for six months
+longer without jeopardising any of the remaining trust funds, of which he
+has some two millions, and while his wife, who is an invalid, knows the
+judge is in some trouble, she does not suspect his real position. His
+daughter says that when the blow came, that day of the panic, when
+Reinhart jammed the stock out of sight and scuttled her father&rsquo;s bankers
+and partners in the road, the Wilsons of Baltimore, she had a frightful
+struggle to keep her father from going insane. She told me that for three
+days and nights she kept him locked in their rooms at their hotel in
+Baltimore, to prevent him from hunting Reinhart and his lawyer Rettybone
+and killing them both, but that at last she got him calmed down and
+together they have been planning.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim, it was tough to sit there and listen to the schemes to recoup that
+this old gentleman and this girl, for she is only twenty-one, have tried
+to hatch up. The tears actually rolled down my cheeks as I listened; I
+couldn&rsquo;t help it; you couldn&rsquo;t either, Jim. But at last out of all the
+plans considered, they found only one that had a tint of hope in it, and
+the serious mention of even that one, Jim, in any but present
+circumstances, would make you think we were dealing with lunatics. But the
+girl has succeeded in making me think it worth trying. Yes, Jim, she has,
+and I have told her so, and I hope to God that that hard-headed
+horse-sense of yours will not make you sit down on it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob Brownley had got to his feet; he was slipping the shackles of that
+fiery, romantic, Southern passion that years in college and Wall Street
+had taught him to keep prisoner. His eyes were flashing sparks. His
+nostrils vibrated like a deer buck&rsquo;s in the autumn woods. He faced me with
+his hands clinched.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim Randolph,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;as I listened to that girl&rsquo;s story of the
+terrible cruelty and devilish treachery practised by the human hyenas you
+and I associate with, human hyenas who, when in search of dirty
+dollars&mdash;the only thing they know anything about&mdash;put to shame the real
+beasts of the wilds&mdash;when I listened, I tell you that I felt it would not
+give me a twinge of conscience to put a ball through that slick scoundrel
+Reinhart. Yes, and that hired cur of his, too, who prostitutes a good
+family name and position, and an inherited ability the Almighty intended
+for more honest uses than the trapping of victims on whose purses his
+gutter-born master has set lecherous eyes. And, Jim, as I listened, a
+troop of old friends invaded my memory&mdash;friends whom I have not seen since
+before I went to Harvard, friends with whom I spent many a happy hour in
+my old Virginia home, friends born of my imagination, stalwart, rugged
+crusaders, who carried the sword and the cross and the banner inscribed
+&lsquo;For Honour and for God.&rsquo; Old friends who would troop into my boyhood and
+trumpet, &lsquo;Bob, don&rsquo;t forget, when you&rsquo;re a man, that the goal is honour,
+and the code: Do unto your neighbour as you would have your neighbour do
+unto you. Don&rsquo;t forget that millions is the crest of the groundlings.&rsquo;
+And, Jim, I thought my friends looked at me with reproachful eyes, as
+they said, &lsquo;You are well on the road, Bob Brownley, and in time your heart
+and soul will bear the hall-mark of the snaky S on the two upright bars,
+and you will be but a frenzied fellow in the Dirty Dollar army.&rsquo; Jim, Jim
+Randolph, as I listened to that agonising tale of the changing of that
+girl&rsquo;s heaven to hell, I did not see that halo you and I have thought
+surrounded the sign of Randolph &amp; Randolph. I did not see it, Jim, but I
+did see myself, and I didn&rsquo;t feel proud of the picture. My God, Jim, is it
+possible you and I have joined the nobility of Dirty Dollars? Is it
+possible we are leaving trails along our life&rsquo;s path like that Reinhart
+left through the home of these Virginians, such trails as this girl has
+shown me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob had worked himself into a state of frenzy. I had never seen him so
+excited as when he stood in front of me and almost shouted this fierce
+self-denunciation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For heaven&rsquo;s sake, Bob, pull yourself together,&rdquo; I urged. &ldquo;The captain on
+the bridge there is staring at you wild-eyed, and Katherine will be up
+here to see what has happened. Now, be a good fellow, and let us talk
+this thing over in a sensible way. At the gait you are going we can do
+nothing to help out your friends. Besides, what is there for you and me to
+take ourselves to task for? We are no wreckers and none of our dollars is
+stained with Frenzied Finance. My father, as you know, despised Reinhart
+and his sort as much as we do. Be yourself. What does this girl want you
+to do? If it is anything in reason, call it done, for you know there is
+nothing I won&rsquo;t do for you at the asking.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob&rsquo;s hysteria oozed. He dropped on the rail-seat at my side.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know it, Jim, I know it, and you must forgive me. The fact, is, Beulah
+Sands&rsquo;s story has aroused a lot of thoughts I have been a-sticking down
+cellar late years, for, to tell the truth, I have some nasty twinges of
+conscience every now and then when I get to thinking of this dollar game
+of ours.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I saw that the impulsive blood was fast cooling, and that it would only be
+a question of minutes until Bob would be his clearheaded self.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, what is it she wants you to do?&rdquo; I persisted. &ldquo;Is it a case of
+money, of our trying to tide her father over?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing of that kind, Jim. You don&rsquo;t know the proud Virginia blood.
+Neither that girl nor her father would accept money help from any one.
+They would go to smash and the grave first.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He paused and then continued impressively:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is how she puts it. She and her father have raked together her
+different legacies and turned them into cash, a matter of sixty thousand
+dollars, and she got him to consent to let her come up here to see if
+during the next six months she might not, in a few desperate plunges in
+the market, run it up to enough to at least regain the trust funds. Yes, I
+know it is a wild idea. I told her so at the beginning, but there was no
+need; she knew it, for she is not only bright, but she has the best idea
+of business I ever knew a woman to have. But it is their only chance, Jim,
+and while I listened to her argument I came around to her way of
+thinking.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But how did she happen to come to you with this extraordinary scheme?&rdquo; I
+interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s this way&mdash;her father, who knew Randolph &amp; Randolph through your
+father&rsquo;s handling of the Seaboard&rsquo;s affairs, learned of my connection
+with the house, and gave her a letter, asking me to do what I could to
+help his daughter carry out her plans. She wants to get a position with
+us, if possible, in some sort of capacity, secretary, confidential clerk,
+or, as she puts it, any sort of place that will justify her being in the
+office. She tells me she is good at shorthand, on the machine, or at
+correspondence, also that she has been a contributor to the magazines. If
+this can be arranged, she says she will on her own responsibility select
+the time and the stock, and hurl the last of the Sands fortune at the
+market, and, Jim, she is game. The blow seems to have turned this child
+into a wonderfully nervy creature, and, old man, I am beginning to have a
+feeling that perhaps the cards may come so she will win the judge out. You
+and I know where less than sixty thousand has been run up to millions more
+than once, and that, too, without the aid she will have, for I&rsquo;ll surely
+do all I can to help her steer this last chance into spongy places.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob in his enthusiasm had completely lost sight of the fact that he was
+indorsing a project that but a moment previously he had pronounced insane,
+and with a start I realised what this sudden transformation betokened.
+Inevitably, if the project he outlined were carried out, Bob and the
+beautiful Southern girl would be thrown into close association with each
+other, and further acquaintance could only deepen the startling influence
+Beulah Sands had already won over my ordinarily sane and cool-headed
+comrade. As I looked at my friend, burning with an ardour as unaccustomed
+as it was impulsive, I felt a tug at my heartstrings at thought of the
+sudden cross-roading of his life&rsquo;s highway. But I, too, was filled with
+the glamour of this girl&rsquo;s wondrous beauty, and her terrible predicament
+appealed to me almost as strongly as it had to Bob. So, although I knew it
+would be fatal to any chance of his weighing the matter by common sense, I
+burst out:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bob, I don&rsquo;t blame you for falling in with the girl&rsquo;s plans. If I were in
+your shoes, I should too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Tears came to Bob&rsquo;s eyes as he grabbed my hand and said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim, how can I ever repay you for all the good things you have done for
+me&mdash;how can I!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was no time to give way to emotional outbursts, and while Bob was
+getting his grip on himself, I went on:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come along down to earth now, Bob; let us look at this thing squarely.
+You and I, with our position in the market, can do lots of things to help
+run that sixty thousand to higher figures, but six months is a short time
+and a million or two a world of money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She knows that,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and the time is much shorter and the road to
+go much longer than you figure,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;This girl is as
+high-tensioned as the E string on a Stradivarius, and she declares she
+will have no charity tips or unusual favours from us or any one else. But
+let us not talk about that now or we&rsquo;ll get discouraged. Let&rsquo;s do as she
+says and trust to God for the outcome. Are you willing, Jim, to take her
+into the office as a sort of confidential secretary? If you will, I&rsquo;ll
+take charge of her account, and together we will do all that two men can
+for her and her father.&rdquo;</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="ch02"></a>Chapter II.</h2>
+
+<p>The following week saw Miss Sands, of Virginia, private secretary to the
+head of Randolph &amp; Randolph, established in a little office between mine
+and Bob&rsquo;s. She had not been there a day before we knew she was a worker.
+She spent the hours going over reports and analysing financial statements,
+showing a sagacity extraordinary in so young a person. She explained her
+knowledge of figures by the hand-work she had done for the judge, all of
+whose accounts she had kept. Bob and I saw that she was bent on smothering
+her memory in that antidote for all ills of heart and soul&mdash;work. Her
+office life was simplicity itself. She spoke to no one except Bob, save in
+connection with such business matters of the firm&rsquo;s as I might send her by
+one of the clerks to attend to. To the others in the banking-house she was
+just an unconventional young literary woman whose high social connections
+had gained her this opportunity of getting at the secrets of finance,
+from actual experience, for use in forthcoming novels. It had got abroad
+that she was the writer of great distinction who, under a <i>nom de plume</i>,
+had recently made quite a dent in the world&rsquo;s literary shell&mdash;a suggestion
+that I rightly guessed was one of Bob&rsquo;s delicate ways of smoothing out her
+path. I had tried in every way to make things easy for her, but it was
+impossible for me to draw her out in talk, and finally I gave it up. Had
+it not been that every time I passed her office door I was compelled by
+the fascination which I had first felt, and which, instead of diminishing,
+had increased with her reticence, to look in at the quiet figure with the
+downcast eyes, working away at her desk as though her life depended on
+never missing a second, I should not have known she was in the building.
+My wife, at my suggestion, had tried to induce her to visit us; in fact,
+after I let her into just enough of Beulah Sands&rsquo;s story so that she could
+see things on a true slant, she had decided to try to bring her to our
+house to live. But though the girl was sweetly gentle in her appreciation
+of Kate&rsquo;s thoughtful attentions, in her simple way she made us both feel
+that our efforts would be for naught, that her position must be the same
+as that of any other clerk in the office. We both finally left her to
+herself. Bob explained to me, some three weeks after she came to the
+office, that she received no visitors at her home, a hotel on a quiet
+uptown street, and that even he had never had permission to call upon her
+there.</p>
+
+<p>But from the day she came to occupy her desk in our office, Bob was a
+changed man, whether for better or for worse neither Kate nor I could
+decide. His old bounding elasticity was gone, and with it his rollicking
+laugh. He was now a man where before he had been a boy, a man with a
+burden. Even if I had not heard Beulah Sands&rsquo;s story, I should have
+guessed that Bob was staggering under a strange load. While before, from
+the close of the Stock Exchange until its opening the next morning, he
+was, as Kate was fond of putting it, always ready to fill in for anything
+from chaperon to nurse, always open for any lark we planned, from a
+Bohemian dinner to the opera, now weeks went by without our seeing him at
+our house. In the office it used to be a saying that outside gong-strikes,
+Bob Brownley did not know he was in the stock business. Formerly every
+clerk knew when Bob came or went, for it was with a rush, a shout, a
+laugh, and a bang of doors; and on the floor of the Stock Exchange no man
+played so many pranks, or filled his orders with so much jolly good-nature
+and hilarious boisterousness. But from the day the Virginian girl crossed
+his path, Bob Brownley was a man who was thinking, thinking, thinking all
+the time. It was only with an effort that he would keep his eyes on
+whomever he was talking with long enough to take in what was said, and if
+the saying occupied much time it would be apparent to the talker that Bob
+was off in the clouds. All his friends and associates remarked the change,
+but I alone, except perhaps Kate, had any idea of the cause. I knew that
+two million dollars and the coming New Year were hurdling like kangaroos
+over Bob&rsquo;s mental rails and ditches, though I did not know it from
+anything he told me, for after that talk on the upper deck of the
+<i>Tribesman</i> he had shut up like a clam.</p>
+
+<p>He did not exactly shun me, but showed me in many ways that he had entered
+into a new world, in which he desired to be alone. That Beulah Sands&rsquo;s
+plight had roused into intense activity all the latent romance of my
+friend&rsquo;s nature, did not surprise me. I foresaw from the first that Bob
+would fall head over heels in love with this beautiful, sorrow-laden girl,
+and it was soon obvious that the long-delayed shaft had planted its point
+in the innermost depths of his being. His was more than love; a fervid
+idolatry now had possession of his soul, mind, and body. Yet its outward
+manifestations were the opposite of what one would have looked for in this
+gay and optimistic Southerner. It was rather priest-like worship, a calm
+imperturbability that nothing seemed to distract or upset, at least in the
+presence of the goddess who was its object. Every morning he would pass
+through my office headed straight for the little room she occupied as if
+it were his one objective point of the day, but once he heard his own
+&ldquo;Good morning, Miss Sands,&rdquo; he seemed to round to, and while in her
+presence was the Bob Brownley of old. He would be in and out all day on
+any and every pretext, always entering with an undisguised eagerness,
+leaving with a slow, dreamy reluctance. That he never saw her outside the
+office, I am sure, for she said good-night to him when he or she left for
+the day with the same don&rsquo;t-come-with-me dignity that she exhibited to
+all the rest of us. I had not attempted to say a word to Bob about his
+feeling for Beulah Sands, nor had he ever brought up the subject to me. On
+the contrary, he studiously avoided it.</p>
+
+<p>Three months of the six had now passed, and with each day I thought I
+noted an increasing anxiety in Bob. He had opened a special account for
+Miss Sands on the books of the house in his name as agent, with a credit
+of sixty thousand dollars, and we both watched it with a painful tenseness
+of scrutiny. It had grown by uneven jerks, until the balance on October
+1st was almost four hundred thousand dollars. On some of the trades Bob
+had consulted me, and on others, two in particular where he closed up
+after a few days&rsquo; operations with nearly two hundred thousand dollars
+profit, I did not even know what the trading was based on until the stocks
+had been sold. Then he said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim, that little lady from Virginia can give us a big handicap and play
+us to a standstill at our own game. She told me to buy all the Burlington
+and Sugar her account would stand, and did not even ask for my opinion. In
+both cases I thought the operations were more the result of a wakeful
+night and an I-must-do-something decision than anything else, and I
+tackled both with a shiver; but when she told me to sell them out at a
+time I thought they looked like going higher and the next day they
+slumped, I could not help thinking about the destiny that shapes our
+ends.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On my part I tried to help. On one occasion, without consulting her, I put
+her account in on a sure thing underwriting, wherein she stood to make a
+profit of a quarter of a million, but when Bob told her what I had done,
+she insisted with great dignity that her name be withdrawn. After that
+neither of us dared help her to any short cuts. Bob was deeply impressed
+by her principles, and, commenting on them, said: &ldquo;Jim, if all Wall Street
+had a code similar to Beulah Sands&rsquo;s to hew to in their gambles, ours
+would be a fairer and more manly game, and many of the multi-millionaires
+would be clerking, while a lot of the hand-to-mouth traders would come
+downtown in a new auto every day in the week. She does not believe in
+stock-gambling. She has worked it out that every dollar one man makes,
+another loses; that the one who makes gives nothing in return for what he
+gets away with; and that the other fellow&rsquo;s loss makes him and his as
+miserable as would robbery to the same amount. Yet she realises that she
+must get back those millions stolen from her father and is willing to
+smother her conscience to attempt it, provided she takes no unfair
+advantage of the other players. The other day she said to me, &lsquo;I have
+decided, because of my duty to my father, to put away my prejudice against
+gambling, but no duty to him or to any one can justify me in playing with
+marked cards.&rsquo; Jim, there is food for reflection for you and me, don&rsquo;t you
+think so?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I did not argue it with him, for, after that Saturday&rsquo;s outburst, I had
+made up my mind to avoid stirring Bob up unnecessarily. Also, I had to
+admit to myself that the things he had then said had raised some
+uncomfortable thoughts in me, thoughts that made me glance less
+confidently now and then at the old sign of Randolph &amp; Randolph and at the
+big ledger which showed that I, an ordinary citizen of a free country, was
+the absolute possessor of more money than a hundred thousand of my fellow
+beings together could accumulate in a lifetime, although each one had
+worked harder, longer, more conscientiously, and with perhaps more ability
+than I.</p>
+
+<p>As to how Beulah Sands&rsquo;s code had affected my friend, I was ignorant. For
+the first time in our association I was completely in the dark as to what
+he was doing stockwise. Up to that Saturday I was the first to whom he
+would rush for congratulations when he struck it rich over others on the
+exchange, and he invariably sought me for consolation when the boys
+&ldquo;upper-cut him hard,&rdquo; as he would put it. Now he never said a word about
+his trading. I saw that his account with the house was inactive, that his
+balance was about the same as before Miss Sands&rsquo;s advent, and I came to
+the conclusion that he was resting on his oars and giving his undivided
+attention to her account and the execution of his commissions. His
+handling of the business of the house showed no change. He still was the
+best broker on the floor. However, knowing Bob as I did, I could not get
+it out of my mind that his brain was running like a mill-race in search of
+some successful solution to the tremendous problem that must be solved in
+the next three months.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after the October 1st statements had been sent out, Bob dropped
+in on Kate and me one night. After she had retired and we had lit our
+cigars in the library he said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim, I want some of that old-fashioned advice of yours. Sugar is selling
+at 110, and it is worth it; in fact it is cheap. The stock is well
+distributed among investors, not much of it floating round &lsquo;the Street.&rsquo; A
+good, big buying movement, well handled, would jump it to 175 and keep it
+there. Am I sound?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I agreed with him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All right. Now what reason is there for a good, big, stiff uplift? That
+tariff bill is up at Washington. If it goes through, Sugar will be cheaper
+at 175 than at 110.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again I agreed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Standard Oil&rsquo; and the Sugar people know whether it is going through, for
+they control the Senate and the House and can induce the President to be
+good. What do you say to that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K.,&rdquo; I answered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No question about it, is there?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not the slightest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Right again. When 26 Broadway<a href="#fn1" name="fnref1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> gives the secret order to the
+Washington boss and he passes it out to the grafters, there will be a
+quiet accumulation of the stock, won&rsquo;t there?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn1"></a> <a href="#fnref1">[1]</a>
+&ldquo;26 Broadway&rdquo; is the Wall Street figure of speech for
+&ldquo;Standard Oil,&rdquo; which has its home there.
+</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got that right, Bob.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And the man who first knows when Washington begins to take on Sugar is
+the man who should load up quick and rush it up to a high level. If he
+does it quickly, the stockholders, who now have it, will get a juicy slice
+of the ripening melon, a slice that otherwise would go to those greedy
+hypocrites at Washington, who are always publicly proclaiming that they
+are there to serve their fellow countrymen, but who never tire of
+expressing themselves to their brokers as not being in politics for their
+health.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So far, good reasoning,&rdquo; I commented.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim, the man who first knows when the Senators and Congressmen and
+members of the Cabinet begin to buy Sugar, is the man who can kill four
+birds with one stone: Win back a part of Judge Sands&rsquo;s stolen fortune;
+increase his own pile against the first of January, when, if the little
+Virginian lady is short a few hundred thousand of the necessary amount,
+he could, if he found a way to induce her to accept it, supply the
+deficiency; fatten up a good friend&rsquo;s bank account a million or so, and do
+a right good turn for the stockholders who are about to be, for the
+hundredth time, bled out of profit rightfully theirs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob was afire with enthusiasm, the first I had seen him show for three
+months. Seeing that I had followed him without objection so far, he
+continued:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Jim, I know the Washington buying has begun. All I know I have dug
+out for myself and am free to use it any way I choose. I have gone over
+the deal with Beulah Sands, and we have decided to plunge. She has a
+balance of about four hundred thousand dollars, and I&rsquo;m going to spread it
+thin. I am going to buy her 20,000 shares and to take on 10,000 for
+myself. If you went in for 20,000 more, it would give me a wide sea to
+sail in. I know you never speculate, Jim, for the house, but I thought you
+might in this case go in personally.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say anything more, Bob,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;This time the rule goes by the
+board. But I will do better: I&rsquo;ll put up a million and you can go as high
+as 70,000 for me. That will give you a buying power of 100,000, and I
+want you to use my last 50,000 shares as a lifter.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I had never speculated in a share of stock since I entered the firm of
+Randolph &amp; Randolph, and on general, special, and every other principle
+was opposed to stock gambling, but I saw how Bob had worked it out, and
+that to make the deal sure it was necessary for him to have a good reserve
+buying power to fall back on if, after he got started, the &ldquo;System&rdquo;
+masters, whose game he was butting in to and whose plans he might upset
+should try to shake down the price to drive him out of their preserves.
+Bob knew how I looked at his proposed deal and ordinarily would not have
+allowed me to have the short end of it, but so changed had he become in
+his anxiety to make that money for the Virginians that he grabbed at my
+acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, Jim,&rdquo; he said fervently, and he continued: &ldquo;Of course, I see
+what&rsquo;s going through your head, but I&rsquo;ll accept the favour, for the deal
+is bound to be successful. I know your reason for coming in is just to
+help out, and that you won&rsquo;t feel badly because your last 50,000 shares
+will be used more as a guarantee for the deal&rsquo;s success than for profit.
+And Miss Sands could not object to the part you play, as she did at the
+underwriting, for you will get a big profit anyway.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Next day Sugar was lively on the Exchange. Bob bought all in sight and
+handled the buying in a masterly way. When the closing gong struck, Beulah
+Sands had 20,000 shares, which averaged her 115; Bob and I had 30,000 at
+an average of 125, and the stock had closed 132 bid and in big demand.
+Miss Sands&rsquo;s 20,000 showed $340,000 profit, while our 30,000 showed
+$210,000 at the closing price. All the houses with Washington wires were
+wildly scrambling for Sugar as soon as it began to jump. And it certainly
+looked as though the shares were good for the figures set for them by Bob,
+$175, at which price the Sands&rsquo;s profits would be $1,200,000. Bob was
+beside himself with joy. He dined with Kate and me, and as I watched him
+my heart almost stopped beating at the thought&mdash;&ldquo;if anything should happen
+to upset his plans!&rdquo; His happiness was pathetic to witness. He was like a
+child. He threw away all the reserve of the past three months and laughed
+and was grave by turns. After dinner, as we sat in the library over our
+coffee, he leaned over to my wife and said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Katherine Randolph, you and Jim don&rsquo;t know what misery I have been in for
+three months, and now&mdash;will to-morrow never come, so I may get into the
+whirl and clean up this deal and send that girl back to her father with
+the money! I wanted her to telegraph the judge that things looked like she
+would win out and bring back the relief, but she would not hear of it. She
+is a marvellous woman. She has not turned a hair to-day. I don&rsquo;t think her
+pulse is up an eighth to-night. She has not sent home a word of
+encouragement since she has been here, more than to tell her father she is
+doing well with her stories. It seems they both agreed that the only way
+to work the thing out was &lsquo;whole hog or none,&rsquo; and that she was to say
+nothing until she could herself bring the word &lsquo;saved&rsquo; or &lsquo;lost.&rsquo; I don&rsquo;t
+know but she is right. She says if she should raise her father&rsquo;s hopes,
+and then be compelled to dash them, the effect would be fatal.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob rushed the talk along, flitting from one point to another, but
+invariably returning to Beulah Sands and to-morrow and its saving
+profits. Finally, he got to a pitch where it seemed as though he must take
+off the lid, and before Kate or I realised what was coming he placed
+himself in front of us and said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim, Kate, I cannot go into to-morrow without telling you something that
+neither of you suspect. I must tell some one, now that everything is
+coming out right and that Beulah is to be saved; and whom can I tell but
+you, who have been everything to me?&mdash;I love Beulah Sands, surely, deeply,
+with every bit of me. I worship her, I tell you, and to-morrow, to-morrow
+if this deal comes out as it must come, and I can put $1,500,000 into her
+hands and send her home to her father, then, then, I will tell her I love
+her, and Jim, Kate, if she&rsquo;ll marry me, good-bye, good-bye to this hell of
+dollar-hunting, good-bye to such misery as I have been in for three
+months, and home, a Virginia home, for Beulah and me.&rdquo; He sank into a
+chair and tears rolled down his cheeks Poor, poor Bob, strong as a lion in
+adversity, hysterical as a woman with victory in sight.</p>
+
+<p>The next day Sugar opened with a wild rush: &ldquo;25,000 shares from 140 to
+152.&rdquo; That is the way it came on the tape, which meant that the crowd
+around the Sugar-pole was a mob and that the transactions were so heavy,
+quick, and tangled that no one could tell to a certainty just what the
+first or opening price was; but after the first lull, after the gong,
+there were officially reported transactions aggregating 25,000 shares and
+at prices varying from 140 to 152. I was over on the floor to see the
+scramble, for it was noised about long before ten o&rsquo;clock that Sugar would
+open wild, and then, too, I wanted to be handy if Bob should need any
+quick advice.</p>
+
+<p>A minute before the gong struck, there were three hundred men jammed
+around the Sugar-pole; men with set, determined faces; men with their
+coats buttoned tight and shoulders thrown back for the rush to which, by
+comparison, that of a football team is child&rsquo;s play. Every man in that
+crowd was a picked man, picked for what was coming. Each felt that upon
+his individual powers to keep a clear head, to shout loudest, to forget
+nothing, to keep his feet, and to stay as near the centre of the crowd as
+possible, depended his &ldquo;floor honour,&rdquo; perhaps his fortune, or, what was
+more to him, his client&rsquo;s fortune. Nearly every man of them was a college
+graduate who had won his spurs at athletics or a seasoned floor man whose
+training had been even more severe than that of the college campus. When
+it is known before the opening of the Exchange that there are to be
+&ldquo;things doing&rdquo; in a certain stock, it is the rule to send only the picked
+floor men into the crowd. There may be a fortune to make or to lose in a
+minute or a sliver of a minute. For instance, the man who that morning was
+able to snatch the first 5,000 shares sold at 140 could have resold them a
+few minutes afterward at 152 and secured $60,000 profit. And the man who
+was sent into the crowd by his client to sell 5,000 shares at the
+&ldquo;opening&rdquo; and who got but 140, when the price would be 152 by the time he
+reported to his customer, was a man to be pitied. Again, the trader who
+the night before had decided that Sugar had gone up too fast, and who had
+&ldquo;shorted&rdquo; (that is, sold what he did not have, with the intention of
+repurchasing at a lower price than he sold it for) 5,000 shares at 140 and
+who, finding himself in that surging mob with Sugar selling at 152, could
+only get out by taking a loss of $60,000, or by taking another chance of
+later paying 162&mdash;such a trader was also to be pitied.</p>
+
+<p>No one who scanned the crowd that morning would have believed that the
+calm, set face on that erect Indian figure, occupying the very centre of
+that horde of gamblers who were only awaiting the ringing clang of the
+gong to hurl themselves like madmen at each other, was the hysterical man
+who the night before was wildly praying for this moment. Nearly every man
+in that crowd was calm, but Bob Brownley was the calmest of them all. It&rsquo;s
+the Exchange code that at any cost of heart or nerve-tear a man must
+retain good form until the gong strikes. Then, that he must be as near the
+uncaged tiger as human mind and body can be made. Only I realised what
+volcano raged inside my chum&rsquo;s bosom. If any other man of the crowd had
+known, Bob&rsquo;s chances of success would have been on par with a Canadian
+canoeist short-cutting Niagara for Buffalo. Nine-tenths of the Stock
+Exchange game is not letting your left brain-lobe know what race your
+right is in until the winning numbers and the also-rans are on the board.
+If one of those three hundred chain-lightning thinkers or any of their
+ten thousand alert associates knew in advance the intentions of a fellow
+broker, the word would sweep through that crowd with the sureness of
+uncorked ether, and the other two hundred and ninty nine, at gong-strike,
+would be at each others&rsquo; throats for his vitals, and before he knew the
+game had started would have his bones picked to a vulture-finish
+cleanness. Suddenly, as I watched the scene, there rang through the great
+hall the first sharp stroke of the gong. There were no echoes heard that
+morning. The metallic voice was yet shaping its command to &ldquo;at &rsquo;em, you
+fiends&rdquo; when from three hundred throats burst the wild sound of the Stock
+Exchange yell. No other sound in any of the open or hidden places of all
+nature duplicates the yell of a great Stock Exchange at an exciting
+opening. It not only fills and refills space, for the volume is terrific,
+but it has an individuality all its own, coming from the incisive
+&ldquo;take-mine-I&rsquo;ve-got yours,&rdquo; from the aggressive, almost arrogant
+&ldquo;you-can&rsquo;t-you-won&rsquo;t-have-your-way,&rdquo; the confident &ldquo;by-heaven-I-will&rdquo;
+individual notes that enter into the whole, as they blend with the shrill
+scream of triumph and the die-away note of disappointment, when the floor
+men realise their success or their failure. I picked Bob&rsquo;s magnificently
+resonant voice from the mass&mdash;&ldquo;40 for any part of 10,000 Sugar.&rdquo; It was
+this daring bid that struck terror to the bears and filled the bulls<a href="#fn2" name="fnref2"><sup>[2]</sup></a>
+with a frenzy of encouragement. Again it rang out&mdash;&ldquo;45 for any part of
+25,000&rdquo;; and a third time&mdash;&ldquo;50 for any part of 50,000.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="fn2"></a> <a href="#fnref2">[2]</a>
+Those who seek to depress the price of a stock are known as bears, and those
+who oppose them by trying to raise the price are bulls.
+</p>
+
+<p>The great crowd was surging all over the room. Hats were smashed and coats
+were being stripped from their owners&rsquo; backs as though made of paper, and
+now and then a particularly frantic buyer or seller would be borne to the
+floor by the impetus of those who sought to fill his bid or grab his
+offer. Through all the wild whirl, straight and erect and commanding was
+the form of Bob, his face cold and expressionless as an iceberg. In five
+minutes the human mass had worked back to the Sugar-pole and there was the
+inevitable lull while its members &ldquo;verified.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I could see by the few entries Bob was making on his pad that he had been
+compelled to buy but little. This meant that his campaign was working
+smoothly, that he was driving the market up by merely bidding, and that
+he had the greater part of my 50,000 yet unbought, which inturn meant he
+could continue to push up the price, or in the event of his opponents&rsquo;
+attempting to run it down, he would be under the market with big
+supporting orders.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the lull was broken. Bob&rsquo;s voice rang out again&mdash;&ldquo;153 for any
+part of 10,000 Sugar.&rdquo; Again the gamblers closed in and for another five
+minutes the opening scene was duplicated, with only a shade less
+fierceness. After ten minutes&rsquo; mad trading a mighty burst of sound told
+that Sugar was 160 bid. Then Bob worked his way out of the crowd, and
+passing by me fairly hissed, &ldquo;By heaven, Jim, I&rsquo;ve got them cinched!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I went back to the office. In a few minutes Bob without a word strode
+through my office and into the little room occupied by Beulah Sands. He
+closed the door behind him, a thing that he had never done before. It was
+only a minute till he opened it and called to me. In his eyes was a
+strange look, a look that came from the blending of two mighty passions,
+one joy, the other I could not make out, unless it was that soft one,
+which suppressed love, emerging from terrible uncertainty, generates in
+deep natures and which usually finds vent in tears. Beulah Sands was a
+study. Her heart was evidently swaying and tugging with the news Bob had
+brought her. She must have seen the nearness of release from the torture
+that had been filling her soul during the past three months, and yet such
+was the remarkable self-control of the woman, such her noble courage, that
+she refused to show any outward sign of her feelings. She was the
+reserved, dignified girl I had ever seen her. &ldquo;Jim, Miss Sands and I
+thought it best that we should have a little match up at this stage of our
+deal,&rdquo; Bob began. &ldquo;I want to know if you both agree with me on adhering to
+the original plans to close out at 175. I never felt surer of my ground
+than in this deal. The stock is 163 on the tape right now.&rdquo; He glanced at
+the white paper ribbon whose every foot on certain days spells Heaven or
+Hell to countless mortals, as it rolled out of the ticker in the corner of
+the office. &ldquo;Yes, there she goes again&mdash;3&frac34;, 4, 4&frac14; and 1,200 at a half.
+There is a tremendous demand from all quarters. Washington&rsquo;s buying is
+unlimited; the commission-houses are tumbling over one another to get
+aboard and the shorts are scared to a paralysed muteness. They don&rsquo;t know
+whether to jump in and cover or to stand their present hands, but they
+have no pluck to fight the rise, that is certain. The news bureaus have
+just published the story that I am buying for Randolph &amp; Randolph, and
+they for the insiders; that the new tariff is as good as passed; and that
+at the directors&rsquo; meeting to-morrow the Sugar dividend will be increased,
+and that it is agreed on all sides she won&rsquo;t stop going until she crosses
+200. I&rsquo;ve been obliged to take on only 18,000 of your 50,000, and at
+present prices there is over two hundred thousand profit in them. I think
+I could go back there and in thirty minutes have it to 180. Then if I
+rested on it until about one o&rsquo;clock and threw myself at it for real
+fireworks up to the close, I could, under cover of them, let slip about
+half our purchases, and to-morrow open her with a whirl and let go the
+balance. If I&rsquo;m in luck I&rsquo;ll average 180-185 for the whole bunch, but I&rsquo;ll
+be satisfied if I get an average of 175, which would allow me to sell it
+on a dropping scale to 160.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I agreed that his campaign was perfect, and Beulah Sands said in her
+usual quiet way, &ldquo;It is entirely in your hands, Mr. Brownley. I don&rsquo;t see
+how any advice from us can help.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob went back to the Exchange and I into my office. Bob had been right
+again. In ten minutes the tape began to scream Sugar. With enormous
+transactions it ran up in fifteen minutes to 188, in three more it dropped
+to 181, and then steadily mounted to 185&frac12;, dulled up, and was healthy
+steady. Presently Bob was back and we sat down again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve bought 20,000 more for you, Jim, on that bulge. I&rsquo;ve 38,000 in all
+of the last 50,000, which leaves me 12,000 reserve. The average is &lsquo;way
+under 75, and there must be $400,000 for you in it now and a strong
+$1,400,000 in Miss Sands&rsquo;s 20,000, and $1,800,000 in our 30,000. They say
+it&rsquo;s bad business to count chickens in the shell, but ours are tapping so
+hard to get out I can&rsquo;t help doing it this once. I&rsquo;m going to keep away
+from the floor for an hour or so, then I will go over and wind it up
+and&mdash;good God, Beulah&mdash;Miss Sands&mdash;are you ill?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The girl&rsquo;s face was ashen gray and she seemed to be gasping for breath. I
+rushed for some water while Bob seized both her hands, but in an instant
+the blood came to her cheeks with a rush and she said, &ldquo;I was dizzy for a
+moment. It must have been the thought of taking $1,800,000 back to father
+that upset me. With that amount father could make good all the trust
+funds, and have back enough of his own fortune to make us seem, after what
+we have been going through, richer than we were before. Pardon me, Mr.
+Randolph, won&rsquo;t you, when I say&mdash;God bless you and every one whom you hold
+dear, God bless you? What could I or my father have done but for you and
+Mr. Brownley?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She turned her big eyes full upon Bob, filled with a light such as can
+come only to a woman&rsquo;s eyes, only to a woman before whom, as she stands on
+the brink of hell, suddenly looms her heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Sharp and shrill rang Bob&rsquo;s Exchange telephone. The ring seemed shriller;
+it certainly was longer than usual. Bob jumped for the receiver.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="ch03"></a>Chapter III.</h2>
+
+<p>He Listened a moment, then answered, &ldquo;Stand on it at 80 for 12,000 shares.
+I will be there in a second.&rdquo; He dropped the receiver. &ldquo;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,&rdquo; and he shot out of the office.</p>
+
+<p>I sprang for Bob&rsquo;s telephone: &ldquo;Perkins, quick!&rdquo; &ldquo;What are they doing,
+Perkins?&rdquo; I asked a moment later.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Conant has almost filled me up. He seems to have a hogshead of it on
+tap,&rdquo; he answered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Buy 50,000 shares, 5,000 each point down; and anything unfilled, give to
+Bob when he gets there. He is on the way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I shut off, and turned to Miss Sands:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is no time to stand on ceremony, Miss Sands. Barry Conant is
+Camemeyer&rsquo;s and &lsquo;Standard Oil&rsquo;s&rsquo; 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&rsquo;t believe in speculation and am in
+this deal only for Bob&mdash;and for you&mdash;I swear I don&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;well, they&rsquo;re not going to,
+if I can prevent it,&rdquo; and I started for the Exchange on the run.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&rsquo; 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 &ldquo;78 for
+5,000,&rdquo; &ldquo;77 for 5,000,&rdquo; &ldquo;75 for 5,000,&rdquo; &ldquo;74 for 5,000,&rdquo; &ldquo;73 for 5,000,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;72 for 5,000,&rdquo; seemingly expecting through sheer power of voice to crush
+his opponent into silence. But with the regularity of a trip-hammer Barry
+Conant&rsquo;s right hand, raised in unhurried gesture, and his clear calm
+&ldquo;Sold&rdquo; met Bob&rsquo;s every retreating bid. It was a battle royal&mdash;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&rsquo;s usual order from his
+clients, the &ldquo;System&rdquo; masters, for such an occasion as the present was
+&ldquo;Break the price at any cost.&rdquo; On the other hand, every one knew that
+Randolph &amp; Randolph were usually behind Bob&rsquo;s big operations; this was
+evidently one of his biggest; and every man there knew that Randolph &amp;
+Randolph were seldom backed down by any force.</p>
+
+<p>As Bob made his bid &ldquo;72 for 5,000,&rdquo; 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 &amp; 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s canoe. I sadly signaled that I was
+through. As Bob caught the sign, he threw his head back and bellowed a
+deep, hoarse &ldquo;70 for 10,000.&rdquo; 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
+&ldquo;Sold!&rdquo; 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&mdash;&ldquo;5,000 at 69, 68, 65,&rdquo; &ldquo;10,000 at
+63,&rdquo; &ldquo;25,000 at 60.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s uplift.</p>
+
+<p>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&rsquo;s and the clubs, these men would moan for poor Bob;
+Barry Conant&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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: &ldquo;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.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s doings; but he stopped me:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim, don&rsquo;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
+&lsquo;System&rsquo; butchers. I know what it is to see my heart and the heart of one
+I love&mdash;and yours, too, Jim&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo; 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&rsquo;ve learned my lesson to-day. I
+thought I knew the game of finance, but I&rsquo;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 &lsquo;System&rsquo; 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&rsquo;m not morbid, I&rsquo;m going to make a
+heroic effort to put the picture out of sight; but I&rsquo;m afraid, Jim, I&rsquo;m
+afraid.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped as we pulled up on the sidewalk in front of Randolph &amp;
+Randolph&rsquo;s office. &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;a few suicides, a few
+defaulters, a few new convicts, an unclaimed corpse or two at the morgue;
+a few innocent girls, whose fathers&rsquo; fortunes have gone to swell
+Camemeyer&rsquo;s and &lsquo;Standard Oil&rsquo;s&rsquo; 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 &lsquo;System,&rsquo; 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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob&rsquo;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.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look me over, Beulah Sands,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;look me over to your heart&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;m
+the fool who did it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>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, &ldquo;It was all for me.&rdquo; 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:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bob.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That was all, but the word seemed to change the very atmosphere in the
+room. The look of desperation faded from Bob&rsquo;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&mdash;clear, calm, fearless, and tender, came
+the one syllable, &ldquo;Bob.&rdquo; And at that Bob&rsquo;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: &ldquo;Mr. Randolph, please forget what you
+have seen. For an instant, as I saw Mr. Brownley&rsquo;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&mdash;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,&rdquo; the voice was now calm and
+self-controlled, &ldquo;tell me what you have done. Where do we stand?&rdquo; &ldquo;There
+is little to tell,&rdquo; Bob answered. &ldquo;Camemeyer and &lsquo;Standard Oil&rsquo; 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.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>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 &ldquo;System&rdquo; 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.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Brownley,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;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&rsquo; 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.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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. &ldquo;I was willing to accept your
+assistance,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; She said this in a way that we both
+knew precluded the possibility of argument. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>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. &ldquo;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&mdash;then you will know that God is good,
+even when we think he is chastening us beyond endurance.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob took me into his office. &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>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&rsquo;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: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;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.&rdquo; She dropped her long
+lashes in a this-conversation-is-closed way that we had come to know meant
+going time.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="ch04"></a>Chapter IV.</h2>
+
+<p>The following week Bob returned to the office. He had not changed, and yet
+he had changed greatly. Rest had apparently done much for him. His colour
+was good, his step elastic as of old, and his head was thrown back as if
+he were buckled up for the fray and wanted all to know it. Yet there was
+something in the eye, in the setness of the jaw, in the hair-trigger calm,
+yet fiercely savage grip in which he closed his strong hands on the arms
+of his chair, that told me more plainly than words that this was not the
+optimistic, soft-hearted Bob Brownley I had known and loved. I could not
+help feeling that if I had been a leader of the Russian terrorists, and
+this man who now sat before me had come to my ken when I was selecting
+bomb-throwers, I should have seized upon him of all men as the one to
+stalk the Czar or his marked minions. Surely the iron that had entered
+Bob&rsquo;s soul a week before had affected his whole being. I think Beulah
+Sands had some such thoughts. For I saw a shadow of perplexity cross her
+broad, low forehead after her first meeting with him, a shadow that had
+not been there before.</p>
+
+<p>For days after Bob&rsquo;s return I saw little of him. I think Beulah Sands saw
+less. During Stock Exchange hours he spent most of his time on the floor,
+but he executed few of our orders. He merely looked them over and handed
+them out to his assistants. As far as I could learn, he spent much of his
+time there yesterdaying through hope&rsquo;s graveyards, a not uncommon pastime
+for active Exchange members whose first through specials have been
+open-switched by the &ldquo;System&rdquo; towerman. So strong had become this habit of
+going about from pole to pole with bent head and a far-off gaze that his
+fellow members began to humour and respect it. They all knew that Bob had
+gone up against the Sugar panic hard. No one knew how hard, but all
+guessed from his changed appearance and habits that it must have been a
+bone-smashing blow. Nothing so quickly and so deeply stirs a Stock
+Exchange man&rsquo;s feelings for his brother member as to know that &ldquo;They&rdquo; have
+ditched his El Dorado flyer&mdash;that is, if he has been a good the books
+showed no change in Beulah Sands&rsquo;s account. There was the poor little
+$30,000 balance; no other entries. One afternoon Beulah Sands had asked
+for a meeting between Bob and myself in her office. She could hardly have
+asked Bob to come without me, but I knew it was Bob she wanted to see, and
+I felt that the best thing I could do for them was to leave them alone. So
+I made some excuse for a moment&rsquo;s delay at my desk, telling Bob to go on
+into her office, and promising to follow shortly. He went in, leaving the
+door partly open. I think that from the moment he entered the room both of
+them utterly forgot my existence. From her desk Beulah could not see me,
+and Bob sat so that his back was half toward me. &ldquo;I dislike to trouble you
+about my account,&rdquo; I heard her begin in a voice a trifle uneven, &ldquo;but as I
+must go back to Father Christmas week, I wanted to get your advice as to
+the advisability of writing him that, though there is still a chance for
+doing wonders, I do not think we shall be able to save him. Of course I
+won&rsquo;t put it in just that blunt way, but it seems to me I should begin to
+prepare him for the blow. I have not talked over any more plunging with
+you, Mr. Brownley, since the unlucky one in Sugar, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Miss Sands, I understand what you mean,&rdquo; Bob broke in, &ldquo;and I should
+apologise for not having consulted with you about your business affairs.
+The fact is, I have not been quite clear as to the best thing to do. I
+hope you don&rsquo;t think I have forgotten. Never for a moment since I took
+charge of your affairs have I forgotten my promise to see that they were
+kept active. Truly I have been trying to think out some successful plunge,
+but&mdash;but&rdquo;&mdash;there was a hoarseness in his voice&mdash;&ldquo;I have not had my old
+confidence in myself since that day in Sugar when I killed your hopes and
+destroyed the chance of saving your father&mdash;no, I have not had that
+confidence a man must have in himself to win at this game.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence, and then I heard an indescribable fluttering rush
+that told as plainly as sight could have done that a woman had answered
+her heart&rsquo;s call. Looking up involuntarily, I saw a sight that for a long
+moment held my eyes as if I had been fascinated. It was Bob bowed forward
+with his face hidden in his hands and beside him, on her knees, Beulah
+Sands, her arms about his neck, his head drawn down to her bosom. &ldquo;Bob,
+Bob,&rdquo; she said chokingly, &ldquo;I cannot stand it any longer. My heart is
+breaking for you. You were so happy when I came into your life, and the
+happiness is changed to misery and despair, and all for me, a stranger. At
+first I thought of nothing but father and how to save him, but since that
+day when those men struck at your heart, I have been filled with, oh! such
+a longing to tell you, to tell you, Bob&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What? Beulah, what? For the love of God, don&rsquo;t stop; tell me, Beulah,
+tell me.&rdquo; He had not lifted his head. It was buried on her breast, his
+arms closed around her. She bent her head and laid her beautiful, soft
+cheek, down which the tears were now streaming, against his brown hair.
+&ldquo;Bob, forgive me, but I love you, love you, Bob, as only a woman can love
+who has never known love before, never known anything but stern duty. Bob,
+night after night when all have left I have crept into your office and sat
+in your chair. I have laid my head on your desk and cried and cried until
+it seemed as though I could not live till morning without hearing you say
+that you loved me, and that you did not mind the ruin I had brought into
+your life. I have patted the back of your chair where your dear head had
+rested. I have covered the arms of your chair, that your strong, brave
+hands had gripped, with kisses. Night after night I have knelt at your
+desk and prayed to God to shield you, to protect you from all harm, to
+brush away the black cloud I brought into your life. I have asked Him to
+do with me, yes, with my father and mother, anything, anything if only He
+would bring back to you the happiness I had stolen. Bob, I have suffered,
+suffered, as only a woman can suffer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She was sobbing as though her heart would break, sobbing wildly,
+convulsively, like the little child who in the night comes to its mother&rsquo;s
+bed to tell of the black goblins that have been pursuing it. Long before
+she had finished speaking&mdash;and it took only a few heart-beats for that
+rush of words&mdash;I had broken the power of the fascination that held me, had
+turned away my eyes, and tried not to listen. For fear of breaking the
+spell, I did not dare cross the room to close Beulah&rsquo;s door or to reach
+the outer door of my office, which was nearer hers than it was to my desk.
+I waited&mdash;through a silence, broken only by Beulah&rsquo;s weeping, that seemed
+hour-long. Then in Bob&rsquo;s voice came one low sob of joy:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Beulah, Beulah, my Beulah!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I realised that he had risen. I rose too, thinking that now I could close
+the door. But again I saw a picture that transfixed me. Bob had taken
+Beulah by both shoulders and he held her off and looked into her eyes long
+and beseechingly. Never before nor since have I seen upon human face that
+glorious joy which the old masters sought to get into the faces of their
+worshippers who, kneeling before Christ, tried to send to Him, through
+their eyes, their soul&rsquo;s gratitude and love. I stood as one enthralled.
+Slowly and as reverently as the living lover touches the brow of his dead
+wife, Bob bent his head and kissed her forehead. Again and again he drew
+her to him and implanted upon her brow and eyes and lips his kisses. I
+could not stand the scene any longer. I started to the corridor-door, and
+then, as though for the first time either had known I was within hearing,
+they turned and stared at me. At last Bob gave a long deep sigh, then one
+of those reluctant laughs of happiness yet wet with sobs.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Jim, dear old Jim, where did you come from? Like all
+eavesdroppers, you have heard no good of yourself. Own up, Jim, you did
+not hear a word good or bad about yourself, for it is just coming back to
+me that we have been selfish, that we have left you entirely out of our
+business conference.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We all laughed, and Beulah Sands, with her face a bloom of burning
+blushes, said: &ldquo;Mr. Randolph, we have not settled what it is best to do
+about father&rsquo;s affairs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>After a little we did begin to talk business, and finally agreed that
+Beulah should write her father, wording her letter as carefully as
+possible, to avoid all direct statements, but showing him that she had
+made but little headway on the work she had come North to accomplish. Bob
+was a changed being now; so, too, was Beulah Sands. Both discussed their
+hopes and fears with a frankness in strange contrast to their former
+manner. But there was one point on which Bob showed he was holding back. I
+finally put it to him bluntly: &ldquo;Bob, are you working out anything that
+looks like real relief for Miss Sands and her father?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how to answer you, Jim. I can only say I have some ideas,
+radical ones perhaps, but&mdash;well, I am thinking along certain lines.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I saw he was not yet willing to take us into his confidence. We parted,
+Bob going along in the cab with Miss Sands.</p>
+
+<p>Two days afterward she sent for us both as soon as we got to the office.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have this telegram from father&mdash;it makes me uneasy: &lsquo;Mailed to-day
+important letter. Answer as soon as you receive.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The following afternoon the letter came. It showed Judge Sands in a very
+nervous, uneasy state. He said he had been living a life of daily terror,
+as some of his friends, for whose estates he was trustee, had been
+receiving anonymous letters, advising them to look into the judge&rsquo;s trust
+affairs; that the Reinhart crowd had been using renewed pressure to make
+him let go all his Seaboard stock, which they wanted to secure at the low
+prices to which they had depressed it, in order that they might reorganise
+and carry out the scheme they had been so long planning. Judge Sands went
+on to say that the day he was compelled to sell his Seaboard stock he
+would have to make public an announcement of his condition, as there
+could be no sale without the court&rsquo;s consent. His closing was:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>   &ldquo;My dear daughter, no one knows better than I the almost hopelessness
+   of expecting any relief from your operations. But so hopeless have I
+   become of late, so much am I reliant upon you, my dear child, and
+   eternal hope so springs in all of us when confronted with great
+   necessities, that I have hoped and still hope that you are to be the
+   saviour of your family; that you, only a frail child, are through God&rsquo;s
+   marvellous workings to be the one to save the honour of that name we
+   both love more than life; the one to keep the wolf of poverty from that
+   door through which so far has come nothing but the sunshine of
+   prosperity and happiness; the one, my dear Beulah, who is to save your
+   old father from a dishonoured grave. Dear child, forgive me for placing
+   upon your weak shoulders the additional burden of knowing I am now
+   helpless and compelled to rely absolutely upon you. After you have read
+   my letter, if there is no hope, I command you to tell me so at once,
+   for although I am now financially and almost mentally helpless, I am
+   still a Sands, and there has never yet been one of the name who shirked
+   his duty, however stern and painful it might be.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>When I handed the letter back to Miss Sands, she said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Randolph, let me tell you and Mr. Brownley a little about my father
+and our home, that you may see our situation as it is. My father is one of
+the noblest men that ever lived. I am not the only one who says that&mdash;if
+you were to ask the people of our State to name the one man who had done
+most for the State as a State, most for her progressive betterment, most
+for her people high and low, white and black, they would answer, &lsquo;Judge
+Lee Sands.&rsquo; He has been, and is, the idol of our people. After he was
+graduated from Harvard, he entered the law office of my grandfather,
+Senator Robert Lee Sands. Before he was thirty he was in Congress and was
+even then reputed the greatest orator of our State, where orators are so
+plentiful. He married my mother, his second cousin, Julia Lee, of
+Richmond, at twenty-five, and from then until the attack of that ruthless
+money-shark, led a life such as a true man would map out for himself if
+his Maker granted him the privilege. You would have to visit at our home
+to appreciate my father&rsquo;s character and to understand how terrible this
+sorrow is to him. Every morning of his life he spends an hour after
+breakfast with my dear mother, who is a cripple from hip disease. He takes
+her in his arms and brings her down from her room to the library as if she
+were a child. He then reads to her&mdash;and he knows good books as well as he
+knows his friends. After he takes mother back to her room, he gives an
+hour to our people, the blacks of the plantation and his white tenants
+throughout the county. He is a father to them all. He settles all their
+troubles, big and little. Then for hours he and I go over his business
+affairs. Every afternoon from four to five he devotes to his estates and
+the men and women for whom he acts as trustee. He has often said to me:
+&lsquo;We have a clear million of money and property, and that is all any man
+should have in America. It is all he is entitled to under our form of
+government. Any more than that an honest man should in one way or another
+return to the people from whom he has taken it. I never want my family to
+have more than a million dollars.&rsquo; When he went into the Seaboard affair,
+he explained to me that it was to assist the Wilsons&mdash;they were old
+friends, and he has acted as their solicitor for years&mdash;in building up the
+South. He discussed with me the right and advisability of putting in the
+trust funds. He said he considered it his duty to employ them as he did
+his own in enterprises that would aid the whole people of the South,
+instead of sending them to the North to be used in Wall Street as belting
+for the &lsquo;System&rsquo; grinder. These fortunes were made in the South by men who
+loved their section of the country more than they did wealth, and why
+should they not be employed to benefit that part of the country which
+their makers and owners loved? I remember vividly how perplexed he was
+when, at the beginning, the Wilsons would show him that the investments
+were returning unusually large profits.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;It is not right, Beulah,&rsquo; he said to me one morning after receiving a
+letter from Baltimore to the effect that Seaboard stock and bonds had
+advanced until his investment showed over fifty per cent, profit, &lsquo;it is
+not right for us to make this money. No man in America should make over
+legal rates of interest and a fair profit on an investment, that is, an
+investment of capital pure and simple, particularly in a transportation
+company, where every dollar of profit comes from the people who patronise
+the lines. I have worked it out on every side, and it is not right; it
+would not be legal if the people, who make the laws for their own
+betterment, understood their affairs as they should.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He was always writing to the Wilsons to conduct the affairs of the
+Seaboard so that there would be remaining each year only profits enough
+to keep the road up and the wharves in good condition and to pay the
+annual interest and a fair dividend. And when the Wilsons came to our
+house to lay before him the offer of Reinhart and his fellow plunderers to
+pay enormous profits for the control of the Seaboard, he was indignant and
+argued with them that the offer was an insult to honest men. It was he who
+advised the trusteeship control of the Seaboard stock to prevent Reinhart
+from securing control. I sat in the library when he talked to the elder
+Wilson and the directors.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He appealed directly to John Wilson to make an effort to stop the growing
+tendency to use the people as pawns to enslave themselves and their
+children. He said some man of undoubted probity, standing, and wealth,
+someone whom the people trusted, must start the fight against these New
+York fiends, whose only thought is to roll up wealth. And he told John
+Wilson he was the man, since he had great wealth, honestly got by his
+father and grandfather; no one would accuse him of being a hypocrite,
+seeking notoriety, and his standing in the financial world was so old and
+solid that it would have to listen to him. I remember-how emphatically
+father said: &lsquo;I tell you, John, <i>even the discussion</i> of such a
+proposition as that scoundrel Reinhart makes is degrading to an American&rsquo;s
+honour.&rsquo; He said it didn&rsquo;t make the least difference if Reinhart counted
+his millions by the score, and was director in thirty or forty great
+institutions, and gave a fortune every year for charity and to the
+church&mdash;that he was a blackleg just the same. And so is any man, he said,
+who dares to say he will take the stock of a transportation company, which
+represents a certain amount of money invested, and double or multiply it
+by five and ten, simply because he can compel the people to pay exorbitant
+fares and freight-rates and so get profits on this fraudulently increased
+capital.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was the decision arrived at by father and the Wilsons at this meeting,
+a decision to refuse in any circumstances to allow our Southern people to
+be bled by the Wall Street &lsquo;System,&rsquo; that started Reinhart and his
+dollar-fiends on the war-path. You can see from what I tell you of my
+father the terrible condition he is in now. At night, when I get to
+thinking of him, hoping against hope, with no one to help him, no one with
+whom he can talk over his affairs, when I think of his nobleness in
+devoting his time to mother and by sheer will-power concealing from her
+his awful suffering, it nearly drives me mad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Miss Sands, why will you not let me lend you the money necessary to tide
+your father over for a while?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are so good, Mr. Randolph, but you don&rsquo;t quite understand my father
+in spite of what I have said. He would not relieve his suffering at the
+expense of another, not if it were a hundred times more acute. You cannot
+understand the old-fashioned, deep-rooted pride of the Sands.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But can you not, at least temporarily, disguise from him just how you
+have arranged the relief?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Her big blue eyes stared at me in bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Randolph, I could not deceive father. I could not tell him a lie even
+to save his life. It would be impossible. My father abhors a lie. He
+believes a man or woman who would lie the lowest of the low things on
+earth. When I go back to my father he will say, &lsquo;Tell me what you have
+done.&rsquo; I can just see him now, standing between the big white pillars at
+the end of the driveway. I can hear him say calmly, &lsquo;Beulah, my daughter,
+welcome. Your mother is waiting for you in her room. Do not lose a moment
+getting to her.&rsquo; Afterward he&rsquo;ll take me over the plantation to show me
+all the familiar things, and not one word will he allow me to say about
+our affairs until dinner is over, until the neighbours have left, for no
+Sands returns from long absence without a fitting home welcome. When I
+have said good night to mother and sister and he has drawn up my rocker in
+front of his big chair in the library alcove and I&rsquo;ve lighted his cigar
+for him, he will look me in the eye and say, &lsquo;Daughter, tell me all you
+have done.&rsquo; I would no more think of holding anything back than I would of
+stabbing him to the heart. No, Mr. Randolph, there is no possibility of
+relief except in fairly using that $30,000, and fairly winning back what
+Wall Street has stolen from father. Even that will cause both of us many
+twinges of conscience, and anything more is impossible. If this cannot be
+done, father must, all of us must, pay the penalty of Reinhart&rsquo;s ruthless
+act.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob had listened, but made no comment until she was through; then he said,
+&ldquo;It looks to me as though the market is shaping up so that we may be able
+to do something soon.&rdquo; It was evident to both of us that he had some plan
+in mind.</p>
+
+<p>Later we learned that that night Beulah wrote her father a long letter,
+telling him what she had done; that she had made almost two millions
+profit from her operations, that they had been lost, and that the outlook
+was not reassuring. She begged him to prepare himself for the final
+calamity; promising that if there were no change for the better by
+December 1st, she would come home to be with him when the blow fell. She
+begged him to prepare to meet it like a Sands, and assured him that if
+worse came to worst she would earn enough to keep poverty away. Judge
+Sands would receive this letter the second day following, Friday, the 13th
+day of November. My God! how well I know the date. It is seared into my
+brain as though with a white-hot iron.</p>
+
+<p>After our talk with Beulah Sands I begged Bob to dine with me and go over
+matters at length to see if we could not find a way out to relief.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, Jim, I have work to do to-night, worn that won&rsquo;t wait. That Tariff
+Bill was buttoned up to-day, and it has just been announced that the
+Sugar directors have declared a big extra stock dividend. Things have come
+out just about as I told you they would, and the stock is climbing to-day.
+They say it will touch 200 to-morrow and &lsquo;the Street&rsquo; is predicting 250
+for it in ten days. Barry Conant has been a steady buyer all day and the
+news bureaus announced that Camemeyer and the &lsquo;Standard Oil&rsquo; are twenty
+millions winners. They say the Washington gamblers, the Congressmen,
+Senators, and Cabinet members with their heelers and lobbyists have made a
+killing. About every one seems to have fattened up, Jim, but you and me
+and Beulah Sands and the public. The public gets the axe both ways as
+usual. They have been shaken out of their stock, and they will be
+compelled to pay millions more each year for their sugar than they would
+if this law had not been made for their benefit. Jim, there is no
+disguising the fact that the American people are as helpless in the hands
+of these thugs of the &lsquo;System&rsquo; as though they lived in the realm of the
+Sultan, where a few cutthroat brigands are licensed to rob and oppress to
+their heart&rsquo;s content. Jim Randolph, you know this game of finance. You
+know how it is worked and the men who work it. Tell me if there is any
+consideration due Wall Street and its heart-and-soul butchers at the hands
+of honest men.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what you mean, Bob. What are you driving at?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never mind what I am driving at. I ask you whether, if an honest man knew
+how to beat Wall Street at its own game, he should hesitate to beat
+it&mdash;hesitate because of anything connected with conscience or morals? You
+saw what Barry Conant was able to do to us that day simply by standing on
+the floor of the Stock Exchange and outstaying me in opening and closing
+his mouth. You saw he was able to sell Sugar to a point so low that I was
+obliged to let go of our 150,000 shares at eight to ten million dollars
+less than we could have got for them if we could have held them until
+to-day. Because of this trick his clients, the &lsquo;System,&rsquo; instead of us,
+make five to seven millions.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t follow you, Bob. I know that Barry Conant was able to do this
+because he had more money behind him than you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You think so, do you, Jim? That is the way it looks to you, but I tell
+you money had nothing to do with it. Nothing had to do with it but the
+fiendish system of fraud and trickery upon which the whole stock-gambling
+structure is reared. Nothing entered into the whole business but the
+trickery of stock-gambling as conducted to-day. It was only a question,
+Jim, of a man&rsquo;s opening and closing his mouth and spitting out words. From
+the minute Barry Conant came into that crowd until he left and we were
+ruined, he showed no money, no anything that I did not show. From the very
+nature of the business he could not. He simply said &lsquo;Sold&rsquo; oftener and
+longer than I said &lsquo;Buy.&rsquo; He may have had money back of him, or he may
+only have had nerve. God Almighty is the only one who can tell, for when
+Conant was through he was able to buy back at 90 the 50,000 shares he sold
+me at 175, the 50,000 that broke my back. Jim, if I had known as much that
+day as I do now I would have stood in that crowd and bought all the stock
+he sold at 180 and I would have stood there buying until hell froze over
+or he quit; then I would have made him rebuy it at 280 or 2,080, and I
+would have broken him and all his Camemeyer and &lsquo;Standard Oil&rsquo; backers;
+broken them to their last crime-covered dollar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bob, what are you talking about? It is all Chinese to me. I cannot get
+head or tail of what you are driving at.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know you can&rsquo;t, Jim, neither could Wall Street if it were listening to
+me. But you will, and Wall Street will too, before many days go by. Now I
+must be off. I have work to do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He put on his hat and left me trying to puzzle out just what he meant.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the Sugar bulls had the centre of the Stock Exchange stage. All
+day long they tossed Sugar from one to another as though each thousand
+shares had been a wisp of hay instead of $200,000&mdash;for soon after the
+opening it soared to 200. The &ldquo;System&rsquo;s&rdquo; cohorts were in absolute control,
+with Barry Conant never a minute away from the Sugar-pole, always on the
+alert to steer the course of prices when they threatened to run away on
+the up or the down side. It was evident to the expert readers of the tape
+that the &ldquo;System&rdquo; was currying its steed for an exceptionally brilliant
+run. Ike Bloomstein, the Average Fiend, who for forty years had kept close
+track of every movement on the floor, and who would bet anything, from his
+Fifth Avenue mansion to his overripe boardroom straw hat, that all stocks
+and movements were as strictly subject to the law of averages as are the
+tides to the moon and sun, remarked to Joe Barnes, the loan expert:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Cam&rsquo; unt de Keroseners are pudding up egstra dop rails to dot wool-pen
+deh haf ben pilding since deh took Pop Prownlee and deh Rantolphs into
+gamp. Unless my topesheet goes pack on me, for deh first dime in forty
+years dere vill pe a record clip pefore a veek from to-tay.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am with you there, Ike,&rdquo; answered Joe. &ldquo;If Barry Conant&rsquo;s knife-edged
+teeth ever spelt a killin&rsquo;, they do to-day. I just got orders from
+somewhere to drop call money from four to two and a half per cent., and
+they have given me ten millions to drop it with and the order is to favour
+Sugar as &lsquo;collat.&rsquo; Some one is anxious to make it easy for the bleaters to
+get the coin to buy all the Sugar they want. Ike, you and I might make
+turkey money for Thanksgiving if we only knew whether Barry and his bunch
+were going to shoot her up thirty or forty points before they turned the
+bag upside down, or whether they will bury them from 200 to 150. What do
+you think?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I gant make out, aldo I haf vatched dem sharp all day. Dey certainly haf
+deh lambs lined up right now for any vey dey vont to twist id. I nefer see
+a petter market for a deluge. From Barry&rsquo;s movements all day I should say
+dey vould keep hoistin&rsquo; her until apout noon to-morrow, unt dat deh might
+get her up to two-tirty or even to deh two-fifty. Put dere are von or two
+topes on deh sheet vhat run deh uder vay. First der is dey fact you gant
+run out, dat dere is alreaty on deh Sugar vagon deh piggest load of chuicy
+suckers dat efer game in from deh suppurbs. Sharley Pates says if any von
+hat tapped his Vashington vire er any utter Capitol vire dis veek he vould
+haf tought dere vas a Senate, House, unt Kabinet roll-gall on. Deh topes
+say &lsquo;Cam&rsquo; vill nefer led dat fat punch off grafters slite out mit real
+money if he gan help id unt deh game iss endirely in his hands.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I agree with you, Ike. If I had the steering of this killing I don&rsquo;t
+think I would take any chance of tempting them to dump and grab the
+profits by carrying it much over 200. But you can&rsquo;t tell what &lsquo;Cam&rsquo; and
+those four-eyed dentists at 26 Broadway will do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, put der iss anudder t&rsquo;ing, Cho, dat makes me sit up unt plink about
+her goin&rsquo; ofer two hundred. To-morrow&rsquo;s Friday der t&rsquo;irteenth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, Ike, that is something to be reckoned with, and every man on
+the floor and in the Street as well has his eye on it. Friday, the 13th,
+would break the best bull market ever under way. You and I know that, Ike,
+and the dope shows it too, but you have got to stack this up against it on
+this trip: no man on the floor knows what Friday the 13th, means better
+than Barry Conant. He has worked it to the queen&rsquo;s taste many a time. Why,
+Barry would not eat to-day for fear the food would get stuck in his
+windpipe. He&rsquo;s never left the pole for a minute; but suppose, Ike, Barry
+has tipped off &lsquo;Cam&rsquo; that all the boys will let go their fliers, and most
+of them will take one on the short side over to-night for a superstition
+drop at the opening; and suppose &lsquo;Cam&rsquo; has told him to take them all into
+camp and give her a rafter-scraper at the opening, where would old Friday,
+13th, land on to-morrow&rsquo;s dope-sheets? Bring up the average, wouldn&rsquo;t it,
+for five years to come? I tell you, Ike, she&rsquo;s too deep for me this run,
+and I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to let her alone and pay for the turkey out of loan
+commissions or stick to plain workday food.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Zame here, Cho. Say, Cho, haf you noticed Pop Prownlee to-tay? He has
+frozen to deh fringe off dat Sugar crowd ess t&rsquo;ough some von hat nipped
+&lsquo;is scarf-pin unt he vos layin&rsquo; for him ass he game out. He hasn&rsquo;t made a
+trade to-tay unt yet he sticks like a stamp-tax. I ben keeping my eyes on
+him for I t&rsquo;ought he hat someding up his sleeve dat might raise tust ven
+he tropt id. I dink Parry has hat deh same itear. He never loses sight of
+him, yet Pop hasn&rsquo;t made a trade to-tay, unt here id iss twenty minutes of
+der glose unt dere iss Parry in deh centre again whooping her up ofer two
+hundred unt four.&rdquo;</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="ch05"></a>Chapter V.</h2>
+
+<p>Thursday, November 12th, was a memorable day in Wall Street. As the gong
+pealed its the-game&rsquo;s-closed-till-another-day, the myriad of tortured
+souls that are supposed to haunt the treacherous bogs and quicksands of
+the great Exchange, where lie their earthly hopes, must have prayed with
+renewed earnestness for its destruction before the morrow. Never had the
+Stock Exchange folded its tents with surer confidence of continuing its
+victorious march. Sugar advanced with record-breaking total sales to
+207&frac12; and in the final half-hour carried the whole list of stocks up
+with it. In that time some of the railroads jumped ten points. Sugar
+closed at the very top amid great excitement, with Barry Conant taking all
+offered. During the last thirty minutes it had become evident to all that
+the boardroom traders and plungers, together with many of the
+semi-professional gamblers, who operated through commission houses, were
+selling out their long stock and going short over the opening of the Wall
+Street hoodoo-day, Friday, the thirteenth of the month. But it was also
+evident, with the heavy selling at the close and the stiffness of the
+price, which had never wavered as block after block was thrown on the
+market, that some powerful interest as well had taken cognisance of the
+fact that the morrow was hoodoo-day. At the close, most of the sellers,
+had they been granted another five minutes, would have repurchased, even
+at a loss, what they had sold, for it looked as though they had sold
+themselves into a trap. Their anxiety was intensified by the publication,
+a few minutes later, of this item:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>   &ldquo;Barry Conant in coming from the Sugar crowd after the close remarked
+   to a fellow broker, &lsquo;By three o&rsquo;clock to-morrow, Friday, the 13th, will
+   have a new meaning to Wall Street.&rsquo; This was interpreted as pointing to
+   a terrific jump in Sugar to-morrow.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Street&rdquo; knew that the news bureau that sent out this item was
+friendly to Barry Conant and the &ldquo;System,&rdquo; and that it would print nothing
+displeasing to them. Therefore, this must be, a foreword of the coming
+harvest of the bulls and the slaughter of the bears.</p>
+
+<p>Others than Ike Bloomstein remarked upon the fact that Bob Brownley had
+hung close to the Sugar-pole all day, but when the close had come and gone
+without his having anything to do with the Sugar skyrockets, he dropped
+out of his fellow-brokers&rsquo; minds. Wall Street has no use for any but the
+&ldquo;doer.&rdquo; The poet and the mooner would be no more secure from interruption
+in the centre of the Sahara than in Wall Street between ten and three
+o&rsquo;clock. Some sage has said that the human mind, like the well-bucket, can
+carry only its fill. The Wall Street mind always has its fill of budding
+dollars. In consequence, there is never room for those other interests
+that enter the normal mind.</p>
+
+<p>Friday, the 13th of November, drifted over Manhattan Island in a drear
+drizzle of marrow-chilling haze, which just missed being rain&mdash;one of
+those New York days that give a hesitating suicide renewed courage to cut
+the mortal coil. By ten o&rsquo;clock it had settled down on the Stock Exchange
+and its surrounding infernos with a clamminess that damped the spirits of
+the most rampant bulls. No class in the world is so susceptible to
+atmospheric conditions as stock-gamblers. Many a stout-hearted one has
+been known to postpone the inauguration of a long-planned coup merely
+because the air filled his blood with the dank chill of superstition.
+Because of the expected Sugar pyrotechnics, Stock Exchange members had
+gathered early; the brokers&rsquo; offices were crowded to overflowing before
+ten; the morning papers, not only in New York but in Boston, Philadelphia,
+and other centres, were filled with stories of the big rise that was to
+take place in Sugar. The knowing ones saw the ear-marks of the &ldquo;System&rsquo;s&rdquo;
+press-agent in these stories; and they knew that this industrious
+institution had not sat up the night before because of insomnia. All the
+signs pointed to a killing, and a terrific one&mdash;pointed so plainly that
+the bears and Sugar shorts found no hope in the atmosphere or the date.</p>
+
+<p>Bob had not been near the office the afternoon before, and as he had not
+come in by five minutes to ten I decided to go over to the Exchange and
+see if he were going to mix up in the baiting of the Sugar bears. I had no
+specific reasons for thinking he was interested except his recent queer
+actions, particularly his hanging to the Sugar-pole, yet doing nothing,
+the day before. But it is one of the best-established traditions of
+stock-gambledom that when an operator has been bitten by a rabid
+stock he is invariably attracted to it every time afterward that it
+shows signs of frothing. More than all, I had one of those strong
+nowhere-born-nowhere-cradled intuitions common to those living in the
+stock-gambling world, which made me feel the creepy shadow of coming
+events.</p>
+
+<p>As on that day a few weeks before, the crowd was at the Sugar-pole, but
+its alignment was different. There in the centre were Barry Conant and his
+trusted lieutenants, but no opposing rival. None of those hundreds of
+brokers showed that desperate resolve to do or die that is born of a
+necessity. They were there to buy or sell, but not to put up a life or
+death, on-me-depends-the-result fight. Those who were long of stock could
+easily be distinguished by their expressions of joy from the shorts, who
+had seen the handwriting on the wall and were filled with uncertainty,
+fear, terror. The demeanour of Barry Conant and his lieutenants expressed
+confidence: they were going to do what they were there to do. They showed
+by their tight-buttoned coats, and squared shoulders that they expected
+lots of rush, push, and haul work, but apparently they anticipated no
+last-ditch fighting. The gong pealed and the crowd of brokers sprang at
+one another, but only for blood, not flesh, bone, heart, and soul; just
+blood. The first price on Sugar was 211 for 3,000 shares. Someone sold it
+in a block. Barry Conant bought it. It did not require three eyes to see
+that the seller was one of his lieutenants. This meant what is known as a
+&ldquo;wash&rdquo; sale, a fictitious one arranged in advance between two brokers to
+establish the basis for the trades that are to follow&mdash;one of those minor
+frauds of stock-gambling by which the public is deceived and the traders
+and plungers are handicapped with loaded dice. In principle, it is a
+device older than stock exchanges themselves, and is put to use elsewhere
+than on the floor. For instance, four genuine buyers want a particular
+animal worth $200 at a horse auction. Its owner&rsquo;s pal starts the bidding
+at $400, and the four, not being up in horse values, are thereby induced
+to reach for it at between $400 to $500. But human nature, whether at
+horse sales or at stock-gambling, loves to be &ldquo;hinky-dinked&rdquo; as much as
+the moth loves to play tag with the candle flame. In five minutes Sugar
+was selling at 221, and the frantic shorts were grabbing for it as though
+there never was to be another share put on sale, while Barry Conant and
+his lieutenants were most industriously pushing it just beyond their
+reaching finger-tips, either by buying it as fast as it was offered by
+genuine sellers or by taking what their own pals threw in the air.</p>
+
+<p>I was not surprised to see Bob&rsquo;s tall form wedged in the crowd about
+two-thirds of the way from the centre. Every other active floor member was
+there too. Even Ike Bloomstein and Joe Barnes, who seldom went into the
+big crowds, were on hand, perhaps to catch a flier for their Thanksgiving
+turkey money, perhaps to get as near the killing as possible. Bob was not
+trading, although, as on the day before, he never took his eye off Barry
+Conant. I said to myself, &ldquo;He is trying to fathom Barry Conant&rsquo;s
+movements,&rdquo; but for what purpose puzzled me. The hands of the big clock on
+the wall showed that trading had been thirty minutes under way and still
+Barry Conant was pushing up the price. His voice had just rung out &ldquo;25 for
+any part of 5,000&rdquo; when, like an echo, sounded through the hall, &ldquo;Sold.&rdquo;
+It was Bob. He had worked his way to the centre of the crowd and stood in
+front of Barry Conant. He was not the Bob who had taken Barry Conant&rsquo;s
+gaff that afternoon a few weeks before. I never saw him cooler, calmer,
+more self-possessed. He was the incarnation of confident power. A cold,
+cynical smile played around the corners of his mouth as he looked down
+upon his opponent.</p>
+
+<p>The effect upon Barry Conant was different from that of Bob&rsquo;s last bid on
+the day when Beulah Sands&rsquo;s hopes went skyward in dust. It did not rouse
+him to the wild, furious desire for the onslaught that he showed then, but
+seemed to quicken his alert, prolific mind to exercise all its cunning. I
+think that in that one moment Barry Conant recalled his suspicions of the
+day before, when he had wondered what Bob&rsquo;s presence in the crowd meant,
+and that he saw again the picture of Bob on the day when he himself had
+ditched Bob&rsquo;s treasure-train. He hesitated for just the fraction of a
+second, while he waved with lightning-like rapidity a set of finger
+signals to his lieutenants. Then he squared himself for the encounter. &ldquo;25
+for 5,000,&rdquo; Cold, cold as the voice of a condemning judge rang Bob&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Sold.&rdquo; &ldquo;25 for 5,000.&rdquo; &ldquo;Sold.&rdquo; &ldquo;25 for 5,000.&rdquo; &ldquo;Sold.&rdquo; Their eyes were
+fixed upon each other, in Barry&rsquo;s a defiant glare, in Bob&rsquo;s mingled pity
+and contempt. The rest of the brokers hushed their own bids and offers
+until it could have truthfully been said that the floor of the Stock
+Exchange was quiet, an almost unheard-of thing in like circumstances.
+Again Barry Conant&rsquo;s voice, &ldquo;25 for 5,000.&rdquo; &ldquo;Sold.&rdquo; &ldquo;25 for 5,000.&rdquo;
+&ldquo;Sold.&rdquo; Barry Conant had met his master. Whether it was that for the first
+time in all his wonderful career he realised that the &ldquo;System&rdquo; was to meet
+its Nemesis, or what the cause, none could tell, perhaps not even Barry
+Conant himself, but some emotion caused his olive face for an instant to
+turn pale, and gave his voice a tell-tale quiver. Once more pealed forth
+&ldquo;25 for 5,000.&rdquo; That Bob saw the pallor, that he caught the quiver, was
+evident to all, for the instant his &ldquo;Sold&rdquo; rang out, he followed it with
+&ldquo;5,000 at 24, 23, 22, 20.&rdquo; Neither Barry Conant nor any of his lieutenants
+got in a &ldquo;Take it&rdquo;; although whether they wanted to or not was an open
+question until Bob allowed his voice to dwell just a pendulum swing of
+time on the 20. It was as if he were tantalising them into sticking by
+their guns. By the time he paused, Barry Conant&rsquo;s nerve was back, for his
+piercing &ldquo;Take it&rdquo; had linked to it &ldquo;20 for any part of 10,000.&rdquo; The bid
+was yet on his lips when Bob&rsquo;s deep voice rang out &ldquo;Sold.&rdquo; &ldquo;Any part of
+25,000 at 19, 18, 15, 10.&rdquo; Hell was now loose. Back and forth, up against
+the rail, around the room and back and around again, the crowd surged for
+fifteen of the wildest, craziest minutes in the history of the New York
+Stock Exchange, a history replete with records of wild and crazy scenes.</p>
+
+<p>At last from sheer exhaustion there came a ten minutes&rsquo; lull, which was
+used in comparing trades. At the beginning of the respite Sugar was
+selling at 155, for in that quarter-hour of madness it had broken from 210
+to 155, but when the ten minutes had elapsed, the stock had worked back to
+167. Barry Conant had again taken the centre of the crowd after hastily
+scanning the brief notes handed him by messenger-boys and giving orders to
+his lieutenants. He had evidently received reinforcements in the form of
+renewed orders from his principals. Many of the faces that fringed the
+inner circle of that crowd were frightful to look upon, some white as
+though just lifted from hospital pillows, others red to the verge of
+apoplexy&mdash;all strained as though awaiting the coming of the jury with a
+life or death verdict. They all knew that Bob had sold more than a hundred
+thousand shares of Sugar upon which the profits must be more than four
+million dollars. Would he resume selling or was he through? Was it short
+stock, which must be bought back, or long stock; and if long, whose stock?
+Were the insiders selling out on one another, or were they all selling
+together, and under cover of Barry Conant&rsquo;s movements were Camemeyer and
+&ldquo;Standard Oil&rdquo; emptying their bag preparatory to the slaughter of the
+Washington contingent? All these questions were rushing through the heads
+of that crowd of brokers like steam through a boiler, now hot, now cold,
+but always at high pressure, for upon the correctness of the answers
+depended the fortune of many who breathlessly awaited the renewal or the
+suspension of the contest. Even Barry Conant&rsquo;s usually impassive face wore
+a tinge of anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, Bob&rsquo;s was the only one in the centre of that throng that showed no
+sign of what was going on behind it. The same cynical smile that had been
+there since the opening still played around the corners of his mouth as he
+squared himself in front of his opponent. All knew now that he was not
+through. Barry Conant had evidently decided to force the fighting,
+although more cautiously than before. &ldquo;67 for a thousand.&rdquo; One of his
+lieutenants bid 67 for 500, another 67 for 300, and as Bob had not yet
+shown his intention of meeting their bids, 67 for different amounts was
+heard all over the crowd. Bob might have been tossing a mental coin to
+decide the advisability of buying back what he had sold; he might have
+been adding up the bids as they were made. He said nothing for a fraction
+of a minute, which to those tortured men must have seemed like an age.
+Then with a wave of his hand, as though delivering a benediction, he swept
+the circle with a cold-blooded, &ldquo;Sold the lots. 5,600 in all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sixty-seven for a thousand&rdquo;&mdash;again Barry Conant&rsquo;s bid. &ldquo;Sold.&rdquo; &ldquo;67 for
+5,000.&rdquo; &ldquo;Sold.&rdquo; &ldquo;66 for a thousand.&rdquo; &ldquo;Sold.&rdquo; The drop from five thousand
+to one thousand and a dollar a share in Barry Conant&rsquo;s bids was the
+mortally wounded but still game general&rsquo;s &ldquo;Sound the retreat.&rdquo; Bob heard
+it. &ldquo;Any part of 10,000 at 65, 64, 62, 60.&rdquo; The din was now as fierce as
+before. The entire crowd, all but Barry Conant and his lieutenants, seemed
+to have concluded that Bob&rsquo;s renewal of attack meant that his was the
+winning side, and those who had been hanging on to their stock, hoping
+against hope, and those who were short and had been undecided whether to
+cover or to hold on and sell more for greater profits, vied with one
+another in a frantic effort to sell. All could now feel the coming panic.
+All could see that it was to be a bad one, as the least informed on the
+floor knew that there was a tremendous amount of Sugar stock in the hands
+of Washington novices at speculation and of others who had bought it at
+high prices. Sugar was now dropping two, three, five dollars a share
+between trades, and the panic was spreading to the other poles, as is
+always the case, for when there are sudden large losses in one stock, the
+losers must throw over the other stocks they hold to meet this loss, and
+thus the whole structure tumbles like a house of cards. Sugar had just
+crossed 110 when the loud bang of the president&rsquo;s gavel resounded through
+the room. Instantly there was a silence as of death. All knew the meaning
+of the sound, the most ominous ever heard in a stock exchange, calling for
+the temporary suspension of business while the president announces the
+failure of some member or house.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>    Perkins, Blanchard &amp; Company</p>
+
+<p>    Announce that They Cannot Meet Their Obligations</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This statement that one of the oldest houses had been swamped in the crash
+Bob had started caused further frantic selling, and, as though every
+member had employed the lull to refill his lungs, a howl arose that pealed
+and wailed to the dome.</p>
+
+<p>I watched Bob closely; in fact, it was impossible for me to take my eyes
+off him; he seemed absolutely unmindful of the agonised shrieks about him,
+for the frenzied brokers were no longer crying their bids or offers, but
+screaming them. He still continued relentlessly to hammer Sugar, offering
+it in thousand and tens of thousand lots.</p>
+
+<p>Again and again the gavel fell, and again and again an announcement of
+failure was followed by blood-curdling howls. When Sugar struck 80&mdash;not
+180, but plain 80&mdash;it seemed that the last day of stock speculation was
+at hand. Announcements were being made every few minutes of the failure of
+this bank, the closing of the doors of that trust company. Where would it
+end? What power could stop this Niagara of molten dollars? Suddenly above
+the tumult rose Bob Brownley&rsquo;s voice. He must have been standing on his
+tiptoes. His hands were raised aloft. He seemed to tower a head above the
+mob. His voice was still clear and unimpaired by the terrible strain of
+the past two hours. To that mob it must have sounded like the trumpet of
+the delivering angel. &ldquo;80 for any part of 25,000 Sugar.&rdquo; Instantly Sugar
+was hurled at him from all sides of the crowd. He was the only buyer of
+moment who had appeared since Sugar broke 125. Barry Conant and his
+lieutenants had disappeared like snowflakes at the opening of the door of
+the firebox of a locomotive speeding through the storm. In a few seconds
+Bob had been sold all the 25,000 he had bid for. Again his voice rang out:
+&ldquo;80 for 25,000.&rdquo; The sellers momentarily halted. He got only a few
+thousands of his twenty-five. &ldquo;85 for 25,000.&rdquo; A few thousands more. &ldquo;90
+for 25,000.&rdquo; Still fewer thousands. His bidding was beginning to tell on
+the mob. A cry ran through the room into the crowds around the other
+poles&mdash;&ldquo;Brownley has turned!&rdquo;&mdash;and taking renewed courage at the report,
+the bulls rallied their forces and began to bid for the different stocks,
+which a moment before it had seemed that no one wanted at any price.</p>
+
+<p>In a chip of a minute the whole scene changed; there was almost as wild a
+panic on the up side as there had been on the down. Bob Brownley continued
+buying Sugar until he had pushed it above 150. He then went about tallying
+up his trades. At the end of ten minutes&rsquo; calculation he returned to the
+centre and bought 11,000 shares more; coming out, his eye caught mine.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim, have you been here long?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;An eternity. I was here at the opening and I pray God never to put me
+through another two hours like the past two. It seems a hideous dream, a
+nightmare. Bob, in the name of God what have you been doing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He gave me a wild, awful look of exultation. Sublime triumph shone in
+those blazing brown orbs, triumph such as I had never seen in the eyes of
+man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim Randolph, I have been giving Wall Street and its hell &lsquo;System&rsquo; a
+dose of its own poison, a good full-measure dose. They planned by
+harvesting a fresh crop of human hearts and souls on the bull side to give
+Friday the 13th a new meaning. Tradition says Friday the 13th is bear
+Saints&rsquo; day. I believe in maintaining old traditions, so I harvested their
+hearts instead. I will tell you about it some time, Jim, but now I must
+see Beulah Sands. Jim Randolph, I&rsquo;ve saved her and her father. I&rsquo;ve made
+them a round three millions and a strong seven millions for myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He almost yelled it as he rushed away and left me dazed, stupefied. A
+moment, and I came to. Something urged me to follow him.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="ch06"></a>Chapter VI.</h2>
+
+<p>As I passed through my office a few minutes later I heard Bob&rsquo;s voice in
+Beulah Sands&rsquo;s office. It was raised in passionate eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, Beulah, I have done it single-handed. I have crucified Camemeyer,
+&lsquo;Standard Oil,&rsquo; and the &lsquo;System&rsquo; that spiked me to the cross a few weeks
+ago. You have three millions, and I have seven. Now there is nothing more
+but for you to go home to your father, and then come back to me. Back to
+me, Beulah, back to me to be my wife!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped. There was no sound. I waited; then, frightened, I stepped to
+the door of Beulah Sands&rsquo;s office. Bob was standing just inside the
+threshold, where he had halted to give her the glad tidings. She had risen
+from her desk and was looking at him with an agonised stare. He seemed to
+be transfixed by her look, the wild ecstasy of the outburst of love yet
+mirrored in his eyes. She was just saying as I reached the door:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bob, in mercy&rsquo;s name tell me you got this money fairly, honourably.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob must have realised for the first time what he had done. He did not
+speak. He only stared into her eyes. She was now at his side.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bob, you are unnerved,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;you have been through a terrible
+ordeal. For an hour I have been reading in the bulletins of the banks and
+trust companies that have failed, of the banking-houses that have been
+ruined. I have been reading that you did it; that you have made
+millions&mdash;and I knew it was for me, for father, but in the midst of my
+joy, my gratitude, my love&mdash;for, oh, Bob, I love you,&rdquo; she interrupted
+herself passionately; &ldquo;it seems as though I love you beyond the capacity
+of a human heart to love. I think that for the right to be yours for one
+single moment of this life I would smilingly endure all the pains and
+miseries of eternal torture. Yes, Bob, for the right to have you call me
+yours for only while I heard the word, I would do anything, Bob, anything
+that was honourable.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She had drawn his head down close to her face, and her great blue eyes
+searched his as though they would go to his very soul. She was a child in
+her simple appeal for him to allow her to see his heart, to see that there
+was nothing black there.</p>
+
+<p>As she gazed, her beautiful hands played through his hair as do a mother&rsquo;s
+through that of the child she is soothing in sickness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bob, speak to me, speak to me,&rdquo; she begged, &ldquo;tell me there was no
+dishonour in the getting of those millions. Tell me no one was made to
+suffer as my father and I have suffered. Tell me that the suicides and the
+convicts, the daughters dragged to shame and the mothers driven to the
+madhouse as a result of this panic, cannot be charged to anything unfair
+or dishonourable that you have done. Bob, oh, Bob, answer! Answer no, or
+my heart will break; or if, Bob, you have made a mistake, if you have done
+that which in your great desire to aid me and my father seemed
+justifiable, but which you now see was wrong, tell it to me, Bob dear, and
+together we will try to undo it. We will try to find a way to atone. We
+will give the millions to the last, last penny to those upon whom you have
+brought misery. Father&rsquo;s loss will not matter. Together we will go to him
+and tell him what we have done, what we have lived through, tell him of
+our mistake, and in our agony he will forget his own. For such a horror
+has my father of anything dishonourable that he will embrace his misery as
+happiness when he knows that his teachings have enabled his daughter to
+undo this great wrong. And then, Bob, we will be married, and you and I
+and father and mother will be together, and be, oh, so happy, and we will
+begin all over again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Beulah, stop; in the name of God, in the name of your love for me, don&rsquo;t
+say another word. There is a limit to the capacity of a man to suffer,
+even if he be a great, strong brute like myself, and, Beulah, I have
+reached that limit. The day has been a hard one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His voice softened and became as a tired child&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I must go out into the hustle of the street, into the din and sound, and
+get down my nerves and get back my head. Then I shall be able to think
+clear and true, and I will come back to you, and together we will see if I
+have done anything that makes me unfit to touch the cheek and the hands
+and the lips of the best and most beautiful woman God ever put upon earth.
+Beulah, you know I would not deceive you to save my body from the fires
+of this world, and my soul from the torture of the damned, and I promise
+you that if I find that I have done wrong, what you call wrong, what your
+father would call wrong, I will do what you say to atone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He took her head between his hands, gently, reverently, and touching his
+lips to her glorious golden hair, he went away.</p>
+
+<p>Beulah Sands turned to me. &ldquo;Please, Mr. Randolph, go with him. He is
+soul-dazed. One can never tell what a heart sorely perplexed will prompt
+its owner to do. Often in the night when I have got myself into a fever
+from thinking of my father&rsquo;s situation, I have had awful temptations. The
+agents of the devil seek the wretched when none of those they love are by.
+I have often thought some of the blackest tragedies of the earth might
+have been averted if there had been a true friend to stand at the wrung
+one&rsquo;s elbow at the fatal minute of decision and point to the sun behind,
+just when the black ahead grew unendurable. Please follow Mr. Brownley
+that you may be ready, should his awakening to what he has done become
+unbearable. Tell him the dreaded morrows are never as terrible actually as
+they seem in anticipation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I overtook Bob just outside the office. I did not speak to him, for I
+realised that he was in no mood for company. I dropped in behind,
+determined that I would not lose sight of him. It was almost one o&rsquo;clock.
+Wall Street was at its meridian of frenzy, every one on a wild rush. The
+day&rsquo;s doing had packed the always-crowded money lane. The newsboys were
+shouting afternoon editions. &ldquo;Terrible panic in Wall Street. One man
+against millions. Robert Brownley broke &lsquo;the Street.&rsquo; Made twenty millions
+in an hour. Banks failed. Wreck and ruin everywhere. President Snow of
+Asterfield National a suicide.&rdquo; Bob gave no sign of hearing. He strode
+with a slow, measured gait, his head erect, his eyes staring ahead at
+space, a man thinking, thinking, thinking for his salvation. Many hurrying
+men looked at him, some with an expression of unutterable hatred, as
+though they wanted to attack him. Then again there were those who called
+him by name with a laugh of joy; and some turned to watch him in
+curiosity. It was easy to pick the wounded from those who shared in his
+victory, and from those who knew the frenzied finance buzz-saw only by its
+buzz. Bob saw none. Where could he be going? He came to the head of the
+street of coin and crime and crossed Broadway. His path was blocked by the
+fence surrounding old Trinity&rsquo;s churchyard. Grasping the pickets in either
+hand he stared at the crumbling headstones of those guardsmen of Mammon
+who once walked the earth and fought their heart battles, as he was
+walking and fighting, but who now knew no ten o&rsquo;clock, no three, who
+looked upon the stock-gamblers and dollar-trailers as they looked upon the
+worms that honeycombed their headstones&rsquo; bases. What thoughts went through
+Bob Brownley&rsquo;s mind only his Maker knew. For minutes he stood motionless,
+then he walked on down Broadway. He went into the Battery. The benches
+were crowded with that jetsam and flotsam of humanity that New York&rsquo;s
+mighty sewers throw in armies upon her inland beaches at every sunrise:
+Here a sodden brute sleeping off a prolonged debauch, there a lad whose
+frankness of face and homespun clothes and bewildered eyes spelt, &ldquo;from
+the farm and mother&rsquo;s watchful love.&rdquo; On another bench an Italian woman
+who had a half-dozen future dollar kings and social queens about her, and
+whose clothes told of the immigrant ship just into port. Bob Brownley
+apparently saw none. But suddenly he stopped. Upon a bench sat a
+sweet-faced mother holding a sleeping babe in her arms, while a
+curly-pated boy nestled his head in her lap and slept through the magic
+lanes and fairy woods of dreamland. The woman&rsquo;s face was one of those that
+blend the confidence of girlhood with the uncertainty of womanhood. &rsquo;Twas
+a pretty face, which had been plainly tagged by its Maker for a
+light-hearted trip through this world, but it had been seared by the iron
+of the city.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Brownley&mdash;&rdquo; She started to rise.</p>
+
+<p>He gently pushed her back with a &ldquo;hush,&rdquo; unwilling to rob the sleepers of
+their heaven.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are you doing here, Mrs.&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo; He halted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mrs. Chase. Mr. Brownley, when I went away from Randolph &amp; Randolph&rsquo;s
+office I married John Chase; you may remember him as delivery clerk. I had
+such a happy home and my husband was so good; I did not have to typewrite
+any longer. These are our two children.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The tears sprang to her eyes; she dropped them, but did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mind me, woman. I, too, have hidden hells I don&rsquo;t want the world to
+see. Don&rsquo;t mind me; tell me your story. It may do you good; it may do me
+good; yes, it may do me good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I had dropped into a seat a few feet away. Both were too much occupied
+with their own thoughts to notice me or any one else. I could not overhear
+their conversation, but long afterward, when I mentioned our old
+stenographer, Bessie Brown, to Bob, he told me of the incident at the
+Battery. Her husband, after their marriage, had become infected with the
+stock-gambling microbe, the microbe that gnaws into its victim&rsquo;s mind and
+heart day and night, while ever fiercer grows the &ldquo;get rich, get rich&rdquo;
+fever. He had plunged with their savings and had drawn a blank. He had
+lost his position in disgrace and had landed in the bucket-shop, the
+sub-cellar pit of the big Stock Exchange hell. From there a week before he
+had been sent to prison for theft, and that morning she had been turned
+into the street by her landlord. I saw Bob take from his pocket his
+memorandum-book, write something upon a leaf, tear it out and hand it to
+the woman, touch his hat, and before she could stop him, stride away. I
+saw her look at the paper, clap her hands to her forehead, look at the
+paper again and at the retreating form of Bob Brownley. Then I saw her,
+yes, there in the old Battery Park, in the drizzling rain and under the
+eyes of all, drop upon her knees in prayer. How long she prayed I do not
+know. I only know that as I followed Bob I looked back and the woman was
+still upon her knees. I thought at the time how queer and unnatural the
+whole thing seemed. Later, I learned to know that nothing is queer and
+unnatural in the world of human suffering; that great human suffering
+turns all that is queer and unnatural into commonplace. Next day Bessie
+Brown came to our office to see Bob. Not being able to get at him she
+asked for me.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Randolph, tell me, please, what shall I do with this paper?&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;I met Mr. Brownley in the Battery yesterday. He saw I was in
+distress and he gave me this, but I cannot believe he meant it,&rdquo; and she
+showed me an order on Randolph &amp; Randolph for a thousand dollars. I cashed
+her check and she went away.</p>
+
+<p>From the Battery Bob sought the wharves, the Bowery, Five Points, the
+hothouses of the under-worldlings of America. He seemed bent on picking
+out the haunts of misery in the misery-infested metropolis of the new
+world. For two hours he tramped and I followed. A number of times I
+thought to speak to him and try to win him from his mood, but I refrained.
+I could see there was a soul battle waging and I realised that upon its
+outcome might depend Bob&rsquo;s salvation. Some seek the quiet of the woods,
+the soothing rustle of the leaves, the peaceful ripple of the brook when
+battling for their soul, but Bob&rsquo;s woods appeared to be the shadowy places
+of misery, his rustling leaves the hoarse din of the multitude, and his
+brook&rsquo;s ripple the tears and tales of the man-damned of the great city,
+for he stopped and conversed with many human derelicts that he met on his
+course. The hand of the clock on Trinity&rsquo;s steeple pointed to four as we
+again approached the office of Randolph &amp; Randolph. Bob was now moving
+with a long, hurried stride, as though consumed with a fever of desire to
+get to Beulah Sands. For the last fifteen minutes I had with difficulty
+kept him in sight. Had he arrived at a decision, and if so, what was it? I
+asked myself over and over again as I plowed through the crowds.</p>
+
+<p>Bob went straight to Beulah Sands&rsquo;s office, I to mine. I had been there
+but a moment when I heard deep, guttural groans. I listened. The sound
+came louder than before. It came from Beulah Sands&rsquo;s office. With a bound
+I was at the open door. My God, the sight that met my gaze! It haunts me
+even now when years have dulled its vividness. The beautiful, quiet, gray
+figure that had grown to be such a familiar picture to Bob and me of late,
+sat at the flat desk in the centre of the room. She faced the door. Her
+elbows rested on the desk; in her hand was an afternoon paper that she had
+evidently been reading when Bob entered. God knows how long she had been
+reading it before he came. Bob was kneeling at the side of her chair, his
+hands clasped and uplifted in an agony of appeal that was supplemented by
+the awful groans. His face showed unspeakable terror and entreaty; the
+eyes were bursting from their sockets and were riveted on hers as those of
+a man in a dungeon might be fixed upon an approaching spectre of one whom
+he had murdered. His chest rose and fell, as though trying to burst some
+unseen bonds that were crushing out his life. With every breath would come
+the awful groan that had first brought me to him. Beulah Sands had half
+turned her face until her eyes gazed into Bob&rsquo;s with a sweet, childish
+perplexity. I looked at her, surprised that one whom I had always seen so
+intelligently masterful should be passive in the face of such anguish.
+<a name="frontisref" id="frontisref"></a>Then, horror of horrors! I saw that there was something missing from her
+great blue eyes. I looked; gasped. Could it possibly be? With a bound I
+was at her side. I gazed again into those eyes which that morning had been
+all that was intelligent, all that was godlike, all that was human. Their
+soul, their life was gone. Beulah Sands was a dead woman; not dead in
+body, but in soul; the magic spark had fled. She was but an empty shell&mdash;a
+woman of living flesh and blood; but the citadel of life was empty, the
+mind was gone. What had been a woman was but a child. I passed my hand
+across my now damp forehead. I closed my eyes and opened them again. Bob&rsquo;s
+figure, with clasped, uplifted hands, and bursting eyes, was still there.
+There still resounded through the room the awful guttural groans. Beulah
+Sands smiled, the smile of an infant in the cradle. She took one beautiful
+hand from the paper and passed it over Bob&rsquo;s bronzed cheek, just as the
+infant touches its mother&rsquo;s face with its chubby fingers. In my horror I
+almost expected to hear the purling of a babe. My eyes in their perplexity
+must have wandered from her face, for I suddenly became aware of a great
+black head-line spread across the top of the paper that she had been
+reading:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>   &ldquo;FRIDAY, THE 13TH.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>And beneath in one of the columns:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>   &ldquo;TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN VIRGINIA&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>   &ldquo;THE MOST PROMINENT CITIZEN OF THE STATE, EX-UNITED STATES SENATOR AND
+   EX-GOVERNOR, JUDGE LEE SANDS OF SANDS LANDING, WHILE TEMPORARILY INSANE
+   FROM THE LOSS OF HIS FORTUNE AND MILLIONS OF THE FUNDS FOR WHICH HE WAS
+   TRUSTEE, CUT THE THROAT OF HIS INVALID WIFE, HIS DAUGHTER&rsquo;S, AND THEN
+   HIS OWN. ALL THREE DIED INSTANTLY.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>In another column:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>   &ldquo;ROBERT BROWNLEY CREATES THE MOST DISASTROUS PANIC IN THE HISTORY OF
+   WALL STREET AND SPREADS WRECK AND RUIN THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>A hideous picture seared its every light and shade on my mind, through my
+heart, into all my soul. A frenzied-finance harvest scene with its gory
+crop; in the centre one living-dead, part of the picture, yet the ghost
+left to haunt the painters, one of whom was already cowering before the
+black and bloody canvas.</p>
+
+<p>Well did the word-artist who wrote over the door of the madhouse, &ldquo;Man can
+suffer only to the limit, then he shall know peace,&rdquo; understand the
+wondrous wisdom of his God. Beulah Sands had gone beyond her limit and was
+at peace.</p>
+
+<p>The awful groaning stopped and an ashen pallor spread over Bob Brownley&rsquo;s
+face. Before I could catch him he rolled backward upon the floor as dead.
+Bob Brownley, too, had gone beyond his limit. I bent over him and lifted
+his head, while the sweet woman-child knelt and covered his face with
+kisses, calling in a voice like that of a tiny girl speaking to her doll,
+&ldquo;Bob, my Bob, wake up, wake up; your Beulah wants you.&rdquo; As I placed my
+hand upon Bob&rsquo;s heart and felt its beats grow stronger, as I listened to
+Beulah Sands&rsquo;s childish voice, joyously confident, as it called upon the
+one thing left of her old world, some of my terror passed. In its place
+came a great mellowing sense of God&rsquo;s marvellous wisdom. I thought
+gratefully of my mother&rsquo;s always ready argument that the law of all laws,
+of God and nature, is that of compensation. I had allowed Bob&rsquo;s head to
+sink until it rested in Beulah&rsquo;s lap, and from his calm and steady
+breathing I could see that he had safely passed a crisis, that at least he
+was not in the clutches of death, as I had at first feared.</p>
+
+<p>Bob slept. Beulah Sands ceased her calling and with a smile raised her
+fingers to her lips and softly said, &ldquo;Hush, my Bob&rsquo;s asleep.&rdquo; Together we
+held vigil over our sleeping lover and friend, she with the happiness of a
+child who had no fear of the awakening, I with a silent terror of what
+should come next. I had seen one mind wafted to the unknown that day. Was
+it to have a companion to cheer and solace it on its far journey to the
+great beyond? How long we waited Bob&rsquo;s awakening I could not tell. The
+clock&rsquo;s hands said an hour; it seemed to me an age. At last his
+magnificent physique, his unpoisoned blood and splendid brain pulled him
+through to his new world of mind and heart torture. His eyelids lifted. He
+looked at me, then at Beulah Sands, with eyes so sad, so awful in their
+perplexed mournfulness, that I almost wished they had never opened, or had
+opened to let me see the childlike look that now shone from the girl&rsquo;s.
+His gaze finally rested on her and his lips murmured &ldquo;Beulah.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There, Bob, I thought you would know it was time to wake up.&rdquo; She bent
+over and kissed him on the eyes again and again with the loving ardour a
+child bestows upon its pets.</p>
+
+<p>He slowly rose to his feet. I could see from his eyes and the shudder that
+went over him as he caught sight of the paper on the desk that he was
+himself; that memory of the happenings of the day had not fled in his
+sleep. He rose to his full height, his head went up, and his shoulders
+back, but only from habit and for an instant. Then he folded Beulah Sands
+to his breast and dropped his head upon her shoulder. He sobbed like a
+father with the corpse of his child.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, Bob, my Bob, is this the way you treat your Beulah when she&rsquo;s let
+you sleep so your beautiful eyes would be pretty for the wedding? Is this
+the way to act before this kind man who has come to take us to the church?
+Naughty, naughty Bob.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I looked at her, at Bob, in horror. I was beginning to realise the
+absolute deadness of this woman. From the first look I had known that her
+mind had fled, but knowledge is not always realisation. She did not even
+know who I was. Her mind was dead to all but the man she loved, the man
+who through all those long days of her suffering she had silently
+worshiped. To all but him she was new-born.</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of &ldquo;wedding,&rdquo; &ldquo;church,&rdquo; Bob&rsquo;s head slowly rose from her
+shoulder. I saw his decision the instant I caught his eye; I realised the
+uselessness of opposing it, and, sick at heart and horrified, I listened
+as he said in a voice now calm and soothing as that of a father to his
+child, &ldquo;Yes, Beulah, my darling, I have slept too long. Bob has been
+naughty, but we will make up for lost time. Get your hat and cloak and
+we&rsquo;ll hurry to the church or we will be late.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With a laugh of joy she followed him to the closet where hung the little
+gray turban and the pretty gray jacket. He took them from their peg and
+gave them to her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not a word, Jim,&rdquo; he bade me. &ldquo;In the name of God and all our friendship,
+not a word. Beulah Sands will be my wife as soon as I can find a minister
+to marry us. It is best, best. It is right. It is as God would have it, or
+I am not capable of knowing right from wrong. Anyway, it is what will be.
+She has no father, no mother, no sister, no one to protect and shield her.
+The &lsquo;System&rsquo; has robbed her of all in life, even of herself, of
+everything, Jim, but me. I must try to win her back for herself, or to
+make her new world a happy one&mdash;a happy one for her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="ch07"></a>Chapter VII.</h2>
+
+<p>An old gambler, whose life had been spent listening to the rattle of the
+drop-in-bound-out little roulette ball, was told by a fellow victim, as
+his last dollar went to the relentless tiger&rsquo;s maw, that the keeper&rsquo;s foot
+was upon an electric button which enabled him to make the ball drop where
+his stake was not. He simply said, &ldquo;Thank God. I thought that prince of
+cheats, Fate, who all through life has had his foot on the button of my
+game, was the one who did the trick.&rdquo; Long suffering had driven the old
+gambler to the loser&rsquo;s bible, Philosophy! Cheated by man&rsquo;s device, he knew
+he had some chance of getting even; but Fate he could not combat.</p>
+
+<p>Bob Brownley had thought himself in hard luck when his eyes opened to the
+fact that he had been robbed by means of dice loaded by man, but when Fate
+pressed the button he saw that his man-made hell was but a feeble
+imitation, and&mdash;was satisfied, as whoever knows the game of life is
+satisfied, because&mdash;he must be. Bob&rsquo;s strong head bowed, his iron will
+bent, and meekly his soul murmured, &ldquo;Thy will be done.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That night he married Beulah Sands. The minister who united the grown-up
+man and the woman who was as a new-born babe saw nothing extraordinary in
+the match. He murmured to me, who acted as best man to the groom, maid of
+honour to the bride, and father and mother to both, &ldquo;We see strange
+sights, we ministers of the great city, Mr. Randolph. The sweet little
+lady appears to be a trifle scared.&rdquo; My explanation that she and Mr.
+Brownley were the only survivors of the awful tragedies of the day was
+sufficient. He was satisfied when he got no other response to his
+question, &ldquo;Do you take this man to be your wedded husband?&rdquo; than a sweet
+childish smile as she snuggled closer to Bob.</p>
+
+<p>Bob and his bride went South to his mother and sisters the next day. He
+left to me the settlement of his trades. He instructed me to set aside
+$3,000,000 profits for Beulah Sands-Brownley, and insisted that I pay from
+the balance the notes he had given me a few weeks before. There remained
+something over $5,000,000 for himself.</p>
+
+<p>The leading Wall Street paper, in its preachment on the panic, wound up
+with:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>   &ldquo;Wall Street has lived through many black Fridays. Some of them have
+   been thirteenth-of-the-month Fridays, but no Friday yet marked from the
+   calendar, no Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday yet
+   garnered to the storehouse of the past was ever more jubilantly
+   welcomed by his Satanic Majesty than yesterday. We pray heaven no
+   coming day may be ordained to go against yesterday&rsquo;s record for
+   tigerish cruelty and awful destruction. It is rumoured that Mr.
+   Brownley of Randolph &amp; Randolph, either for himself or his clients
+   cleared twenty-five millions of profit. We believe that this estimate
+   is low. The losses coming through Robert Brownley&rsquo;s terrible onslaught
+   must have run over five hundred millions. Wall Street and the country
+   will do well to take the moral of yesterday&rsquo;s market to their heart. It
+   is this: The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few Americans is
+   a menace to our financial structure. It is the unanimous opinion of
+   &lsquo;the Street&rsquo; that Robert Brownley could never have succeeded in
+   battering down the price of Sugar in the very teeth of the Camemeyer
+   and Standard Oil support as he did yesterday, without a cash backing of
+   from fifty to one hundred millions. If a vast aggregation of money
+   owners deliberately place themselves behind an onslaught such as was so
+   successfully made yesterday, why can that slaughter not be repeated at
+   any time, on any stock, and against the support of any backing?&rdquo;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>When I read this and listened to talk along the same lines, I was puzzled.
+I could not for the life of me see where Bob Brownley could have got five
+to ten millions&rsquo; backing for such a raid, much less fifty to a hundred.
+Yet I was forced to confess that he must have had some tremendous backing;
+else how could he have done what I had seen him do?</p>
+
+<p>Bob left his wife at his mother&rsquo;s house while he went to Sands Landing to
+the funeral. After the old judge and his victims had been laid away and
+the relatives had gathered in the library of the great white Sands
+mansion, he explained their kinswoman&rsquo;s condition and told them that she
+was his wife. He insisted upon paying all Judge Sands&rsquo;s debts, over
+$500,000 of which was owed to members of the Sands family for whom he had
+been trustee. Before he went back to his mother&rsquo;s, Bob had turned a great
+calamity into an occasion for something near rejoicing. Judge Sands and
+his family were very dear to the people of the section, but his misfortune
+had threatened such wide-spread ruin that the unlooked-for recovery of a
+million and a half was a godsend that made for happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Two days after the funeral Bob&rsquo;s dearest hope fled. He had ordered all
+things at the Sands plantation put in their every-day condition. Beulah
+Sands&rsquo;s uncles, aunts, and cousins had arranged to welcome her and to try
+by every means in their power to coax back her lost mind. They assured Bob
+that, barring the absence of Beulah&rsquo;s father, mother, and sister, there
+would not be a memory-recaller missing. Bob and his wife landed from the
+river packet at the foot of the driveway, which led straight from the
+landing to the vine-covered, white-pillared portico. Bob&rsquo;s agony must have
+been awful when his wife clapped her hands in childish joy as she
+exclaimed, &ldquo;Oh, Bob, what a pretty place!&rdquo; She gave no sign that she had
+ever seen the great entrance, through which she had come and gone from her
+babyhood. Bob took her to the library, to her mother&rsquo;s room, to her own,
+to the nursery where were the dolls and toys of her childhood, but there
+came no sign of recognition, nothing but childish pleasure. She looked at
+her aunts and uncles and the cousins with whom she had spent her life,
+bewildered at finding so many strangers in the otherwise quiet place. As a
+last hope, they led in her old black foster-mother, who had nursed her in
+babyhood, who was the companion of her childhood and the pet of her
+womanhood. There was not a dry eye in the library when she met the old
+mammy&rsquo;s outburst of joy with the puzzled gaze of the child who does not
+understand. The grief of the old negress was pitiful as she realised that
+she was a stranger to her &ldquo;honey bird.&rdquo; The child seemed perplexed at her
+grief. It was plain to all that the Sands home meant nothing to the last
+of the judge&rsquo;s family.</p>
+
+<p>Bob brought her back to New York and besought the aid of the medical
+experts of America and of the Old World to regain that which had been
+recalled by its Maker. The doctors were fascinated with this new phase of
+mind blight, for in some particulars Beulah&rsquo;s case was unlike any known
+instances, but none gave hope. All agreed that some wire connecting heart
+and brain had burned out when the cruel &ldquo;System&rdquo; threw on a voltage beyond
+the wire&rsquo;s capacity to transmit. All agreed that the woman-child wife
+would never grow older unless through some mental eruption beyond human
+power to produce. Some of the medical men pointed to one possibility, but
+that one was too terrible for Bob to entertain.</p>
+
+<p>The first anniversary of their marriage found Bob and his wife settled in
+their new Fifth Avenue mansion. He had bought and torn down two old
+houses between Forty-second and Forty-third Streets and had erected a
+palace, the inside of which was unique among all New York&rsquo;s unusual
+structures. The first and second floors were all that refined taste and
+unlimited expenditure of money could produce. Nothing on those splendid
+floors told of the strange things above. A sedate luxury pervaded the
+drawing-rooms, library, and dining-room. Bob said to me, in taking me
+through them, &ldquo;Some day, Jim, Beulah may recover, may come back to me, and
+I want to have everything as she would wish, everything as she would have
+had it if the curse had never come.&rdquo; The third floor was Beulah&rsquo;s. A
+child&rsquo;s dainty bedroom; two nurses&rsquo; rooms adjoining; a nursery, with a
+child&rsquo;s small schoolroom and a big playroom, with dolls and doll houses,
+child&rsquo;s toys of every description in abandon, as though their owner were
+in fact but a few years old. Across the hall were three offices, exact
+duplicates of mine, Bob&rsquo;s, and Beulah Sands&rsquo;s at Randolph &amp; Randolph&rsquo;s.
+When I first saw them it was with difficulty that I brought myself to
+realise that I was not where the gruesome happenings of a year before had
+taken place. Bob had reproduced to the minutest details our down-town
+workshop. Standing in the door of Beulah Sands&rsquo;s office I faced the flat
+desk at which she had sat the afternoon when I first saw that hideous
+result of the work of the &ldquo;System.&rdquo; I could almost see the little gray
+figure holding the afternoon paper. In horror my eyes sought the floor at
+the side of the chair in search of Bob&rsquo;s agonised face and uplifted hands.
+As I stood for the first time in the middle of Bob&rsquo;s handiwork, I seemed
+to hear again those awful groans.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim,&rdquo; Bob said, &ldquo;I have a haunting idea that some day Beulah will wake
+and look around and think she has been but a few minutes asleep. If she
+should, she must have nothing to disabuse her mind until we break the news
+to her. I have instructed her nurses, one or the other of whom never loses
+sight of her night or day, to win her to the habit of spending her time at
+her old desk; I have told them always to be prepared for her awakening,
+and when it comes they are instantly to shut off the rest of the floor and
+house until I can get to her. Here comes Beulah now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Out of the nursery came a laughing, happy child-woman. In spite of her
+finely developed, womanly figure, which had lost nothing of its wonderful
+beauty, and the exquisite face and golden-brown hair and great blue eyes,
+which were as fascinating as on the day she first entered the offices of
+Randolph &amp; Randolph; in spite of the close-fitting gray gown with dainty
+turned-over lace collar, I could hardly bring myself to believe that she
+was anything but a young child. With an eager look and a happy laugh she
+went to Bob and throwing her arms about his neck, covered his face with
+kisses.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good Bob has come back to play with Beulah,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;She knew he
+would. They told Beulah Bob had gone away to the woods to gather pretty
+flowers. Beulah knew if Bob had gone to the woods he would have taken
+Beulah with him. Now Bob must play school with Beulah.&rdquo; She sat at her
+desk and opened her child&rsquo;s school-book. With mock severity she said,
+&ldquo;Bob, c-a-t. What does it spell?&rdquo; For half an hour Bob sat and played
+scholar and teacher by turns with all the patience of a fond father. With
+difficulty I kept back the tears the sad sight brought to my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>For the first year of Bob&rsquo;s marriage we saw but little of him at the
+office. The Exchange saw less. He had wandered in upon the floor two or
+three times, but did no business and seemed to take but little interest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Street&rdquo; knew Bob had married the daughter of Judge Lee Sands, the
+victim of Tom Reinhart&rsquo;s cold-blooded Seaboard Air Line deal. Otherwise it
+knew nothing of the affair. His friends never met his wife. Occasionally
+they would pass the Brownley carriage on the avenue or in the park and,
+taking it for granted that the beautiful woman was Mrs. Brownley, they
+thought Bob a lucky fellow. It seemed quite natural that his wife should
+choose seclusion after the awful tragedy at her home in Virginia. But they
+could not understand why, with such cause for mourning, the exquisite
+figure beside Bob in the victoria should always be garbed in gray. After a
+while it was whispered that there was something wrong in Bob&rsquo;s household.
+Then his friends and acquaintances ceased to whisper or to think of his
+affairs. With all New York&rsquo;s bad points&mdash;and they are as plentiful as her
+church spires and charity bazaars&mdash;she has one offsetting virtue. If a
+dweller in her midst chooses to let New York alone, New York is willing to
+reciprocate. In her most crowded fashionable districts a person may come
+and go for a lifetime, and none in the block in which he dwells will know
+when his coming and going ceases. When a New Yorker reads in his newspaper
+of the man who lives next door to him, &ldquo;murdered and his body discovered
+by the gas man&rdquo; or the tax collector, the butcher or the baker, as the
+case may be, he never thinks he may have been remiss in his neighbourly
+duties. There is no such word as &ldquo;neighbour&rdquo; in the New York City
+dictionary. It may have been there once, but, if so, it was long
+ago used as a stake for the barbed-wire fence of exclusive
+keep-your-distance-we-keep-our-distance-until-we-know-youness. It is told
+of a minister from the rural districts, an old-fashioned American, who
+came to New York to take charge of a parish, that he started out to make
+his calls and was seized in the hall of what in civilisation would have
+been his next-door neighbour. He was rushed away to Bellevue for
+examination as to sanity. The verdict was: &ldquo;Insane. Had no letter of
+introduction and was not in the set.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after the first anniversary of his wedding Bob gave up his office
+with Randolph &amp; Randolph and opened one for himself. He explained that he
+was giving up his commission business to devote all his time to personal
+trading. With the opening of his new office he again became the most
+active man on the floor. His trading was intermittent. For weeks he would
+not be seen at the Exchange or on &ldquo;the Street.&rdquo; Then he would return and,
+after executing a series of brilliant trades, which were invariably
+successful, he would again disappear. He soon became known as the luckiest
+operator in Wall Street, and the beginning of his every new deal was the
+signal for his fast-growing following to tag on.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time I learned that Beulah Sands was making no real
+improvement, though in some details she had learned as a child learns. But
+there was no indication that she would ever regain her lost mind.</p>
+
+<p>Strange stories of Bob&rsquo;s doings began to seep into my office. For long
+periods he would disappear. Neither the nurses in charge of his wife, nor
+his brother, mother, and sisters, for whom he had purchased a mansion a
+few blocks above his own, would hear a word from him. Then he would
+return as suddenly as he had disappeared, and his wild eyes and haggard
+face would tell of a prolonged and desperate soul struggle. He drank often
+now, a habit he had never before indulged in.</p>
+
+<p>For ten days before the second anniversary of his marriage he had been
+missing. On the morning of the anniversary he appeared at the Exchange,
+wild-eyed and dare-devil reckless. The market had been advancing for weeks
+and was at a high level. Tom Reinhart and his branch of the &ldquo;System&rdquo; were
+working out a new fleecing of the public in Union and Northern Pacific. At
+the strike of the gong Bob took possession of the Union Pacific pole and
+in thirty minutes had precipitated a panic by his merciless selling. Our
+house was heavily interested in the Pacifics, although not in connection
+with Reinhart and his crowd. As soon as I got word that Bob was the cause
+of the slaughter, I rushed over to the Exchange and working my way into
+the crowd, I begged a word with him. He had broken both stocks over fifty
+points a share and the panic was raging through the room. He glared at me,
+but finally followed me out into the lobby. At first he would not heed my
+appeal, but finally he said, &ldquo;Jim, it is too bad to let up. I had
+determined to rub this devilish institution off the map, but if it really
+is a case of injury to the house, it&rsquo;s my opportunity to do something for
+you who have done so much for me, so here goes.&rdquo; He threw himself into the
+Union Pacific crowd, first giving an order to a group of his brokers, who
+jumped for a number of other poles. Almost instantly the panic was stayed
+and stocks were bounding upward two to five points at a leap. Bob
+continued buying Union Pacific and his brokers other stocks in unlimited
+quantities. Nothing like such a quick turn of the market had been seen
+before. His power to absorb stocks seemed to be boundless. It was
+estimated that personally and through his brokers he bought over half a
+million shares before he joined me and left the Exchange.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at him in wonderment. &ldquo;Bob, I cannot understand you,&rdquo; I said at
+last as we turned out of Broad Street into Wall. &ldquo;It seems as if you work
+with magic. Everything you touch turns to gold.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He wheeled on me. &ldquo;Yes, Jim, you are right. Gold, heartless, soulless
+gold. But what is the dross good for? What is it good for to me? To-day I
+suppose I have made the biggest one-man killing in the history of &lsquo;the
+Street.&rsquo; I must be an easy twenty-five millions richer in gold than I was
+this morning, and I had enough then to dam the East River and a good
+section of the North. But tell me, Jim, tell me, what can it buy in this
+world that I have not got? I had health and happiness, perfect health,
+pure happiness, when I did not have a thousand all told. Now I have fifty
+millions, and I know how to get fifty or five hundred and fifty more any
+time I care to take them, and I have only physical and mental hell. No
+beggar in all the world is so poor in happiness as I. Tell me, tell me,
+Jim, in the name of God, if there is one&mdash;for already the game of gold is
+robbing me of my faith in God&mdash;where can I buy a little, just a little
+happiness with all this cursed yellow dirt? What will it get me in the
+next world, Jim Randolph, what will it get me? If I had died when I was
+poor, I think you will agree with me that, if there is a heaven, I should
+have stood an even chance of getting there. Now on a day like to-day, when
+you see the results of my work, the results of my handling of unlimited
+gold, you must agree that if I were taken off I should stand more than an
+even show of landing in hell where the sulphur is thickest and the flames
+are hottest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We were at the entrance of Randolph &amp; Randolph&rsquo;s office as he poured out
+this terrible torrent of bitterness. He glared at me as a dungeon prisoner
+might glare at his keeper for his answer to &ldquo;Where can I find liberty?&rdquo; I
+had no words to answer him. As I noted the awful changes his new life was
+making in every line of his face, the rigid hardness, the haunted, nervous
+look of desperation, which seemed a forerunner of madness, I could not
+see, either, where his millions brought any happiness. His hair, which
+once was smooth and orderly, hung over his forehead in an unparted mass of
+tangled curls, and here and there showed a streak of white. Bob Brownley
+was still handsome, even more fascinating than before the mercury entered
+his soul, but it was that wild, awful beauty of the caged lion, lashing
+himself into madness with memories of his lost freedom.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim,&rdquo; he went on, when he saw I could not answer, &ldquo;I guess you don&rsquo;t know
+where I can swap the yellow mud for balm of Gilead. I won&rsquo;t bother you
+with my troubles any longer. I will go up-town and see the little girl
+whose happiness Tom Reinhart needed in his business. I will go up and show
+her the pictures in this week&rsquo;s <i>Collier&rsquo;s</i> of the fine hospital for
+incurables that Reinhart has so generously and nobly built at a cost of
+two and a half millions! The little girl may think better of Reinhart when
+she knows that her father&rsquo;s money was put to such good use. Who knows but
+the great finance king may dedicate it as the &lsquo;Judge Lee Sands Home&rsquo; and
+carve over the entrance a bas-relief of her father, mother, and sister
+with Hope, Faith, and Charity coming from the mouths of their hanging
+severed heads?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob Brownley laughed a horrible ringing laugh as he uttered these awful
+words. Then he beat his hand down on my shoulders as he said in a hoarse
+voice, &ldquo;Jim, but for you I should have had crimps in that jackal
+philanthropist&rsquo;s soul by now and in the souls of his kind. But never mind.
+He will keep; he will surely keep until I get to him. Every day he lives
+he will be fitter for the crimping. Within the short two years since he
+finished grilling Judge Sands&rsquo;s soul, he has put himself in better form
+to appreciate his reward. I see by the press that at last his aristocratic
+wife has gold-cured Newport of its habit of dating back the name Reinhart
+to her scullionhood, and it has taken her into the high-instep circle. I
+read the other day of his daughter&rsquo;s marriage to some English nob, and of
+the discovery of the ancient Reinhart family tree and crest with the
+mailed hand and two-edged dirk and the vulture rampant, and the motto,
+&lsquo;Who strikes in the back strikes often.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He left me with his laugh still ringing in my ears. I shuddered as I
+passed under the old black-and-gold sign my uncle and my father had nailed
+over the office entrance in an age now dead, an age when Wall Street men
+talked of honour and gold, not gold and more gold.</p>
+
+<p>In telling my wife of the day&rsquo;s happenings I could not refrain from giving
+vent to the feelings that consumed me. &ldquo;Kate, Bob will surely do something
+awful one of these days. I can see no hope for him. He grows more and more
+the madman as he broods over his horrible situation. The whole thing seems
+incredible to me. Never was a human being in such perpetual living
+purgatory&mdash;unlimited, absolute power on the one hand, unfathomable,
+never-cool-down hell on the other.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim, how does he do what he does? I cannot make out from anything I have
+read or you have told me, how he creates those panics and makes all that
+money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No one has ever been able to figure it out,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;I understand
+the stock business, but I cannot for the life of me see how he does it. He
+has none of the money powers in league with him, that&rsquo;s sure, for in the
+mood he has been in during the past two years it would be impossible for
+him to work with them, even if his salvation depended on it. The mention
+of any of the big &lsquo;System&rsquo; men drives him to a fury. He has to-day made
+more money than any one man ever made in a day since the world began, and
+he had only commenced his work when he quit to please me. As I stand in
+the Exchange and watch him do it, it seems commonplace and simple.
+Afterward it is beyond my comprehension. At the gait he is going, the
+Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Gould fortunes combined will look tiny in
+comparison with the one he will have in a few years. It is beyond my power
+of figuring out, and it gives me a headache every time I try to see
+through it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="ch08"></a>Chapter VIII.</h2>
+
+<p>A number of times during the following year, and finally on the
+anniversary of the Sands tragedy, Bob carried the Exchange to the verge of
+panic, only to turn the market and save &ldquo;the Street&rdquo; in the end. His
+profits were fabulous. Already his fortune was estimated to be between two
+and three hundred millions, one of the largest in the world. His name had
+become one of terror wherever stocks were dealt in. Wall Street had come
+to regard his every deal, from the moment that he began operations, as
+inevitably successful. Now and again he would jump into the market when
+some of the plunging cliques had a bear raid under way, and would put them
+to rout by buying everything in sight and bidding up prices until it
+looked as though he intended to do as extraordinary work on the up-side as
+he was wont to do on the down. At such times he was the idol of the
+Exchange, which worships the man who puts prices up as it hates him who
+pulls them down. Once when war news flashed over the wires from Washington
+and rumour had the Cabinet members, Senators, and Congressmen selling the
+market short on advance information, when the &ldquo;Standard Oil&rdquo; banks had put
+up money rates to 150 per cent, and a crash seemed inevitable, Bob
+suddenly smashed the loan market by offering to lend one hundred millions
+at four per cent.; and by buying and bidding up prices at the same time,
+he put the whole Washington crowd and its New York accomplices to
+disastrous rout and caused them to lose millions. He continued his
+operations with increasing violence and increasing profits up to the
+fourth anniversary of the tragedy. On the intervening anniversary I had
+been compelled by self-interest and fear that he would really pull down
+the entire Wall Street structure, to rush in and fairly drag him off. But
+with his growing madness my influence was waning. Each raid it was with
+greater difficulty that I got his ear.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, on the fourth anniversary, in a panic that seemed to be running
+into something more terrible than any previous, he savagely refused to
+accede to my appeal, telling me that he would not stop, even if Randolph
+&amp; Randolph were doomed to go down in the crash. It had become known on the
+floor that I was the only one who could do anything with him in his
+frenzies, and my pleading with him in the lobby was watched by the members
+of the Exchange with triple eyed suspense. When it was clear from his
+emphatic gestures and raised voice&mdash;for he was in a reckless mood from
+drink and madness and took no pains to disguise his intentions&mdash;that I
+could not prevail upon him, there was a frantic rush for the poles to
+throw over stocks in advance of him. Suddenly, after I had turned from him
+in despair, there flashed into my mind an idea. The situation was
+desperate. I was dealing with a madman, and I decided that I was justified
+in making this last try. I rushed back to him. &ldquo;Bob, good-bye,&rdquo; I
+whispered in his ear, &ldquo;good-bye. In ten minutes you will get word that Jim
+Randolph has cut his throat!&rdquo; He stopped as though I had plunged a knife
+into him, struck his forehead a resounding blow, and into his wild brown
+eyes came a sickening look of fear.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stop, Jim, for God&rsquo;s sake, don&rsquo;t say that to me. My cup is full now.
+Don&rsquo;t tell me I am to have that crime on my soul.&rdquo; He thought a moment.
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether you mean it, Jim, but I can take no chances, not for
+all the money in the world, not even for revenge. Wait here, Jim.&rdquo; He
+yelled for his brokers, and several rushed to him from different parts of
+the room. He sent them back into the crowd while he dashed for the
+Amalgamated-pole. The day was saved.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he came back to me. &ldquo;Jim, I must have a talk with you. Come over
+to my office.&rdquo; When we got there he turned the key and stood in front of
+me. His great eyes looked full into mine. In college days, gazing into
+their brown depths, by some magic I seemed to see the heroes and heroines
+of always happy-ending tales, as the child sees enchanted creatures far
+back in the burning Yule log flames. But there were no joyous beings in
+the haunted depths of Bob&rsquo;s eyes that day.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jim, you gave me an awful scare,&rdquo; he said brokenly. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ever do it
+again. I have little left to live for. To be sure I have some feeling for
+mother, Fred, and sisters. But for you I have a love second only to that I
+should have felt for Beulah had I been allowed to have her. The thought,
+Jim, that I had wrecked your life, with all you have to live for, would
+have been the last straw. My life is purgatory. Beulah is only an
+ever-present curse to me&mdash;a ghost that rends my heart and soul, one minute
+with a blind frenzy to revenge her wrongs, the next with an icy remorse
+that I have not already done so. If I did not have her, perhaps in time I
+could forget; perhaps I might lay out some scheme to help poor devils
+whose poverty makes life unendurable, and with the millions I have taken
+from that main shaft of hell I might do things that would at least bring
+quiet to my soul; but it is impossible with the living corpse of Beulah
+Sands before me every minute and that devil machinery whirling in my brain
+all the time the song, &lsquo;Revenge her and her father, revenge yourself.&rsquo; It
+is impossible to give it up, Jim. I must have revenge. I must stop this
+machinery that is smashing up more American hearts and souls each year
+than all the rest of earth&rsquo;s grinders combined. Every day I delay I become
+more fiendish in my desires. Jim, don&rsquo;t think I do not know that I have
+literally turned into a fiend. Whenever of late I see myself in the
+mirror, I shudder. When I think of what I was when your father stood us up
+in his office and started us in this heart-shrivelling, soul-callousing
+business, and what I am now, I cannot keep the madness down except with
+rum. You know what it means for me to say this, me who started with all
+the pride of a Brownley; but it is so, Jim. The other night I went home
+with my soul frozen with thoughts of the past and with my brain ablaze
+with rum, intending to end it all. I got out my revolver, and woke Beulah,
+but as I said, &lsquo;Bob is going to kill Beulah and himself,&rsquo; she laughed that
+sweet child&rsquo;s laugh and clapping her hands said, &lsquo;Bob is so good to play
+with Beulah,&rsquo; and then I thought of that devil Reinhart and the other
+fiends of the &lsquo;System&rsquo; being left to continue their work unhindered and I
+could not do it. I must have revenge; I must smash that heart-crushing
+machinery. Then I can go, and take Beulah with me. Now, Jim, let us have
+it clearly understood once and for all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Remorse and softness were past; he was the Indian again. &ldquo;I am going to
+wreck that hell-annex some day, and that some day will be the next time I
+start in. Don&rsquo;t argue with me, don&rsquo;t misunderstand me. To-day you stopped
+me. I don&rsquo;t know whether you meant what you threatened; I don&rsquo;t care now.
+It is just as well that I stopped, for the &lsquo;System&rsquo;s&rsquo; machine will be
+there whenever I start in again. It loses nothing of its fiendishness,
+none of its destructive powers by grinding, but, on the contrary, as you
+know, it increases its speed every day it runs. Now, Jim Randolph, I want
+to tell you that you must get yours and the house&rsquo;s affairs in such shape
+that you won&rsquo;t be hurt when I go into that human rat-pit the next time,
+for when I come from it the New York Stock Exchange and the &lsquo;System&rsquo; will
+have had their spines unjointed. Yes, and I&rsquo;ll have their hearts out, too.
+Neither will ever again be able to take from the American people their
+savings and their manhood and womanhood and give them in exchange
+unadulterated torment. I am going to be fair with you, Jim; this is the
+last time I will discuss the subject. After this you must take your chance
+with the rest of those who have to do with the cursed business. When I
+strike again, none will be spared. I will wreck &lsquo;the Street&rsquo;, and the
+innocent will go down with the guilty, if they have any stocks on hand at
+that time.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My power, Jim, is unlimited; nothing can stay it. I am not going to
+explain any further. You have seen me work. You must know that my power is
+greater than the &lsquo;System&rsquo;s,&rsquo; and you and I and &lsquo;the Street&rsquo; have always
+known that the &lsquo;System&rsquo; is more powerful than the Government, more
+powerful than are the courts, legislatures, Congress, and the President of
+the United States combined, that it absolutely controls the foundation on
+which they rest&mdash;the money of the nation. But my power is greater, a
+thousand, yes, a million times greater than theirs. Jim, they say that I
+have made more money than any man in the world. They say that I have five
+hundred millions of dollars, but the fools don&rsquo;t keep track of my
+movements. They only know that I have pulled five hundred millions from my
+open whirls, the ones they have had an opportunity to keep tab on. But I
+tell you that I have made even more in my secret deals than the amount
+they have seen me take. I have had my agents with my capital in every
+deal, every steal the &lsquo;System&rsquo; has rigged up. The world has been throwing
+up its hands in horror because Carnegie, the blacksmith of Pittsburgh,
+pulled off three hundred millions of swag in the Steel hold-up&mdash;yes,
+swag, Jim. Don&rsquo;t scowl as though you wanted to read me a lecture on the
+coarseness of my language. I have learned to call this game of ours by its
+right name. It is not business enterprise with earned profits as results,
+but pulled-off tricks with bags of loot&mdash;black-jack swag&mdash;for their end.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I got away with three hundred millions when Steel slumped from 105 to 50
+and from 50 to 8, and no one knew I&rsquo;d made a dollar. You and &lsquo;the Street&rsquo;
+read every morning last year the &lsquo;guesses&rsquo; as to who could be rounding up
+the hundreds of millions on the slump. The papers and the market letters
+one morning said it was &lsquo;Standard Oil&rsquo;; the next, that it was Morgan; then
+it was Frick, Schwab, Gates, and so on down through the list. Of course,
+none of them denied; it is capital to all these knights of the road to be
+making millions in the minds of the world, even though they never get any
+of the money. Dick Turpin and Jonathan Wild never were fonder of having
+the daring hold-ups that other highwaymen perpetrated laid to their doors,
+than are these modern bandits of being credited with ruthless deeds that
+they did not commit. But Jim, &rsquo;twas I, &rsquo;twas I who sold Pennsylvania
+every morning for a year, while the selling was explained by the press as
+&lsquo;Cassatt cutting down Gould&rsquo;s telegraph poles. Gould and old man
+Rockefeller selling Pennsylvania to get even.&rsquo; Jim Randolph, I have to-day
+a billion dollars, not the Rockefeller or Carnegie kind, but a real
+billion. If I had no other power but the power to call to-morrow for that
+billion in cash, it would be sufficient to lay in waste the financial
+world before to-morrow night. You are welcome, Jim, to any part of that
+billion, and the more you take the happier you will make me, but when I
+strike in again, don&rsquo;t attempt to stay me, for it will do no good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after this talk Bob left for Europe with Beulah. A great German
+expert on brain disorders had held out hope that a six month&rsquo;s treatment
+at his sanitarium in Berlin might aid in restoring her mind. They returned
+the following August. The trip had been fruitless. It was plain to me that
+Bob was the same hopelessly desperate man as when he left, more hopeless,
+more desperate if anything than when he warned me of his determination.</p>
+
+<p>When he left for Europe &ldquo;the Street&rdquo; breathed more freely, and as time
+went by and there was no sign of his confidence-disturbing influence in
+the market, the &ldquo;System&rdquo; began to bring out its deferred deals. Times were
+ripe for setting up the most wildly inflated stock lamb-shearing traps. It
+had been advertised throughout the world that Tom Reinhart, now a
+two-hundred-time millionaire, was to consolidate his and many other
+enterprises into one gigantic trust with twelve billions of capital. His
+Union and Southern Pacific Railroads, his coal and Southern lines,
+together with his steamship company and lead, iron, and copper mines, were
+to be merged with the steel, traction, gas, and other enterprises he owned
+jointly with &ldquo;Standard Oil.&rdquo; Some of the railroads owned by Rockefeller
+and his pals, in which Reinhart had no part, were to go in too, and with
+these was to unite that mother hog of them all, &ldquo;Standard Oil&rdquo; itself. The
+trust was to be an enormous holding company, the like of which had until
+then not even been dreamed of by the most daring stock manipulators. The
+&ldquo;System&rsquo;s&rdquo; banks, as well as trust and insurance companies throughout the
+country, had for a long time been getting into shape by concentrating the
+money of the country for this monster trust. It was newspaper and news
+bureau gossip that Reinhart and his crowd had bought millions of shares of
+the different stocks involved in the deal, and it was common knowledge
+that upon its successful completion Reinhart&rsquo;s fortune would be in the
+neighbourhood of a billion. On October 1st the certificate of the
+Anti-People&rsquo;s Trust, $12,000,000,000 capital, 120,000,000 shares, were
+listed upon the New York, London, and Boston Stock Exchanges, and the
+German and French Bourses, and trading in them started off fast and
+furious at 106. The claim that one billion of the twelve billions capital
+had been set aside to be used in protecting and manipulating the stock in
+the market, had been so widely advertised that even the most daring
+plunger did not think of selling it short.</p>
+
+<p>It was evident to all in the stock-gambling world that this was to be the
+&ldquo;System&rsquo;s&rdquo; grand coup, that at its completion the masses would be rudely
+awakened to a realisation that their savings were invested in the combined
+American industries at vastly inflated values, that the few had all the
+real money, and that any attempt upon the people&rsquo;s part to regulate and
+control the new system of robbery, would be fraught with unparalleled
+disaster&mdash;not to the &ldquo;System,&rdquo; but to the people.</p>
+
+<p>Since Bob&rsquo;s return from Europe I had seen him but a few times. Up to
+October 1st he had not been near the Stock Exchange or &ldquo;the Street.&rdquo;
+Shortly after the listing of the &ldquo;People Be Damned,&rdquo; as &ldquo;the Street&rdquo; had
+dubbed the new trust, he began to show up at his office regularly. This
+was the condition of affairs when Fred Brownley called me up on the
+telephone, as I related at the beginning of my story, which I did not
+realise I had been so long in telling.</p>
+
+<p>My thoughts had been chasing each other with lightning-like rapidity back
+over the last five years and the fifteen before them, and each thought
+deepened the black mist over my present mental vision. In the midst of my
+reflections my telephone rang again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Randolph, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake have you done nothing yet?&rdquo; It was Fred
+Brownley&rsquo;s voice. &ldquo;Things are frightful here. Bob&rsquo;s brokers are selling
+stocks at five and ten thousand-lot clips. Barry Conant is leading
+Reinhart&rsquo;s forces. It is said he has the pool&rsquo;s protection order in
+Anti-People&rsquo;s and that it is unlimited, but Bob has the Reinhart crowd
+pretty badly scared. Swan has just finished giving Conant a hundred
+thousand off the reel in 10,000 lots, and he told me a moment ago he was
+going over to get Bob himself to face Barry Conant. They&rsquo;re down twenty
+points on the average, although they haven&rsquo;t let Anti-People&rsquo;s break an
+eighth yet. They have it pegged at 106, but there is an ugly rumour just
+in that Bob, under cover of a general attack, is unloading Anti-People&rsquo;s
+on to the Reinhart wing for Rogers and Rockefeller, and the rumour is
+getting in its work. Even Barry Conant is growing a bit anxious. The
+latest talk is that Reinhart is borrowing hundreds of millions on
+Anti-People&rsquo;s, and that his loans are being called in all directions. Do
+you know Reinhart is at his place in Virginia and cannot get here before
+to-morrow night? If Bob breaks through Anti-People&rsquo;s peg, it will be the
+worst crash yet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All right, Fred,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;I will go over to Bob&rsquo;s right now. I hate
+to do it, but there is no other hope.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I dropped the receiver and started for Bob&rsquo;s office. As I went through his
+counting-room one of the clerks said, &ldquo;They have just broken Anti-People&rsquo;s
+to 90 on a bulletin that Tom Reinhart&rsquo;s wife and only daughter have been
+killed in an automobile accident at their place in Virginia. They first
+had it that Reinhart himself was killed. That has been corrected, although
+the latest word is that he is prostrated.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I rapped on Bob&rsquo;s private-office door. I felt the coming struggle as I
+heard his hoarse bellow, &ldquo;Come in.&rdquo; He stood at the ticker, with the tape
+in one hand, while with the other he held the telephone receiver to his
+ear. My God, what a picture for a stage! His magnificent form was erect,
+his feet were as firmly planted as if he were made of bronze, his
+shoulders thrown back as if he were withstanding the rush of the Stock
+Exchange hordes, his eyes afire with a sullen, smouldering blaze, his jaw
+was set in a way that brought into terrible relief the new, hard lines of
+desperation that had recently come into his face. His great chest was
+rising and falling as though he were engaged in a physical struggle; his
+perfect-fitting, heavy black Melton cutaway coat, thrown back from the
+chest, and a low, turned-down, white collar formed the setting for a
+throat and head that reminded one of a forest monarch at bay on the
+mountain crag awaiting the coming of the hounds and hunters.</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated at the threshold to catch my breath, as I took in the
+terrific figure. Had Bob Brownley been an enemy of mine I should have
+backed out in fear, and I do not confess to more than my fair share of
+cowardice. Inwardly I thanked God that Bob was in his office instead of on
+the floor of the Exchange. His whole appearance was frightful. He showed
+in every line and lineament that he was a man who would hesitate at
+nothing, even at killing, if he should find a human obstacle in his road
+and his mind should suggest murder. He was the personification of the most
+awful madness. Even when he caught sight of me, he hardly moved, although
+my coming must have been a surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So it is you, Jim Randolph, is it? What brings <i>you</i> here?&rdquo; His voice was
+hoarse, but it had a metallic ring that went to my marrow. Bob Brownley in
+all the years of our friendship had never spoken to me except in kind and
+loving regard. I looked at him, stunned. I must have shown how hurt I was.
+But if he saw it, he gave no sign. His eyes, looking straight into mine,
+changed no more than if he had been addressing his deadliest enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Again his voice rang out, &ldquo;What brings you here? Do you come to plead
+again for that dastard Reinhart after the warning I gave you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I clenched both hands until I felt the nails cut the flesh of my palms. I
+loved Bob Brownley. I would have done anything to make him happy, would
+willingly have sacrificed my own life to protect his from himself or
+others, but this madman, this wild brute, was no more Bob Brownley as I
+had known him than the howling northeast gale of December is the gentle,
+welcome zephyr of August; and I felt a resentment at his brutal speech
+that I could hardly suppress. With a mighty effort I crushed it back,
+trying to think of nothing but his awful misery and the Bob of our college
+days.</p>
+
+<p>I said in a firm voice, &ldquo;Bob, is this the way to talk to me in your own
+office?&rdquo; At any time before, my words and tone would have touched his
+all-generous Southern chivalry, but now he said harshly&mdash;&ldquo;To hell with
+sentiment. What&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He did not take his eyes from mine, but they told me
+that he was listening to a voice in the receiver. Only for a second; then
+he let loose a wild laugh, which must have penetrated to the outer office.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eighty and coming like a spring freshet,&rdquo; he said into the mouthpiece,
+&ldquo;and the boys want to know if I won&rsquo;t let up now that Reinhart is down?
+Go back and smother them with all they will take down to 60. That&rsquo;s my
+answer. Tell them if Reinhart had ten more wives and daughters and they
+were all killed, I&rsquo;d rend his bastard trust to help him dull his sorrow.
+Give the word at every pole that I will have Reinhart where he will curse
+his luck that he was not in the automobile with the rest of his tribe&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To hell with sentiment!&rdquo; He was speaking to me again. &ldquo;What do you want?
+If you are here to beg for Reinhart and his pack of yellow curs, you&rsquo;ve
+got your answer. I wouldn&rsquo;t let up on that fiendish hyena, not if his wife
+and daughter and all the dead wives and daughters of every &lsquo;System&rsquo; man
+came back in their grave clothes and begged. I wouldn&rsquo;t let up a share.&rdquo; I
+gasped in horror.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When did those robbers of men and despoilers of women and children ever
+let up because of death? When were they ever known to wait even till the
+corpse stiffened to pluck out the hearts of the victims? It is my turn
+now, and if I let up a hair may I, yes, and Beulah, too, be damned,
+eternally damned.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I could not stand it. If I stayed, I, too, should become mad. I reached
+for the doorknob, but before I could swing the door open Bob was upon me
+like a wolf. He grasped me by the shoulders and with the strength of a
+madman hurled me half across the room. I sank into a chair.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, you don&rsquo;t, Jim Randolph, no, you don&rsquo;t. You came here for something
+and, by heaven, you will tell me what it is! You know me; you are the only
+human being who does. You know what I was, you see what I am. You know
+what they did to me to make me what I am. You know, Jim Randolph, you know
+whether I deserved it. You know whether in all my life up to the day those
+dollar-frenzied hounds tore my soul, I had done any man, woman, or child a
+wrong. You know whether I had, and now you are going to sneak off and
+leave me as though I were a cur dog of the Reinhart-&lsquo;Standard Oil&rsquo; breed
+gone mad!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He was standing over me, a terrible yet a magnificent figure. As he hurled
+these words at me, I was sure he had really lost his mind; that I was in
+the presence of a man truly mad. But only for an instant; then my horror,
+my anger turned to a great, crushing, all-consuming agony of pity for
+Bob, and I dropped my head on my hands and wept. It is hard to admit it,
+but it is true&mdash;I wept uncontrollably. In an instant the room was quiet
+except for the sound of my own awful grief. I heard it, was ashamed of it,
+but I could not stop. The telephone rang again and again, wildly, shrilly,
+but there was no answer. The stillness became so oppressive that even my
+own sobs quieted. I gasped as the lump in my throat choked me, then I
+slowly raised my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Bob&rsquo;s towering figure was in front of me. His head had fallen forward, and
+his arms were folded across his breast. But that he stood erect I should
+have thought him dead, so still was he. I jumped to my feet and looked
+into his face, down which great tears were dropping silently. I touched
+him on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bob, my dear old chum, Bob, forgive me. For God&rsquo;s sake, forgive me for
+intruding on your misery.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I looked at him. I will never forget his face. No heartbroken woman&rsquo;s
+could have been sadder. He slowly raised his head, then staggered and
+grasped the ticker-stand for support.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t, Jim, don&rsquo;t&mdash;don&rsquo;t ask me to forgive you. Oh, Jim, Jim, my old
+friend, forgive me for my madness; forget what I said to you, forget the
+brute you just saw and think of me as of old, when I would have plucked
+out my tongue if I had caught it saying a harsh word to the best and
+truest friend man ever had. Jim, forget it all. I was mad, I am mad, I
+have been mad for a long time, but it cannot last much longer. I know it
+can&rsquo;t, and, Jim, by all our past love, by the memories of the dear old
+days at St. Paul&rsquo;s and at Harvard, the dear old days of hope and
+happiness, when we planned for the future, try to think of me only as you
+knew me then, as you know that I should now be, but for the &lsquo;System&rsquo;s&rsquo;
+curse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The clerks were pounding on the door; through the glass showed many forms.
+They had been gathering for minutes while Bob talked in his low, sad tone,
+a tone that no one could believe came from the same mouth that a few
+moments before had poured forth a flood of brutal heartlessness.</p>
+
+<p>Bob went to the door. The office was in an uproar. Twenty or thirty of
+Bob&rsquo;s brokers were there, aghast at not getting a reply to their calls.
+Many more were pouring in through the outer office. Bob looked at them
+coldly. &ldquo;Well, what is the trouble? Is it possible we are down to a point
+where the Stock Exchange rushes over to a man&rsquo;s office when his wire
+happens to break down?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They saw his bluff. You cannot deceive Stock Exchange men, at least not
+the kind that Bob Brownley employed on panic days, but his coolness
+reassured them, and when they saw me it was odds-on that they guessed to a
+man why Bob had ignored his wires&mdash;guessed that I had been pleading for
+the life of &ldquo;the Street.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, where do you stand?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Frank Swan answered for the crowd: &ldquo;The panic is in full swing. She&rsquo;s a
+cellar-to-ridge-pole ripper. They&rsquo;re down 40 or over on an average.
+Anti-People&rsquo;s is down to 35, and still coming like sawdust over a broken
+dam. Barry Conant&rsquo;s house and a dozen other of Reinhart&rsquo;s have gone under.
+His banks and trust companies are going every minute. The whole Street
+will be overboard before the close. The governing committee has just
+called a meeting to see whether it will not be best to adjourn the
+Exchange over to-day and to-morrow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob listened as if he had been a master at the wheel in a gale, receiving
+reports from his mates.</p>
+
+<p>There was no trace now of the scene he had just been through. He was cool,
+masterful, like the seasoned sea-dog who knows that in spite of the
+ocean&rsquo;s rage and the wind&rsquo;s howl, the wheel will answer his hand and the
+craft its rudder. &ldquo;Jim, come over to the Exchange.&rdquo; The crowd followed
+along. &ldquo;We have but a minute and I want to have you say you forgive me,&rdquo;
+he said to me. &ldquo;I know, Jim, you understand it all, but I must tell you
+how sorrowful I am that in my madness I should have so forgotten my
+admiration, respect, and love for you, yes, and my gratitude to you, as to
+say what I did. I&rsquo;ll do the only thing I can to atone. I will stop this
+panic and undo as much as possible of my work; and now that I have wrecked
+Reinhart I am through with this game forever, yes, through forever.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He pressed my hand in his strong, honest one and strode into the Exchange
+ahead of the crowd. All was chaos, although the trading had toned down to
+a sullen desperation. So many houses, banks, and trust companies had
+failed that no man knew whether the member he had traded with early in
+the day would on the morrow be solvent enough to carry out his trades. The
+man who had been &ldquo;long&rdquo; in the morning, and had sold out before the crash,
+and who thought he now had no interest in the panic, found himself with
+his stock again on hand, because of the failure of the one to whom he had
+sold, and the price cut in two. The man who was &ldquo;short&rdquo; and who a few
+minutes before had been eagerly counting his profits now knew that they
+had been turned to loss, because the man from whom he had borrowed his
+short stocks for delivery would be in no condition to repay for them, the
+next day, when they should be returned to him. The &ldquo;short&rdquo; man was
+himself, therefore, &ldquo;long&rdquo; stocks he had bought to cover his &ldquo;short&rdquo; sale.
+In depressing the price he had been working against his own pocket instead
+of against the bulls he had thought he was opposing. All was confusion and
+black despair. There is, indeed, no blacker place than the floor of the
+Stock Exchange after a panic cyclone has swept it, and is yet lingering in
+its corners, while the survivors of its fury do not know whether or not it
+will again gather force.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="ch09"></a>Chapter IX.</h2>
+
+<p>The Governing Committee was holding a meeting in its room. Bob rushed in
+unceremoniously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One word, gentlemen,&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;I have more trades outstanding, both
+buys and sells, than any other member or house. Before deciding whether to
+adjourn in an attempt to save &lsquo;the Street&rsquo;, I ask your consideration of
+this proposition: If the Exchange will suspend operations for thirty
+minutes, and allow me to address the members on the floor, I will agree to
+buy stocks all around the room, until they have regained at least half
+their drop&mdash;all of it, if possible. I will buy until I have exhausted to
+the last hundred my fortune of a billion dollars. This should make an
+adjournment unnecessary. I know that this is a most extraordinary request,
+but you are confronted with a most extraordinary situation, the most
+remarkable in the history of the Stock Exchange. Already, if what they say
+on the floor is correct, over two hundred banks and trust companies
+throughout the country have gone under, and new failures are being
+announced every minute. Half the members of this and the Boston and
+Philadelphia Exchanges are insolvent and have closed their doors, or will
+close them before three o&rsquo;clock, and the shrinkage in values so far
+reported runs over fifteen billions. Unless something is done before the
+close, there will be a similar panic in every Exchange and Bourse in
+Europe to-morrow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The committee instantly voted to lay the proposition before the full
+board. In another minute the president&rsquo;s gavel sounded, and the floor was
+still as a tomb. All eyes were fixed on the president. Every man in that
+great throng knew that upon the announcement they were about to hear,
+might depend, at least temporarily, the welfare, not only of Wall Street,
+but of the nation, perhaps even of the civilised world. The president
+spoke:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Members of the New York Stock Exchange:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Governing Committee instructs me to say that Mr. Robert Brownley has
+asked that operations be suspended for thirty minutes, in order that he be
+allowed to address you. Mr. Brownley has agreed, if this request be
+granted, he will upon resumption of operations purchase a sufficient
+amount of stock to raise the average price of all active shares at least
+one-half their total drop&mdash;all of it, if possible. He agrees to buy to the
+limit of his fortune of a billion dollars. I now put Mr. Brownley&rsquo;s
+request to a vote. All those in favour of granting it will signify the
+same by saying &lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A mighty roof-lifting &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; sounded through the room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All those opposed, &lsquo;No.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was a deathly hush.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Brownley will please speak from this platform, and remember, in
+thirty minutes to the second, I will sound the gavel for the resumption of
+business.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob Brownley strode to the place just vacated by the president. The crowd
+was growing larger every minute. The ticker was already hissing a tape
+biograph of this extraordinary situation in brokerage shops, hotels, and
+banks throughout the country, and in a few minutes the news of it would be
+in the capitals of Europe. Never before in history did man have such an
+audience&mdash;the whole civilised world. Already arose from Wall, Broad, and
+New Streets, which surround the Exchange, the hoarse bellow of the
+gathering hordes. Before the ticker should announce the resumption of
+business these would number hundreds of thousands, for the financial
+district for more than an hour had been a surging mob.</p>
+
+<p>For once at least the much-abused phrase, &ldquo;He looked the part,&rdquo; could be
+used in all truthfulness. As Robert Brownley threw back his head and
+shoulders and faced that crowd of men, some of whom he had hurt, many of
+whom he had beggared, and all of whom he had tortured, he presented a
+picture such as a royal lion recently from the jungles and just freed from
+his cage might have made. Defiance, deference, contempt, and pity all
+blended in his mien, but over all was an I-am-the-one-you-are-the-many
+atmosphere of confidence that turned my spinal column into a mercury tube.
+He began to speak:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Men of Wall Street:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have just witnessed a record-breaking slaughter. I have asked
+permission to talk to you for the purpose of showing you how any member of
+a great Stock Exchange may at any time do what I have done to-day. Weigh
+well what I am about to say to you. During the last quarter of a century
+there has grown up in this free and fair land of ours a system by which
+the few take from the many the results of their labours. The men who take
+have no more license, from God or man, to take, than have those from whom
+they filch. They are not endowed by God with superior wisdom, nor have
+they performed for their fellow-men any labour or given to them anything
+of value that entitles them to what they take. Their only license to
+plunder is their knowledge of the system of trickery and fraud that they
+themselves have created. No man can gainsay this, for on every side is the
+evidence. Men come into Wall Street at sunrise without dollars; before
+that same sun sets they depart with millions. So all-powerful has grown
+the system of oppression that single men take in a single lifetime all the
+savings of a million of their fellows. To-day the people, eighty millions
+strong, are slaving for the few, and their pay is their board and keep. I
+saw this robbery. I felt the robbers&rsquo; scourge. I sought the secret. I
+found it here, here in this gambling-hell. I found that the stocks we
+bought and sold were mere gambling chips; that the man who had the
+biggest stack could beat his opponent off the board; that his opponent was
+the world, because all men directly or indirectly played the
+stock-gambling game. To win, it was but necessary to have unlimited chips.
+If chips were bought and sold, on equal terms, by all, no one could buy
+more than he could pay for, and the game, although still a gambling one,
+would be fair. A few master tricksters, dollar magicians, long ago seeing
+this condition, invented the system by which the people are ruthlessly
+plundered. The system they invented was simple, so simple that for a
+quarter of a century it has remained undiscovered by the world at
+large&mdash;and even by you, who profess to be experts. No man thought that a
+free people who had intended to allow all the equal use of every avenue
+for the attainment of wealth, and who intended to provide for the
+safeguarding of wealth after it was secured, could be such dolts as to
+allow themselves to be robbed of all their accumulated wealth by a device
+as simple as that by which children play at blindman&rsquo;s buff. The process
+was no more complex than that employed by the robber of old, who took the
+pebbles from the beach, marked them money, and with the money bought the
+labour of his fellows, and by the manipulation of that labour and by
+turning pebbles into money he took away from the labourer the money which
+he had paid them for the labour until all in the land were slaves of the
+moneymaker. These few tricksters said: We will arbitrarily manufacture
+these chips&mdash;stocks. After we have manufactured them, we will sell the
+world what the world can pay for, and then by the use of the unlimited
+supply we still have we will win away from the world what it has bought,
+and repeat the operation, until we have all the wealth, and the people are
+enslaved. To do this there was one thing besides the manufacturing of the
+chips&mdash;stocks&mdash;that was absolutely necessary&mdash;a gambling-hell, the working
+of whose machinery would place a selling value upon such chips; a hell
+where, after selling the chips, they could be won back. I saw that if
+these tricksters were to be routed and their &lsquo;System&rsquo; was to be destroyed,
+it must be through the machinery of this Stock Exchange. I studied the
+machinery, and presently I marvelled that men could for so long have been
+asses.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;From the very nature of stock-gambling it is necessary, absolutely
+necessary, that it be conducted under certain rules, unchangeable,
+unbreakable rules, to attempt to change or break which would destroy
+stock-gambling. The foundation rule, the rule absolutely necessary for the
+existence of stock-gambling is: Any member of the Stock Exchange can buy,
+or sell, between the opening and the closing of the Exchange as many
+shares of stock as he cares to. With this rule in force his buying and
+selling cannot be restricted to the amount he can take and pay for, or
+deliver and receive pay for, because there is not money enough in the
+world to pay for what under this same rule can be bought and sold in a
+single session. This is because there have been arbitrarily created by
+these few tricksters many times more stocks than there is money in
+existence. The amount of stock that any man can sell in one session of the
+Exchange is limited only by the amount that he can offer for sale, and he
+can offer any amount his tongue can utter; and he is not compelled and
+cannot be compelled to show his ability to deliver what he has offered for
+sale until after he has finished selling, which is the following day. You
+will ask as I did: Can this be possible? You will find the answer I
+found. It is so, and must continue to be so, or there will be no
+stock-gambling. Mark me, for this statement is weighted with the greatest
+import to you all. A member of this Exchange can sell as many shares of
+stock at one session as he cares to offer. If any attempt is made at the
+session he sells at to compel him either before or after he offers to sell
+to show his ability to deliver, away goes the stock-gambling structure,
+because from the very nature of the whole structure of stock-gambling the
+same shares are sold and resold many times in each session and the seller
+cannot know, much less show, that he can deliver until he first adjusts
+with the buyer and the buyer cannot adjust until after he has become such
+by buying. If a rule were made compelling a seller to show his
+responsibility before selling, every member would have every other member
+at his mercy and there could be no stock-gambling. When I had worked this
+out, I saw that while the few tricksters of the &lsquo;System&rsquo; had a perfect
+device for taking from the people their wealth, I had discovered as
+perfect a means of taking away from the few the wealth they had secured
+from the many. With this knowledge came a conviction that my way was as
+honest as the &lsquo;System&rsquo;s,&rsquo; in fact more honest than theirs. They took from
+the innocent, I took from the guilty what had already been dishonestly
+secured. I determined to put my discovery into practice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I might never have done so but for that Sugar panic in which I was robbed
+of millions by the &lsquo;System&rsquo; through Barry Conant. In that panic the
+&lsquo;System,&rsquo; with its unlimited resources, filched from the people by the
+arbitrary manufacture of stocks, and by their manipulation did to me what
+I afterward discovered I could do to them, without any resources other
+than my right to do business on the floor of this Exchange. You saw the
+outcome, in the second Sugar panic, of my first experiment. In a few
+minutes I cleared a profit of ten million dollars. I could have made it
+fifty millions, or one hundred and fifty, but I was not then on familiar
+terms with my new robber-robbing device, and I had yet a heart. To make
+this ten millions of money, all that was necessary for me to do was to
+sell more Sugar than Barry Conant could buy. This was easy, because Barry
+Conant, not knowing of my newly invented trick, could buy only what he
+could pay for on the morrow, or, at least, what he believed his clients
+could pay for; while I, not intending to deliver what I sold&mdash;unless by
+smashing the price to a point where I could compel those who had bought to
+resell to me at millions less than I sold at&mdash;could sell unlimited
+amounts&mdash;literally unlimited amounts. When Barry Conant had bought all
+that he thought he could pay for, he was obliged to beat a retreat in
+front of my offerings, and I was able to smash, and smash, until the price
+was so low that he could not by the use of what he had bought, as
+collateral, borrow sufficient to pay me for what I had sold him. Then he
+was compelled to turn about and sell what he had bought from me, and when
+I had rebought it, for ten millions less than I had sold it for, the trick
+had been turned. I had sold him 100,000 shares say at 220. He had sold
+them back to me say at 120, and he stood where he had stood at the
+beginning. He had none of the 100,000 shares. Both of us stood, so far as
+stock was concerned, where we had stood at the beginning, but as to
+profits and losses there was this difference: I had ten millions of
+dollars profits, while Barry Conant&rsquo;s clients, the &lsquo;System,&rsquo; were ten
+millions losers&mdash;and all by a trick. The trick did not differ in
+principle from the one in constant practice by the &lsquo;System.&rsquo; When the
+&lsquo;System,&rsquo; after manufacturing Sugar stock, sell 100,000 shares to the
+people for $10,000,000, they so manipulate the market by the use of the
+$10,000,000 that they have taken from the people as to scare them into
+selling the 100,000 shares back to them for $5,000,000. After they have
+bought they again manipulate the market until the people buy back for
+$10,000,000 what they sold for $5,000,000. The &lsquo;System&rsquo; commits no legal
+crime. I committed no legal crime. I had not even infringed any rule of
+the Exchange, any more than had the &lsquo;System&rsquo; when they performed their
+trick. Since my experimental panic I have repeatedly put the trick in
+operation, and each time I have taken millions, until to-day I have in my
+control, as absolutely as though I had honestly earned them, as the
+labourer earns his week&rsquo;s wages, or the farmer the price of his crops,
+over $1,000,000,000, or sufficient to keep enslaved the rest of their
+lives a million people.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you intelligent men think of this situation? You know, because
+you know the stock-gambling game, that the American people, with their
+boasted brains and courage, come year after year with their bags of gold,
+the result of their prosperous labours, and dump them, hundreds of
+millions, into this gambling-inferno of yours. You know that they are
+fools, these silly millions of people whom you term lambs and suckers. You
+chuckle as, year after year, having been sent away shorn, they return for
+new shearing. You marvel that the merchants, manufacturers, miners,
+lawyers, farmers, who have sufficient intelligence to gather such surplus
+legitimately, would bring it to our gambling-hell, where upon all sides is
+plain proof that we who conduct the gambling, and who produce nothing, are
+obliged to take from those who do produce, hundreds of millions each year
+for expenses, and hundreds of millions each year for profits&mdash;for you know
+that we have nothing to give them in return for what they bring to us. You
+know that every dollar of the billions lost in Wall Street means higher
+prices for steel rails, for lumber and cars, and that this means higher
+passenger and freight rates to the people. You know that when the
+manufacturer brings his wealth to Wall Street and is robbed of it, he
+will add something to the price of boots and shoes, cotton and woollen
+clothes, and other necessities that he makes and that he sells to the
+people. You know that when the copper, lead, tin, and iron miners part
+with their surplus to the &lsquo;System,&rsquo; it means higher prices to the people
+for their copper pots and gutters, for the water that comes through lead
+pipes, for their tin dippers and wash boilers, and for their rents, and
+all those necessities into which machinery, lumber, and other raw and
+finished material enters. You know that every hundred millions dropped by
+real producers to the brigands of our world means lower wages or less of
+the necessities and luxuries for all the people, and especially for the
+farmer. You know that it is habit with us of Wall Street to gloat over the
+doctrine of the &lsquo;System,&rsquo; which the people parrot among themselves, the
+doctrine that the people at large are not affected by our gambling,
+because they, the people, having no surplus to gamble with, never come
+into Wall Street. And yet, knowing all this, you never thought, with all
+your wisdom and cynicism, that right here in this institution, which you
+own and control, was the open sesame, for each or all of you, to those
+great chests of gold that your clients, the &lsquo;System,&rsquo; have filled to
+bursting from the stores of the people. What, I ask, do you wise men think
+of the situation as you now see it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was an oppressive stillness on the floor. The great crowd, which now
+contained nearly all the members of the Exchange, listened with bulging
+eyes and open mouths to the revelations of their fellow member. From time
+to time, as Bob Brownley poured forth his shot and shell of deadly logic,
+from the vast mob that now surrounded the Exchange rose a hoarse bellow of
+impatience, for few in that dense throng outside could understand the
+silence of the gigantic human crusher, which between the hours of ten and
+three was never before known to miss a revolution except while its
+victims&rsquo; hearts and souls were being removed from its gears and meshes.</p>
+
+<p>Bob Brownley paused and looked down into the faces of the breathless
+gamblers with a contempt that was superb. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Men of Wall Street, it is writ in the books of the ancients that every
+evil contains within itself a cure or a destroyer. I do not pretend that
+what I am revealing to you is to you a cure for this hideous evil, but I
+do say that what I am giving you is a destroyer for it, and that while it
+will be to the world a cure, it may leave you in a more fiery hell than
+the one of which you now feel the flames. I do not care if it does. When I
+am through, any member of the New York Stock Exchange who feels the iron
+in his soul can get instant revenge and unlimited wealth. You who are
+turning over in your minds the consideration that your great body can make
+new rules to render my discovery inoperative, are dealing with a shadow.
+There is no rule or device that can prevent its working. There are one
+thousand seats in the New York Stock Exchange. They are worth to-day
+$95,000 apiece, or $95,000,000 in all. Their value is due to the fact that
+this Exchange deals in between one and three million shares a day. Were
+any attempt made to prevent the operation of my invention, transactions
+would because of such attempt drop to five or ten thousand shares per day,
+or to such transactions as represent stock that will be actually delivered
+and actually paid for. To make my invention useless it must be made
+impossible to buy or sell the same share of stock more than once at one
+session, and short selling, which is now, as you know, the foundation of
+the modern stock-gambling structure, must likewise be made impossible. If
+this could be done the $95,000,000 worth of seats in the Exchange would be
+worth less than five millions, and, what is of far greater import to all
+the people, the financial world would be revolutionised. Men of Wall
+Street, do not fool yourselves. My invention is a sure destroyer of the
+greatest curse in the world, stock-gambling.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A sullen growl rose from the gamblers. Robert Brownley glared down his
+defiance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let me show you the impossibility of preventing in the future anyone&rsquo;s
+doing what I have done to you so many times during the past five years.
+All the capital required to work my invention is nerve and desperation, or
+nerve without desperation. It is well known to you that there are at all
+times Exchange members who will commit any crime, barring perhaps murder,
+to gain millions. Your members have from time to time shown nerve or
+desperation enough to embezzle, raise certificates, give bogus checks,
+counterfeit stocks and bonds, and this for gain of less than millions, and
+when detection was probable. All these are criminal offences and their
+detection is sure to bring disgrace and State prison. Yet members of this
+Exchange desperate enough to take the chance, when confronted with loss of
+fortune and open bankruptcy, have always been found with nerve enough to
+attempt the crimes. I repeat that there are at all times Exchange members
+who will commit any crime, barring perhaps murder, to gain millions. That
+you may see that my successors will surely come from your midst from time
+to time during the future existence of the Exchange, I will enumerate the
+different classes of members who will follow in my footsteps:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;First, the &lsquo;In Gold We Trust&rsquo; schemer who is of the &lsquo;System&rsquo; type, but
+who is outside the magic circle. A man of this class will reason: I know
+scores of men, who stand high on &lsquo;the Street&rsquo; and in the social world, who
+have tens of millions that they have filched by &lsquo;System&rsquo; tricks, if not by
+legal crimes. If I perform this trick of Brownley&rsquo;s, the trick of selling
+short until a panic is produced, I shall make millions and none will be
+the wiser. For all I know, many of the multi-millionaires whom I have seen
+produce panics and who were applauded by &lsquo;the Street&rsquo; and the press for
+their ability and daring, and whose standing, business and social, is now
+the highest, were only doing this same thing, and having been successful,
+they have never been detected or suspected. But even suppose I fail, which
+can only be through some extraordinary accident happening while I am
+engaged in selling, I shall have committed no crime, and, in fact, shall
+have done no one any great moral wrong, for if I fail to carry out my
+contract to deliver the stock I have sold in trying to produce a panic,
+the men to whom I have sold will be no worse off for not receiving what
+they bought; in fact they will stand just where they stood before I
+attempted to bring on a panic.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Second, if an Exchange member for any reason should find himself
+overboard and should realise that he must publicly become bankrupt and
+lose all, he surely would be a fool not to attempt to produce a panic,
+when its production would enable him to recoup his losses and prevent his
+failure, and when if by accident he should fail in his attempt to produce
+a panic, the penalty would simply be his bankruptcy, which would have
+taken place in any event.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The third class is that large one that always will exist while there is
+stock-gambling, a class of honest, square-dealing-play-the-game-fair-Exchange
+men who would take no unfair advantage of their fellow-members until they
+become awakened to the knowledge that they are about to be ruined by their
+fellow-members&rsquo; trickery.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Next, let us consider further whether it is possible for our Exchange to
+prevent my device from being worked, now that it is known to all. Suppose
+the Governing Committee was informed in advance that the attempt to work
+the trick was to be made. If, at any session, after gong-strike, the
+Governing Committee, or any Exchange authority, could for any reason
+compel a member to cease operating, even for the purpose of showing that
+his transactions were legitimate, the entire structure of stock-gambling
+would fall. Think it through: Suppose a man like Barry Conant or myself,
+or any active commission broker, begins the execution of a large order for
+a client, one, say, who has advance information of a receivership, a fire
+at a mine, the death of a President, a declaration of war, or any of the
+hundred and one items of information that must be acted upon instantly,
+where a delay of a minute would ruin the broker, or his house, or its
+clients. If the Governing Committee could thus call the broker to account,
+the professional bear or the schemer, who desired to prevent him from
+selling, would have but to pass the word to the president of the Exchange
+that the broker in question was about to work Brownley&rsquo;s discovery and he
+could be taken from the crowd and before he returned his place could be
+taken by others and he could be ruined.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Men of Wall Street, it is impossible to prevent the repetition of those
+acts by which in five years I have accumulated a billion dollars,
+impossible so long as a short sale or a repurchase and resale, is allowed.
+When short sales, and repurchases and resales, are made impossible, stock
+speculation will be dead. When stock speculation is dead, the people can
+no longer be robbed by the &lsquo;System.&rsquo; In leaving you, the Exchange, and
+stock-gambling forever, as I shall when I leave this platform, I will say
+from the depth of a heart that has been broken, from the profoundity of a
+soul that has been withered by the &lsquo;System&rsquo;s&rsquo; poison, with a full sense
+of my responsibility to my fellow-man and to my God, that I advise every
+one of you to do what I have done and to do it quickly, before the doing
+of it by others shall have made it impossible, before the doing of it by
+others shall have blown up the whole stock-gambling structure. In
+accepting my advice you can quiet your conscience, those of you who have
+any, with this argument: &lsquo;If I start, I am sure of success. If I succeed,
+no one will be the wiser. The millions I secure I will take from men who
+took them from others, and who would take mine. The more I and others
+take, the sooner will come the day when the stock-gambling structure will
+fall.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The day on which the stock-gambling structure falls is the day for which
+all honest men and women should pray.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Bob Brownley paused and let his eyes sweep his dumfounded audience. There
+was not a murmur. The crowd was speechless.</p>
+
+<p>Again his eyes swept the room. Then he slowly raised his right hand with
+fist clenched, as though about to deal a blow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Men of Wall Street&rdquo;&mdash;his voice was now deep and solemn&mdash;&ldquo;to show that
+Robert Brownley knew what was fitting for the last day of his career, he
+has revealed to you the trick&mdash;and more.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Many of you are desperate. Many of you by to-morrow will be ruined. The
+time of all times for such to put my trick in practice is now. The victim
+of victims is ready for the experiment. I am he. I have a billion dollars.
+With this billion dollars I am able to buy ten million shares of the
+leading stocks and to pay for them, even though after I have bought they
+fall a hundred dollars a share. Here is your chance to prevent your ruin,
+your chance to retrieve your fortune, your chance to secure revenge upon
+me, the one who has robbed you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He paused only long enough for his astounding advice to connect with his
+listener&rsquo;s now keenly sensitive nerve centres; then deep and clear rang
+out, &ldquo;Barry Conant.&rdquo; The wiry form of Bob&rsquo;s old antagonist leaped to the
+rostrum.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I authorise you to buy any part of ten million shares of the leading
+stocks at any price up to fifty points above the present market. There is
+my check-book signed in blank, and I authorise you to use it up to a
+billion dollars, and I agree to have in bank to-morrow sufficient funds to
+meet any checks you draw. You have failed to-day for seven millions, and,
+therefore, cannot trade, but I herewith announce that I will pay all the
+indebtedness of Barry Conant and his house. Therefore he is now in good
+standing.&rdquo; Bob had kept his eye on the great clock; as the last word
+passed his lips, the President&rsquo;s gavel descended.</p>
+
+<p>With a mighty rush the gamblers leaped for the different poles. Barry
+Conant with lightning rapidity gave his orders to twenty of his
+assistants, who, when Bob Brownley called for Conant, had gathered around
+their chief. In less than a minute the dollar-battle of the age was on, a
+battle such as no man had ever seen before. It required no supernatural
+wisdom for any man on the floor to see that Bob Brownley&rsquo;s seed had fallen
+in superheated soil, that his until now secret hellite was about to be
+tested. It needed no expert in the mystic art of deciphering the wall
+hieroglyphics of Old Hag Fate to see that the hands on the clock of the
+&ldquo;System&rdquo; were approaching twelve. It needed no ear trained to hear human
+heart and soul beats to detect the approaching sound of onrushing doom to
+the stock-gambling structure. The deafening roar of the brokers that had
+broken the stillness following Robert Brownley&rsquo;s fateful speech had
+awakened echoes that threatened to shake down the Exchange walls. The
+surging mob on the outside was roaring like a million hungry lions in an
+Arbestan run at slaughter time.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="ch10"></a>Chapter X.</h2>
+
+<p>The instant after the gong sounded Bob Brownley was alone on the floor at
+the foot of the president&rsquo;s desk. His form was swaying like a reed on the
+edge of the cyclone&rsquo;s path. I jumped to his side. His brother, who had
+during Bob&rsquo;s harangue been vainly endeavouring to beat his way through the
+crowd, was there first. &ldquo;For God&rsquo;s sake, Bob, hear me. Word came from your
+house half an hour ago of the miracle: Beulah has awakened to her past.
+Her mind is clear; the nurses are frantic for you to come to her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He got no further. With a mad bellow and a bound, like a tortured bull
+that sees the arena walls go down, Bob rushed out through the nearest
+door, which, I thanked God, was a side one leading to the street where the
+crowd was thinnest. He cast a wild look around. His eyes lighted on an
+empty automobile whose chauffeur had deserted to the crowd. It was the
+work of a second to crank it; of another to jump into the front seat.
+Quick as had been his movement, I was behind him in the rear seat. With a
+bound the great machine leaped through the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In the name of Christ, Bob, be careful,&rdquo; I yelled, as he hurled the iron
+monster through the throng, scattering it to the right and left as the
+mower scatters the sheaves in the wheat fields. Some were crushed beneath
+its wheels. Bob Brownley heard not their screams, heard not the curses of
+those who escaped. He was on his feet, his body crouched low over the
+steering-wheel, which he grasped in his vise-like hands. His hatless head
+was thrust far out, as though it strove to get to Beulah Sands ahead of
+his body. His teeth were set, and as I had jumped into the machine I had
+noted that his eyes were those of a maniac, who saw sanity just ahead if
+he could but get to it in time. His ears were deaf not only to the howl of
+the terrified throng and the curses of the teamsters who frantically
+pulled their horses to the curb, but to my warnings as well. He swung the
+machine around the corner at New Street and into Wall as though it had
+been the broadest boulevard in the park. He took Wall Street at a bound I
+was sure would land us through the fence into Trinity&rsquo;s churchyard. But
+no. Again he turned the corner, throwing the Juggernaut on its outside
+wheels from Wall Street into Broadway as the crowds on the sidewalk held
+their breath in horror. I, too, was on my feet, but crouching as I hung to
+the sides. Thank God, that usually crowded thoroughfare was free from
+vehicles as far up as I could see, on beyond the Astor House. What could
+it mean? Was that divinity which &rsquo;tis said protects the drunkard and the
+idiot about to aid the mad rush of this love-frenzied creature to his
+long-lost but newly returned dear one? I heard the frantic clang of gongs,
+and as we shot by the World Building, I saw ahead of us two plunging
+automobiles filled with men. &rsquo;Twas from them the gong clamour sounded. As
+we drew nearer. I saw that these were the cars of the fire chiefs
+answering a call. I thanked God again and again as I yelled into Bob&rsquo;s
+ear, &ldquo;For Beulah&rsquo;s sake, Bob, don&rsquo;t pass; if you do, we&rsquo;ll run into a
+blockade. If we keep in the rear they&rsquo;ll clear our way, and we may get to
+her alive.&rdquo; I do not know whether he heard, but he held the machine in the
+rear of the other cars and did not try to pass. Away we went on our mad
+rush through crowded Broadway. At Union Square we lost our way-clearers.
+As our automobile jumped across Fourteenth Street into Fourth Avenue, Bob
+must have opened her up to the last notch, for she seemed to leap through
+the air. We sent two wagons crashing across the sidewalks into the
+buildings. Cries of rage arose above the din of the machine, and seemed to
+follow in our wake. Bob was dead to all we passed. His entire being seemed
+set on what was ahead. I knew he was an expert in the handling of the
+automobile, for since his misfortune, automobiling with Beulah Sands had
+been his favourite pastime, but who could expect to carry that plunging,
+swaying car to Forty-second Street! Bob seemed to be performing the
+wondrous task. We shot from curb to curb and around and in front of
+vehicles and foot passengers as though the driver&rsquo;s eyes and hands were
+inspired.</p>
+
+<p>Across the square at last and on up Fourth Avenue to Twenty-sixth Street.
+Then a dizzying whirl into Madison. Was he going to keep to it until he
+got to Forty-second Street and try to make Fifth Avenue along that
+congested block with its crush of Grand Central passengers and lines upon
+lines of hacks and teams? No. His head must be clear. Again he threw the
+great machine around the corner and into Fortieth Street. For a part of
+the block our wheels rode the sidewalk, and I awaited the crash. It did
+not come. Surely the new world Bob was speeding to must be a kind one,
+else why should Hag Fate, who had been at the steer-wheel of his life-car
+during the last five years, carry him safely through what looked a dozen
+sure deaths? Without slacking speed a jot we swung around the corner of
+Fortieth into Fifth Avenue. The road was clear to Forty-second; there a
+dense jam of cars, teams, and carriages blocked the crossing. Bob must
+have seen the solid wall for I heard his low muttered curse. Nothing else
+to indicate that we were blocked with his goal in sight. He never touched
+the speed controller, but took the two blocks as though shot from a
+catapult. The two? No, one, and three-quarters of the next, for when
+within a score of yards of the black wall he jammed down the brakes, and
+the iron mass ground and shook as though it would rend itself to atoms,
+but it stopped with its dasher and front wheels wedged in between a car
+and a dray. It had not stopped when Bob was off and up the avenue like a
+hound on the end-in-sight trail. I was after him while the astonished
+bystanders stared in wonder. As we neared Bob&rsquo;s house I could see people
+on the stoop. I heard Bob&rsquo;s secretary shout, &ldquo;Thank God, Mr. Brownley, you
+have come. She is in the office. I found her there, quiet and recovered.
+She did not ask a question. She said, &lsquo;Tell Mr. Brownley when he comes
+that I should like to see him.&rsquo; Then she ordered me to get the afternoon
+paper. I handed it to her an hour ago. I think she believes herself in her
+old office. I shut off the floor as you instructed. I did not dare go to
+her for fear she would ask questions. I have&rdquo;&mdash;but Bob was up the stairs
+two and three steps at a time.</p>
+
+<p>My breath was almost gone and it took me minutes to get to the second
+floor. My feet touched the top stair, when, O God! that sound! For five
+long years I had been trying to get it out of my ears, but now more
+guttural, more agonised than before, it broke upon my tortured senses. I
+did not need to seek its direction. With a bound I was at the threshold of
+Beulah Sands-Brownley&rsquo;s office. In that brief time the groans had
+stilled. For one instant I closed my eyes, for the very atmosphere of
+that hall moaned and groaned death. I opened them. Yes, I knew it. There
+at the desk was the beautiful gray-clad figure of five years ago. There
+the two arms resting on the desk. There the two beautiful hands holding
+the open paper, but the eyes, those marvellous gray-blue doors to an
+immortal soul&mdash;they were closed forever. The exquisitely beautiful face
+was cold and white and peaceful. Beulah Sands was dead. The hell-hounds of
+the &ldquo;System&rdquo; had overtaken its maimed and hunted victim; it had added her
+beautiful heart to the bags and barrels and hogsheads stored away in its
+big &ldquo;business-is-business&rdquo; safe-deposit vaults. My eyes in sick pity
+sought the form of my old schoolmate, my college chum, my partner, my
+friend, the man I loved. He was on his knees. His agonised face was turned
+to his wife. His clasped hands had been raised in an awful, heart-crushing
+prayer as his Maker touched the bell. Bob Brownley&rsquo;s great brown eyes were
+closed, his clasped hands had dropped against his wife&rsquo;s head, and in
+dropping had unloosed the glorious golden-brown waves until in fond
+abandon they had coiled around his arms and brow as though she for whom
+he had sacrificed all was shielding his beloved head from the chills and
+dark mists of the black river that laps the brink of the eternal rest. The
+&ldquo;System&rdquo; had skewered Robert Brownley&rsquo;s heart too. I staggered to his
+side. As I touched his now fast-icing brow my eyes fell upon the great
+black headlines spread across the top of the paper that Beulah Sands had
+been reading when the all-kind God had cut her bonds:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>   FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>And beneath in one column:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>   TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN VIRGINIA</p>
+
+<p>   THE RICHEST MAN IN THE STATE, THOMAS REINHART, MULTI-MILLIONAIRE, WHILE
+   TEMPORARILY INSANE FROM THE LOSS OF HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER, AND OF HIS
+   ENORMOUS FORTUNE, WHICH WAS SHATTERED IN TO-DAY&rsquo;S AWFUL PANIC, CUT HIS
+   THROAT. HIS DEATH WAS INSTANTANEOUS.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>In another column:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>   ROBERT BROWNLEY CREATES THE MOST AWFUL PANIC IN HISTORY, AND SPREADS
+   WRECK AND RUIN THROUGHOUT THE CIVILISED WORLD.</p></blockquote>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>Publisher&rsquo;s Note</h2>
+
+<p><i>The following are fac-similes of a few of the letters received by the
+author during the serial publication of &ldquo;Friday, the Thirteenth.&rdquo;</i></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="letter">
+RESIDENCE OF<br />
+THE PAULIST FATHERS<br />
+2158 PINE STREET
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+San Francisco, CA 21 October 1906
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+My Dear Mr. Lawson<br />
+    Kindly allow one of your countless admirers to express his extreme
+gratification with the announcement that you will add fiction to your
+distinguished literary achievements. Your gifts as a writer are so wonderful
+and fascinating that I look forward eagerly to your work in this new
+field&mdash;and I pray God to prosper you in all good.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">Sincerely,<br />
+John Marus Haudly
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+70 Kirkland St., Cambridge<br />
+Dec. 26, 1906.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Mr. T. W. Lawson,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Boston, Mass.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+My Dear Sir: Allow me to congratulate you on your last move and on your story,
+&ldquo;Friday, the Thirteenth&rdquo;.<br />
+    It is the best yet, not merely as a story but as an eye opener. I can begin
+to see daylight in spots, where it looks like a remedy and a real one. I
+can&rsquo;t see how you will work it; but I think I do get a hint, and it holds
+me tightly.<br />
+    That story ought to be issued in a cheap (25&cent;) edition in paper, and
+every man in American ought to read it. The third part is yet to come; but, if
+I mistake not, it will make us all say &ldquo;Hurrah!&rdquo; In this form the
+facts go home. They were too abstract before. Now they live and palpitate.
+Sincerely yours,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+[Illegible: H. W. Majorson]
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+Dowagiac, Mich., Dec 26, 1906.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Mr. T. Lawson,<br />
+Boston, Mass.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear Sir&mdash;<br />
+    I have just finished reading your second installment of &ldquo;Friday the
+13th.&rdquo; It is one of the greatest stories I ever read. Your previous
+articles are good, but this is a wonder. I believe you are sincere and cannot
+help admiring your wonderful courage + grit in going up against big odds. I
+have no axe to grind with you, simply think that no matter how big you may be
+you like to know that what you write is appreciated by the majority of good
+american citizens. So Here&rsquo;s to you Mr Lawson + I back you to eventually
+win. Smash &rsquo;em good.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Yours Truly<br />
+A. J. Hill.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+Grinnell, Iowa, Nov. 3 1906
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Thomas Lawson<br />
+Boston, Mass.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear Sir,<br />
+    What did &ldquo;Bob&rdquo; hear when he picked up the receiver. Impossible
+to wait one month to find out.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Yours truly,<br />
+A. W. Talbott
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+103 Stedman Street<br />
+Brookline Mass.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear Mr. Lawson:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+I have hit just read the first instalment of your serial &ldquo;Friday the
+13th.&rdquo;<br />
+    I was so interested, aroused and stirred, I felt I must express to you
+some of the appreciation I feel for the work you have done and are doing.<br />
+    The army of those who suffer is so great the human spoilers so strong;
+that one&rsquo;s heart goes out in gratitude to a champion who comes around and
+able willing to do better for the oppressed.<br />
+    Would it be an intrusion to extend sympathy to one bereft of the beautiful
+gift of loving companionship? I hope that it is sincerely felt.<br />
+    Many admire and rejoice in your work&mdash;may it go forward bringing the
+knowledge which is power to ever increasing numbers of American people.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Most Sincerely<br />
+Marion E. Major
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+December 14th, 1906
+</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center">
+L. GUY DENNETT<br />
+ATTORNEY AT LAW<br />
+48 TREMONT ST., BOSTON<br />
+TELEPHONE CONNECTION
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Nov. 21/06
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Thomas W. Lawson Esq.<br />
+Boston, Mass.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear Sir,<br />
+    I take it for granted that you want to know how the &ldquo;Public&rdquo; is
+going to take to your latest writing &ldquo;fiction&rdquo; and how are you to
+know unless your unknown friends write you?<br />
+    I have read every thing you have ever written because I believe in you and
+admire the work you have done and are doing and allow me to say that I finaly
+believe that you will one day be recognized as one of the greatest story
+writers of the age. The first section of &ldquo;Friday the Thirteenth&rdquo;
+has convinced me that you will be a sure winner.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Yours very truly,<br />
+L. Guy Dennett
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+Angola Tulare Co. Cal.<br />
+Dec. 29, 1906
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+W. T. Lawson,
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear Sir,<br />
+    I wanted to thank you for the first number of &ldquo;Friday the
+13th&rdquo;, but did not know your address. &ldquo;Everybody&rsquo;s&rdquo;
+contains some letters written you to Boston so hope this may reach its
+destination.<br />
+    I live in the wildest of the wooley west + such a god send as in
+&ldquo;Everybody&rsquo;s&rdquo; (sent me by a sister in Oakland Cal.) +
+containing the first number of your story, words inadequately suffices. Friday
+the 13th made an impression on me which I could not easily shake off if I
+would. I was so sorry it ended where it did that I wanted to cry out + could
+hardly wait for the Jan. number. Yesterday I bought one in Hanford Cal. rode 30
+miles north to get it. I live a mile from the recently filled in basin of old
+Tulare Lake. The snowfall on the mountains argue that our part of the Wild +
+Wooley may soon be a fishing station instead of an alfalfa ranch.<br />
+    Perhaps you don&rsquo;t understand how much your story is appreciated.<br />
+    You are Bob Brownley, <i>I know</i>. Can you really <i>feel</i> what you
+write as you make us do? Your characters appeal to me so that I live with them,
+every nerve alert to the straining point (but with pleasure). You are certianly
+the idol of the American people. I&rsquo;ve heard you discussed by rich + poor,
+monopolist + antimonopolist during the publication of &ldquo;Frenzied
+Finance&rdquo; + the worst a monopolist could say was that you were as bad as
+the Standard Oil, but wanted to get even. &ldquo;What is that but a
+virtue,&rdquo; exclaimed I. &ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t he have made millions by
+staying in, but <i>he</i> recognized his past failings and exposed
+<del>them</del> S.O. to uphold a nation. May honor attend him. Isn&rsquo;t that
+being a man and a gentleman?&rdquo;<br />
+    People read &ldquo;Frenzied Finance&rdquo; to a man + would loan the
+magazine one to another so those who felt the 15&cent; impossible could get the
+good of your revelations.<br />
+    I&rsquo;m glad you believe in sentiment&mdash;the heart-lasting sentiment
+(instead of dollars and desire) which I feared was becoming a thing of the
+past; There are still splendid men in America. God bless them.<br />
+    O happy New Year may the weight of your pen sway millions. Amen.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Respectfully,<br />
+Louise D. Tennent
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+See 14 Kings<br />
+Angola P.O.<br />
+Ca.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+Spokane, Wash.<br />
+December 28. 1906.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Mr. Thomas W. Lawson,<br />
+Boston, Mass.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear Sir:<br />
+    I have lived nine years in Anaconda, Montana, and therefore become somewhat
+familiar with amalgamated copper, etc. I want to say I have followed your
+writings with lively interest and have sworn by all the statements you have
+made. It is, therefore, with the greatest regret that I am compelled to state
+that my faith in you has been shattered.<br />
+    When you state in your story of &ldquo;Friday the 13th&rdquo; that the
+heroine walked in to an office in New York in the middle of July with a feather
+turban on her head I simply cannot swallow it. That a lady of refinement and
+good taste with $30,000 in the bank, and anxious to make a good appearance,
+should walk into an office in New York with a winter hat taxes my credulity to
+the breaking point. However, be that as it may, I want to say that you have
+made a big fight against great odds and that I admire your pluck and genius,
+and I hope you will keep right on fighting for the right.<br />
+    By the way, I might as well admit that it was my wife by the way is a
+superior woman who called my attention to the turban when I was reading your
+story aloud to her. I am,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Very truly yours,<br />
+John Ortson
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+O’Fallon, Ill. Nov. 22nd, 1906
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Thos W. Lawson<br />
+Boston, Mass.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear Sir,<br />
+    It has afforded me great pleasure to just have finished your first
+installment to &ldquo;Friday the 13th,&rdquo; as have also your previous
+writings, from which I learned a great deal,&mdash;although from a financial
+standpoint, following what I thought to be your advice, I am several thousand
+dollars looser,&mdash;and I take this means of contributing my mite of
+encouragement, firmly believing that your work is doing a great good, and
+trusting that success on the lines you have mapped out, will be your reward.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Very respectfully,<br />
+Wm. A. Staney.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+(I&rsquo;m awaiting your next installment)
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear sir:<br />
+    I have only had the pleasure of meeting you once&mdash;in your private car,
+with Thayer, when you were returning from your western trip&mdash;but I hope
+you will not consider me presuming if I take a moment of your valuable time to
+thank you for your masterpiece just begun in Everybody&rsquo;s.<br />
+    Such magic has not flowed from a pen for many a year.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Yours Truly<br />
+John O Powers
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+206 North 34th Street<br />
+Philadelphia
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+Des Moines, Iowa, 11/20, 1906
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Mr. Thos. Lawson<br />
+Boston.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear Sir,<br />
+    I like your story &ldquo;Friday the Thirteenth.&rdquo; For the information
+and added knowledge your previous writing has given me I thank you.<br />
+    &mdash;&ldquo;for the crow that is in him and the spurs that are on him to
+back up the crow with.&rdquo; You certainly are a game and competant old
+fighter.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Sincerely, with best wishes<br />
+[Illegible signature: A. S. Goodman]
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+St. Paul, Minn.,<br />
+November 26, 1906.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Mr. Thomas W. Lawson,<br />
+Boston,<br />
+Mass.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear Sir:<br />
+    I wish to congratulate you on the good story you wrote in Everybody&rsquo;s
+Magazine this month. It is the beat story I ever read and the best I ever
+saw published in any magazine.<br />
+    I am well posted on the &ldquo;Brokers&rdquo; business and enjoyed your story very
+much. I hope you will continue to write them. I know they are taken more
+from real life than immagination. I am sure they will be appreciated as
+much as &ldquo;Frenzied Finance&rdquo;. I have taken the liberty to send a good word
+to Ridgway&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+With best wishes, I remain<br />
+Yours respectfully,<br />
+<br />
+Western Union Telegraph Co.<br />
+R.A. Kelly
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+Los Angeles, Calif.,<br />
+December 11, 1906.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Mr. Thomas W. Lawson,<br />
+Boston, Mass.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+My dear Sir:<br />
+    It was indeed a pleasure to read your novel in this month&rsquo;s
+Everybody&rsquo;s. Being an old trader myself, I have appreciated every word of
+it and look forward for the continuation with much interest.<br />
+    I just want to say this too&mdash;that anyone who says that you cannot
+write anything else but &ldquo;Street&rdquo; gossip had better cover his
+&ldquo;shorts&rdquo;.<br />
+    Wishing you all kinds of success, and with congratulations on your splendid
+work, I am
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Very sincerely,<br />
+Nancy Brown<br />
+214 Citizens Nat&rsquo;l Bank Bldg.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+Washington, D.C.,<br />
+December 1, 1906.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Thos. W. Lawson, Esq.,<br />
+Boston,<br />
+Mass.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear Sir:<br />
+    I have just read with very great pleasure and edification the first
+installment of your excellent story &ldquo;Friday the 13th&rdquo;. It is so far
+a masterpiece.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Congratulating you. I remain<br />
+Very truly,<br />
+M. H. Ramaze
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+Cleburn, Texas, Dec 3 1906
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Mr. Thos. W. Lawson<br />
+Boston
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear Sirs:<br />
+    I have just your first installment of &ldquo;Friday 13th.&rdquo; It is OK +
+if the balance of the story is as good (+ I have no doubts on that score) you
+are &ldquo;It&rdquo; when it comes to writting fiction as well as tricking the
+Insurance Thief + Standard Oil Grafters.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Wishing you success<br />
+I am yours very truly<br />
+S. F. Welch
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="right">
+Rumford Falls, Maine,<br />
+November 20, 1906.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Mr. Tom Lewson,<br />
+Boston,<br />
+Mass.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Dear Sir:<br />
+    I have read all your writings in Everybody&rsquo;s, including the first
+installment of your story in the December number, and I must say that I am more
+than pleased with it. As a writer of fiction you are sure to make another big
+hit.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Yours truly,<br />
+W. I. White.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,4881 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Friday, the Thirteenth, by Thomas W. Lawson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Friday, the Thirteenth
+
+Author: Thomas W. Lawson
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2004 [EBook #12345]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRIDAY, THE THIRTEENTH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "I saw there something missing from her great blue eyes.
+I looked; gasped"]
+
+
+
+
+Friday, the Thirteenth
+
+A Novel by
+
+Thomas W. Lawson
+
+Frontispiece in colour by Sigismond de Ivanowski
+
+1907
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1906, 1907.
+Copyright, 1907.
+Published, February, 1907
+
+
+
+
+To Her
+
+I Dedicate This Book
+
+All That Is Good In This Little Waif, Which Is Very
+Dear To Me, I Know A Just God Will Place To
+Her Credit. All That Is Mean And Low And
+Human Could Never Have Been Birthed
+Had She Been Nigh To Guide An
+Ever Wayward Pen.
+
+_The Author._
+
+_The Nest, Dreamwold,
+August, 1906._
+
+
+
+
+Friday, the Thirteenth
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+
+
+"Friday, the 13th; I thought as much. If Bob has started, there will be
+hell, but I will see what I can do."
+
+The sound of my voice, as I dropped the receiver, seemed to part the mists
+of five years and usher me into the world of Then as though it had never
+passed on.
+
+I had been sitting in my office, letting the tape slide through my fingers
+while its every yard spelled "panic" in a constantly rising voice, when
+they told me that Brownley on the floor of the Exchange wanted me at the
+'phone, and "quick." Brownley was our junior partner and floor man. He
+talked with a rush. Stock Exchange floor men in panics never let their
+speech hobble.
+
+"Mr. Randolph, it's sizzling over here, and it's getting hotter every
+second. It's Bob--that is evident to all. If he keeps up this pace for
+twenty minutes longer, the sulphur will overflow 'the Street' and get
+into the banks and into the country, and no man can tell how much
+territory will be burned over by to-morrow. The boys have begged me to ask
+you to throw yourself into the breach and stay him. They agree you are the
+only hope now."
+
+"Are you sure, Fred, that this is Bob's work?" I asked. "Have you seen
+him?"
+
+"Yes, I have just come from his office, and glad I was to get out. He's on
+the war-path, Mr. Randolph--uglier than I ever saw him. The last time he
+broke loose was child's play to his mood to-day. Mother sent me word this
+morning that she saw last night the spell was coming. He had been up to
+see her and sisters, and mother thought from his tone he was about to
+disappear again. When she told me of his mood, and I remembered the day, I
+was afraid he might seek his vent here. Also I heard of his being about
+town till long after midnight. The minute I opened his office door this
+morning he flew at me like a panther. I told him I had only dropped in on
+my rounds for an order, as they were running off right smart, and I didn't
+know but he might like to pick up some bargains. 'Bargains!' he roared,
+'don't you know the day? Don't you know it is Friday, the 13th? Go back
+to that hell-pit and sell, sell, sell.' 'Sell what and how much?' I asked.
+'Anything, everything. Give the thieves every share they will take, and
+when they won't take any more, ram as much again down their crops until
+they spit up all they have been buying for the last three months!' Going
+out I met Jim Holliday and Frank Swan rushing in. They are evidently
+executing Bob's orders, and have been pouring Anti-People's out for an
+hour. They will be on the floor again in a few minutes, so I thought it
+safer to call you before I started to sell. Mr. Randolph, they cannot take
+much more of anything in here, and if I begin to throw stocks over, it
+will bring the gavel inside of ten minutes; and that will be to announce a
+dozen failures. It's yet twenty minutes to one and God only knows what
+will happen before three. It's up to you, Mr. Randolph, to do something,
+and unless I am on a bad slant, you haven't many minutes to lose."
+
+It was then I dropped the receiver with "I thought as much!" As I had been
+fingering the tape, watching five and ten millions crumbling from price
+values every few minutes, I was sure this was the work of Bob Brownley.
+No one else in Wall Street had the power, the nerve, and the devilish
+cruelty to rip things as they had been ripped during the last twenty
+minutes. The night before I had passed Bob in the theatre lobby. I gave
+him close scrutiny and saw the look of which I of all men best knew the
+meaning. The big brown eyes were set on space; the outer corners of the
+handsome mouth were drawn hard and tense as though weighted. As I had my
+wife with me it was impossible to follow him, but when I got home I called
+up his house and his clubs, intending to ask, him to run up and smoke a
+cigar with me, but could locate him nowhere. I tried again in the morning
+without success, but when just before noon the tape began to jump and
+flash and snarl, I remembered Bob's ugly mood, and all it portended.
+
+Fred Brownley was Bob's youngest brother, twelve years his junior. He had
+been with Randolph & Randolph from the day he left college, and for over a
+year had been our most trusted Stock Exchange man. Bob Brownley, when
+himself, was as fond of his "baby brother," as he called him, as his
+beautiful Southern mother was of both; but when the devil had possession
+of Bob--and his option during the past five years had been exercised many
+a time--mother and brother had to take their place with all the rest of
+the world, for then Bob knew no kindred, no friends. All the wide world
+was to him during those periods a jungle peopled with savage animals and
+reptiles to hunt and fight and tear and kill.
+
+It is hardly necessary for me to explain who Randolph & Randolph are. For
+more than sixty years the name has spoken for itself in every part of the
+world where dollar-making machines are installed. No railroad is financed,
+no great "industrial" projected, without by force of habit, hat-in-handing
+a by-your-leave of Randolph & Randolph, and every nation when entering the
+market for loans, knows that the favour of the foremost American bankers
+is something which must be reckoned with. I pride myself that at
+forty-two, at the end of the ten years I have had the helm of Randolph &
+Randolph, I have done nothing to mar the great name my father and uncle
+created, but something to add to its sterling reputation for honest
+dealing, fearless, old-fashioned methods, and all-round integrity.
+Bradstreet's and other mercantile agencies say, in reporting Randolph &
+Randolph, "Worth fifty millions and upward, credit unlimited." I can take
+but small praise for this, for the report was about the same the day I
+left college and came to the office to "learn the business." But, as the
+survivor of my great father and uncle, I can say, my Maker as my witness,
+that Randolph & Randolph have never loaned a dollar of their millions at
+over legal rates, 6 per cent, per annum; have never added to their hoard
+by any but fair, square business methods; and that blight of blights,
+frenzied finance, has yet to find a lodging-place beneath the old
+black-and-gold sign that father and uncle nailed up with their own hands
+over the entrance.
+
+Nineteen years ago I was graduated from Harvard. My classmate and chum,
+Bob Brownley, of Richmond, Va., was graduated with me. He was class poet,
+I, yard marshal. We had been four years together at St. Paul's previous to
+entering Harvard. No girl and lover were fonder than we of each other.
+
+My people had money, and to spare, and with it a hard-headed, Northern
+horse-sense. The Brownleys were poor as church mice, but they had the
+brilliant, virile blood of the old Southern oligarchy and the romantic,
+"salaam-to-no-one" Dixie-land pride of before-the-war days, when Southern
+prodigality and hospitality were found wherever women were fair and men's
+mirrors in the bottom of their julep-glasses.
+
+Bob's father, one of the big, white pillars of Southern aristocracy, had
+gone through Congress and the Senate of his country to the tune of "Spend
+and not spare," which left his widow and three younger daughters and a
+small son dependent upon Bob, his eldest.
+
+Many a warm summer's afternoon, as Bob and I paddled down the Charles, and
+often on a cold, crispy night as we sat in my shooting-box on the Cape Cod
+shore, had we matched up for our future. I was to have the inside run of
+the great banking business of Randolph & Randolph, and Bob was eventually
+to represent my father's firm on the floor of the Stock Exchange. "I'd die
+in an office," Bob used to say, "and the floor of the Stock Exchange is
+just the chimney-place to roast my hoe-cake in." So when our college days
+were over my able had saddled Bob's youth with the heavy responsibilities
+of husbanding and directing his family's slim finances that he took to
+business as a swallow to the air. We entered the office of Randolph &
+Randolph on the same day, and on its anniversary, a year later, my father
+summoned us into his office for a sort of tally-up talk. Neither of us
+quite knew what was coming, and we thrilled with pleasure when he said:
+
+"Jim, you and Bob have fairly outdone my expectations. I have had my eye
+on both of you and I want you to know that the kind of industry and
+business intelligence you have shown here would have won you recognition
+in any banking-house on 'the Street.' I want you both in the firm--Jim to
+learn his way round so he can step into my shoes; you, Bob, to take one of
+the firm's seats on the Stock Exchange."
+
+Bob's face went red and then pale with happiness as he reached for my
+father's hand.
+
+"I'm very grateful to you sir, far more so than any words can say, but I
+want to talk this proposition of yours over with Jim here first. He knows
+me better than any one else in the world and I've some ideas I'd like to
+thrash out with him."
+
+"Speak up here, Bob," said my father.
+
+"Well, sir, I should feel much better if I could go over there into the
+swirl and smash it out for myself. You see if I could win out alone and
+pay back the seat price, and then make a pile for myself, if you felt
+later like giving me another chance to come into the firm, then I should
+not be laying myself open to the charge of being a mere pensioner on your
+friendship. You know what I mean, sir, and won't think I am filled with
+any low-down pride, but if you will let me have the price of a Stock
+Exchange seat on my note, and will give me the chance, when I get the hang
+of the ropes, to handle some of the firm's orders, I shall be just as much
+beholden to you and Jim, sir, and shall feel a lot better myself."
+
+I knew what Bob meant; so did father, and we were glad enough to do what
+he asked, father insisting on making the seat price in the form of a
+present, after explaining to us that a foundation Stock Exchange rule
+prohibited an applicant from borrowing the seat price. Four years after
+Bob Brownley entered the Stock Exchange he had paid back the forty
+thousand, with interest, and not only had a snug fifty thousand to his
+credit on Randolph & Randolph's books, but was sending home six thousand a
+year while living up to, as he jokingly put it, "an honest man's notch." I
+may say in passing, that a Wall Street man's notch would make twice six
+thousand yearly earnings cast an uncertain shadow at Christmas time. Bob
+was the favourite of the Exchange, as he had been the pet at school and at
+college, and had his hands full of business three hundred days in the
+year. Besides Randolph & Randolph's choicest commissions, he had the
+confidential orders of two of the heavy plunging cliques.
+
+I had just passed my thirty-second birthday when my kind old dad suddenly
+died. For the previous six years I had been getting ready for such an
+event; that is, I had grown accustomed to hearing my father say: "Jim,
+don't let any grass grow in getting the hang of every branch of our
+business, so that when anything happens to me there will be no disturbance
+in 'the Street' in regard to Randolph & Randolph's affairs. I want to let
+the world know as soon as possible that after I am gone our business will
+run as it always has. So I will work you into my directorships in those
+companies where we have interests and gradually put you into my different
+trusteeships."
+
+Thus at father's death there was not a ripple in our affairs and none of
+the stocks known as "The Randolph's" fluttered a point because of that, to
+the financial world, momentous event. I inherited all of father's fortune
+other than four millions, which he divided up among relatives and
+charities, and took command of a business that gave me an income of two
+millions and a half a year.
+
+Once more I begged Bob to come into the firm.
+
+"Not yet, Jim," he replied. "I've got my seat and about a hundred thousand
+capital, and I want to feel that I'm free to kick my heels until I have
+raked together an even million all of my own making; then I'll settle down
+with you, old man, and hold my handle of the plough, and if some good girl
+happens along about that time--well, then it will be 'An ivy-covered
+little cot' for mine."
+
+He laughed, and I laughed too. Bob was looked upon by all his friends as a
+bad case of woman-shy. No woman, young or old, who had in any way crossed
+Bob's orbit but had felt that fascination, delicious to all women, in the
+presence of:
+
+    A soul by honour schooled,
+    A heart by passion ruled--
+
+but he never seemed to see it. As my wife--for I had been three years
+married and had two little Randolphs to show that both Katherine Blair and
+I knew what marriage was for--never tired of saying, "Poor Bob! He's
+woman-blind, and it looks as though he would never get his sight in that
+direction."
+
+"Then again, Jim," he continued in a tone of great seriousness, "there's a
+little secret I have never let even you into. The truth is I am not safe
+yet--not safe to speak for the old house of Randolph & Randolph. Yes, you
+may laugh--you who are, and always have been, as staunch and steady as the
+old bronze John Harvard in the yard, you who know Monday mornings just
+what you are going to do Saturday nights and all the days and nights in
+between, and who always do it. Jim, I have found since I have been over on
+the floor that the Southern gambling blood that made my grandfather, on
+one of his trips back from New York, though he had more land and slaves
+than he could use, stake his land and slaves--yes, and grandmother's
+too--on a card-game, and--lose, and change the whole face of the Brownley
+destiny--those same gambling microbes are in my blood, and when they begin
+to claw and gnaw I want to do something; and, Jim"--and the big brown eyes
+suddenly shot sparks--"if those microbes ever get unleashed, there'll be
+mischief to pay on the floor--sure there will!"
+
+Bob's handsome head was thrown back; his thin nostrils dilated as though
+there was in them the breath of conflict. The lips were drawn across the
+white teeth with just part enough to show their edges, and in the depths
+of the eyes was a dark-red blaze that somehow gave the impression one gets
+in looking down some long avenue of black at the instant a locomotive
+headlight rounds a curve at night.
+
+Twice before, way back in our college days, I had had a peep at this
+gambling tempter of Bob's. Once in a poker game in our rooms, when a crowd
+of New York classmates tried to run him out of a hand by the sheer weight
+of coin. And again at the Pequot House at New London on the eve of a
+varsity boat-race, when a Yale crowd shook a big wad of money and taunts
+at Bob until with a yell he left his usually well-leaded feet and
+frightened me, whose allowance was dollars to Bob's cents, at the sum
+total of the bet-cards he signed before he cleared the room of Yale money
+and came to with a white face streaming with cold perspiration. These
+events had passed out of my memory as the ordinary student breaks that any
+hot-blooded youth is liable to make in like circumstances. As I looked at
+Bob that day, while he tried to tell me that the business of Randolph &
+Randolph would not be safe in his keeping, I had to admit to myself that I
+was puzzled. I had regarded my old college chum not only as the best
+mentally harnessed man I had ever met, but I knew him as the soul of
+honour, that honour of the old story-books, and I could not credit his
+being tempted to jeopardise unfairly the rights or property of another.
+But it was habit with me to let Bob have his way, and I did not press him
+to come into our firm as a full partner.
+
+Five years later, during which time affairs, business and social, had been
+slipping along as well as either Bob or I could have asked, I was
+preparing for another sit-down to show my chum that the time had now come
+for him to help me in earnest, when a queer thing happened--one of those
+unaccountable incidents that God sometimes sees fit to drop across the
+life-paths of His children, paths heretofore as straight and
+far-ahead-visible as highways along which one has never to look twice to
+see where he is travelling; one of those events that, looked at
+retrospectively, are beyond all human understanding.
+
+It was a beautiful July Saturday noon and Bob and I had just "packed up"
+for the day preparatory to joining Mrs. Randolph on my yacht for a run
+down to our place at Newport. As we stepped out of his office one of the
+clerks announced that a lady had come in and had particularly asked to see
+Mr. Brownley.
+
+"Who the deuce can she be, coming in at this time on Saturday, just when
+all alive men are in a rush to shake the heat and dirt of business for
+food and the good air of all outdoors?" growled Bob. Then he said, "Show
+her in."
+
+Another minute and he had his answer.
+
+A lady entered.
+
+"Mr. Brownley?" She waited an instant to make sure he was the Virginian.
+
+Bob bowed.
+
+"I am Beulah Sands, of Sands Landing, Virginia. Your people know our
+people, Mr. Brownley, probably well enough for you to place me."
+
+"Of the Judge Lee Sands's?" asked Bob, as he held out his hand.
+
+"I am Judge Lee Sands's oldest daughter," said the sweetest voice I had
+ever heard, one of those mellow, rippling voices that start the
+imagination on a chase for a mocking-bird, only to bring it up at the pool
+beneath the brook-fall in quest of the harp of moss and watercresses that
+sends a bubbling cadence into its eddies and swirls. Perhaps it was the
+Southern accent that nibbled off the corners and edges of certain words
+and languidly let others mist themselves together, that gave it its
+luscious penetration--however that may be, it was the most
+no-yesterday-no-tomorrow voice I had ever heard. Before I grew fully
+conscious of the exquisite beauty of the girl, this voice of hers spelled
+its way into my brain like the breath of some bewitching Oriental essence.
+Nature, environment, the security of a perfect marriage have ever
+combined to constitute me loyal to my chosen one, yet as I stood silent,
+like one dumb, absorbing the details of the loveliness of this young
+stranger who had so suddenly swept into my office, it came over me that
+here was a woman intended to enlighten men who could not understand that
+shaft which in all ages has without warning pierced men's hearts and
+souls--love at first sight. Had there not been Katherine Blair, wife and
+mother--Katherine Blair Randolph, who filled my love-world as the noonday
+August sun fills the old-fashioned well with nestling warmth and restful
+shade--after this interval, looking back at the past, I dare ask the
+question--who knows but that I too might have drifted from the secure
+anchorage of my slow Yankee blood and floated into the deep waters?
+
+Beauty, the cynic's scoff, is in the eye of the beholder, or in an angle
+of vision--mere product of lime-light, point of view, desire--but Beulah
+Sands's was beauty beyond cavil, superior to all analysis, as definite as
+the evening star against the twilight sky. In height medium, girlish, but
+with a figure maturely modelled, charmingly full and rounded, yet by very
+perfection of proportion escaping suggestion of "plumpness." The head,
+surrounded and crowned with a wealth of dark golden hair, rested on a neck
+that would have seemed short had its slender column sprung less graciously
+from the lovely lines of the breast and shoulders beneath. It was on the
+face, however, and finally on the eyes that one's glances inevitably
+lingered--the face rose-tinted, with dimples in either of the full cheeks,
+entering laughing protest against the sad droop that brought slightly down
+the corners of a mouth too large perhaps for beauty, if the coral curve of
+the lips had been less exquisitely perfect. The straight, thin-nostriled
+nose, the broad forehead, the square, full jaw almost as low at the points
+where they come beneath the ears as at the chin, suggested dignity and
+high resolve coupled with a power of purpose, rare in woman. The
+combination of forehead, jaw, and nose was seldom seen. Had it been
+possessed by a man it would surely have driven him to the tented field for
+his profession. But the greatest glory of Beulah Sands was her
+eyes--large, full, very gray, very blue, vivid with all the glamour of her
+personality, full of smiles and tears and spirituality and passion; one
+instant, frankly innocent, they illuminated the face of a blonde Madonna;
+the next, seen through the extraordinary, long, jet-black eye-lashes
+underneath the finely pencilled black brows, they caressed, coquetted,
+allured. I afterward found much of this girl's purely physical fascination
+lay in this strange blending of English fairness with Andalusian tints,
+though the abiding quality of her charm was surely in an exaltation of
+spirit of which she might make the dullest conscious. As she stood looking
+at Bob in my office that long-ago noon, gracefully at ease in a suit of
+gray, with a gray-feathered turban on her head, and tiny lace bands at
+neck and wrist, she was very exquisite, exceedingly dainty, and, though
+Southerner of Southerners, very unlike the typical brunette girl who comes
+out of Dixie land.
+
+This girl who came into our office that July Saturday, just in time to
+interfere with the outing Bob Brownley and I had laid out, and who was
+destined to divert my chum's heretofore smooth-flowing river of existence
+and turn it into an alternation of roaring rushes and deadly calms, was
+truly the most exquisite creature one could conceive of, I know my
+thought must have been Bob's too, for his eyes were riveted on her face.
+She dropped the black lashes like a veil as she went on:
+
+"Mr. Brownley, I have just come from Sands Landing. I am very anxious to
+talk with you on a business matter. I have brought a letter to you from my
+father. If you have other engagements I can wait until Monday, although,"
+and the black veiling lashes lifted, showing the half-laughing,
+half-pathetic eyes, "I wanted much to lay my business before you at the
+earliest minute possible."
+
+There was a faint touch of appeal in the charming voice as she spoke that
+was irresistible, and we were both willing to forget we had lunch waiting
+us on the _Tribesman_.
+
+"Step into my office, Miss Sands, and all my time is yours," said Bob, as
+he opened the door between his office and mine. After I had sent a note to
+my wife, saying we might be delayed for an hour or two, I settled down to
+wait for Bob in the general office, and it was a long wait. Thirty minutes
+went into an hour and an hour into two before Bob and Miss Sands came out.
+After he had put her in a cab for her hotel, he said in a tone curiously
+intent: "Jim, I have got to talk with you, got to get some of your good
+advice. Suppose we hustle along to the yacht and after lunch you tell Kate
+we have some business to go over. I don't want to keep that girl waiting
+any longer than possible for an answer I cannot give until I get your
+ideas." After lunch, on the bow end of the upper deck Bob relieved
+himself. Relieved is the word, for from the minute he had put Miss Sands
+into the carriage until then, it was evident even to my wife that his
+thoughts were anywhere but upon our outing.
+
+"Jim," he began in a voice that shook in spite of his efforts to make it
+sound calm, "there is no disguising the fact that I am mightily worked up
+about this matter, and I want to do everything possible for this girl. No
+need of my telling you how sacred we have got to keep what she has just
+let me into. You'll see as I go along that it is sacred, and I know you
+will look at it as I do. Miss Sands must be helped out of her trouble.
+
+"Judge Lee Sands, her father, is the head of the old Sands family of
+Virginia. The Virginia Sands don't take off their bonnets to another
+family in this country, or elsewhere, for that matter, for anything that
+really counts. They have had brains, learning, money, and fixed position
+since Virginia was first settled. They are the best people of our State.
+It is a cross-road saying in Virginia that a Sands of Sands Landing can go
+to the bench, the United States Senate, the House, or the governor's chair
+for the starting, and nearly all of the men folks have held one or all of
+these honours for generations. The present judge has held them all. I
+don't know him personally, although my people and his have been thick from
+away back. Sands Landing on the James is some fifty miles above our home.
+The judge, Beulah Sands's father, is close on to seventy, and I have heard
+mother and father say is a stalwart, a Virginia stalwart. Being rich--that
+is, what we Virginians call rich, a million or so--he has been very active
+in affairs, and I knew before his daughter told me, that he was the
+trustee for about all the best estates in our part of the country. It
+seems from what she tells, that of late he has been very active in
+developing our coal-mines and railroads, and that particularly he took a
+prominent hand in the Seaboard Air Line. You know the road, for your
+father was a director, and I think the house has been prominent in its
+banking affairs. Now, Jim, this poor girl, who, it seems, has recently
+been acting as the judge's secretary, has just learned that that coup of
+Reinhart and his crowd has completely ruined her father. The decline has
+swamped his own fortune, and, what is worse, a million to a million and a
+half of his trust funds as well, and the old judge--well, you and I can
+understand his position. Yet I do not know that you just can, either, for
+you do not quite understand our Virginia life and the kind of revered
+position a man like Judge Sands occupies. You would have to know that to
+understand fully his present purgatory and the terrible position of this
+daughter, for it seems that since he began to get into deep water he has
+been relying upon her for courage and ideas. From our talk I gather she
+has a wonderful store of up-to-date business notions, and I am convinced
+from what she lays out that the judge's affairs are hopeless, and, Jim,
+when that old man goes down it will be a smash that will shake our State
+in more ways than one.
+
+"Up to now the girl has stood up to the blow like a man and has been able
+to steady the judge until he presents an exterior that holds down
+suspicion as to his real financial condition, although she says Reinhart
+and his Baltimore lawyer, from the ruthless way they put on the screws to
+shake out his holdings in the Air Line, must have a line on it that the
+judge is overboard. The old gentleman can keep things going for six months
+longer without jeopardising any of the remaining trust funds, of which he
+has some two millions, and while his wife, who is an invalid, knows the
+judge is in some trouble, she does not suspect his real position. His
+daughter says that when the blow came, that day of the panic, when
+Reinhart jammed the stock out of sight and scuttled her father's bankers
+and partners in the road, the Wilsons of Baltimore, she had a frightful
+struggle to keep her father from going insane. She told me that for three
+days and nights she kept him locked in their rooms at their hotel in
+Baltimore, to prevent him from hunting Reinhart and his lawyer Rettybone
+and killing them both, but that at last she got him calmed down and
+together they have been planning.
+
+"Jim, it was tough to sit there and listen to the schemes to recoup that
+this old gentleman and this girl, for she is only twenty-one, have tried
+to hatch up. The tears actually rolled down my cheeks as I listened; I
+couldn't help it; you couldn't either, Jim. But at last out of all the
+plans considered, they found only one that had a tint of hope in it, and
+the serious mention of even that one, Jim, in any but present
+circumstances, would make you think we were dealing with lunatics. But the
+girl has succeeded in making me think it worth trying. Yes, Jim, she has,
+and I have told her so, and I hope to God that that hard-headed
+horse-sense of yours will not make you sit down on it."
+
+Bob Brownley had got to his feet; he was slipping the shackles of that
+fiery, romantic, Southern passion that years in college and Wall Street
+had taught him to keep prisoner. His eyes were flashing sparks. His
+nostrils vibrated like a deer buck's in the autumn woods. He faced me with
+his hands clinched.
+
+"Jim Randolph," he went on, "as I listened to that girl's story of the
+terrible cruelty and devilish treachery practised by the human hyenas you
+and I associate with, human hyenas who, when in search of dirty
+dollars--the only thing they know anything about--put to shame the real
+beasts of the wilds--when I listened, I tell you that I felt it would not
+give me a twinge of conscience to put a ball through that slick scoundrel
+Reinhart. Yes, and that hired cur of his, too, who prostitutes a good
+family name and position, and an inherited ability the Almighty intended
+for more honest uses than the trapping of victims on whose purses his
+gutter-born master has set lecherous eyes. And, Jim, as I listened, a
+troop of old friends invaded my memory--friends whom I have not seen since
+before I went to Harvard, friends with whom I spent many a happy hour in
+my old Virginia home, friends born of my imagination, stalwart, rugged
+crusaders, who carried the sword and the cross and the banner inscribed
+'For Honour and for God.' Old friends who would troop into my boyhood and
+trumpet, 'Bob, don't forget, when you're a man, that the goal is honour,
+and the code: Do unto your neighbour as you would have your neighbour do
+unto you. Don't forget that millions is the crest of the groundlings.'
+And, Jim, I thought my friends looked at me with reproachful eyes, as
+they said, 'You are well on the road, Bob Brownley, and in time your heart
+and soul will bear the hall-mark of the snaky S on the two upright bars,
+and you will be but a frenzied fellow in the Dirty Dollar army.' Jim, Jim
+Randolph, as I listened to that agonising tale of the changing of that
+girl's heaven to hell, I did not see that halo you and I have thought
+surrounded the sign of Randolph & Randolph. I did not see it, Jim, but I
+did see myself, and I didn't feel proud of the picture. My God, Jim, is it
+possible you and I have joined the nobility of Dirty Dollars? Is it
+possible we are leaving trails along our life's path like that Reinhart
+left through the home of these Virginians, such trails as this girl has
+shown me?"
+
+Bob had worked himself into a state of frenzy. I had never seen him so
+excited as when he stood in front of me and almost shouted this fierce
+self-denunciation.
+
+"For heaven's sake, Bob, pull yourself together," I urged. "The captain on
+the bridge there is staring at you wild-eyed, and Katherine will be up
+here to see what has happened. Now, be a good fellow, and let us talk
+this thing over in a sensible way. At the gait you are going we can do
+nothing to help out your friends. Besides, what is there for you and me to
+take ourselves to task for? We are no wreckers and none of our dollars is
+stained with Frenzied Finance. My father, as you know, despised Reinhart
+and his sort as much as we do. Be yourself. What does this girl want you
+to do? If it is anything in reason, call it done, for you know there is
+nothing I won't do for you at the asking."
+
+Bob's hysteria oozed. He dropped on the rail-seat at my side.
+
+"I know it, Jim, I know it, and you must forgive me. The fact, is, Beulah
+Sands's story has aroused a lot of thoughts I have been a-sticking down
+cellar late years, for, to tell the truth, I have some nasty twinges of
+conscience every now and then when I get to thinking of this dollar game
+of ours."
+
+I saw that the impulsive blood was fast cooling, and that it would only be
+a question of minutes until Bob would be his clearheaded self.
+
+"Now, what is it she wants you to do?" I persisted. "Is it a case of
+money, of our trying to tide her father over?"
+
+"Nothing of that kind, Jim. You don't know the proud Virginia blood.
+Neither that girl nor her father would accept money help from any one.
+They would go to smash and the grave first."
+
+He paused and then continued impressively:
+
+"This is how she puts it. She and her father have raked together her
+different legacies and turned them into cash, a matter of sixty thousand
+dollars, and she got him to consent to let her come up here to see if
+during the next six months she might not, in a few desperate plunges in
+the market, run it up to enough to at least regain the trust funds. Yes, I
+know it is a wild idea. I told her so at the beginning, but there was no
+need; she knew it, for she is not only bright, but she has the best idea
+of business I ever knew a woman to have. But it is their only chance, Jim,
+and while I listened to her argument I came around to her way of
+thinking."
+
+"But how did she happen to come to you with this extraordinary scheme?" I
+interrupted.
+
+"It's this way--her father, who knew Randolph & Randolph through your
+father's handling of the Seaboard's affairs, learned of my connection
+with the house, and gave her a letter, asking me to do what I could to
+help his daughter carry out her plans. She wants to get a position with
+us, if possible, in some sort of capacity, secretary, confidential clerk,
+or, as she puts it, any sort of place that will justify her being in the
+office. She tells me she is good at shorthand, on the machine, or at
+correspondence, also that she has been a contributor to the magazines. If
+this can be arranged, she says she will on her own responsibility select
+the time and the stock, and hurl the last of the Sands fortune at the
+market, and, Jim, she is game. The blow seems to have turned this child
+into a wonderfully nervy creature, and, old man, I am beginning to have a
+feeling that perhaps the cards may come so she will win the judge out. You
+and I know where less than sixty thousand has been run up to millions more
+than once, and that, too, without the aid she will have, for I'll surely
+do all I can to help her steer this last chance into spongy places."
+
+Bob in his enthusiasm had completely lost sight of the fact that he was
+indorsing a project that but a moment previously he had pronounced insane,
+and with a start I realised what this sudden transformation betokened.
+Inevitably, if the project he outlined were carried out, Bob and the
+beautiful Southern girl would be thrown into close association with each
+other, and further acquaintance could only deepen the startling influence
+Beulah Sands had already won over my ordinarily sane and cool-headed
+comrade. As I looked at my friend, burning with an ardour as unaccustomed
+as it was impulsive, I felt a tug at my heartstrings at thought of the
+sudden cross-roading of his life's highway. But I, too, was filled with
+the glamour of this girl's wondrous beauty, and her terrible predicament
+appealed to me almost as strongly as it had to Bob. So, although I knew it
+would be fatal to any chance of his weighing the matter by common sense, I
+burst out:
+
+"Bob, I don't blame you for falling in with the girl's plans. If I were in
+your shoes, I should too."
+
+Tears came to Bob's eyes as he grabbed my hand and said:
+
+"Jim, how can I ever repay you for all the good things you have done for
+me--how can I!"
+
+It was no time to give way to emotional outbursts, and while Bob was
+getting his grip on himself, I went on:
+
+"Come along down to earth now, Bob; let us look at this thing squarely.
+You and I, with our position in the market, can do lots of things to help
+run that sixty thousand to higher figures, but six months is a short time
+and a million or two a world of money."
+
+"She knows that," he said, "and the time is much shorter and the road to
+go much longer than you figure," he replied. "This girl is as
+high-tensioned as the E string on a Stradivarius, and she declares she
+will have no charity tips or unusual favours from us or any one else. But
+let us not talk about that now or we'll get discouraged. Let's do as she
+says and trust to God for the outcome. Are you willing, Jim, to take her
+into the office as a sort of confidential secretary? If you will, I'll
+take charge of her account, and together we will do all that two men can
+for her and her father."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+
+
+The following week saw Miss Sands, of Virginia, private secretary to the
+head of Randolph & Randolph, established in a little office between mine
+and Bob's. She had not been there a day before we knew she was a worker.
+She spent the hours going over reports and analysing financial statements,
+showing a sagacity extraordinary in so young a person. She explained her
+knowledge of figures by the hand-work she had done for the judge, all of
+whose accounts she had kept. Bob and I saw that she was bent on smothering
+her memory in that antidote for all ills of heart and soul--work. Her
+office life was simplicity itself. She spoke to no one except Bob, save in
+connection with such business matters of the firm's as I might send her by
+one of the clerks to attend to. To the others in the banking-house she was
+just an unconventional young literary woman whose high social connections
+had gained her this opportunity of getting at the secrets of finance,
+from actual experience, for use in forthcoming novels. It had got abroad
+that she was the writer of great distinction who, under a _nom de plume_,
+had recently made quite a dent in the world's literary shell--a suggestion
+that I rightly guessed was one of Bob's delicate ways of smoothing out her
+path. I had tried in every way to make things easy for her, but it was
+impossible for me to draw her out in talk, and finally I gave it up. Had
+it not been that every time I passed her office door I was compelled by
+the fascination which I had first felt, and which, instead of diminishing,
+had increased with her reticence, to look in at the quiet figure with the
+downcast eyes, working away at her desk as though her life depended on
+never missing a second, I should not have known she was in the building.
+My wife, at my suggestion, had tried to induce her to visit us; in fact,
+after I let her into just enough of Beulah Sands's story so that she could
+see things on a true slant, she had decided to try to bring her to our
+house to live. But though the girl was sweetly gentle in her appreciation
+of Kate's thoughtful attentions, in her simple way she made us both feel
+that our efforts would be for naught, that her position must be the same
+as that of any other clerk in the office. We both finally left her to
+herself. Bob explained to me, some three weeks after she came to the
+office, that she received no visitors at her home, a hotel on a quiet
+uptown street, and that even he had never had permission to call upon her
+there.
+
+But from the day she came to occupy her desk in our office, Bob was a
+changed man, whether for better or for worse neither Kate nor I could
+decide. His old bounding elasticity was gone, and with it his rollicking
+laugh. He was now a man where before he had been a boy, a man with a
+burden. Even if I had not heard Beulah Sands's story, I should have
+guessed that Bob was staggering under a strange load. While before, from
+the close of the Stock Exchange until its opening the next morning, he
+was, as Kate was fond of putting it, always ready to fill in for anything
+from chaperon to nurse, always open for any lark we planned, from a
+Bohemian dinner to the opera, now weeks went by without our seeing him at
+our house. In the office it used to be a saying that outside gong-strikes,
+Bob Brownley did not know he was in the stock business. Formerly every
+clerk knew when Bob came or went, for it was with a rush, a shout, a
+laugh, and a bang of doors; and on the floor of the Stock Exchange no man
+played so many pranks, or filled his orders with so much jolly good-nature
+and hilarious boisterousness. But from the day the Virginian girl crossed
+his path, Bob Brownley was a man who was thinking, thinking, thinking all
+the time. It was only with an effort that he would keep his eyes on
+whomever he was talking with long enough to take in what was said, and if
+the saying occupied much time it would be apparent to the talker that Bob
+was off in the clouds. All his friends and associates remarked the change,
+but I alone, except perhaps Kate, had any idea of the cause. I knew that
+two million dollars and the coming New Year were hurdling like kangaroos
+over Bob's mental rails and ditches, though I did not know it from
+anything he told me, for after that talk on the upper deck of the
+_Tribesman_ he had shut up like a clam.
+
+He did not exactly shun me, but showed me in many ways that he had entered
+into a new world, in which he desired to be alone. That Beulah Sands's
+plight had roused into intense activity all the latent romance of my
+friend's nature, did not surprise me. I foresaw from the first that Bob
+would fall head over heels in love with this beautiful, sorrow-laden girl,
+and it was soon obvious that the long-delayed shaft had planted its point
+in the innermost depths of his being. His was more than love; a fervid
+idolatry now had possession of his soul, mind, and body. Yet its outward
+manifestations were the opposite of what one would have looked for in this
+gay and optimistic Southerner. It was rather priest-like worship, a calm
+imperturbability that nothing seemed to distract or upset, at least in the
+presence of the goddess who was its object. Every morning he would pass
+through my office headed straight for the little room she occupied as if
+it were his one objective point of the day, but once he heard his own
+"Good morning, Miss Sands," he seemed to round to, and while in her
+presence was the Bob Brownley of old. He would be in and out all day on
+any and every pretext, always entering with an undisguised eagerness,
+leaving with a slow, dreamy reluctance. That he never saw her outside the
+office, I am sure, for she said good-night to him when he or she left for
+the day with the same don't-come-with-me dignity that she exhibited to
+all the rest of us. I had not attempted to say a word to Bob about his
+feeling for Beulah Sands, nor had he ever brought up the subject to me. On
+the contrary, he studiously avoided it.
+
+Three months of the six had now passed, and with each day I thought I
+noted an increasing anxiety in Bob. He had opened a special account for
+Miss Sands on the books of the house in his name as agent, with a credit
+of sixty thousand dollars, and we both watched it with a painful tenseness
+of scrutiny. It had grown by uneven jerks, until the balance on October
+1st was almost four hundred thousand dollars. On some of the trades Bob
+had consulted me, and on others, two in particular where he closed up
+after a few days' operations with nearly two hundred thousand dollars
+profit, I did not even know what the trading was based on until the stocks
+had been sold. Then he said:
+
+"Jim, that little lady from Virginia can give us a big handicap and play
+us to a standstill at our own game. She told me to buy all the Burlington
+and Sugar her account would stand, and did not even ask for my opinion. In
+both cases I thought the operations were more the result of a wakeful
+night and an I-must-do-something decision than anything else, and I
+tackled both with a shiver; but when she told me to sell them out at a
+time I thought they looked like going higher and the next day they
+slumped, I could not help thinking about the destiny that shapes our
+ends."
+
+On my part I tried to help. On one occasion, without consulting her, I put
+her account in on a sure thing underwriting, wherein she stood to make a
+profit of a quarter of a million, but when Bob told her what I had done,
+she insisted with great dignity that her name be withdrawn. After that
+neither of us dared help her to any short cuts. Bob was deeply impressed
+by her principles, and, commenting on them, said: "Jim, if all Wall Street
+had a code similar to Beulah Sands's to hew to in their gambles, ours
+would be a fairer and more manly game, and many of the multi-millionaires
+would be clerking, while a lot of the hand-to-mouth traders would come
+downtown in a new auto every day in the week. She does not believe in
+stock-gambling. She has worked it out that every dollar one man makes,
+another loses; that the one who makes gives nothing in return for what he
+gets away with; and that the other fellow's loss makes him and his as
+miserable as would robbery to the same amount. Yet she realises that she
+must get back those millions stolen from her father and is willing to
+smother her conscience to attempt it, provided she takes no unfair
+advantage of the other players. The other day she said to me, 'I have
+decided, because of my duty to my father, to put away my prejudice against
+gambling, but no duty to him or to any one can justify me in playing with
+marked cards.' Jim, there is food for reflection for you and me, don't you
+think so?"
+
+I did not argue it with him, for, after that Saturday's outburst, I had
+made up my mind to avoid stirring Bob up unnecessarily. Also, I had to
+admit to myself that the things he had then said had raised some
+uncomfortable thoughts in me, thoughts that made me glance less
+confidently now and then at the old sign of Randolph & Randolph and at the
+big ledger which showed that I, an ordinary citizen of a free country, was
+the absolute possessor of more money than a hundred thousand of my fellow
+beings together could accumulate in a lifetime, although each one had
+worked harder, longer, more conscientiously, and with perhaps more ability
+than I.
+
+As to how Beulah Sands's code had affected my friend, I was ignorant. For
+the first time in our association I was completely in the dark as to what
+he was doing stockwise. Up to that Saturday I was the first to whom he
+would rush for congratulations when he struck it rich over others on the
+exchange, and he invariably sought me for consolation when the boys
+"upper-cut him hard," as he would put it. Now he never said a word about
+his trading. I saw that his account with the house was inactive, that his
+balance was about the same as before Miss Sands's advent, and I came to
+the conclusion that he was resting on his oars and giving his undivided
+attention to her account and the execution of his commissions. His
+handling of the business of the house showed no change. He still was the
+best broker on the floor. However, knowing Bob as I did, I could not get
+it out of my mind that his brain was running like a mill-race in search of
+some successful solution to the tremendous problem that must be solved in
+the next three months.
+
+Shortly after the October 1st statements had been sent out, Bob dropped
+in on Kate and me one night. After she had retired and we had lit our
+cigars in the library he said:
+
+"Jim, I want some of that old-fashioned advice of yours. Sugar is selling
+at 110, and it is worth it; in fact it is cheap. The stock is well
+distributed among investors, not much of it floating round 'the Street.' A
+good, big buying movement, well handled, would jump it to 175 and keep it
+there. Am I sound?"
+
+I agreed with him.
+
+"All right. Now what reason is there for a good, big, stiff uplift? That
+tariff bill is up at Washington. If it goes through, Sugar will be cheaper
+at 175 than at 110."
+
+Again I agreed.
+
+"'Standard Oil' and the Sugar people know whether it is going through, for
+they control the Senate and the House and can induce the President to be
+good. What do you say to that?"
+
+"O.K.," I answered.
+
+"No question about it, is there?"
+
+"Not the slightest."
+
+"Right again. When 26 Broadway[1] gives the secret order to the
+Washington boss and he passes it out to the grafters, there will be a
+quiet accumulation of the stock, won't there?"
+
+"You've got that right, Bob."
+
+"And the man who first knows when Washington begins to take on Sugar is
+the man who should load up quick and rush it up to a high level. If he
+does it quickly, the stockholders, who now have it, will get a juicy slice
+of the ripening melon, a slice that otherwise would go to those greedy
+hypocrites at Washington, who are always publicly proclaiming that they
+are there to serve their fellow countrymen, but who never tire of
+expressing themselves to their brokers as not being in politics for their
+health."
+
+"So far, good reasoning," I commented.
+
+"Jim, the man who first knows when the Senators and Congressmen and
+members of the Cabinet begin to buy Sugar, is the man who can kill four
+birds with one stone: Win back a part of Judge Sands's stolen fortune;
+increase his own pile against the first of January, when, if the little
+Virginian lady is short a few hundred thousand of the necessary amount,
+he could, if he found a way to induce her to accept it, supply the
+deficiency; fatten up a good friend's bank account a million or so, and do
+a right good turn for the stockholders who are about to be, for the
+hundredth time, bled out of profit rightfully theirs."
+
+Bob was afire with enthusiasm, the first I had seen him show for three
+months. Seeing that I had followed him without objection so far, he
+continued:
+
+"Well, Jim, I know the Washington buying has begun. All I know I have dug
+out for myself and am free to use it any way I choose. I have gone over
+the deal with Beulah Sands, and we have decided to plunge. She has a
+balance of about four hundred thousand dollars, and I'm going to spread it
+thin. I am going to buy her 20,000 shares and to take on 10,000 for
+myself. If you went in for 20,000 more, it would give me a wide sea to
+sail in. I know you never speculate, Jim, for the house, but I thought you
+might in this case go in personally."
+
+"Don't say anything more, Bob," I replied. "This time the rule goes by the
+board. But I will do better: I'll put up a million and you can go as high
+as 70,000 for me. That will give you a buying power of 100,000, and I
+want you to use my last 50,000 shares as a lifter."
+
+I had never speculated in a share of stock since I entered the firm of
+Randolph & Randolph, and on general, special, and every other principle
+was opposed to stock gambling, but I saw how Bob had worked it out, and
+that to make the deal sure it was necessary for him to have a good reserve
+buying power to fall back on if, after he got started, the "System"
+masters, whose game he was butting in to and whose plans he might upset
+should try to shake down the price to drive him out of their preserves.
+Bob knew how I looked at his proposed deal and ordinarily would not have
+allowed me to have the short end of it, but so changed had he become in
+his anxiety to make that money for the Virginians that he grabbed at my
+acceptance.
+
+"Thank you, Jim," he said fervently, and he continued: "Of course, I see
+what's going through your head, but I'll accept the favour, for the deal
+is bound to be successful. I know your reason for coming in is just to
+help out, and that you won't feel badly because your last 50,000 shares
+will be used more as a guarantee for the deal's success than for profit.
+And Miss Sands could not object to the part you play, as she did at the
+underwriting, for you will get a big profit anyway."
+
+Next day Sugar was lively on the Exchange. Bob bought all in sight and
+handled the buying in a masterly way. When the closing gong struck, Beulah
+Sands had 20,000 shares, which averaged her 115; Bob and I had 30,000 at
+an average of 125, and the stock had closed 132 bid and in big demand.
+Miss Sands's 20,000 showed $340,000 profit, while our 30,000 showed
+$210,000 at the closing price. All the houses with Washington wires were
+wildly scrambling for Sugar as soon as it began to jump. And it certainly
+looked as though the shares were good for the figures set for them by Bob,
+$175, at which price the Sands's profits would be $1,200,000. Bob was
+beside himself with joy. He dined with Kate and me, and as I watched him
+my heart almost stopped beating at the thought--"if anything should happen
+to upset his plans!" His happiness was pathetic to witness. He was like a
+child. He threw away all the reserve of the past three months and laughed
+and was grave by turns. After dinner, as we sat in the library over our
+coffee, he leaned over to my wife and said:
+
+"Katherine Randolph, you and Jim don't know what misery I have been in for
+three months, and now--will to-morrow never come, so I may get into the
+whirl and clean up this deal and send that girl back to her father with
+the money! I wanted her to telegraph the judge that things looked like she
+would win out and bring back the relief, but she would not hear of it. She
+is a marvellous woman. She has not turned a hair to-day. I don't think her
+pulse is up an eighth to-night. She has not sent home a word of
+encouragement since she has been here, more than to tell her father she is
+doing well with her stories. It seems they both agreed that the only way
+to work the thing out was 'whole hog or none,' and that she was to say
+nothing until she could herself bring the word 'saved' or 'lost.' I don't
+know but she is right. She says if she should raise her father's hopes,
+and then be compelled to dash them, the effect would be fatal."
+
+Bob rushed the talk along, flitting from one point to another, but
+invariably returning to Beulah Sands and to-morrow and its saving
+profits. Finally, he got to a pitch where it seemed as though he must take
+off the lid, and before Kate or I realised what was coming he placed
+himself in front of us and said:
+
+"Jim, Kate, I cannot go into to-morrow without telling you something that
+neither of you suspect. I must tell some one, now that everything is
+coming out right and that Beulah is to be saved; and whom can I tell but
+you, who have been everything to me?--I love Beulah Sands, surely, deeply,
+with every bit of me. I worship her, I tell you, and to-morrow, to-morrow
+if this deal comes out as it must come, and I can put $1,500,000 into her
+hands and send her home to her father, then, then, I will tell her I love
+her, and Jim, Kate, if she'll marry me, good-bye, good-bye to this hell of
+dollar-hunting, good-bye to such misery as I have been in for three
+months, and home, a Virginia home, for Beulah and me." He sank into a
+chair and tears rolled down his cheeks Poor, poor Bob, strong as a lion in
+adversity, hysterical as a woman with victory in sight.
+
+The next day Sugar opened with a wild rush: "25,000 shares from 140 to
+152." That is the way it came on the tape, which meant that the crowd
+around the Sugar-pole was a mob and that the transactions were so heavy,
+quick, and tangled that no one could tell to a certainty just what the
+first or opening price was; but after the first lull, after the gong,
+there were officially reported transactions aggregating 25,000 shares and
+at prices varying from 140 to 152. I was over on the floor to see the
+scramble, for it was noised about long before ten o'clock that Sugar would
+open wild, and then, too, I wanted to be handy if Bob should need any
+quick advice.
+
+A minute before the gong struck, there were three hundred men jammed
+around the Sugar-pole; men with set, determined faces; men with their
+coats buttoned tight and shoulders thrown back for the rush to which, by
+comparison, that of a football team is child's play. Every man in that
+crowd was a picked man, picked for what was coming. Each felt that upon
+his individual powers to keep a clear head, to shout loudest, to forget
+nothing, to keep his feet, and to stay as near the centre of the crowd as
+possible, depended his "floor honour," perhaps his fortune, or, what was
+more to him, his client's fortune. Nearly every man of them was a college
+graduate who had won his spurs at athletics or a seasoned floor man whose
+training had been even more severe than that of the college campus. When
+it is known before the opening of the Exchange that there are to be
+"things doing" in a certain stock, it is the rule to send only the picked
+floor men into the crowd. There may be a fortune to make or to lose in a
+minute or a sliver of a minute. For instance, the man who that morning was
+able to snatch the first 5,000 shares sold at 140 could have resold them a
+few minutes afterward at 152 and secured $60,000 profit. And the man who
+was sent into the crowd by his client to sell 5,000 shares at the
+"opening" and who got but 140, when the price would be 152 by the time he
+reported to his customer, was a man to be pitied. Again, the trader who
+the night before had decided that Sugar had gone up too fast, and who had
+"shorted" (that is, sold what he did not have, with the intention of
+repurchasing at a lower price than he sold it for) 5,000 shares at 140 and
+who, finding himself in that surging mob with Sugar selling at 152, could
+only get out by taking a loss of $60,000, or by taking another chance of
+later paying 162--such a trader was also to be pitied.
+
+No one who scanned the crowd that morning would have believed that the
+calm, set face on that erect Indian figure, occupying the very centre of
+that horde of gamblers who were only awaiting the ringing clang of the
+gong to hurl themselves like madmen at each other, was the hysterical man
+who the night before was wildly praying for this moment. Nearly every man
+in that crowd was calm, but Bob Brownley was the calmest of them all. It's
+the Exchange code that at any cost of heart or nerve-tear a man must
+retain good form until the gong strikes. Then, that he must be as near the
+uncaged tiger as human mind and body can be made. Only I realised what
+volcano raged inside my chum's bosom. If any other man of the crowd had
+known, Bob's chances of success would have been on par with a Canadian
+canoeist short-cutting Niagara for Buffalo. Nine-tenths of the Stock
+Exchange game is not letting your left brain-lobe know what race your
+right is in until the winning numbers and the also-rans are on the board.
+If one of those three hundred chain-lightning thinkers or any of their
+ten thousand alert associates knew in advance the intentions of a fellow
+broker, the word would sweep through that crowd with the sureness of
+uncorked ether, and the other two hundred and ninty nine, at gong-strike,
+would be at each others' throats for his vitals, and before he knew the
+game had started would have his bones picked to a vulture-finish
+cleanness. Suddenly, as I watched the scene, there rang through the great
+hall the first sharp stroke of the gong. There were no echoes heard that
+morning. The metallic voice was yet shaping its command to "at 'em, you
+fiends" when from three hundred throats burst the wild sound of the Stock
+Exchange yell. No other sound in any of the open or hidden places of all
+nature duplicates the yell of a great Stock Exchange at an exciting
+opening. It not only fills and refills space, for the volume is terrific,
+but it has an individuality all its own, coming from the incisive
+"take-mine-I've-got yours," from the aggressive, almost arrogant
+"you-can't-you-won't-have-your-way," the confident "by-heaven-I-will"
+individual notes that enter into the whole, as they blend with the shrill
+scream of triumph and the die-away note of disappointment, when the floor
+men realise their success or their failure. I picked Bob's magnificently
+resonant voice from the mass--"40 for any part of 10,000 Sugar." It was
+this daring bid that struck terror to the bears and filled the bulls[2]
+with a frenzy of encouragement. Again it rang out--"45 for any part of
+25,000"; and a third time--"50 for any part of 50,000."
+
+The great crowd was surging all over the room. Hats were smashed and coats
+were being stripped from their owners' backs as though made of paper, and
+now and then a particularly frantic buyer or seller would be borne to the
+floor by the impetus of those who sought to fill his bid or grab his
+offer. Through all the wild whirl, straight and erect and commanding was
+the form of Bob, his face cold and expressionless as an iceberg. In five
+minutes the human mass had worked back to the Sugar-pole and there was the
+inevitable lull while its members "verified."
+
+I could see by the few entries Bob was making on his pad that he had been
+compelled to buy but little. This meant that his campaign was working
+smoothly, that he was driving the market up by merely bidding, and that
+he had the greater part of my 50,000 yet unbought, which inturn meant he
+could continue to push up the price, or in the event of his opponents'
+attempting to run it down, he would be under the market with big
+supporting orders.
+
+Suddenly the lull was broken. Bob's voice rang out again--"153 for any
+part of 10,000 Sugar." Again the gamblers closed in and for another five
+minutes the opening scene was duplicated, with only a shade less
+fierceness. After ten minutes' mad trading a mighty burst of sound told
+that Sugar was 160 bid. Then Bob worked his way out of the crowd, and
+passing by me fairly hissed, "By heaven, Jim, I've got them cinched!"
+
+I went back to the office. In a few minutes Bob without a word strode
+through my office and into the little room occupied by Beulah Sands. He
+closed the door behind him, a thing that he had never done before. It was
+only a minute till he opened it and called to me. In his eyes was a
+strange look, a look that came from the blending of two mighty passions,
+one joy, the other I could not make out, unless it was that soft one,
+which suppressed love, emerging from terrible uncertainty, generates in
+deep natures and which usually finds vent in tears. Beulah Sands was a
+study. Her heart was evidently swaying and tugging with the news Bob had
+brought her. She must have seen the nearness of release from the torture
+that had been filling her soul during the past three months, and yet such
+was the remarkable self-control of the woman, such her noble courage, that
+she refused to show any outward sign of her feelings. She was the
+reserved, dignified girl I had ever seen her. "Jim, Miss Sands and I
+thought it best that we should have a little match up at this stage of our
+deal," Bob began. "I want to know if you both agree with me on adhering to
+the original plans to close out at 175. I never felt surer of my ground
+than in this deal. The stock is 163 on the tape right now." He glanced at
+the white paper ribbon whose every foot on certain days spells Heaven or
+Hell to countless mortals, as it rolled out of the ticker in the corner of
+the office. "Yes, there she goes again--3�, 4, 4� and 1,200 at a half.
+There is a tremendous demand from all quarters. Washington's buying is
+unlimited; the commission-houses are tumbling over one another to get
+aboard and the shorts are scared to a paralysed muteness. They don't know
+whether to jump in and cover or to stand their present hands, but they
+have no pluck to fight the rise, that is certain. The news bureaus have
+just published the story that I am buying for Randolph & Randolph, and
+they for the insiders; that the new tariff is as good as passed; and that
+at the directors' meeting to-morrow the Sugar dividend will be increased,
+and that it is agreed on all sides she won't stop going until she crosses
+200. I've been obliged to take on only 18,000 of your 50,000, and at
+present prices there is over two hundred thousand profit in them. I think
+I could go back there and in thirty minutes have it to 180. Then if I
+rested on it until about one o'clock and threw myself at it for real
+fireworks up to the close, I could, under cover of them, let slip about
+half our purchases, and to-morrow open her with a whirl and let go the
+balance. If I'm in luck I'll average 180-185 for the whole bunch, but I'll
+be satisfied if I get an average of 175, which would allow me to sell it
+on a dropping scale to 160."
+
+I agreed that his campaign was perfect, and Beulah Sands said in her
+usual quiet way, "It is entirely in your hands, Mr. Brownley. I don't see
+how any advice from us can help."
+
+Bob went back to the Exchange and I into my office. Bob had been right
+again. In ten minutes the tape began to scream Sugar. With enormous
+transactions it ran up in fifteen minutes to 188, in three more it dropped
+to 181, and then steadily mounted to 185�, dulled up, and was healthy
+steady. Presently Bob was back and we sat down again.
+
+"I've bought 20,000 more for you, Jim, on that bulge. I've 38,000 in all
+of the last 50,000, which leaves me 12,000 reserve. The average is 'way
+under 75, and there must be $400,000 for you in it now and a strong
+$1,400,000 in Miss Sands's 20,000, and $1,800,000 in our 30,000. They say
+it's bad business to count chickens in the shell, but ours are tapping so
+hard to get out I can't help doing it this once. I'm going to keep away
+from the floor for an hour or so, then I will go over and wind it up
+and--good God, Beulah--Miss Sands--are you ill?"
+
+The girl's face was ashen gray and she seemed to be gasping for breath. I
+rushed for some water while Bob seized both her hands, but in an instant
+the blood came to her cheeks with a rush and she said, "I was dizzy for a
+moment. It must have been the thought of taking $1,800,000 back to father
+that upset me. With that amount father could make good all the trust
+funds, and have back enough of his own fortune to make us seem, after what
+we have been going through, richer than we were before. Pardon me, Mr.
+Randolph, won't you, when I say--God bless you and every one whom you hold
+dear, God bless you? What could I or my father have done but for you and
+Mr. Brownley?"
+
+She turned her big eyes full upon Bob, filled with a light such as can
+come only to a woman's eyes, only to a woman before whom, as she stands on
+the brink of hell, suddenly looms her heaven.
+
+Sharp and shrill rang Bob's Exchange telephone. The ring seemed shriller;
+it certainly was longer than usual. Bob jumped for the receiver.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+
+
+The following week Bob returned to the office. He had not changed, and yet
+he had changed greatly. Rest had apparently done much for him. His colour
+was good, his step elastic as of old, and his head was thrown back as if
+he were buckled up for the fray and wanted all to know it. Yet there was
+something in the eye, in the setness of the jaw, in the hair-trigger calm,
+yet fiercely savage grip in which he closed his strong hands on the arms
+of his chair, that told me more plainly than words that this was not the
+optimistic, soft-hearted Bob Brownley I had known and loved. I could not
+help feeling that if I had been a leader of the Russian terrorists, and
+this man who now sat before me had come to my ken when I was selecting
+bomb-throwers, I should have seized upon him of all men as the one to
+stalk the Czar or his marked minions. Surely the iron that had entered
+Bob's soul a week before had affected his whole being. I think Beulah
+Sands had some such thoughts. For I saw a shadow of perplexity cross her
+broad, low forehead after her first meeting with him, a shadow that had
+not been there before.
+
+For days after Bob's return I saw little of him. I think Beulah Sands saw
+less. During Stock Exchange hours he spent most of his time on the floor,
+but he executed few of our orders. He merely looked them over and handed
+them out to his assistants. As far as I could learn, he spent much of his
+time there yesterdaying through hope's graveyards, a not uncommon pastime
+for active Exchange members whose first through specials have been
+open-switched by the "System" towerman. So strong had become this habit of
+going about from pole to pole with bent head and a far-off gaze that his
+fellow members began to humour and respect it. They all knew that Bob had
+gone up against the Sugar panic hard. No one knew how hard, but all
+guessed from his changed appearance and habits that it must have been a
+bone-smashing blow. Nothing so quickly and so deeply stirs a Stock
+Exchange man's feelings for his brother member as to know that "They" have
+ditched his El Dorado flyer--that is, if he has been a good the books
+showed no change in Beulah Sands's account. There was the poor little
+$30,000 balance; no other entries. One afternoon Beulah Sands had asked
+for a meeting between Bob and myself in her office. She could hardly have
+asked Bob to come without me, but I knew it was Bob she wanted to see, and
+I felt that the best thing I could do for them was to leave them alone. So
+I made some excuse for a moment's delay at my desk, telling Bob to go on
+into her office, and promising to follow shortly. He went in, leaving the
+door partly open. I think that from the moment he entered the room both of
+them utterly forgot my existence. From her desk Beulah could not see me,
+and Bob sat so that his back was half toward me. "I dislike to trouble you
+about my account," I heard her begin in a voice a trifle uneven, "but as I
+must go back to Father Christmas week, I wanted to get your advice as to
+the advisability of writing him that, though there is still a chance for
+doing wonders, I do not think we shall be able to save him. Of course I
+won't put it in just that blunt way, but it seems to me I should begin to
+prepare him for the blow. I have not talked over any more plunging with
+you, Mr. Brownley, since the unlucky one in Sugar, and----"
+
+"Miss Sands, I understand what you mean," Bob broke in, "and I should
+apologise for not having consulted with you about your business affairs.
+The fact is, I have not been quite clear as to the best thing to do. I
+hope you don't think I have forgotten. Never for a moment since I took
+charge of your affairs have I forgotten my promise to see that they were
+kept active. Truly I have been trying to think out some successful plunge,
+but--but"--there was a hoarseness in his voice--"I have not had my old
+confidence in myself since that day in Sugar when I killed your hopes and
+destroyed the chance of saving your father--no, I have not had that
+confidence a man must have in himself to win at this game."
+
+There was a silence, and then I heard an indescribable fluttering rush
+that told as plainly as sight could have done that a woman had answered
+her heart's call. Looking up involuntarily, I saw a sight that for a long
+moment held my eyes as if I had been fascinated. It was Bob bowed forward
+with his face hidden in his hands and beside him, on her knees, Beulah
+Sands, her arms about his neck, his head drawn down to her bosom. "Bob,
+Bob," she said chokingly, "I cannot stand it any longer. My heart is
+breaking for you. You were so happy when I came into your life, and the
+happiness is changed to misery and despair, and all for me, a stranger. At
+first I thought of nothing but father and how to save him, but since that
+day when those men struck at your heart, I have been filled with, oh! such
+a longing to tell you, to tell you, Bob----"
+
+"What? Beulah, what? For the love of God, don't stop; tell me, Beulah,
+tell me." He had not lifted his head. It was buried on her breast, his
+arms closed around her. She bent her head and laid her beautiful, soft
+cheek, down which the tears were now streaming, against his brown hair.
+"Bob, forgive me, but I love you, love you, Bob, as only a woman can love
+who has never known love before, never known anything but stern duty. Bob,
+night after night when all have left I have crept into your office and sat
+in your chair. I have laid my head on your desk and cried and cried until
+it seemed as though I could not live till morning without hearing you say
+that you loved me, and that you did not mind the ruin I had brought into
+your life. I have patted the back of your chair where your dear head had
+rested. I have covered the arms of your chair, that your strong, brave
+hands had gripped, with kisses. Night after night I have knelt at your
+desk and prayed to God to shield you, to protect you from all harm, to
+brush away the black cloud I brought into your life. I have asked Him to
+do with me, yes, with my father and mother, anything, anything if only He
+would bring back to you the happiness I had stolen. Bob, I have suffered,
+suffered, as only a woman can suffer."
+
+She was sobbing as though her heart would break, sobbing wildly,
+convulsively, like the little child who in the night comes to its mother's
+bed to tell of the black goblins that have been pursuing it. Long before
+she had finished speaking--and it took only a few heart-beats for that
+rush of words--I had broken the power of the fascination that held me, had
+turned away my eyes, and tried not to listen. For fear of breaking the
+spell, I did not dare cross the room to close Beulah's door or to reach
+the outer door of my office, which was nearer hers than it was to my desk.
+I waited--through a silence, broken only by Beulah's weeping, that seemed
+hour-long. Then in Bob's voice came one low sob of joy:
+
+"Beulah, Beulah, my Beulah!"
+
+I realised that he had risen. I rose too, thinking that now I could close
+the door. But again I saw a picture that transfixed me. Bob had taken
+Beulah by both shoulders and he held her off and looked into her eyes long
+and beseechingly. Never before nor since have I seen upon human face that
+glorious joy which the old masters sought to get into the faces of their
+worshippers who, kneeling before Christ, tried to send to Him, through
+their eyes, their soul's gratitude and love. I stood as one enthralled.
+Slowly and as reverently as the living lover touches the brow of his dead
+wife, Bob bent his head and kissed her forehead. Again and again he drew
+her to him and implanted upon her brow and eyes and lips his kisses. I
+could not stand the scene any longer. I started to the corridor-door, and
+then, as though for the first time either had known I was within hearing,
+they turned and stared at me. At last Bob gave a long deep sigh, then one
+of those reluctant laughs of happiness yet wet with sobs.
+
+"Well, Jim, dear old Jim, where did you come from? Like all
+eavesdroppers, you have heard no good of yourself. Own up, Jim, you did
+not hear a word good or bad about yourself, for it is just coming back to
+me that we have been selfish, that we have left you entirely out of our
+business conference."
+
+We all laughed, and Beulah Sands, with her face a bloom of burning
+blushes, said: "Mr. Randolph, we have not settled what it is best to do
+about father's affairs."
+
+After a little we did begin to talk business, and finally agreed that
+Beulah should write her father, wording her letter as carefully as
+possible, to avoid all direct statements, but showing him that she had
+made but little headway on the work she had come North to accomplish. Bob
+was a changed being now; so, too, was Beulah Sands. Both discussed their
+hopes and fears with a frankness in strange contrast to their former
+manner. But there was one point on which Bob showed he was holding back. I
+finally put it to him bluntly: "Bob, are you working out anything that
+looks like real relief for Miss Sands and her father?"
+
+"I don't know how to answer you, Jim. I can only say I have some ideas,
+radical ones perhaps, but--well, I am thinking along certain lines."
+
+I saw he was not yet willing to take us into his confidence. We parted,
+Bob going along in the cab with Miss Sands.
+
+Two days afterward she sent for us both as soon as we got to the office.
+
+"I have this telegram from father--it makes me uneasy: 'Mailed to-day
+important letter. Answer as soon as you receive.'"
+
+The following afternoon the letter came. It showed Judge Sands in a very
+nervous, uneasy state. He said he had been living a life of daily terror,
+as some of his friends, for whose estates he was trustee, had been
+receiving anonymous letters, advising them to look into the judge's trust
+affairs; that the Reinhart crowd had been using renewed pressure to make
+him let go all his Seaboard stock, which they wanted to secure at the low
+prices to which they had depressed it, in order that they might reorganise
+and carry out the scheme they had been so long planning. Judge Sands went
+on to say that the day he was compelled to sell his Seaboard stock he
+would have to make public an announcement of his condition, as there
+could be no sale without the court's consent. His closing was:
+
+   "My dear daughter, no one knows better than I the almost hopelessness
+   of expecting any relief from your operations. But so hopeless have I
+   become of late, so much am I reliant upon you, my dear child, and
+   eternal hope so springs in all of us when confronted with great
+   necessities, that I have hoped and still hope that you are to be the
+   saviour of your family; that you, only a frail child, are through God's
+   marvellous workings to be the one to save the honour of that name we
+   both love more than life; the one to keep the wolf of poverty from that
+   door through which so far has come nothing but the sunshine of
+   prosperity and happiness; the one, my dear Beulah, who is to save your
+   old father from a dishonoured grave. Dear child, forgive me for placing
+   upon your weak shoulders the additional burden of knowing I am now
+   helpless and compelled to rely absolutely upon you. After you have read
+   my letter, if there is no hope, I command you to tell me so at once,
+   for although I am now financially and almost mentally helpless, I am
+   still a Sands, and there has never yet been one of the name who shirked
+   his duty, however stern and painful it might be."
+
+When I handed the letter back to Miss Sands, she said:
+
+"Mr. Randolph, let me tell you and Mr. Brownley a little about my father
+and our home, that you may see our situation as it is. My father is one of
+the noblest men that ever lived. I am not the only one who says that--if
+you were to ask the people of our State to name the one man who had done
+most for the State as a State, most for her progressive betterment, most
+for her people high and low, white and black, they would answer, 'Judge
+Lee Sands.' He has been, and is, the idol of our people. After he was
+graduated from Harvard, he entered the law office of my grandfather,
+Senator Robert Lee Sands. Before he was thirty he was in Congress and was
+even then reputed the greatest orator of our State, where orators are so
+plentiful. He married my mother, his second cousin, Julia Lee, of
+Richmond, at twenty-five, and from then until the attack of that ruthless
+money-shark, led a life such as a true man would map out for himself if
+his Maker granted him the privilege. You would have to visit at our home
+to appreciate my father's character and to understand how terrible this
+sorrow is to him. Every morning of his life he spends an hour after
+breakfast with my dear mother, who is a cripple from hip disease. He takes
+her in his arms and brings her down from her room to the library as if she
+were a child. He then reads to her--and he knows good books as well as he
+knows his friends. After he takes mother back to her room, he gives an
+hour to our people, the blacks of the plantation and his white tenants
+throughout the county. He is a father to them all. He settles all their
+troubles, big and little. Then for hours he and I go over his business
+affairs. Every afternoon from four to five he devotes to his estates and
+the men and women for whom he acts as trustee. He has often said to me:
+'We have a clear million of money and property, and that is all any man
+should have in America. It is all he is entitled to under our form of
+government. Any more than that an honest man should in one way or another
+return to the people from whom he has taken it. I never want my family to
+have more than a million dollars.' When he went into the Seaboard affair,
+he explained to me that it was to assist the Wilsons--they were old
+friends, and he has acted as their solicitor for years--in building up the
+South. He discussed with me the right and advisability of putting in the
+trust funds. He said he considered it his duty to employ them as he did
+his own in enterprises that would aid the whole people of the South,
+instead of sending them to the North to be used in Wall Street as belting
+for the 'System' grinder. These fortunes were made in the South by men who
+loved their section of the country more than they did wealth, and why
+should they not be employed to benefit that part of the country which
+their makers and owners loved? I remember vividly how perplexed he was
+when, at the beginning, the Wilsons would show him that the investments
+were returning unusually large profits.
+
+"'It is not right, Beulah,' he said to me one morning after receiving a
+letter from Baltimore to the effect that Seaboard stock and bonds had
+advanced until his investment showed over fifty per cent, profit, 'it is
+not right for us to make this money. No man in America should make over
+legal rates of interest and a fair profit on an investment, that is, an
+investment of capital pure and simple, particularly in a transportation
+company, where every dollar of profit comes from the people who patronise
+the lines. I have worked it out on every side, and it is not right; it
+would not be legal if the people, who make the laws for their own
+betterment, understood their affairs as they should.'
+
+"He was always writing to the Wilsons to conduct the affairs of the
+Seaboard so that there would be remaining each year only profits enough
+to keep the road up and the wharves in good condition and to pay the
+annual interest and a fair dividend. And when the Wilsons came to our
+house to lay before him the offer of Reinhart and his fellow plunderers to
+pay enormous profits for the control of the Seaboard, he was indignant and
+argued with them that the offer was an insult to honest men. It was he who
+advised the trusteeship control of the Seaboard stock to prevent Reinhart
+from securing control. I sat in the library when he talked to the elder
+Wilson and the directors.
+
+"He appealed directly to John Wilson to make an effort to stop the growing
+tendency to use the people as pawns to enslave themselves and their
+children. He said some man of undoubted probity, standing, and wealth,
+someone whom the people trusted, must start the fight against these New
+York fiends, whose only thought is to roll up wealth. And he told John
+Wilson he was the man, since he had great wealth, honestly got by his
+father and grandfather; no one would accuse him of being a hypocrite,
+seeking notoriety, and his standing in the financial world was so old and
+solid that it would have to listen to him. I remember-how emphatically
+father said: 'I tell you, John, _even the discussion_ of such a
+proposition as that scoundrel Reinhart makes is degrading to an American's
+honour.' He said it didn't make the least difference if Reinhart counted
+his millions by the score, and was director in thirty or forty great
+institutions, and gave a fortune every year for charity and to the
+church--that he was a blackleg just the same. And so is any man, he said,
+who dares to say he will take the stock of a transportation company, which
+represents a certain amount of money invested, and double or multiply it
+by five and ten, simply because he can compel the people to pay exorbitant
+fares and freight-rates and so get profits on this fraudulently increased
+capital.
+
+"It was the decision arrived at by father and the Wilsons at this meeting,
+a decision to refuse in any circumstances to allow our Southern people to
+be bled by the Wall Street 'System,' that started Reinhart and his
+dollar-fiends on the war-path. You can see from what I tell you of my
+father the terrible condition he is in now. At night, when I get to
+thinking of him, hoping against hope, with no one to help him, no one with
+whom he can talk over his affairs, when I think of his nobleness in
+devoting his time to mother and by sheer will-power concealing from her
+his awful suffering, it nearly drives me mad."
+
+"Miss Sands, why will you not let me lend you the money necessary to tide
+your father over for a while?" I asked.
+
+"You are so good, Mr. Randolph, but you don't quite understand my father
+in spite of what I have said. He would not relieve his suffering at the
+expense of another, not if it were a hundred times more acute. You cannot
+understand the old-fashioned, deep-rooted pride of the Sands."
+
+"But can you not, at least temporarily, disguise from him just how you
+have arranged the relief?"
+
+Her big blue eyes stared at me in bewilderment.
+
+"Mr. Randolph, I could not deceive father. I could not tell him a lie even
+to save his life. It would be impossible. My father abhors a lie. He
+believes a man or woman who would lie the lowest of the low things on
+earth. When I go back to my father he will say, 'Tell me what you have
+done.' I can just see him now, standing between the big white pillars at
+the end of the driveway. I can hear him say calmly, 'Beulah, my daughter,
+welcome. Your mother is waiting for you in her room. Do not lose a moment
+getting to her.' Afterward he'll take me over the plantation to show me
+all the familiar things, and not one word will he allow me to say about
+our affairs until dinner is over, until the neighbours have left, for no
+Sands returns from long absence without a fitting home welcome. When I
+have said good night to mother and sister and he has drawn up my rocker in
+front of his big chair in the library alcove and I've lighted his cigar
+for him, he will look me in the eye and say, 'Daughter, tell me all you
+have done.' I would no more think of holding anything back than I would of
+stabbing him to the heart. No, Mr. Randolph, there is no possibility of
+relief except in fairly using that $30,000, and fairly winning back what
+Wall Street has stolen from father. Even that will cause both of us many
+twinges of conscience, and anything more is impossible. If this cannot be
+done, father must, all of us must, pay the penalty of Reinhart's ruthless
+act."
+
+Bob had listened, but made no comment until she was through; then he said,
+"It looks to me as though the market is shaping up so that we may be able
+to do something soon." It was evident to both of us that he had some plan
+in mind.
+
+Later we learned that that night Beulah wrote her father a long letter,
+telling him what she had done; that she had made almost two millions
+profit from her operations, that they had been lost, and that the outlook
+was not reassuring. She begged him to prepare himself for the final
+calamity; promising that if there were no change for the better by
+December 1st, she would come home to be with him when the blow fell. She
+begged him to prepare to meet it like a Sands, and assured him that if
+worse came to worst she would earn enough to keep poverty away. Judge
+Sands would receive this letter the second day following, Friday, the 13th
+day of November. My God! how well I know the date. It is seared into my
+brain as though with a white-hot iron.
+
+After our talk with Beulah Sands I begged Bob to dine with me and go over
+matters at length to see if we could not find a way out to relief.
+
+"No, Jim, I have work to do to-night, worn that won't wait. That Tariff
+Bill was buttoned up to-day, and it has just been announced that the
+Sugar directors have declared a big extra stock dividend. Things have come
+out just about as I told you they would, and the stock is climbing to-day.
+They say it will touch 200 to-morrow and 'the Street' is predicting 250
+for it in ten days. Barry Conant has been a steady buyer all day and the
+news bureaus announced that Camemeyer and the 'Standard Oil' are twenty
+millions winners. They say the Washington gamblers, the Congressmen,
+Senators, and Cabinet members with their heelers and lobbyists have made a
+killing. About every one seems to have fattened up, Jim, but you and me
+and Beulah Sands and the public. The public gets the axe both ways as
+usual. They have been shaken out of their stock, and they will be
+compelled to pay millions more each year for their sugar than they would
+if this law had not been made for their benefit. Jim, there is no
+disguising the fact that the American people are as helpless in the hands
+of these thugs of the 'System' as though they lived in the realm of the
+Sultan, where a few cutthroat brigands are licensed to rob and oppress to
+their heart's content. Jim Randolph, you know this game of finance. You
+know how it is worked and the men who work it. Tell me if there is any
+consideration due Wall Street and its heart-and-soul butchers at the hands
+of honest men."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Bob. What are you driving at?"
+
+"Never mind what I am driving at. I ask you whether, if an honest man knew
+how to beat Wall Street at its own game, he should hesitate to beat
+it--hesitate because of anything connected with conscience or morals? You
+saw what Barry Conant was able to do to us that day simply by standing on
+the floor of the Stock Exchange and outstaying me in opening and closing
+his mouth. You saw he was able to sell Sugar to a point so low that I was
+obliged to let go of our 150,000 shares at eight to ten million dollars
+less than we could have got for them if we could have held them until
+to-day. Because of this trick his clients, the 'System,' instead of us,
+make five to seven millions."
+
+"I don't follow you, Bob. I know that Barry Conant was able to do this
+because he had more money behind him than you."
+
+"You think so, do you, Jim? That is the way it looks to you, but I tell
+you money had nothing to do with it. Nothing had to do with it but the
+fiendish system of fraud and trickery upon which the whole stock-gambling
+structure is reared. Nothing entered into the whole business but the
+trickery of stock-gambling as conducted to-day. It was only a question,
+Jim, of a man's opening and closing his mouth and spitting out words. From
+the minute Barry Conant came into that crowd until he left and we were
+ruined, he showed no money, no anything that I did not show. From the very
+nature of the business he could not. He simply said 'Sold' oftener and
+longer than I said 'Buy.' He may have had money back of him, or he may
+only have had nerve. God Almighty is the only one who can tell, for when
+Conant was through he was able to buy back at 90 the 50,000 shares he sold
+me at 175, the 50,000 that broke my back. Jim, if I had known as much that
+day as I do now I would have stood in that crowd and bought all the stock
+he sold at 180 and I would have stood there buying until hell froze over
+or he quit; then I would have made him rebuy it at 280 or 2,080, and I
+would have broken him and all his Camemeyer and 'Standard Oil' backers;
+broken them to their last crime-covered dollar."
+
+"Bob, what are you talking about? It is all Chinese to me. I cannot get
+head or tail of what you are driving at."
+
+"I know you can't, Jim, neither could Wall Street if it were listening to
+me. But you will, and Wall Street will too, before many days go by. Now I
+must be off. I have work to do."
+
+He put on his hat and left me trying to puzzle out just what he meant.
+
+Next day the Sugar bulls had the centre of the Stock Exchange stage. All
+day long they tossed Sugar from one to another as though each thousand
+shares had been a wisp of hay instead of $200,000--for soon after the
+opening it soared to 200. The "System's" cohorts were in absolute control,
+with Barry Conant never a minute away from the Sugar-pole, always on the
+alert to steer the course of prices when they threatened to run away on
+the up or the down side. It was evident to the expert readers of the tape
+that the "System" was currying its steed for an exceptionally brilliant
+run. Ike Bloomstein, the Average Fiend, who for forty years had kept close
+track of every movement on the floor, and who would bet anything, from his
+Fifth Avenue mansion to his overripe boardroom straw hat, that all stocks
+and movements were as strictly subject to the law of averages as are the
+tides to the moon and sun, remarked to Joe Barnes, the loan expert:
+
+"'Cam' unt de Keroseners are pudding up egstra dop rails to dot wool-pen
+deh haf ben pilding since deh took Pop Prownlee and deh Rantolphs into
+gamp. Unless my topesheet goes pack on me, for deh first dime in forty
+years dere vill pe a record clip pefore a veek from to-tay."
+
+"I am with you there, Ike," answered Joe. "If Barry Conant's knife-edged
+teeth ever spelt a killin', they do to-day. I just got orders from
+somewhere to drop call money from four to two and a half per cent., and
+they have given me ten millions to drop it with and the order is to favour
+Sugar as 'collat.' Some one is anxious to make it easy for the bleaters to
+get the coin to buy all the Sugar they want. Ike, you and I might make
+turkey money for Thanksgiving if we only knew whether Barry and his bunch
+were going to shoot her up thirty or forty points before they turned the
+bag upside down, or whether they will bury them from 200 to 150. What do
+you think?"
+
+"I gant make out, aldo I haf vatched dem sharp all day. Dey certainly haf
+deh lambs lined up right now for any vey dey vont to twist id. I nefer see
+a petter market for a deluge. From Barry's movements all day I should say
+dey vould keep hoistin' her until apout noon to-morrow, unt dat deh might
+get her up to two-tirty or even to deh two-fifty. Put dere are von or two
+topes on deh sheet vhat run deh uder vay. First der is dey fact you gant
+run out, dat dere is alreaty on deh Sugar vagon deh piggest load of chuicy
+suckers dat efer game in from deh suppurbs. Sharley Pates says if any von
+hat tapped his Vashington vire er any utter Capitol vire dis veek he vould
+haf tought dere vas a Senate, House, unt Kabinet roll-gall on. Deh topes
+say 'Cam' vill nefer led dat fat punch off grafters slite out mit real
+money if he gan help id unt deh game iss endirely in his hands."
+
+"I agree with you, Ike. If I had the steering of this killing I don't
+think I would take any chance of tempting them to dump and grab the
+profits by carrying it much over 200. But you can't tell what 'Cam' and
+those four-eyed dentists at 26 Broadway will do."
+
+"Yes, put der iss anudder t'ing, Cho, dat makes me sit up unt plink about
+her goin' ofer two hundred. To-morrow's Friday der t'irteenth."
+
+"Of course, Ike, that is something to be reckoned with, and every man on
+the floor and in the Street as well has his eye on it. Friday, the 13th,
+would break the best bull market ever under way. You and I know that, Ike,
+and the dope shows it too, but you have got to stack this up against it on
+this trip: no man on the floor knows what Friday the 13th, means better
+than Barry Conant. He has worked it to the queen's taste many a time. Why,
+Barry would not eat to-day for fear the food would get stuck in his
+windpipe. He's never left the pole for a minute; but suppose, Ike, Barry
+has tipped off 'Cam' that all the boys will let go their fliers, and most
+of them will take one on the short side over to-night for a superstition
+drop at the opening; and suppose 'Cam' has told him to take them all into
+camp and give her a rafter-scraper at the opening, where would old Friday,
+13th, land on to-morrow's dope-sheets? Bring up the average, wouldn't it,
+for five years to come? I tell you, Ike, she's too deep for me this run,
+and I'm goin' to let her alone and pay for the turkey out of loan
+commissions or stick to plain workday food."
+
+"Zame here, Cho. Say, Cho, haf you noticed Pop Prownlee to-tay? He has
+frozen to deh fringe off dat Sugar crowd ess t'ough some von hat nipped
+'is scarf-pin unt he vos layin' for him ass he game out. He hasn't made a
+trade to-tay unt yet he sticks like a stamp-tax. I ben keeping my eyes on
+him for I t'ought he hat someding up his sleeve dat might raise tust ven
+he tropt id. I dink Parry has hat deh same itear. He never loses sight of
+him, yet Pop hasn't made a trade to-tay, unt here id iss twenty minutes of
+der glose unt dere iss Parry in deh centre again whooping her up ofer two
+hundred unt four."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+
+
+Thursday, November 12th, was a memorable day in Wall Street. As the gong
+pealed its the-game's-closed-till-another-day, the myriad of tortured
+souls that are supposed to haunt the treacherous bogs and quicksands of
+the great Exchange, where lie their earthly hopes, must have prayed with
+renewed earnestness for its destruction before the morrow. Never had the
+Stock Exchange folded its tents with surer confidence of continuing its
+victorious march. Sugar advanced with record-breaking total sales to
+207� and in the final half-hour carried the whole list of stocks up
+with it. In that time some of the railroads jumped ten points. Sugar
+closed at the very top amid great excitement, with Barry Conant taking all
+offered. During the last thirty minutes it had become evident to all that
+the boardroom traders and plungers, together with many of the
+semi-professional gamblers, who operated through commission houses, were
+selling out their long stock and going short over the opening of the Wall
+Street hoodoo-day, Friday, the thirteenth of the month. But it was also
+evident, with the heavy selling at the close and the stiffness of the
+price, which had never wavered as block after block was thrown on the
+market, that some powerful interest as well had taken cognisance of the
+fact that the morrow was hoodoo-day. At the close, most of the sellers,
+had they been granted another five minutes, would have repurchased, even
+at a loss, what they had sold, for it looked as though they had sold
+themselves into a trap. Their anxiety was intensified by the publication,
+a few minutes later, of this item:
+
+   "Barry Conant in coming from the Sugar crowd after the close remarked
+   to a fellow broker, 'By three o'clock to-morrow, Friday, the 13th, will
+   have a new meaning to Wall Street.' This was interpreted as pointing to
+   a terrific jump in Sugar to-morrow."
+
+"The Street" knew that the news bureau that sent out this item was
+friendly to Barry Conant and the "System," and that it would print nothing
+displeasing to them. Therefore, this must be, a foreword of the coming
+harvest of the bulls and the slaughter of the bears.
+
+Others than Ike Bloomstein remarked upon the fact that Bob Brownley had
+hung close to the Sugar-pole all day, but when the close had come and gone
+without his having anything to do with the Sugar skyrockets, he dropped
+out of his fellow-brokers' minds. Wall Street has no use for any but the
+"doer." The poet and the mooner would be no more secure from interruption
+in the centre of the Sahara than in Wall Street between ten and three
+o'clock. Some sage has said that the human mind, like the well-bucket, can
+carry only its fill. The Wall Street mind always has its fill of budding
+dollars. In consequence, there is never room for those other interests
+that enter the normal mind.
+
+Friday, the 13th of November, drifted over Manhattan Island in a drear
+drizzle of marrow-chilling haze, which just missed being rain--one of
+those New York days that give a hesitating suicide renewed courage to cut
+the mortal coil. By ten o'clock it had settled down on the Stock Exchange
+and its surrounding infernos with a clamminess that damped the spirits of
+the most rampant bulls. No class in the world is so susceptible to
+atmospheric conditions as stock-gamblers. Many a stout-hearted one has
+been known to postpone the inauguration of a long-planned coup merely
+because the air filled his blood with the dank chill of superstition.
+Because of the expected Sugar pyrotechnics, Stock Exchange members had
+gathered early; the brokers' offices were crowded to overflowing before
+ten; the morning papers, not only in New York but in Boston, Philadelphia,
+and other centres, were filled with stories of the big rise that was to
+take place in Sugar. The knowing ones saw the ear-marks of the "System's"
+press-agent in these stories; and they knew that this industrious
+institution had not sat up the night before because of insomnia. All the
+signs pointed to a killing, and a terrific one--pointed so plainly that
+the bears and Sugar shorts found no hope in the atmosphere or the date.
+
+Bob had not been near the office the afternoon before, and as he had not
+come in by five minutes to ten I decided to go over to the Exchange and
+see if he were going to mix up in the baiting of the Sugar bears. I had no
+specific reasons for thinking he was interested except his recent queer
+actions, particularly his hanging to the Sugar-pole, yet doing nothing,
+the day before. But it is one of the best-established traditions of
+stock-gambledom that when an operator has been bitten by a rabid
+stock he is invariably attracted to it every time afterward that it
+shows signs of frothing. More than all, I had one of those strong
+nowhere-born-nowhere-cradled intuitions common to those living in the
+stock-gambling world, which made me feel the creepy shadow of coming
+events.
+
+As on that day a few weeks before, the crowd was at the Sugar-pole, but
+its alignment was different. There in the centre were Barry Conant and his
+trusted lieutenants, but no opposing rival. None of those hundreds of
+brokers showed that desperate resolve to do or die that is born of a
+necessity. They were there to buy or sell, but not to put up a life or
+death, on-me-depends-the-result fight. Those who were long of stock could
+easily be distinguished by their expressions of joy from the shorts, who
+had seen the handwriting on the wall and were filled with uncertainty,
+fear, terror. The demeanour of Barry Conant and his lieutenants expressed
+confidence: they were going to do what they were there to do. They showed
+by their tight-buttoned coats, and squared shoulders that they expected
+lots of rush, push, and haul work, but apparently they anticipated no
+last-ditch fighting. The gong pealed and the crowd of brokers sprang at
+one another, but only for blood, not flesh, bone, heart, and soul; just
+blood. The first price on Sugar was 211 for 3,000 shares. Someone sold it
+in a block. Barry Conant bought it. It did not require three eyes to see
+that the seller was one of his lieutenants. This meant what is known as a
+"wash" sale, a fictitious one arranged in advance between two brokers to
+establish the basis for the trades that are to follow--one of those minor
+frauds of stock-gambling by which the public is deceived and the traders
+and plungers are handicapped with loaded dice. In principle, it is a
+device older than stock exchanges themselves, and is put to use elsewhere
+than on the floor. For instance, four genuine buyers want a particular
+animal worth $200 at a horse auction. Its owner's pal starts the bidding
+at $400, and the four, not being up in horse values, are thereby induced
+to reach for it at between $400 to $500. But human nature, whether at
+horse sales or at stock-gambling, loves to be "hinky-dinked" as much as
+the moth loves to play tag with the candle flame. In five minutes Sugar
+was selling at 221, and the frantic shorts were grabbing for it as though
+there never was to be another share put on sale, while Barry Conant and
+his lieutenants were most industriously pushing it just beyond their
+reaching finger-tips, either by buying it as fast as it was offered by
+genuine sellers or by taking what their own pals threw in the air.
+
+I was not surprised to see Bob's tall form wedged in the crowd about
+two-thirds of the way from the centre. Every other active floor member was
+there too. Even Ike Bloomstein and Joe Barnes, who seldom went into the
+big crowds, were on hand, perhaps to catch a flier for their Thanksgiving
+turkey money, perhaps to get as near the killing as possible. Bob was not
+trading, although, as on the day before, he never took his eye off Barry
+Conant. I said to myself, "He is trying to fathom Barry Conant's
+movements," but for what purpose puzzled me. The hands of the big clock on
+the wall showed that trading had been thirty minutes under way and still
+Barry Conant was pushing up the price. His voice had just rung out "25 for
+any part of 5,000" when, like an echo, sounded through the hall, "Sold."
+It was Bob. He had worked his way to the centre of the crowd and stood in
+front of Barry Conant. He was not the Bob who had taken Barry Conant's
+gaff that afternoon a few weeks before. I never saw him cooler, calmer,
+more self-possessed. He was the incarnation of confident power. A cold,
+cynical smile played around the corners of his mouth as he looked down
+upon his opponent.
+
+The effect upon Barry Conant was different from that of Bob's last bid on
+the day when Beulah Sands's hopes went skyward in dust. It did not rouse
+him to the wild, furious desire for the onslaught that he showed then, but
+seemed to quicken his alert, prolific mind to exercise all its cunning. I
+think that in that one moment Barry Conant recalled his suspicions of the
+day before, when he had wondered what Bob's presence in the crowd meant,
+and that he saw again the picture of Bob on the day when he himself had
+ditched Bob's treasure-train. He hesitated for just the fraction of a
+second, while he waved with lightning-like rapidity a set of finger
+signals to his lieutenants. Then he squared himself for the encounter. "25
+for 5,000," Cold, cold as the voice of a condemning judge rang Bob's
+"Sold." "25 for 5,000." "Sold." "25 for 5,000." "Sold." Their eyes were
+fixed upon each other, in Barry's a defiant glare, in Bob's mingled pity
+and contempt. The rest of the brokers hushed their own bids and offers
+until it could have truthfully been said that the floor of the Stock
+Exchange was quiet, an almost unheard-of thing in like circumstances.
+Again Barry Conant's voice, "25 for 5,000." "Sold." "25 for 5,000."
+"Sold." Barry Conant had met his master. Whether it was that for the first
+time in all his wonderful career he realised that the "System" was to meet
+its Nemesis, or what the cause, none could tell, perhaps not even Barry
+Conant himself, but some emotion caused his olive face for an instant to
+turn pale, and gave his voice a tell-tale quiver. Once more pealed forth
+"25 for 5,000." That Bob saw the pallor, that he caught the quiver, was
+evident to all, for the instant his "Sold" rang out, he followed it with
+"5,000 at 24, 23, 22, 20." Neither Barry Conant nor any of his lieutenants
+got in a "Take it"; although whether they wanted to or not was an open
+question until Bob allowed his voice to dwell just a pendulum swing of
+time on the 20. It was as if he were tantalising them into sticking by
+their guns. By the time he paused, Barry Conant's nerve was back, for his
+piercing "Take it" had linked to it "20 for any part of 10,000." The bid
+was yet on his lips when Bob's deep voice rang out "Sold." "Any part of
+25,000 at 19, 18, 15, 10." Hell was now loose. Back and forth, up against
+the rail, around the room and back and around again, the crowd surged for
+fifteen of the wildest, craziest minutes in the history of the New York
+Stock Exchange, a history replete with records of wild and crazy scenes.
+
+At last from sheer exhaustion there came a ten minutes' lull, which was
+used in comparing trades. At the beginning of the respite Sugar was
+selling at 155, for in that quarter-hour of madness it had broken from 210
+to 155, but when the ten minutes had elapsed, the stock had worked back to
+167. Barry Conant had again taken the centre of the crowd after hastily
+scanning the brief notes handed him by messenger-boys and giving orders to
+his lieutenants. He had evidently received reinforcements in the form of
+renewed orders from his principals. Many of the faces that fringed the
+inner circle of that crowd were frightful to look upon, some white as
+though just lifted from hospital pillows, others red to the verge of
+apoplexy--all strained as though awaiting the coming of the jury with a
+life or death verdict. They all knew that Bob had sold more than a hundred
+thousand shares of Sugar upon which the profits must be more than four
+million dollars. Would he resume selling or was he through? Was it short
+stock, which must be bought back, or long stock; and if long, whose stock?
+Were the insiders selling out on one another, or were they all selling
+together, and under cover of Barry Conant's movements were Camemeyer and
+"Standard Oil" emptying their bag preparatory to the slaughter of the
+Washington contingent? All these questions were rushing through the heads
+of that crowd of brokers like steam through a boiler, now hot, now cold,
+but always at high pressure, for upon the correctness of the answers
+depended the fortune of many who breathlessly awaited the renewal or the
+suspension of the contest. Even Barry Conant's usually impassive face wore
+a tinge of anxiety.
+
+Indeed, Bob's was the only one in the centre of that throng that showed no
+sign of what was going on behind it. The same cynical smile that had been
+there since the opening still played around the corners of his mouth as he
+squared himself in front of his opponent. All knew now that he was not
+through. Barry Conant had evidently decided to force the fighting,
+although more cautiously than before. "67 for a thousand." One of his
+lieutenants bid 67 for 500, another 67 for 300, and as Bob had not yet
+shown his intention of meeting their bids, 67 for different amounts was
+heard all over the crowd. Bob might have been tossing a mental coin to
+decide the advisability of buying back what he had sold; he might have
+been adding up the bids as they were made. He said nothing for a fraction
+of a minute, which to those tortured men must have seemed like an age.
+Then with a wave of his hand, as though delivering a benediction, he swept
+the circle with a cold-blooded, "Sold the lots. 5,600 in all."
+
+"Sixty-seven for a thousand"--again Barry Conant's bid. "Sold." "67 for
+5,000." "Sold." "66 for a thousand." "Sold." The drop from five thousand
+to one thousand and a dollar a share in Barry Conant's bids was the
+mortally wounded but still game general's "Sound the retreat." Bob heard
+it. "Any part of 10,000 at 65, 64, 62, 60." The din was now as fierce as
+before. The entire crowd, all but Barry Conant and his lieutenants, seemed
+to have concluded that Bob's renewal of attack meant that his was the
+winning side, and those who had been hanging on to their stock, hoping
+against hope, and those who were short and had been undecided whether to
+cover or to hold on and sell more for greater profits, vied with one
+another in a frantic effort to sell. All could now feel the coming panic.
+All could see that it was to be a bad one, as the least informed on the
+floor knew that there was a tremendous amount of Sugar stock in the hands
+of Washington novices at speculation and of others who had bought it at
+high prices. Sugar was now dropping two, three, five dollars a share
+between trades, and the panic was spreading to the other poles, as is
+always the case, for when there are sudden large losses in one stock, the
+losers must throw over the other stocks they hold to meet this loss, and
+thus the whole structure tumbles like a house of cards. Sugar had just
+crossed 110 when the loud bang of the president's gavel resounded through
+the room. Instantly there was a silence as of death. All knew the meaning
+of the sound, the most ominous ever heard in a stock exchange, calling for
+the temporary suspension of business while the president announces the
+failure of some member or house.
+
+    Perkins, Blanchard & Company
+
+    Announce that They Cannot Meet Their Obligations
+
+This statement that one of the oldest houses had been swamped in the crash
+Bob had started caused further frantic selling, and, as though every
+member had employed the lull to refill his lungs, a howl arose that pealed
+and wailed to the dome.
+
+I watched Bob closely; in fact, it was impossible for me to take my eyes
+off him; he seemed absolutely unmindful of the agonised shrieks about him,
+for the frenzied brokers were no longer crying their bids or offers, but
+screaming them. He still continued relentlessly to hammer Sugar, offering
+it in thousand and tens of thousand lots.
+
+Again and again the gavel fell, and again and again an announcement of
+failure was followed by blood-curdling howls. When Sugar struck 80--not
+180, but plain 80--it seemed that the last day of stock speculation was
+at hand. Announcements were being made every few minutes of the failure of
+this bank, the closing of the doors of that trust company. Where would it
+end? What power could stop this Niagara of molten dollars? Suddenly above
+the tumult rose Bob Brownley's voice. He must have been standing on his
+tiptoes. His hands were raised aloft. He seemed to tower a head above the
+mob. His voice was still clear and unimpaired by the terrible strain of
+the past two hours. To that mob it must have sounded like the trumpet of
+the delivering angel. "80 for any part of 25,000 Sugar." Instantly Sugar
+was hurled at him from all sides of the crowd. He was the only buyer of
+moment who had appeared since Sugar broke 125. Barry Conant and his
+lieutenants had disappeared like snowflakes at the opening of the door of
+the firebox of a locomotive speeding through the storm. In a few seconds
+Bob had been sold all the 25,000 he had bid for. Again his voice rang out:
+"80 for 25,000." The sellers momentarily halted. He got only a few
+thousands of his twenty-five. "85 for 25,000." A few thousands more. "90
+for 25,000." Still fewer thousands. His bidding was beginning to tell on
+the mob. A cry ran through the room into the crowds around the other
+poles--"Brownley has turned!"--and taking renewed courage at the report,
+the bulls rallied their forces and began to bid for the different stocks,
+which a moment before it had seemed that no one wanted at any price.
+
+In a chip of a minute the whole scene changed; there was almost as wild a
+panic on the up side as there had been on the down. Bob Brownley continued
+buying Sugar until he had pushed it above 150. He then went about tallying
+up his trades. At the end of ten minutes' calculation he returned to the
+centre and bought 11,000 shares more; coming out, his eye caught mine.
+
+"Jim, have you been here long?"
+
+"An eternity. I was here at the opening and I pray God never to put me
+through another two hours like the past two. It seems a hideous dream, a
+nightmare. Bob, in the name of God what have you been doing?"
+
+He gave me a wild, awful look of exultation. Sublime triumph shone in
+those blazing brown orbs, triumph such as I had never seen in the eyes of
+man.
+
+"Jim Randolph, I have been giving Wall Street and its hell 'System' a
+dose of its own poison, a good full-measure dose. They planned by
+harvesting a fresh crop of human hearts and souls on the bull side to give
+Friday the 13th a new meaning. Tradition says Friday the 13th is bear
+Saints' day. I believe in maintaining old traditions, so I harvested their
+hearts instead. I will tell you about it some time, Jim, but now I must
+see Beulah Sands. Jim Randolph, I've saved her and her father. I've made
+them a round three millions and a strong seven millions for myself."
+
+He almost yelled it as he rushed away and left me dazed, stupefied. A
+moment, and I came to. Something urged me to follow him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+
+
+As I passed through my office a few minutes later I heard Bob's voice in
+Beulah Sands's office. It was raised in passionate eloquence.
+
+"Yes, Beulah, I have done it single-handed. I have crucified Camemeyer,
+'Standard Oil,' and the 'System' that spiked me to the cross a few weeks
+ago. You have three millions, and I have seven. Now there is nothing more
+but for you to go home to your father, and then come back to me. Back to
+me, Beulah, back to me to be my wife!"
+
+He stopped. There was no sound. I waited; then, frightened, I stepped to
+the door of Beulah Sands's office. Bob was standing just inside the
+threshold, where he had halted to give her the glad tidings. She had risen
+from her desk and was looking at him with an agonised stare. He seemed to
+be transfixed by her look, the wild ecstasy of the outburst of love yet
+mirrored in his eyes. She was just saying as I reached the door:
+
+"Bob, in mercy's name tell me you got this money fairly, honourably."
+
+Bob must have realised for the first time what he had done. He did not
+speak. He only stared into her eyes. She was now at his side.
+
+"Bob, you are unnerved," she said; "you have been through a terrible
+ordeal. For an hour I have been reading in the bulletins of the banks and
+trust companies that have failed, of the banking-houses that have been
+ruined. I have been reading that you did it; that you have made
+millions--and I knew it was for me, for father, but in the midst of my
+joy, my gratitude, my love--for, oh, Bob, I love you," she interrupted
+herself passionately; "it seems as though I love you beyond the capacity
+of a human heart to love. I think that for the right to be yours for one
+single moment of this life I would smilingly endure all the pains and
+miseries of eternal torture. Yes, Bob, for the right to have you call me
+yours for only while I heard the word, I would do anything, Bob, anything
+that was honourable."
+
+She had drawn his head down close to her face, and her great blue eyes
+searched his as though they would go to his very soul. She was a child in
+her simple appeal for him to allow her to see his heart, to see that there
+was nothing black there.
+
+As she gazed, her beautiful hands played through his hair as do a mother's
+through that of the child she is soothing in sickness.
+
+"Bob, speak to me, speak to me," she begged, "tell me there was no
+dishonour in the getting of those millions. Tell me no one was made to
+suffer as my father and I have suffered. Tell me that the suicides and the
+convicts, the daughters dragged to shame and the mothers driven to the
+madhouse as a result of this panic, cannot be charged to anything unfair
+or dishonourable that you have done. Bob, oh, Bob, answer! Answer no, or
+my heart will break; or if, Bob, you have made a mistake, if you have done
+that which in your great desire to aid me and my father seemed
+justifiable, but which you now see was wrong, tell it to me, Bob dear, and
+together we will try to undo it. We will try to find a way to atone. We
+will give the millions to the last, last penny to those upon whom you have
+brought misery. Father's loss will not matter. Together we will go to him
+and tell him what we have done, what we have lived through, tell him of
+our mistake, and in our agony he will forget his own. For such a horror
+has my father of anything dishonourable that he will embrace his misery as
+happiness when he knows that his teachings have enabled his daughter to
+undo this great wrong. And then, Bob, we will be married, and you and I
+and father and mother will be together, and be, oh, so happy, and we will
+begin all over again."
+
+"Beulah, stop; in the name of God, in the name of your love for me, don't
+say another word. There is a limit to the capacity of a man to suffer,
+even if he be a great, strong brute like myself, and, Beulah, I have
+reached that limit. The day has been a hard one."
+
+His voice softened and became as a tired child's.
+
+"I must go out into the hustle of the street, into the din and sound, and
+get down my nerves and get back my head. Then I shall be able to think
+clear and true, and I will come back to you, and together we will see if I
+have done anything that makes me unfit to touch the cheek and the hands
+and the lips of the best and most beautiful woman God ever put upon earth.
+Beulah, you know I would not deceive you to save my body from the fires
+of this world, and my soul from the torture of the damned, and I promise
+you that if I find that I have done wrong, what you call wrong, what your
+father would call wrong, I will do what you say to atone."
+
+He took her head between his hands, gently, reverently, and touching his
+lips to her glorious golden hair, he went away.
+
+Beulah Sands turned to me. "Please, Mr. Randolph, go with him. He is
+soul-dazed. One can never tell what a heart sorely perplexed will prompt
+its owner to do. Often in the night when I have got myself into a fever
+from thinking of my father's situation, I have had awful temptations. The
+agents of the devil seek the wretched when none of those they love are by.
+I have often thought some of the blackest tragedies of the earth might
+have been averted if there had been a true friend to stand at the wrung
+one's elbow at the fatal minute of decision and point to the sun behind,
+just when the black ahead grew unendurable. Please follow Mr. Brownley
+that you may be ready, should his awakening to what he has done become
+unbearable. Tell him the dreaded morrows are never as terrible actually as
+they seem in anticipation."
+
+I overtook Bob just outside the office. I did not speak to him, for I
+realised that he was in no mood for company. I dropped in behind,
+determined that I would not lose sight of him. It was almost one o'clock.
+Wall Street was at its meridian of frenzy, every one on a wild rush. The
+day's doing had packed the always-crowded money lane. The newsboys were
+shouting afternoon editions. "Terrible panic in Wall Street. One man
+against millions. Robert Brownley broke 'the Street.' Made twenty millions
+in an hour. Banks failed. Wreck and ruin everywhere. President Snow of
+Asterfield National a suicide." Bob gave no sign of hearing. He strode
+with a slow, measured gait, his head erect, his eyes staring ahead at
+space, a man thinking, thinking, thinking for his salvation. Many hurrying
+men looked at him, some with an expression of unutterable hatred, as
+though they wanted to attack him. Then again there were those who called
+him by name with a laugh of joy; and some turned to watch him in
+curiosity. It was easy to pick the wounded from those who shared in his
+victory, and from those who knew the frenzied finance buzz-saw only by its
+buzz. Bob saw none. Where could he be going? He came to the head of the
+street of coin and crime and crossed Broadway. His path was blocked by the
+fence surrounding old Trinity's churchyard. Grasping the pickets in either
+hand he stared at the crumbling headstones of those guardsmen of Mammon
+who once walked the earth and fought their heart battles, as he was
+walking and fighting, but who now knew no ten o'clock, no three, who
+looked upon the stock-gamblers and dollar-trailers as they looked upon the
+worms that honeycombed their headstones' bases. What thoughts went through
+Bob Brownley's mind only his Maker knew. For minutes he stood motionless,
+then he walked on down Broadway. He went into the Battery. The benches
+were crowded with that jetsam and flotsam of humanity that New York's
+mighty sewers throw in armies upon her inland beaches at every sunrise:
+Here a sodden brute sleeping off a prolonged debauch, there a lad whose
+frankness of face and homespun clothes and bewildered eyes spelt, "from
+the farm and mother's watchful love." On another bench an Italian woman
+who had a half-dozen future dollar kings and social queens about her, and
+whose clothes told of the immigrant ship just into port. Bob Brownley
+apparently saw none. But suddenly he stopped. Upon a bench sat a
+sweet-faced mother holding a sleeping babe in her arms, while a
+curly-pated boy nestled his head in her lap and slept through the magic
+lanes and fairy woods of dreamland. The woman's face was one of those that
+blend the confidence of girlhood with the uncertainty of womanhood. 'Twas
+a pretty face, which had been plainly tagged by its Maker for a
+light-hearted trip through this world, but it had been seared by the iron
+of the city.
+
+"Mr. Brownley--" She started to rise.
+
+He gently pushed her back with a "hush," unwilling to rob the sleepers of
+their heaven.
+
+"What are you doing here, Mrs.----?" He halted.
+
+"Mrs. Chase. Mr. Brownley, when I went away from Randolph & Randolph's
+office I married John Chase; you may remember him as delivery clerk. I had
+such a happy home and my husband was so good; I did not have to typewrite
+any longer. These are our two children."
+
+"What are you doing here?"
+
+The tears sprang to her eyes; she dropped them, but did not answer.
+
+"Don't mind me, woman. I, too, have hidden hells I don't want the world to
+see. Don't mind me; tell me your story. It may do you good; it may do me
+good; yes, it may do me good."
+
+I had dropped into a seat a few feet away. Both were too much occupied
+with their own thoughts to notice me or any one else. I could not overhear
+their conversation, but long afterward, when I mentioned our old
+stenographer, Bessie Brown, to Bob, he told me of the incident at the
+Battery. Her husband, after their marriage, had become infected with the
+stock-gambling microbe, the microbe that gnaws into its victim's mind and
+heart day and night, while ever fiercer grows the "get rich, get rich"
+fever. He had plunged with their savings and had drawn a blank. He had
+lost his position in disgrace and had landed in the bucket-shop, the
+sub-cellar pit of the big Stock Exchange hell. From there a week before he
+had been sent to prison for theft, and that morning she had been turned
+into the street by her landlord. I saw Bob take from his pocket his
+memorandum-book, write something upon a leaf, tear it out and hand it to
+the woman, touch his hat, and before she could stop him, stride away. I
+saw her look at the paper, clap her hands to her forehead, look at the
+paper again and at the retreating form of Bob Brownley. Then I saw her,
+yes, there in the old Battery Park, in the drizzling rain and under the
+eyes of all, drop upon her knees in prayer. How long she prayed I do not
+know. I only know that as I followed Bob I looked back and the woman was
+still upon her knees. I thought at the time how queer and unnatural the
+whole thing seemed. Later, I learned to know that nothing is queer and
+unnatural in the world of human suffering; that great human suffering
+turns all that is queer and unnatural into commonplace. Next day Bessie
+Brown came to our office to see Bob. Not being able to get at him she
+asked for me.
+
+"Mr. Randolph, tell me, please, what shall I do with this paper?" she
+said. "I met Mr. Brownley in the Battery yesterday. He saw I was in
+distress and he gave me this, but I cannot believe he meant it," and she
+showed me an order on Randolph & Randolph for a thousand dollars. I cashed
+her check and she went away.
+
+From the Battery Bob sought the wharves, the Bowery, Five Points, the
+hothouses of the under-worldlings of America. He seemed bent on picking
+out the haunts of misery in the misery-infested metropolis of the new
+world. For two hours he tramped and I followed. A number of times I
+thought to speak to him and try to win him from his mood, but I refrained.
+I could see there was a soul battle waging and I realised that upon its
+outcome might depend Bob's salvation. Some seek the quiet of the woods,
+the soothing rustle of the leaves, the peaceful ripple of the brook when
+battling for their soul, but Bob's woods appeared to be the shadowy places
+of misery, his rustling leaves the hoarse din of the multitude, and his
+brook's ripple the tears and tales of the man-damned of the great city,
+for he stopped and conversed with many human derelicts that he met on his
+course. The hand of the clock on Trinity's steeple pointed to four as we
+again approached the office of Randolph & Randolph. Bob was now moving
+with a long, hurried stride, as though consumed with a fever of desire to
+get to Beulah Sands. For the last fifteen minutes I had with difficulty
+kept him in sight. Had he arrived at a decision, and if so, what was it? I
+asked myself over and over again as I plowed through the crowds.
+
+Bob went straight to Beulah Sands's office, I to mine. I had been there
+but a moment when I heard deep, guttural groans. I listened. The sound
+came louder than before. It came from Beulah Sands's office. With a bound
+I was at the open door. My God, the sight that met my gaze! It haunts me
+even now when years have dulled its vividness. The beautiful, quiet, gray
+figure that had grown to be such a familiar picture to Bob and me of late,
+sat at the flat desk in the centre of the room. She faced the door. Her
+elbows rested on the desk; in her hand was an afternoon paper that she had
+evidently been reading when Bob entered. God knows how long she had been
+reading it before he came. Bob was kneeling at the side of her chair, his
+hands clasped and uplifted in an agony of appeal that was supplemented by
+the awful groans. His face showed unspeakable terror and entreaty; the
+eyes were bursting from their sockets and were riveted on hers as those of
+a man in a dungeon might be fixed upon an approaching spectre of one whom
+he had murdered. His chest rose and fell, as though trying to burst some
+unseen bonds that were crushing out his life. With every breath would come
+the awful groan that had first brought me to him. Beulah Sands had half
+turned her face until her eyes gazed into Bob's with a sweet, childish
+perplexity. I looked at her, surprised that one whom I had always seen so
+intelligently masterful should be passive in the face of such anguish.
+Then, horror of horrors! I saw that there was something missing from her
+great blue eyes. I looked; gasped. Could it possibly be? With a bound I
+was at her side. I gazed again into those eyes which that morning had been
+all that was intelligent, all that was godlike, all that was human. Their
+soul, their life was gone. Beulah Sands was a dead woman; not dead in
+body, but in soul; the magic spark had fled. She was but an empty shell--a
+woman of living flesh and blood; but the citadel of life was empty, the
+mind was gone. What had been a woman was but a child. I passed my hand
+across my now damp forehead. I closed my eyes and opened them again. Bob's
+figure, with clasped, uplifted hands, and bursting eyes, was still there.
+There still resounded through the room the awful guttural groans. Beulah
+Sands smiled, the smile of an infant in the cradle. She took one beautiful
+hand from the paper and passed it over Bob's bronzed cheek, just as the
+infant touches its mother's face with its chubby fingers. In my horror I
+almost expected to hear the purling of a babe. My eyes in their perplexity
+must have wandered from her face, for I suddenly became aware of a great
+black head-line spread across the top of the paper that she had been
+reading:
+
+   "FRIDAY, THE 13TH."
+
+And beneath in one of the columns:
+
+   "TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN VIRGINIA"
+
+   "THE MOST PROMINENT CITIZEN OF THE STATE, EX-UNITED STATES SENATOR AND
+   EX-GOVERNOR, JUDGE LEE SANDS OF SANDS LANDING, WHILE TEMPORARILY INSANE
+   FROM THE LOSS OF HIS FORTUNE AND MILLIONS OF THE FUNDS FOR WHICH HE WAS
+   TRUSTEE, CUT THE THROAT OF HIS INVALID WIFE, HIS DAUGHTER'S, AND THEN
+   HIS OWN. ALL THREE DIED INSTANTLY."
+
+In another column:
+
+   "ROBERT BROWNLEY CREATES THE MOST DISASTROUS PANIC IN THE HISTORY OF
+   WALL STREET AND SPREADS WRECK AND RUIN THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY."
+
+A hideous picture seared its every light and shade on my mind, through my
+heart, into all my soul. A frenzied-finance harvest scene with its gory
+crop; in the centre one living-dead, part of the picture, yet the ghost
+left to haunt the painters, one of whom was already cowering before the
+black and bloody canvas.
+
+Well did the word-artist who wrote over the door of the madhouse, "Man can
+suffer only to the limit, then he shall know peace," understand the
+wondrous wisdom of his God. Beulah Sands had gone beyond her limit and was
+at peace.
+
+The awful groaning stopped and an ashen pallor spread over Bob Brownley's
+face. Before I could catch him he rolled backward upon the floor as dead.
+Bob Brownley, too, had gone beyond his limit. I bent over him and lifted
+his head, while the sweet woman-child knelt and covered his face with
+kisses, calling in a voice like that of a tiny girl speaking to her doll,
+"Bob, my Bob, wake up, wake up; your Beulah wants you." As I placed my
+hand upon Bob's heart and felt its beats grow stronger, as I listened to
+Beulah Sands's childish voice, joyously confident, as it called upon the
+one thing left of her old world, some of my terror passed. In its place
+came a great mellowing sense of God's marvellous wisdom. I thought
+gratefully of my mother's always ready argument that the law of all laws,
+of God and nature, is that of compensation. I had allowed Bob's head to
+sink until it rested in Beulah's lap, and from his calm and steady
+breathing I could see that he had safely passed a crisis, that at least he
+was not in the clutches of death, as I had at first feared.
+
+Bob slept. Beulah Sands ceased her calling and with a smile raised her
+fingers to her lips and softly said, "Hush, my Bob's asleep." Together we
+held vigil over our sleeping lover and friend, she with the happiness of a
+child who had no fear of the awakening, I with a silent terror of what
+should come next. I had seen one mind wafted to the unknown that day. Was
+it to have a companion to cheer and solace it on its far journey to the
+great beyond? How long we waited Bob's awakening I could not tell. The
+clock's hands said an hour; it seemed to me an age. At last his
+magnificent physique, his unpoisoned blood and splendid brain pulled him
+through to his new world of mind and heart torture. His eyelids lifted. He
+looked at me, then at Beulah Sands, with eyes so sad, so awful in their
+perplexed mournfulness, that I almost wished they had never opened, or had
+opened to let me see the childlike look that now shone from the girl's.
+His gaze finally rested on her and his lips murmured "Beulah."
+
+"There, Bob, I thought you would know it was time to wake up." She bent
+over and kissed him on the eyes again and again with the loving ardour a
+child bestows upon its pets.
+
+He slowly rose to his feet. I could see from his eyes and the shudder that
+went over him as he caught sight of the paper on the desk that he was
+himself; that memory of the happenings of the day had not fled in his
+sleep. He rose to his full height, his head went up, and his shoulders
+back, but only from habit and for an instant. Then he folded Beulah Sands
+to his breast and dropped his head upon her shoulder. He sobbed like a
+father with the corpse of his child.
+
+"Why, Bob, my Bob, is this the way you treat your Beulah when she's let
+you sleep so your beautiful eyes would be pretty for the wedding? Is this
+the way to act before this kind man who has come to take us to the church?
+Naughty, naughty Bob."
+
+I looked at her, at Bob, in horror. I was beginning to realise the
+absolute deadness of this woman. From the first look I had known that her
+mind had fled, but knowledge is not always realisation. She did not even
+know who I was. Her mind was dead to all but the man she loved, the man
+who through all those long days of her suffering she had silently
+worshiped. To all but him she was new-born.
+
+At the sound of "wedding," "church," Bob's head slowly rose from her
+shoulder. I saw his decision the instant I caught his eye; I realised the
+uselessness of opposing it, and, sick at heart and horrified, I listened
+as he said in a voice now calm and soothing as that of a father to his
+child, "Yes, Beulah, my darling, I have slept too long. Bob has been
+naughty, but we will make up for lost time. Get your hat and cloak and
+we'll hurry to the church or we will be late."
+
+With a laugh of joy she followed him to the closet where hung the little
+gray turban and the pretty gray jacket. He took them from their peg and
+gave them to her.
+
+"Not a word, Jim," he bade me. "In the name of God and all our friendship,
+not a word. Beulah Sands will be my wife as soon as I can find a minister
+to marry us. It is best, best. It is right. It is as God would have it, or
+I am not capable of knowing right from wrong. Anyway, it is what will be.
+She has no father, no mother, no sister, no one to protect and shield her.
+The 'System' has robbed her of all in life, even of herself, of
+everything, Jim, but me. I must try to win her back for herself, or to
+make her new world a happy one--a happy one for her."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+
+
+An old gambler, whose life had been spent listening to the rattle of the
+drop-in-bound-out little roulette ball, was told by a fellow victim, as
+his last dollar went to the relentless tiger's maw, that the keeper's foot
+was upon an electric button which enabled him to make the ball drop where
+his stake was not. He simply said, "Thank God. I thought that prince of
+cheats, Fate, who all through life has had his foot on the button of my
+game, was the one who did the trick." Long suffering had driven the old
+gambler to the loser's bible, Philosophy! Cheated by man's device, he knew
+he had some chance of getting even; but Fate he could not combat.
+
+Bob Brownley had thought himself in hard luck when his eyes opened to the
+fact that he had been robbed by means of dice loaded by man, but when Fate
+pressed the button he saw that his man-made hell was but a feeble
+imitation, and--was satisfied, as whoever knows the game of life is
+satisfied, because--he must be. Bob's strong head bowed, his iron will
+bent, and meekly his soul murmured, "Thy will be done."
+
+That night he married Beulah Sands. The minister who united the grown-up
+man and the woman who was as a new-born babe saw nothing extraordinary in
+the match. He murmured to me, who acted as best man to the groom, maid of
+honour to the bride, and father and mother to both, "We see strange
+sights, we ministers of the great city, Mr. Randolph. The sweet little
+lady appears to be a trifle scared." My explanation that she and Mr.
+Brownley were the only survivors of the awful tragedies of the day was
+sufficient. He was satisfied when he got no other response to his
+question, "Do you take this man to be your wedded husband?" than a sweet
+childish smile as she snuggled closer to Bob.
+
+Bob and his bride went South to his mother and sisters the next day. He
+left to me the settlement of his trades. He instructed me to set aside
+$3,000,000 profits for Beulah Sands-Brownley, and insisted that I pay from
+the balance the notes he had given me a few weeks before. There remained
+something over $5,000,000 for himself.
+
+The leading Wall Street paper, in its preachment on the panic, wound up
+with:
+
+   "Wall Street has lived through many black Fridays. Some of them have
+   been thirteenth-of-the-month Fridays, but no Friday yet marked from the
+   calendar, no Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday yet
+   garnered to the storehouse of the past was ever more jubilantly
+   welcomed by his Satanic Majesty than yesterday. We pray heaven no
+   coming day may be ordained to go against yesterday's record for
+   tigerish cruelty and awful destruction. It is rumoured that Mr.
+   Brownley of Randolph & Randolph, either for himself or his clients
+   cleared twenty-five millions of profit. We believe that this estimate
+   is low. The losses coming through Robert Brownley's terrible onslaught
+   must have run over five hundred millions. Wall Street and the country
+   will do well to take the moral of yesterday's market to their heart. It
+   is this: The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few Americans is
+   a menace to our financial structure. It is the unanimous opinion of
+   'the Street' that Robert Brownley could never have succeeded in
+   battering down the price of Sugar in the very teeth of the Camemeyer
+   and Standard Oil support as he did yesterday, without a cash backing of
+   from fifty to one hundred millions. If a vast aggregation of money
+   owners deliberately place themselves behind an onslaught such as was so
+   successfully made yesterday, why can that slaughter not be repeated at
+   any time, on any stock, and against the support of any backing?"
+
+When I read this and listened to talk along the same lines, I was puzzled.
+I could not for the life of me see where Bob Brownley could have got five
+to ten millions' backing for such a raid, much less fifty to a hundred.
+Yet I was forced to confess that he must have had some tremendous backing;
+else how could he have done what I had seen him do?
+
+Bob left his wife at his mother's house while he went to Sands Landing to
+the funeral. After the old judge and his victims had been laid away and
+the relatives had gathered in the library of the great white Sands
+mansion, he explained their kinswoman's condition and told them that she
+was his wife. He insisted upon paying all Judge Sands's debts, over
+$500,000 of which was owed to members of the Sands family for whom he had
+been trustee. Before he went back to his mother's, Bob had turned a great
+calamity into an occasion for something near rejoicing. Judge Sands and
+his family were very dear to the people of the section, but his misfortune
+had threatened such wide-spread ruin that the unlooked-for recovery of a
+million and a half was a godsend that made for happiness.
+
+Two days after the funeral Bob's dearest hope fled. He had ordered all
+things at the Sands plantation put in their every-day condition. Beulah
+Sands's uncles, aunts, and cousins had arranged to welcome her and to try
+by every means in their power to coax back her lost mind. They assured Bob
+that, barring the absence of Beulah's father, mother, and sister, there
+would not be a memory-recaller missing. Bob and his wife landed from the
+river packet at the foot of the driveway, which led straight from the
+landing to the vine-covered, white-pillared portico. Bob's agony must have
+been awful when his wife clapped her hands in childish joy as she
+exclaimed, "Oh, Bob, what a pretty place!" She gave no sign that she had
+ever seen the great entrance, through which she had come and gone from her
+babyhood. Bob took her to the library, to her mother's room, to her own,
+to the nursery where were the dolls and toys of her childhood, but there
+came no sign of recognition, nothing but childish pleasure. She looked at
+her aunts and uncles and the cousins with whom she had spent her life,
+bewildered at finding so many strangers in the otherwise quiet place. As a
+last hope, they led in her old black foster-mother, who had nursed her in
+babyhood, who was the companion of her childhood and the pet of her
+womanhood. There was not a dry eye in the library when she met the old
+mammy's outburst of joy with the puzzled gaze of the child who does not
+understand. The grief of the old negress was pitiful as she realised that
+she was a stranger to her "honey bird." The child seemed perplexed at her
+grief. It was plain to all that the Sands home meant nothing to the last
+of the judge's family.
+
+Bob brought her back to New York and besought the aid of the medical
+experts of America and of the Old World to regain that which had been
+recalled by its Maker. The doctors were fascinated with this new phase of
+mind blight, for in some particulars Beulah's case was unlike any known
+instances, but none gave hope. All agreed that some wire connecting heart
+and brain had burned out when the cruel "System" threw on a voltage beyond
+the wire's capacity to transmit. All agreed that the woman-child wife
+would never grow older unless through some mental eruption beyond human
+power to produce. Some of the medical men pointed to one possibility, but
+that one was too terrible for Bob to entertain.
+
+The first anniversary of their marriage found Bob and his wife settled in
+their new Fifth Avenue mansion. He had bought and torn down two old
+houses between Forty-second and Forty-third Streets and had erected a
+palace, the inside of which was unique among all New York's unusual
+structures. The first and second floors were all that refined taste and
+unlimited expenditure of money could produce. Nothing on those splendid
+floors told of the strange things above. A sedate luxury pervaded the
+drawing-rooms, library, and dining-room. Bob said to me, in taking me
+through them, "Some day, Jim, Beulah may recover, may come back to me, and
+I want to have everything as she would wish, everything as she would have
+had it if the curse had never come." The third floor was Beulah's. A
+child's dainty bedroom; two nurses' rooms adjoining; a nursery, with a
+child's small schoolroom and a big playroom, with dolls and doll houses,
+child's toys of every description in abandon, as though their owner were
+in fact but a few years old. Across the hall were three offices, exact
+duplicates of mine, Bob's, and Beulah Sands's at Randolph & Randolph's.
+When I first saw them it was with difficulty that I brought myself to
+realise that I was not where the gruesome happenings of a year before had
+taken place. Bob had reproduced to the minutest details our down-town
+workshop. Standing in the door of Beulah Sands's office I faced the flat
+desk at which she had sat the afternoon when I first saw that hideous
+result of the work of the "System." I could almost see the little gray
+figure holding the afternoon paper. In horror my eyes sought the floor at
+the side of the chair in search of Bob's agonised face and uplifted hands.
+As I stood for the first time in the middle of Bob's handiwork, I seemed
+to hear again those awful groans.
+
+"Jim," Bob said, "I have a haunting idea that some day Beulah will wake
+and look around and think she has been but a few minutes asleep. If she
+should, she must have nothing to disabuse her mind until we break the news
+to her. I have instructed her nurses, one or the other of whom never loses
+sight of her night or day, to win her to the habit of spending her time at
+her old desk; I have told them always to be prepared for her awakening,
+and when it comes they are instantly to shut off the rest of the floor and
+house until I can get to her. Here comes Beulah now."
+
+Out of the nursery came a laughing, happy child-woman. In spite of her
+finely developed, womanly figure, which had lost nothing of its wonderful
+beauty, and the exquisite face and golden-brown hair and great blue eyes,
+which were as fascinating as on the day she first entered the offices of
+Randolph & Randolph; in spite of the close-fitting gray gown with dainty
+turned-over lace collar, I could hardly bring myself to believe that she
+was anything but a young child. With an eager look and a happy laugh she
+went to Bob and throwing her arms about his neck, covered his face with
+kisses.
+
+"Good Bob has come back to play with Beulah," she said, "She knew he
+would. They told Beulah Bob had gone away to the woods to gather pretty
+flowers. Beulah knew if Bob had gone to the woods he would have taken
+Beulah with him. Now Bob must play school with Beulah." She sat at her
+desk and opened her child's school-book. With mock severity she said,
+"Bob, c-a-t. What does it spell?" For half an hour Bob sat and played
+scholar and teacher by turns with all the patience of a fond father. With
+difficulty I kept back the tears the sad sight brought to my eyes.
+
+For the first year of Bob's marriage we saw but little of him at the
+office. The Exchange saw less. He had wandered in upon the floor two or
+three times, but did no business and seemed to take but little interest.
+
+"The Street" knew Bob had married the daughter of Judge Lee Sands, the
+victim of Tom Reinhart's cold-blooded Seaboard Air Line deal. Otherwise it
+knew nothing of the affair. His friends never met his wife. Occasionally
+they would pass the Brownley carriage on the avenue or in the park and,
+taking it for granted that the beautiful woman was Mrs. Brownley, they
+thought Bob a lucky fellow. It seemed quite natural that his wife should
+choose seclusion after the awful tragedy at her home in Virginia. But they
+could not understand why, with such cause for mourning, the exquisite
+figure beside Bob in the victoria should always be garbed in gray. After a
+while it was whispered that there was something wrong in Bob's household.
+Then his friends and acquaintances ceased to whisper or to think of his
+affairs. With all New York's bad points--and they are as plentiful as her
+church spires and charity bazaars--she has one offsetting virtue. If a
+dweller in her midst chooses to let New York alone, New York is willing to
+reciprocate. In her most crowded fashionable districts a person may come
+and go for a lifetime, and none in the block in which he dwells will know
+when his coming and going ceases. When a New Yorker reads in his newspaper
+of the man who lives next door to him, "murdered and his body discovered
+by the gas man" or the tax collector, the butcher or the baker, as the
+case may be, he never thinks he may have been remiss in his neighbourly
+duties. There is no such word as "neighbour" in the New York City
+dictionary. It may have been there once, but, if so, it was long
+ago used as a stake for the barbed-wire fence of exclusive
+keep-your-distance-we-keep-our-distance-until-we-know-youness. It is told
+of a minister from the rural districts, an old-fashioned American, who
+came to New York to take charge of a parish, that he started out to make
+his calls and was seized in the hall of what in civilisation would have
+been his next-door neighbour. He was rushed away to Bellevue for
+examination as to sanity. The verdict was: "Insane. Had no letter of
+introduction and was not in the set."
+
+Shortly after the first anniversary of his wedding Bob gave up his office
+with Randolph & Randolph and opened one for himself. He explained that he
+was giving up his commission business to devote all his time to personal
+trading. With the opening of his new office he again became the most
+active man on the floor. His trading was intermittent. For weeks he would
+not be seen at the Exchange or on "the Street." Then he would return and,
+after executing a series of brilliant trades, which were invariably
+successful, he would again disappear. He soon became known as the luckiest
+operator in Wall Street, and the beginning of his every new deal was the
+signal for his fast-growing following to tag on.
+
+From time to time I learned that Beulah Sands was making no real
+improvement, though in some details she had learned as a child learns. But
+there was no indication that she would ever regain her lost mind.
+
+Strange stories of Bob's doings began to seep into my office. For long
+periods he would disappear. Neither the nurses in charge of his wife, nor
+his brother, mother, and sisters, for whom he had purchased a mansion a
+few blocks above his own, would hear a word from him. Then he would
+return as suddenly as he had disappeared, and his wild eyes and haggard
+face would tell of a prolonged and desperate soul struggle. He drank often
+now, a habit he had never before indulged in.
+
+For ten days before the second anniversary of his marriage he had been
+missing. On the morning of the anniversary he appeared at the Exchange,
+wild-eyed and dare-devil reckless. The market had been advancing for weeks
+and was at a high level. Tom Reinhart and his branch of the "System" were
+working out a new fleecing of the public in Union and Northern Pacific. At
+the strike of the gong Bob took possession of the Union Pacific pole and
+in thirty minutes had precipitated a panic by his merciless selling. Our
+house was heavily interested in the Pacifics, although not in connection
+with Reinhart and his crowd. As soon as I got word that Bob was the cause
+of the slaughter, I rushed over to the Exchange and working my way into
+the crowd, I begged a word with him. He had broken both stocks over fifty
+points a share and the panic was raging through the room. He glared at me,
+but finally followed me out into the lobby. At first he would not heed my
+appeal, but finally he said, "Jim, it is too bad to let up. I had
+determined to rub this devilish institution off the map, but if it really
+is a case of injury to the house, it's my opportunity to do something for
+you who have done so much for me, so here goes." He threw himself into the
+Union Pacific crowd, first giving an order to a group of his brokers, who
+jumped for a number of other poles. Almost instantly the panic was stayed
+and stocks were bounding upward two to five points at a leap. Bob
+continued buying Union Pacific and his brokers other stocks in unlimited
+quantities. Nothing like such a quick turn of the market had been seen
+before. His power to absorb stocks seemed to be boundless. It was
+estimated that personally and through his brokers he bought over half a
+million shares before he joined me and left the Exchange.
+
+I looked at him in wonderment. "Bob, I cannot understand you," I said at
+last as we turned out of Broad Street into Wall. "It seems as if you work
+with magic. Everything you touch turns to gold."
+
+He wheeled on me. "Yes, Jim, you are right. Gold, heartless, soulless
+gold. But what is the dross good for? What is it good for to me? To-day I
+suppose I have made the biggest one-man killing in the history of 'the
+Street.' I must be an easy twenty-five millions richer in gold than I was
+this morning, and I had enough then to dam the East River and a good
+section of the North. But tell me, Jim, tell me, what can it buy in this
+world that I have not got? I had health and happiness, perfect health,
+pure happiness, when I did not have a thousand all told. Now I have fifty
+millions, and I know how to get fifty or five hundred and fifty more any
+time I care to take them, and I have only physical and mental hell. No
+beggar in all the world is so poor in happiness as I. Tell me, tell me,
+Jim, in the name of God, if there is one--for already the game of gold is
+robbing me of my faith in God--where can I buy a little, just a little
+happiness with all this cursed yellow dirt? What will it get me in the
+next world, Jim Randolph, what will it get me? If I had died when I was
+poor, I think you will agree with me that, if there is a heaven, I should
+have stood an even chance of getting there. Now on a day like to-day, when
+you see the results of my work, the results of my handling of unlimited
+gold, you must agree that if I were taken off I should stand more than an
+even show of landing in hell where the sulphur is thickest and the flames
+are hottest."
+
+We were at the entrance of Randolph & Randolph's office as he poured out
+this terrible torrent of bitterness. He glared at me as a dungeon prisoner
+might glare at his keeper for his answer to "Where can I find liberty?" I
+had no words to answer him. As I noted the awful changes his new life was
+making in every line of his face, the rigid hardness, the haunted, nervous
+look of desperation, which seemed a forerunner of madness, I could not
+see, either, where his millions brought any happiness. His hair, which
+once was smooth and orderly, hung over his forehead in an unparted mass of
+tangled curls, and here and there showed a streak of white. Bob Brownley
+was still handsome, even more fascinating than before the mercury entered
+his soul, but it was that wild, awful beauty of the caged lion, lashing
+himself into madness with memories of his lost freedom.
+
+"Jim," he went on, when he saw I could not answer, "I guess you don't know
+where I can swap the yellow mud for balm of Gilead. I won't bother you
+with my troubles any longer. I will go up-town and see the little girl
+whose happiness Tom Reinhart needed in his business. I will go up and show
+her the pictures in this week's _Collier's_ of the fine hospital for
+incurables that Reinhart has so generously and nobly built at a cost of
+two and a half millions! The little girl may think better of Reinhart when
+she knows that her father's money was put to such good use. Who knows but
+the great finance king may dedicate it as the 'Judge Lee Sands Home' and
+carve over the entrance a bas-relief of her father, mother, and sister
+with Hope, Faith, and Charity coming from the mouths of their hanging
+severed heads?"
+
+Bob Brownley laughed a horrible ringing laugh as he uttered these awful
+words. Then he beat his hand down on my shoulders as he said in a hoarse
+voice, "Jim, but for you I should have had crimps in that jackal
+philanthropist's soul by now and in the souls of his kind. But never mind.
+He will keep; he will surely keep until I get to him. Every day he lives
+he will be fitter for the crimping. Within the short two years since he
+finished grilling Judge Sands's soul, he has put himself in better form
+to appreciate his reward. I see by the press that at last his aristocratic
+wife has gold-cured Newport of its habit of dating back the name Reinhart
+to her scullionhood, and it has taken her into the high-instep circle. I
+read the other day of his daughter's marriage to some English nob, and of
+the discovery of the ancient Reinhart family tree and crest with the
+mailed hand and two-edged dirk and the vulture rampant, and the motto,
+'Who strikes in the back strikes often.'"
+
+He left me with his laugh still ringing in my ears. I shuddered as I
+passed under the old black-and-gold sign my uncle and my father had nailed
+over the office entrance in an age now dead, an age when Wall Street men
+talked of honour and gold, not gold and more gold.
+
+In telling my wife of the day's happenings I could not refrain from giving
+vent to the feelings that consumed me. "Kate, Bob will surely do something
+awful one of these days. I can see no hope for him. He grows more and more
+the madman as he broods over his horrible situation. The whole thing seems
+incredible to me. Never was a human being in such perpetual living
+purgatory--unlimited, absolute power on the one hand, unfathomable,
+never-cool-down hell on the other."
+
+"Jim, how does he do what he does? I cannot make out from anything I have
+read or you have told me, how he creates those panics and makes all that
+money."
+
+"No one has ever been able to figure it out," I answered. "I understand
+the stock business, but I cannot for the life of me see how he does it. He
+has none of the money powers in league with him, that's sure, for in the
+mood he has been in during the past two years it would be impossible for
+him to work with them, even if his salvation depended on it. The mention
+of any of the big 'System' men drives him to a fury. He has to-day made
+more money than any one man ever made in a day since the world began, and
+he had only commenced his work when he quit to please me. As I stand in
+the Exchange and watch him do it, it seems commonplace and simple.
+Afterward it is beyond my comprehension. At the gait he is going, the
+Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Gould fortunes combined will look tiny in
+comparison with the one he will have in a few years. It is beyond my power
+of figuring out, and it gives me a headache every time I try to see
+through it."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+
+
+A number of times during the following year, and finally on the
+anniversary of the Sands tragedy, Bob carried the Exchange to the verge of
+panic, only to turn the market and save "the Street" in the end. His
+profits were fabulous. Already his fortune was estimated to be between two
+and three hundred millions, one of the largest in the world. His name had
+become one of terror wherever stocks were dealt in. Wall Street had come
+to regard his every deal, from the moment that he began operations, as
+inevitably successful. Now and again he would jump into the market when
+some of the plunging cliques had a bear raid under way, and would put them
+to rout by buying everything in sight and bidding up prices until it
+looked as though he intended to do as extraordinary work on the up-side as
+he was wont to do on the down. At such times he was the idol of the
+Exchange, which worships the man who puts prices up as it hates him who
+pulls them down. Once when war news flashed over the wires from Washington
+and rumour had the Cabinet members, Senators, and Congressmen selling the
+market short on advance information, when the "Standard Oil" banks had put
+up money rates to 150 per cent, and a crash seemed inevitable, Bob
+suddenly smashed the loan market by offering to lend one hundred millions
+at four per cent.; and by buying and bidding up prices at the same time,
+he put the whole Washington crowd and its New York accomplices to
+disastrous rout and caused them to lose millions. He continued his
+operations with increasing violence and increasing profits up to the
+fourth anniversary of the tragedy. On the intervening anniversary I had
+been compelled by self-interest and fear that he would really pull down
+the entire Wall Street structure, to rush in and fairly drag him off. But
+with his growing madness my influence was waning. Each raid it was with
+greater difficulty that I got his ear.
+
+Finally, on the fourth anniversary, in a panic that seemed to be running
+into something more terrible than any previous, he savagely refused to
+accede to my appeal, telling me that he would not stop, even if Randolph
+& Randolph were doomed to go down in the crash. It had become known on the
+floor that I was the only one who could do anything with him in his
+frenzies, and my pleading with him in the lobby was watched by the members
+of the Exchange with triple eyed suspense. When it was clear from his
+emphatic gestures and raised voice--for he was in a reckless mood from
+drink and madness and took no pains to disguise his intentions--that I
+could not prevail upon him, there was a frantic rush for the poles to
+throw over stocks in advance of him. Suddenly, after I had turned from him
+in despair, there flashed into my mind an idea. The situation was
+desperate. I was dealing with a madman, and I decided that I was justified
+in making this last try. I rushed back to him. "Bob, good-bye," I
+whispered in his ear, "good-bye. In ten minutes you will get word that Jim
+Randolph has cut his throat!" He stopped as though I had plunged a knife
+into him, struck his forehead a resounding blow, and into his wild brown
+eyes came a sickening look of fear.
+
+"Stop, Jim, for God's sake, don't say that to me. My cup is full now.
+Don't tell me I am to have that crime on my soul." He thought a moment.
+"I don't know whether you mean it, Jim, but I can take no chances, not for
+all the money in the world, not even for revenge. Wait here, Jim." He
+yelled for his brokers, and several rushed to him from different parts of
+the room. He sent them back into the crowd while he dashed for the
+Amalgamated-pole. The day was saved.
+
+Presently he came back to me. "Jim, I must have a talk with you. Come over
+to my office." When we got there he turned the key and stood in front of
+me. His great eyes looked full into mine. In college days, gazing into
+their brown depths, by some magic I seemed to see the heroes and heroines
+of always happy-ending tales, as the child sees enchanted creatures far
+back in the burning Yule log flames. But there were no joyous beings in
+the haunted depths of Bob's eyes that day.
+
+"Jim, you gave me an awful scare," he said brokenly. "Don't ever do it
+again. I have little left to live for. To be sure I have some feeling for
+mother, Fred, and sisters. But for you I have a love second only to that I
+should have felt for Beulah had I been allowed to have her. The thought,
+Jim, that I had wrecked your life, with all you have to live for, would
+have been the last straw. My life is purgatory. Beulah is only an
+ever-present curse to me--a ghost that rends my heart and soul, one minute
+with a blind frenzy to revenge her wrongs, the next with an icy remorse
+that I have not already done so. If I did not have her, perhaps in time I
+could forget; perhaps I might lay out some scheme to help poor devils
+whose poverty makes life unendurable, and with the millions I have taken
+from that main shaft of hell I might do things that would at least bring
+quiet to my soul; but it is impossible with the living corpse of Beulah
+Sands before me every minute and that devil machinery whirling in my brain
+all the time the song, 'Revenge her and her father, revenge yourself.' It
+is impossible to give it up, Jim. I must have revenge. I must stop this
+machinery that is smashing up more American hearts and souls each year
+than all the rest of earth's grinders combined. Every day I delay I become
+more fiendish in my desires. Jim, don't think I do not know that I have
+literally turned into a fiend. Whenever of late I see myself in the
+mirror, I shudder. When I think of what I was when your father stood us up
+in his office and started us in this heart-shrivelling, soul-callousing
+business, and what I am now, I cannot keep the madness down except with
+rum. You know what it means for me to say this, me who started with all
+the pride of a Brownley; but it is so, Jim. The other night I went home
+with my soul frozen with thoughts of the past and with my brain ablaze
+with rum, intending to end it all. I got out my revolver, and woke Beulah,
+but as I said, 'Bob is going to kill Beulah and himself,' she laughed that
+sweet child's laugh and clapping her hands said, 'Bob is so good to play
+with Beulah,' and then I thought of that devil Reinhart and the other
+fiends of the 'System' being left to continue their work unhindered and I
+could not do it. I must have revenge; I must smash that heart-crushing
+machinery. Then I can go, and take Beulah with me. Now, Jim, let us have
+it clearly understood once and for all."
+
+Remorse and softness were past; he was the Indian again. "I am going to
+wreck that hell-annex some day, and that some day will be the next time I
+start in. Don't argue with me, don't misunderstand me. To-day you stopped
+me. I don't know whether you meant what you threatened; I don't care now.
+It is just as well that I stopped, for the 'System's' machine will be
+there whenever I start in again. It loses nothing of its fiendishness,
+none of its destructive powers by grinding, but, on the contrary, as you
+know, it increases its speed every day it runs. Now, Jim Randolph, I want
+to tell you that you must get yours and the house's affairs in such shape
+that you won't be hurt when I go into that human rat-pit the next time,
+for when I come from it the New York Stock Exchange and the 'System' will
+have had their spines unjointed. Yes, and I'll have their hearts out, too.
+Neither will ever again be able to take from the American people their
+savings and their manhood and womanhood and give them in exchange
+unadulterated torment. I am going to be fair with you, Jim; this is the
+last time I will discuss the subject. After this you must take your chance
+with the rest of those who have to do with the cursed business. When I
+strike again, none will be spared. I will wreck 'the Street', and the
+innocent will go down with the guilty, if they have any stocks on hand at
+that time.
+
+"My power, Jim, is unlimited; nothing can stay it. I am not going to
+explain any further. You have seen me work. You must know that my power is
+greater than the 'System's,' and you and I and 'the Street' have always
+known that the 'System' is more powerful than the Government, more
+powerful than are the courts, legislatures, Congress, and the President of
+the United States combined, that it absolutely controls the foundation on
+which they rest--the money of the nation. But my power is greater, a
+thousand, yes, a million times greater than theirs. Jim, they say that I
+have made more money than any man in the world. They say that I have five
+hundred millions of dollars, but the fools don't keep track of my
+movements. They only know that I have pulled five hundred millions from my
+open whirls, the ones they have had an opportunity to keep tab on. But I
+tell you that I have made even more in my secret deals than the amount
+they have seen me take. I have had my agents with my capital in every
+deal, every steal the 'System' has rigged up. The world has been throwing
+up its hands in horror because Carnegie, the blacksmith of Pittsburgh,
+pulled off three hundred millions of swag in the Steel hold-up--yes,
+swag, Jim. Don't scowl as though you wanted to read me a lecture on the
+coarseness of my language. I have learned to call this game of ours by its
+right name. It is not business enterprise with earned profits as results,
+but pulled-off tricks with bags of loot--black-jack swag--for their end.
+
+"I got away with three hundred millions when Steel slumped from 105 to 50
+and from 50 to 8, and no one knew I'd made a dollar. You and 'the Street'
+read every morning last year the 'guesses' as to who could be rounding up
+the hundreds of millions on the slump. The papers and the market letters
+one morning said it was 'Standard Oil'; the next, that it was Morgan; then
+it was Frick, Schwab, Gates, and so on down through the list. Of course,
+none of them denied; it is capital to all these knights of the road to be
+making millions in the minds of the world, even though they never get any
+of the money. Dick Turpin and Jonathan Wild never were fonder of having
+the daring hold-ups that other highwaymen perpetrated laid to their doors,
+than are these modern bandits of being credited with ruthless deeds that
+they did not commit. But Jim, 'twas I, 'twas I who sold Pennsylvania
+every morning for a year, while the selling was explained by the press as
+'Cassatt cutting down Gould's telegraph poles. Gould and old man
+Rockefeller selling Pennsylvania to get even.' Jim Randolph, I have to-day
+a billion dollars, not the Rockefeller or Carnegie kind, but a real
+billion. If I had no other power but the power to call to-morrow for that
+billion in cash, it would be sufficient to lay in waste the financial
+world before to-morrow night. You are welcome, Jim, to any part of that
+billion, and the more you take the happier you will make me, but when I
+strike in again, don't attempt to stay me, for it will do no good."
+
+Shortly after this talk Bob left for Europe with Beulah. A great German
+expert on brain disorders had held out hope that a six month's treatment
+at his sanitarium in Berlin might aid in restoring her mind. They returned
+the following August. The trip had been fruitless. It was plain to me that
+Bob was the same hopelessly desperate man as when he left, more hopeless,
+more desperate if anything than when he warned me of his determination.
+
+When he left for Europe "the Street" breathed more freely, and as time
+went by and there was no sign of his confidence-disturbing influence in
+the market, the "System" began to bring out its deferred deals. Times were
+ripe for setting up the most wildly inflated stock lamb-shearing traps. It
+had been advertised throughout the world that Tom Reinhart, now a
+two-hundred-time millionaire, was to consolidate his and many other
+enterprises into one gigantic trust with twelve billions of capital. His
+Union and Southern Pacific Railroads, his coal and Southern lines,
+together with his steamship company and lead, iron, and copper mines, were
+to be merged with the steel, traction, gas, and other enterprises he owned
+jointly with "Standard Oil." Some of the railroads owned by Rockefeller
+and his pals, in which Reinhart had no part, were to go in too, and with
+these was to unite that mother hog of them all, "Standard Oil" itself. The
+trust was to be an enormous holding company, the like of which had until
+then not even been dreamed of by the most daring stock manipulators. The
+"System's" banks, as well as trust and insurance companies throughout the
+country, had for a long time been getting into shape by concentrating the
+money of the country for this monster trust. It was newspaper and news
+bureau gossip that Reinhart and his crowd had bought millions of shares of
+the different stocks involved in the deal, and it was common knowledge
+that upon its successful completion Reinhart's fortune would be in the
+neighbourhood of a billion. On October 1st the certificate of the
+Anti-People's Trust, $12,000,000,000 capital, 120,000,000 shares, were
+listed upon the New York, London, and Boston Stock Exchanges, and the
+German and French Bourses, and trading in them started off fast and
+furious at 106. The claim that one billion of the twelve billions capital
+had been set aside to be used in protecting and manipulating the stock in
+the market, had been so widely advertised that even the most daring
+plunger did not think of selling it short.
+
+It was evident to all in the stock-gambling world that this was to be the
+"System's" grand coup, that at its completion the masses would be rudely
+awakened to a realisation that their savings were invested in the combined
+American industries at vastly inflated values, that the few had all the
+real money, and that any attempt upon the people's part to regulate and
+control the new system of robbery, would be fraught with unparalleled
+disaster--not to the "System," but to the people.
+
+Since Bob's return from Europe I had seen him but a few times. Up to
+October 1st he had not been near the Stock Exchange or "the Street."
+Shortly after the listing of the "People Be Damned," as "the Street" had
+dubbed the new trust, he began to show up at his office regularly. This
+was the condition of affairs when Fred Brownley called me up on the
+telephone, as I related at the beginning of my story, which I did not
+realise I had been so long in telling.
+
+My thoughts had been chasing each other with lightning-like rapidity back
+over the last five years and the fifteen before them, and each thought
+deepened the black mist over my present mental vision. In the midst of my
+reflections my telephone rang again.
+
+"Mr. Randolph, for Heaven's sake have you done nothing yet?" It was Fred
+Brownley's voice. "Things are frightful here. Bob's brokers are selling
+stocks at five and ten thousand-lot clips. Barry Conant is leading
+Reinhart's forces. It is said he has the pool's protection order in
+Anti-People's and that it is unlimited, but Bob has the Reinhart crowd
+pretty badly scared. Swan has just finished giving Conant a hundred
+thousand off the reel in 10,000 lots, and he told me a moment ago he was
+going over to get Bob himself to face Barry Conant. They're down twenty
+points on the average, although they haven't let Anti-People's break an
+eighth yet. They have it pegged at 106, but there is an ugly rumour just
+in that Bob, under cover of a general attack, is unloading Anti-People's
+on to the Reinhart wing for Rogers and Rockefeller, and the rumour is
+getting in its work. Even Barry Conant is growing a bit anxious. The
+latest talk is that Reinhart is borrowing hundreds of millions on
+Anti-People's, and that his loans are being called in all directions. Do
+you know Reinhart is at his place in Virginia and cannot get here before
+to-morrow night? If Bob breaks through Anti-People's peg, it will be the
+worst crash yet."
+
+"All right, Fred," I answered. "I will go over to Bob's right now. I hate
+to do it, but there is no other hope."
+
+I dropped the receiver and started for Bob's office. As I went through his
+counting-room one of the clerks said, "They have just broken Anti-People's
+to 90 on a bulletin that Tom Reinhart's wife and only daughter have been
+killed in an automobile accident at their place in Virginia. They first
+had it that Reinhart himself was killed. That has been corrected, although
+the latest word is that he is prostrated."
+
+I rapped on Bob's private-office door. I felt the coming struggle as I
+heard his hoarse bellow, "Come in." He stood at the ticker, with the tape
+in one hand, while with the other he held the telephone receiver to his
+ear. My God, what a picture for a stage! His magnificent form was erect,
+his feet were as firmly planted as if he were made of bronze, his
+shoulders thrown back as if he were withstanding the rush of the Stock
+Exchange hordes, his eyes afire with a sullen, smouldering blaze, his jaw
+was set in a way that brought into terrible relief the new, hard lines of
+desperation that had recently come into his face. His great chest was
+rising and falling as though he were engaged in a physical struggle; his
+perfect-fitting, heavy black Melton cutaway coat, thrown back from the
+chest, and a low, turned-down, white collar formed the setting for a
+throat and head that reminded one of a forest monarch at bay on the
+mountain crag awaiting the coming of the hounds and hunters.
+
+I hesitated at the threshold to catch my breath, as I took in the
+terrific figure. Had Bob Brownley been an enemy of mine I should have
+backed out in fear, and I do not confess to more than my fair share of
+cowardice. Inwardly I thanked God that Bob was in his office instead of on
+the floor of the Exchange. His whole appearance was frightful. He showed
+in every line and lineament that he was a man who would hesitate at
+nothing, even at killing, if he should find a human obstacle in his road
+and his mind should suggest murder. He was the personification of the most
+awful madness. Even when he caught sight of me, he hardly moved, although
+my coming must have been a surprise.
+
+"So it is you, Jim Randolph, is it? What brings _you_ here?" His voice was
+hoarse, but it had a metallic ring that went to my marrow. Bob Brownley in
+all the years of our friendship had never spoken to me except in kind and
+loving regard. I looked at him, stunned. I must have shown how hurt I was.
+But if he saw it, he gave no sign. His eyes, looking straight into mine,
+changed no more than if he had been addressing his deadliest enemy.
+
+Again his voice rang out, "What brings you here? Do you come to plead
+again for that dastard Reinhart after the warning I gave you?"
+
+I clenched both hands until I felt the nails cut the flesh of my palms. I
+loved Bob Brownley. I would have done anything to make him happy, would
+willingly have sacrificed my own life to protect his from himself or
+others, but this madman, this wild brute, was no more Bob Brownley as I
+had known him than the howling northeast gale of December is the gentle,
+welcome zephyr of August; and I felt a resentment at his brutal speech
+that I could hardly suppress. With a mighty effort I crushed it back,
+trying to think of nothing but his awful misery and the Bob of our college
+days.
+
+I said in a firm voice, "Bob, is this the way to talk to me in your own
+office?" At any time before, my words and tone would have touched his
+all-generous Southern chivalry, but now he said harshly--"To hell with
+sentiment. What----" He did not take his eyes from mine, but they told me
+that he was listening to a voice in the receiver. Only for a second; then
+he let loose a wild laugh, which must have penetrated to the outer office.
+
+"Eighty and coming like a spring freshet," he said into the mouthpiece,
+"and the boys want to know if I won't let up now that Reinhart is down?
+Go back and smother them with all they will take down to 60. That's my
+answer. Tell them if Reinhart had ten more wives and daughters and they
+were all killed, I'd rend his bastard trust to help him dull his sorrow.
+Give the word at every pole that I will have Reinhart where he will curse
+his luck that he was not in the automobile with the rest of his tribe----
+
+"To hell with sentiment!" He was speaking to me again. "What do you want?
+If you are here to beg for Reinhart and his pack of yellow curs, you've
+got your answer. I wouldn't let up on that fiendish hyena, not if his wife
+and daughter and all the dead wives and daughters of every 'System' man
+came back in their grave clothes and begged. I wouldn't let up a share." I
+gasped in horror.
+
+"When did those robbers of men and despoilers of women and children ever
+let up because of death? When were they ever known to wait even till the
+corpse stiffened to pluck out the hearts of the victims? It is my turn
+now, and if I let up a hair may I, yes, and Beulah, too, be damned,
+eternally damned."
+
+I could not stand it. If I stayed, I, too, should become mad. I reached
+for the doorknob, but before I could swing the door open Bob was upon me
+like a wolf. He grasped me by the shoulders and with the strength of a
+madman hurled me half across the room. I sank into a chair.
+
+"No, you don't, Jim Randolph, no, you don't. You came here for something
+and, by heaven, you will tell me what it is! You know me; you are the only
+human being who does. You know what I was, you see what I am. You know
+what they did to me to make me what I am. You know, Jim Randolph, you know
+whether I deserved it. You know whether in all my life up to the day those
+dollar-frenzied hounds tore my soul, I had done any man, woman, or child a
+wrong. You know whether I had, and now you are going to sneak off and
+leave me as though I were a cur dog of the Reinhart-'Standard Oil' breed
+gone mad!"
+
+He was standing over me, a terrible yet a magnificent figure. As he hurled
+these words at me, I was sure he had really lost his mind; that I was in
+the presence of a man truly mad. But only for an instant; then my horror,
+my anger turned to a great, crushing, all-consuming agony of pity for
+Bob, and I dropped my head on my hands and wept. It is hard to admit it,
+but it is true--I wept uncontrollably. In an instant the room was quiet
+except for the sound of my own awful grief. I heard it, was ashamed of it,
+but I could not stop. The telephone rang again and again, wildly, shrilly,
+but there was no answer. The stillness became so oppressive that even my
+own sobs quieted. I gasped as the lump in my throat choked me, then I
+slowly raised my eyes.
+
+Bob's towering figure was in front of me. His head had fallen forward, and
+his arms were folded across his breast. But that he stood erect I should
+have thought him dead, so still was he. I jumped to my feet and looked
+into his face, down which great tears were dropping silently. I touched
+him on the shoulder.
+
+"Bob, my dear old chum, Bob, forgive me. For God's sake, forgive me for
+intruding on your misery."
+
+I looked at him. I will never forget his face. No heartbroken woman's
+could have been sadder. He slowly raised his head, then staggered and
+grasped the ticker-stand for support.
+
+"Don't, Jim, don't--don't ask me to forgive you. Oh, Jim, Jim, my old
+friend, forgive me for my madness; forget what I said to you, forget the
+brute you just saw and think of me as of old, when I would have plucked
+out my tongue if I had caught it saying a harsh word to the best and
+truest friend man ever had. Jim, forget it all. I was mad, I am mad, I
+have been mad for a long time, but it cannot last much longer. I know it
+can't, and, Jim, by all our past love, by the memories of the dear old
+days at St. Paul's and at Harvard, the dear old days of hope and
+happiness, when we planned for the future, try to think of me only as you
+knew me then, as you know that I should now be, but for the 'System's'
+curse."
+
+The clerks were pounding on the door; through the glass showed many forms.
+They had been gathering for minutes while Bob talked in his low, sad tone,
+a tone that no one could believe came from the same mouth that a few
+moments before had poured forth a flood of brutal heartlessness.
+
+Bob went to the door. The office was in an uproar. Twenty or thirty of
+Bob's brokers were there, aghast at not getting a reply to their calls.
+Many more were pouring in through the outer office. Bob looked at them
+coldly. "Well, what is the trouble? Is it possible we are down to a point
+where the Stock Exchange rushes over to a man's office when his wire
+happens to break down?"
+
+They saw his bluff. You cannot deceive Stock Exchange men, at least not
+the kind that Bob Brownley employed on panic days, but his coolness
+reassured them, and when they saw me it was odds-on that they guessed to a
+man why Bob had ignored his wires--guessed that I had been pleading for
+the life of "the Street."
+
+"Well, where do you stand?"
+
+Frank Swan answered for the crowd: "The panic is in full swing. She's a
+cellar-to-ridge-pole ripper. They're down 40 or over on an average.
+Anti-People's is down to 35, and still coming like sawdust over a broken
+dam. Barry Conant's house and a dozen other of Reinhart's have gone under.
+His banks and trust companies are going every minute. The whole Street
+will be overboard before the close. The governing committee has just
+called a meeting to see whether it will not be best to adjourn the
+Exchange over to-day and to-morrow."
+
+Bob listened as if he had been a master at the wheel in a gale, receiving
+reports from his mates.
+
+There was no trace now of the scene he had just been through. He was cool,
+masterful, like the seasoned sea-dog who knows that in spite of the
+ocean's rage and the wind's howl, the wheel will answer his hand and the
+craft its rudder. "Jim, come over to the Exchange." The crowd followed
+along. "We have but a minute and I want to have you say you forgive me,"
+he said to me. "I know, Jim, you understand it all, but I must tell you
+how sorrowful I am that in my madness I should have so forgotten my
+admiration, respect, and love for you, yes, and my gratitude to you, as to
+say what I did. I'll do the only thing I can to atone. I will stop this
+panic and undo as much as possible of my work; and now that I have wrecked
+Reinhart I am through with this game forever, yes, through forever."
+
+He pressed my hand in his strong, honest one and strode into the Exchange
+ahead of the crowd. All was chaos, although the trading had toned down to
+a sullen desperation. So many houses, banks, and trust companies had
+failed that no man knew whether the member he had traded with early in
+the day would on the morrow be solvent enough to carry out his trades. The
+man who had been "long" in the morning, and had sold out before the crash,
+and who thought he now had no interest in the panic, found himself with
+his stock again on hand, because of the failure of the one to whom he had
+sold, and the price cut in two. The man who was "short" and who a few
+minutes before had been eagerly counting his profits now knew that they
+had been turned to loss, because the man from whom he had borrowed his
+short stocks for delivery would be in no condition to repay for them, the
+next day, when they should be returned to him. The "short" man was
+himself, therefore, "long" stocks he had bought to cover his "short" sale.
+In depressing the price he had been working against his own pocket instead
+of against the bulls he had thought he was opposing. All was confusion and
+black despair. There is, indeed, no blacker place than the floor of the
+Stock Exchange after a panic cyclone has swept it, and is yet lingering in
+its corners, while the survivors of its fury do not know whether or not it
+will again gather force.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+
+
+The Governing Committee was holding a meeting in its room. Bob rushed in
+unceremoniously.
+
+"One word, gentlemen," he called. "I have more trades outstanding, both
+buys and sells, than any other member or house. Before deciding whether to
+adjourn in an attempt to save 'the Street', I ask your consideration of
+this proposition: If the Exchange will suspend operations for thirty
+minutes, and allow me to address the members on the floor, I will agree to
+buy stocks all around the room, until they have regained at least half
+their drop--all of it, if possible. I will buy until I have exhausted to
+the last hundred my fortune of a billion dollars. This should make an
+adjournment unnecessary. I know that this is a most extraordinary request,
+but you are confronted with a most extraordinary situation, the most
+remarkable in the history of the Stock Exchange. Already, if what they say
+on the floor is correct, over two hundred banks and trust companies
+throughout the country have gone under, and new failures are being
+announced every minute. Half the members of this and the Boston and
+Philadelphia Exchanges are insolvent and have closed their doors, or will
+close them before three o'clock, and the shrinkage in values so far
+reported runs over fifteen billions. Unless something is done before the
+close, there will be a similar panic in every Exchange and Bourse in
+Europe to-morrow."
+
+The committee instantly voted to lay the proposition before the full
+board. In another minute the president's gavel sounded, and the floor was
+still as a tomb. All eyes were fixed on the president. Every man in that
+great throng knew that upon the announcement they were about to hear,
+might depend, at least temporarily, the welfare, not only of Wall Street,
+but of the nation, perhaps even of the civilised world. The president
+spoke:
+
+"Members of the New York Stock Exchange:
+
+"The Governing Committee instructs me to say that Mr. Robert Brownley has
+asked that operations be suspended for thirty minutes, in order that he be
+allowed to address you. Mr. Brownley has agreed, if this request be
+granted, he will upon resumption of operations purchase a sufficient
+amount of stock to raise the average price of all active shares at least
+one-half their total drop--all of it, if possible. He agrees to buy to the
+limit of his fortune of a billion dollars. I now put Mr. Brownley's
+request to a vote. All those in favour of granting it will signify the
+same by saying 'Yes.'"
+
+A mighty roof-lifting "Yes" sounded through the room.
+
+"All those opposed, 'No.'"
+
+There was a deathly hush.
+
+"Mr. Brownley will please speak from this platform, and remember, in
+thirty minutes to the second, I will sound the gavel for the resumption of
+business."
+
+Bob Brownley strode to the place just vacated by the president. The crowd
+was growing larger every minute. The ticker was already hissing a tape
+biograph of this extraordinary situation in brokerage shops, hotels, and
+banks throughout the country, and in a few minutes the news of it would be
+in the capitals of Europe. Never before in history did man have such an
+audience--the whole civilised world. Already arose from Wall, Broad, and
+New Streets, which surround the Exchange, the hoarse bellow of the
+gathering hordes. Before the ticker should announce the resumption of
+business these would number hundreds of thousands, for the financial
+district for more than an hour had been a surging mob.
+
+For once at least the much-abused phrase, "He looked the part," could be
+used in all truthfulness. As Robert Brownley threw back his head and
+shoulders and faced that crowd of men, some of whom he had hurt, many of
+whom he had beggared, and all of whom he had tortured, he presented a
+picture such as a royal lion recently from the jungles and just freed from
+his cage might have made. Defiance, deference, contempt, and pity all
+blended in his mien, but over all was an I-am-the-one-you-are-the-many
+atmosphere of confidence that turned my spinal column into a mercury tube.
+He began to speak:
+
+"Men of Wall Street:
+
+"You have just witnessed a record-breaking slaughter. I have asked
+permission to talk to you for the purpose of showing you how any member of
+a great Stock Exchange may at any time do what I have done to-day. Weigh
+well what I am about to say to you. During the last quarter of a century
+there has grown up in this free and fair land of ours a system by which
+the few take from the many the results of their labours. The men who take
+have no more license, from God or man, to take, than have those from whom
+they filch. They are not endowed by God with superior wisdom, nor have
+they performed for their fellow-men any labour or given to them anything
+of value that entitles them to what they take. Their only license to
+plunder is their knowledge of the system of trickery and fraud that they
+themselves have created. No man can gainsay this, for on every side is the
+evidence. Men come into Wall Street at sunrise without dollars; before
+that same sun sets they depart with millions. So all-powerful has grown
+the system of oppression that single men take in a single lifetime all the
+savings of a million of their fellows. To-day the people, eighty millions
+strong, are slaving for the few, and their pay is their board and keep. I
+saw this robbery. I felt the robbers' scourge. I sought the secret. I
+found it here, here in this gambling-hell. I found that the stocks we
+bought and sold were mere gambling chips; that the man who had the
+biggest stack could beat his opponent off the board; that his opponent was
+the world, because all men directly or indirectly played the
+stock-gambling game. To win, it was but necessary to have unlimited chips.
+If chips were bought and sold, on equal terms, by all, no one could buy
+more than he could pay for, and the game, although still a gambling one,
+would be fair. A few master tricksters, dollar magicians, long ago seeing
+this condition, invented the system by which the people are ruthlessly
+plundered. The system they invented was simple, so simple that for a
+quarter of a century it has remained undiscovered by the world at
+large--and even by you, who profess to be experts. No man thought that a
+free people who had intended to allow all the equal use of every avenue
+for the attainment of wealth, and who intended to provide for the
+safeguarding of wealth after it was secured, could be such dolts as to
+allow themselves to be robbed of all their accumulated wealth by a device
+as simple as that by which children play at blindman's buff. The process
+was no more complex than that employed by the robber of old, who took the
+pebbles from the beach, marked them money, and with the money bought the
+labour of his fellows, and by the manipulation of that labour and by
+turning pebbles into money he took away from the labourer the money which
+he had paid them for the labour until all in the land were slaves of the
+moneymaker. These few tricksters said: We will arbitrarily manufacture
+these chips--stocks. After we have manufactured them, we will sell the
+world what the world can pay for, and then by the use of the unlimited
+supply we still have we will win away from the world what it has bought,
+and repeat the operation, until we have all the wealth, and the people are
+enslaved. To do this there was one thing besides the manufacturing of the
+chips--stocks--that was absolutely necessary--a gambling-hell, the working
+of whose machinery would place a selling value upon such chips; a hell
+where, after selling the chips, they could be won back. I saw that if
+these tricksters were to be routed and their 'System' was to be destroyed,
+it must be through the machinery of this Stock Exchange. I studied the
+machinery, and presently I marvelled that men could for so long have been
+asses.
+
+"From the very nature of stock-gambling it is necessary, absolutely
+necessary, that it be conducted under certain rules, unchangeable,
+unbreakable rules, to attempt to change or break which would destroy
+stock-gambling. The foundation rule, the rule absolutely necessary for the
+existence of stock-gambling is: Any member of the Stock Exchange can buy,
+or sell, between the opening and the closing of the Exchange as many
+shares of stock as he cares to. With this rule in force his buying and
+selling cannot be restricted to the amount he can take and pay for, or
+deliver and receive pay for, because there is not money enough in the
+world to pay for what under this same rule can be bought and sold in a
+single session. This is because there have been arbitrarily created by
+these few tricksters many times more stocks than there is money in
+existence. The amount of stock that any man can sell in one session of the
+Exchange is limited only by the amount that he can offer for sale, and he
+can offer any amount his tongue can utter; and he is not compelled and
+cannot be compelled to show his ability to deliver what he has offered for
+sale until after he has finished selling, which is the following day. You
+will ask as I did: Can this be possible? You will find the answer I
+found. It is so, and must continue to be so, or there will be no
+stock-gambling. Mark me, for this statement is weighted with the greatest
+import to you all. A member of this Exchange can sell as many shares of
+stock at one session as he cares to offer. If any attempt is made at the
+session he sells at to compel him either before or after he offers to sell
+to show his ability to deliver, away goes the stock-gambling structure,
+because from the very nature of the whole structure of stock-gambling the
+same shares are sold and resold many times in each session and the seller
+cannot know, much less show, that he can deliver until he first adjusts
+with the buyer and the buyer cannot adjust until after he has become such
+by buying. If a rule were made compelling a seller to show his
+responsibility before selling, every member would have every other member
+at his mercy and there could be no stock-gambling. When I had worked this
+out, I saw that while the few tricksters of the 'System' had a perfect
+device for taking from the people their wealth, I had discovered as
+perfect a means of taking away from the few the wealth they had secured
+from the many. With this knowledge came a conviction that my way was as
+honest as the 'System's,' in fact more honest than theirs. They took from
+the innocent, I took from the guilty what had already been dishonestly
+secured. I determined to put my discovery into practice.
+
+"I might never have done so but for that Sugar panic in which I was robbed
+of millions by the 'System' through Barry Conant. In that panic the
+'System,' with its unlimited resources, filched from the people by the
+arbitrary manufacture of stocks, and by their manipulation did to me what
+I afterward discovered I could do to them, without any resources other
+than my right to do business on the floor of this Exchange. You saw the
+outcome, in the second Sugar panic, of my first experiment. In a few
+minutes I cleared a profit of ten million dollars. I could have made it
+fifty millions, or one hundred and fifty, but I was not then on familiar
+terms with my new robber-robbing device, and I had yet a heart. To make
+this ten millions of money, all that was necessary for me to do was to
+sell more Sugar than Barry Conant could buy. This was easy, because Barry
+Conant, not knowing of my newly invented trick, could buy only what he
+could pay for on the morrow, or, at least, what he believed his clients
+could pay for; while I, not intending to deliver what I sold--unless by
+smashing the price to a point where I could compel those who had bought to
+resell to me at millions less than I sold at--could sell unlimited
+amounts--literally unlimited amounts. When Barry Conant had bought all
+that he thought he could pay for, he was obliged to beat a retreat in
+front of my offerings, and I was able to smash, and smash, until the price
+was so low that he could not by the use of what he had bought, as
+collateral, borrow sufficient to pay me for what I had sold him. Then he
+was compelled to turn about and sell what he had bought from me, and when
+I had rebought it, for ten millions less than I had sold it for, the trick
+had been turned. I had sold him 100,000 shares say at 220. He had sold
+them back to me say at 120, and he stood where he had stood at the
+beginning. He had none of the 100,000 shares. Both of us stood, so far as
+stock was concerned, where we had stood at the beginning, but as to
+profits and losses there was this difference: I had ten millions of
+dollars profits, while Barry Conant's clients, the 'System,' were ten
+millions losers--and all by a trick. The trick did not differ in
+principle from the one in constant practice by the 'System.' When the
+'System,' after manufacturing Sugar stock, sell 100,000 shares to the
+people for $10,000,000, they so manipulate the market by the use of the
+$10,000,000 that they have taken from the people as to scare them into
+selling the 100,000 shares back to them for $5,000,000. After they have
+bought they again manipulate the market until the people buy back for
+$10,000,000 what they sold for $5,000,000. The 'System' commits no legal
+crime. I committed no legal crime. I had not even infringed any rule of
+the Exchange, any more than had the 'System' when they performed their
+trick. Since my experimental panic I have repeatedly put the trick in
+operation, and each time I have taken millions, until to-day I have in my
+control, as absolutely as though I had honestly earned them, as the
+labourer earns his week's wages, or the farmer the price of his crops,
+over $1,000,000,000, or sufficient to keep enslaved the rest of their
+lives a million people.
+
+"What do you intelligent men think of this situation? You know, because
+you know the stock-gambling game, that the American people, with their
+boasted brains and courage, come year after year with their bags of gold,
+the result of their prosperous labours, and dump them, hundreds of
+millions, into this gambling-inferno of yours. You know that they are
+fools, these silly millions of people whom you term lambs and suckers. You
+chuckle as, year after year, having been sent away shorn, they return for
+new shearing. You marvel that the merchants, manufacturers, miners,
+lawyers, farmers, who have sufficient intelligence to gather such surplus
+legitimately, would bring it to our gambling-hell, where upon all sides is
+plain proof that we who conduct the gambling, and who produce nothing, are
+obliged to take from those who do produce, hundreds of millions each year
+for expenses, and hundreds of millions each year for profits--for you know
+that we have nothing to give them in return for what they bring to us. You
+know that every dollar of the billions lost in Wall Street means higher
+prices for steel rails, for lumber and cars, and that this means higher
+passenger and freight rates to the people. You know that when the
+manufacturer brings his wealth to Wall Street and is robbed of it, he
+will add something to the price of boots and shoes, cotton and woollen
+clothes, and other necessities that he makes and that he sells to the
+people. You know that when the copper, lead, tin, and iron miners part
+with their surplus to the 'System,' it means higher prices to the people
+for their copper pots and gutters, for the water that comes through lead
+pipes, for their tin dippers and wash boilers, and for their rents, and
+all those necessities into which machinery, lumber, and other raw and
+finished material enters. You know that every hundred millions dropped by
+real producers to the brigands of our world means lower wages or less of
+the necessities and luxuries for all the people, and especially for the
+farmer. You know that it is habit with us of Wall Street to gloat over the
+doctrine of the 'System,' which the people parrot among themselves, the
+doctrine that the people at large are not affected by our gambling,
+because they, the people, having no surplus to gamble with, never come
+into Wall Street. And yet, knowing all this, you never thought, with all
+your wisdom and cynicism, that right here in this institution, which you
+own and control, was the open sesame, for each or all of you, to those
+great chests of gold that your clients, the 'System,' have filled to
+bursting from the stores of the people. What, I ask, do you wise men think
+of the situation as you now see it?"
+
+There was an oppressive stillness on the floor. The great crowd, which now
+contained nearly all the members of the Exchange, listened with bulging
+eyes and open mouths to the revelations of their fellow member. From time
+to time, as Bob Brownley poured forth his shot and shell of deadly logic,
+from the vast mob that now surrounded the Exchange rose a hoarse bellow of
+impatience, for few in that dense throng outside could understand the
+silence of the gigantic human crusher, which between the hours of ten and
+three was never before known to miss a revolution except while its
+victims' hearts and souls were being removed from its gears and meshes.
+
+Bob Brownley paused and looked down into the faces of the breathless
+gamblers with a contempt that was superb. He went on:
+
+"Men of Wall Street, it is writ in the books of the ancients that every
+evil contains within itself a cure or a destroyer. I do not pretend that
+what I am revealing to you is to you a cure for this hideous evil, but I
+do say that what I am giving you is a destroyer for it, and that while it
+will be to the world a cure, it may leave you in a more fiery hell than
+the one of which you now feel the flames. I do not care if it does. When I
+am through, any member of the New York Stock Exchange who feels the iron
+in his soul can get instant revenge and unlimited wealth. You who are
+turning over in your minds the consideration that your great body can make
+new rules to render my discovery inoperative, are dealing with a shadow.
+There is no rule or device that can prevent its working. There are one
+thousand seats in the New York Stock Exchange. They are worth to-day
+$95,000 apiece, or $95,000,000 in all. Their value is due to the fact that
+this Exchange deals in between one and three million shares a day. Were
+any attempt made to prevent the operation of my invention, transactions
+would because of such attempt drop to five or ten thousand shares per day,
+or to such transactions as represent stock that will be actually delivered
+and actually paid for. To make my invention useless it must be made
+impossible to buy or sell the same share of stock more than once at one
+session, and short selling, which is now, as you know, the foundation of
+the modern stock-gambling structure, must likewise be made impossible. If
+this could be done the $95,000,000 worth of seats in the Exchange would be
+worth less than five millions, and, what is of far greater import to all
+the people, the financial world would be revolutionised. Men of Wall
+Street, do not fool yourselves. My invention is a sure destroyer of the
+greatest curse in the world, stock-gambling."
+
+A sullen growl rose from the gamblers. Robert Brownley glared down his
+defiance.
+
+"Let me show you the impossibility of preventing in the future anyone's
+doing what I have done to you so many times during the past five years.
+All the capital required to work my invention is nerve and desperation, or
+nerve without desperation. It is well known to you that there are at all
+times Exchange members who will commit any crime, barring perhaps murder,
+to gain millions. Your members have from time to time shown nerve or
+desperation enough to embezzle, raise certificates, give bogus checks,
+counterfeit stocks and bonds, and this for gain of less than millions, and
+when detection was probable. All these are criminal offences and their
+detection is sure to bring disgrace and State prison. Yet members of this
+Exchange desperate enough to take the chance, when confronted with loss of
+fortune and open bankruptcy, have always been found with nerve enough to
+attempt the crimes. I repeat that there are at all times Exchange members
+who will commit any crime, barring perhaps murder, to gain millions. That
+you may see that my successors will surely come from your midst from time
+to time during the future existence of the Exchange, I will enumerate the
+different classes of members who will follow in my footsteps:
+
+"First, the 'In Gold We Trust' schemer who is of the 'System' type, but
+who is outside the magic circle. A man of this class will reason: I know
+scores of men, who stand high on 'the Street' and in the social world, who
+have tens of millions that they have filched by 'System' tricks, if not by
+legal crimes. If I perform this trick of Brownley's, the trick of selling
+short until a panic is produced, I shall make millions and none will be
+the wiser. For all I know, many of the multi-millionaires whom I have seen
+produce panics and who were applauded by 'the Street' and the press for
+their ability and daring, and whose standing, business and social, is now
+the highest, were only doing this same thing, and having been successful,
+they have never been detected or suspected. But even suppose I fail, which
+can only be through some extraordinary accident happening while I am
+engaged in selling, I shall have committed no crime, and, in fact, shall
+have done no one any great moral wrong, for if I fail to carry out my
+contract to deliver the stock I have sold in trying to produce a panic,
+the men to whom I have sold will be no worse off for not receiving what
+they bought; in fact they will stand just where they stood before I
+attempted to bring on a panic.
+
+"Second, if an Exchange member for any reason should find himself
+overboard and should realise that he must publicly become bankrupt and
+lose all, he surely would be a fool not to attempt to produce a panic,
+when its production would enable him to recoup his losses and prevent his
+failure, and when if by accident he should fail in his attempt to produce
+a panic, the penalty would simply be his bankruptcy, which would have
+taken place in any event.
+
+"The third class is that large one that always will exist while there is
+stock-gambling, a class of honest, square-dealing-play-the-game-fair-Exchange
+men who would take no unfair advantage of their fellow-members until they
+become awakened to the knowledge that they are about to be ruined by their
+fellow-members' trickery.
+
+"Next, let us consider further whether it is possible for our Exchange to
+prevent my device from being worked, now that it is known to all. Suppose
+the Governing Committee was informed in advance that the attempt to work
+the trick was to be made. If, at any session, after gong-strike, the
+Governing Committee, or any Exchange authority, could for any reason
+compel a member to cease operating, even for the purpose of showing that
+his transactions were legitimate, the entire structure of stock-gambling
+would fall. Think it through: Suppose a man like Barry Conant or myself,
+or any active commission broker, begins the execution of a large order for
+a client, one, say, who has advance information of a receivership, a fire
+at a mine, the death of a President, a declaration of war, or any of the
+hundred and one items of information that must be acted upon instantly,
+where a delay of a minute would ruin the broker, or his house, or its
+clients. If the Governing Committee could thus call the broker to account,
+the professional bear or the schemer, who desired to prevent him from
+selling, would have but to pass the word to the president of the Exchange
+that the broker in question was about to work Brownley's discovery and he
+could be taken from the crowd and before he returned his place could be
+taken by others and he could be ruined.
+
+"Men of Wall Street, it is impossible to prevent the repetition of those
+acts by which in five years I have accumulated a billion dollars,
+impossible so long as a short sale or a repurchase and resale, is allowed.
+When short sales, and repurchases and resales, are made impossible, stock
+speculation will be dead. When stock speculation is dead, the people can
+no longer be robbed by the 'System.' In leaving you, the Exchange, and
+stock-gambling forever, as I shall when I leave this platform, I will say
+from the depth of a heart that has been broken, from the profoundity of a
+soul that has been withered by the 'System's' poison, with a full sense
+of my responsibility to my fellow-man and to my God, that I advise every
+one of you to do what I have done and to do it quickly, before the doing
+of it by others shall have made it impossible, before the doing of it by
+others shall have blown up the whole stock-gambling structure. In
+accepting my advice you can quiet your conscience, those of you who have
+any, with this argument: 'If I start, I am sure of success. If I succeed,
+no one will be the wiser. The millions I secure I will take from men who
+took them from others, and who would take mine. The more I and others
+take, the sooner will come the day when the stock-gambling structure will
+fall.'
+
+"The day on which the stock-gambling structure falls is the day for which
+all honest men and women should pray."
+
+Bob Brownley paused and let his eyes sweep his dumfounded audience. There
+was not a murmur. The crowd was speechless.
+
+Again his eyes swept the room. Then he slowly raised his right hand with
+fist clenched, as though about to deal a blow.
+
+"Men of Wall Street"--his voice was now deep and solemn--"to show that
+Robert Brownley knew what was fitting for the last day of his career, he
+has revealed to you the trick--and more.
+
+"Many of you are desperate. Many of you by to-morrow will be ruined. The
+time of all times for such to put my trick in practice is now. The victim
+of victims is ready for the experiment. I am he. I have a billion dollars.
+With this billion dollars I am able to buy ten million shares of the
+leading stocks and to pay for them, even though after I have bought they
+fall a hundred dollars a share. Here is your chance to prevent your ruin,
+your chance to retrieve your fortune, your chance to secure revenge upon
+me, the one who has robbed you."
+
+He paused only long enough for his astounding advice to connect with his
+listener's now keenly sensitive nerve centres; then deep and clear rang
+out, "Barry Conant." The wiry form of Bob's old antagonist leaped to the
+rostrum.
+
+"I authorise you to buy any part of ten million shares of the leading
+stocks at any price up to fifty points above the present market. There is
+my check-book signed in blank, and I authorise you to use it up to a
+billion dollars, and I agree to have in bank to-morrow sufficient funds to
+meet any checks you draw. You have failed to-day for seven millions, and,
+therefore, cannot trade, but I herewith announce that I will pay all the
+indebtedness of Barry Conant and his house. Therefore he is now in good
+standing." Bob had kept his eye on the great clock; as the last word
+passed his lips, the President's gavel descended.
+
+With a mighty rush the gamblers leaped for the different poles. Barry
+Conant with lightning rapidity gave his orders to twenty of his
+assistants, who, when Bob Brownley called for Conant, had gathered around
+their chief. In less than a minute the dollar-battle of the age was on, a
+battle such as no man had ever seen before. It required no supernatural
+wisdom for any man on the floor to see that Bob Brownley's seed had fallen
+in superheated soil, that his until now secret hellite was about to be
+tested. It needed no expert in the mystic art of deciphering the wall
+hieroglyphics of Old Hag Fate to see that the hands on the clock of the
+"System" were approaching twelve. It needed no ear trained to hear human
+heart and soul beats to detect the approaching sound of onrushing doom to
+the stock-gambling structure. The deafening roar of the brokers that had
+broken the stillness following Robert Brownley's fateful speech had
+awakened echoes that threatened to shake down the Exchange walls. The
+surging mob on the outside was roaring like a million hungry lions in an
+Arbestan run at slaughter time.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+
+
+The instant after the gong sounded Bob Brownley was alone on the floor at
+the foot of the president's desk. His form was swaying like a reed on the
+edge of the cyclone's path. I jumped to his side. His brother, who had
+during Bob's harangue been vainly endeavouring to beat his way through the
+crowd, was there first. "For God's sake, Bob, hear me. Word came from your
+house half an hour ago of the miracle: Beulah has awakened to her past.
+Her mind is clear; the nurses are frantic for you to come to her."
+
+He got no further. With a mad bellow and a bound, like a tortured bull
+that sees the arena walls go down, Bob rushed out through the nearest
+door, which, I thanked God, was a side one leading to the street where the
+crowd was thinnest. He cast a wild look around. His eyes lighted on an
+empty automobile whose chauffeur had deserted to the crowd. It was the
+work of a second to crank it; of another to jump into the front seat.
+Quick as had been his movement, I was behind him in the rear seat. With a
+bound the great machine leaped through the crowd.
+
+"In the name of Christ, Bob, be careful," I yelled, as he hurled the iron
+monster through the throng, scattering it to the right and left as the
+mower scatters the sheaves in the wheat fields. Some were crushed beneath
+its wheels. Bob Brownley heard not their screams, heard not the curses of
+those who escaped. He was on his feet, his body crouched low over the
+steering-wheel, which he grasped in his vise-like hands. His hatless head
+was thrust far out, as though it strove to get to Beulah Sands ahead of
+his body. His teeth were set, and as I had jumped into the machine I had
+noted that his eyes were those of a maniac, who saw sanity just ahead if
+he could but get to it in time. His ears were deaf not only to the howl of
+the terrified throng and the curses of the teamsters who frantically
+pulled their horses to the curb, but to my warnings as well. He swung the
+machine around the corner at New Street and into Wall as though it had
+been the broadest boulevard in the park. He took Wall Street at a bound I
+was sure would land us through the fence into Trinity's churchyard. But
+no. Again he turned the corner, throwing the Juggernaut on its outside
+wheels from Wall Street into Broadway as the crowds on the sidewalk held
+their breath in horror. I, too, was on my feet, but crouching as I hung to
+the sides. Thank God, that usually crowded thoroughfare was free from
+vehicles as far up as I could see, on beyond the Astor House. What could
+it mean? Was that divinity which 'tis said protects the drunkard and the
+idiot about to aid the mad rush of this love-frenzied creature to his
+long-lost but newly returned dear one? I heard the frantic clang of gongs,
+and as we shot by the World Building, I saw ahead of us two plunging
+automobiles filled with men. 'Twas from them the gong clamour sounded. As
+we drew nearer. I saw that these were the cars of the fire chiefs
+answering a call. I thanked God again and again as I yelled into Bob's
+ear, "For Beulah's sake, Bob, don't pass; if you do, we'll run into a
+blockade. If we keep in the rear they'll clear our way, and we may get to
+her alive." I do not know whether he heard, but he held the machine in the
+rear of the other cars and did not try to pass. Away we went on our mad
+rush through crowded Broadway. At Union Square we lost our way-clearers.
+As our automobile jumped across Fourteenth Street into Fourth Avenue, Bob
+must have opened her up to the last notch, for she seemed to leap through
+the air. We sent two wagons crashing across the sidewalks into the
+buildings. Cries of rage arose above the din of the machine, and seemed to
+follow in our wake. Bob was dead to all we passed. His entire being seemed
+set on what was ahead. I knew he was an expert in the handling of the
+automobile, for since his misfortune, automobiling with Beulah Sands had
+been his favourite pastime, but who could expect to carry that plunging,
+swaying car to Forty-second Street! Bob seemed to be performing the
+wondrous task. We shot from curb to curb and around and in front of
+vehicles and foot passengers as though the driver's eyes and hands were
+inspired.
+
+Across the square at last and on up Fourth Avenue to Twenty-sixth Street.
+Then a dizzying whirl into Madison. Was he going to keep to it until he
+got to Forty-second Street and try to make Fifth Avenue along that
+congested block with its crush of Grand Central passengers and lines upon
+lines of hacks and teams? No. His head must be clear. Again he threw the
+great machine around the corner and into Fortieth Street. For a part of
+the block our wheels rode the sidewalk, and I awaited the crash. It did
+not come. Surely the new world Bob was speeding to must be a kind one,
+else why should Hag Fate, who had been at the steer-wheel of his life-car
+during the last five years, carry him safely through what looked a dozen
+sure deaths? Without slacking speed a jot we swung around the corner of
+Fortieth into Fifth Avenue. The road was clear to Forty-second; there a
+dense jam of cars, teams, and carriages blocked the crossing. Bob must
+have seen the solid wall for I heard his low muttered curse. Nothing else
+to indicate that we were blocked with his goal in sight. He never touched
+the speed controller, but took the two blocks as though shot from a
+catapult. The two? No, one, and three-quarters of the next, for when
+within a score of yards of the black wall he jammed down the brakes, and
+the iron mass ground and shook as though it would rend itself to atoms,
+but it stopped with its dasher and front wheels wedged in between a car
+and a dray. It had not stopped when Bob was off and up the avenue like a
+hound on the end-in-sight trail. I was after him while the astonished
+bystanders stared in wonder. As we neared Bob's house I could see people
+on the stoop. I heard Bob's secretary shout, "Thank God, Mr. Brownley, you
+have come. She is in the office. I found her there, quiet and recovered.
+She did not ask a question. She said, 'Tell Mr. Brownley when he comes
+that I should like to see him.' Then she ordered me to get the afternoon
+paper. I handed it to her an hour ago. I think she believes herself in her
+old office. I shut off the floor as you instructed. I did not dare go to
+her for fear she would ask questions. I have"--but Bob was up the stairs
+two and three steps at a time.
+
+My breath was almost gone and it took me minutes to get to the second
+floor. My feet touched the top stair, when, O God! that sound! For five
+long years I had been trying to get it out of my ears, but now more
+guttural, more agonised than before, it broke upon my tortured senses. I
+did not need to seek its direction. With a bound I was at the threshold of
+Beulah Sands-Brownley's office. In that brief time the groans had
+stilled. For one instant I closed my eyes, for the very atmosphere of
+that hall moaned and groaned death. I opened them. Yes, I knew it. There
+at the desk was the beautiful gray-clad figure of five years ago. There
+the two arms resting on the desk. There the two beautiful hands holding
+the open paper, but the eyes, those marvellous gray-blue doors to an
+immortal soul--they were closed forever. The exquisitely beautiful face
+was cold and white and peaceful. Beulah Sands was dead. The hell-hounds of
+the "System" had overtaken its maimed and hunted victim; it had added her
+beautiful heart to the bags and barrels and hogsheads stored away in its
+big "business-is-business" safe-deposit vaults. My eyes in sick pity
+sought the form of my old schoolmate, my college chum, my partner, my
+friend, the man I loved. He was on his knees. His agonised face was turned
+to his wife. His clasped hands had been raised in an awful, heart-crushing
+prayer as his Maker touched the bell. Bob Brownley's great brown eyes were
+closed, his clasped hands had dropped against his wife's head, and in
+dropping had unloosed the glorious golden-brown waves until in fond
+abandon they had coiled around his arms and brow as though she for whom
+he had sacrificed all was shielding his beloved head from the chills and
+dark mists of the black river that laps the brink of the eternal rest. The
+"System" had skewered Robert Brownley's heart too. I staggered to his
+side. As I touched his now fast-icing brow my eyes fell upon the great
+black headlines spread across the top of the paper that Beulah Sands had
+been reading when the all-kind God had cut her bonds:
+
+   FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH
+
+And beneath in one column:
+
+   TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN VIRGINIA
+
+   THE RICHEST MAN IN THE STATE, THOMAS REINHART, MULTI-MILLIONAIRE, WHILE
+   TEMPORARILY INSANE FROM THE LOSS OF HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER, AND OF HIS
+   ENORMOUS FORTUNE, WHICH WAS SHATTERED IN TO-DAY'S AWFUL PANIC, CUT HIS
+   THROAT. HIS DEATH WAS INSTANTANEOUS.
+
+In another column:
+
+   ROBERT BROWNLEY CREATES THE MOST AWFUL PANIC IN HISTORY, AND SPREADS
+   WRECK AND RUIN THROUGHOUT THE CIVILISED WORLD.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Publisher's Note
+
+
+
+_The following are fac-similes of a few of the letters received by the
+author during the serial publication of "Friday, the Thirteenth."_
+
+
+
+
+RESIDENCE OF
+THE PAULIST FATHERS
+2158 PINE STREET
+
+San Francisco, CA
+21 October 1906
+
+
+My Dear Mr. Dawson
+
+Kindly allow one of your countless admirers to express his extreme
+gratification with the announcement that you will add fiction to your
+distinguished literary achievements. Your gifts as a writer are so
+wonderful and fascinating that I look forward eagerly to your work in this
+new field--and I pray God to prosper you in all good.
+
+Sincerely,
+John Marus Haudly
+
+
+
+
+70 Kirkland St., Cambridge
+Dec. 26, 1906.
+
+Mr. T. W. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+My Dear Sir: Allow me to congratulate you on your last move and on your
+story, "Friday, the Thirteenth".
+
+It is the best yet, not merely as a story but as an eye opener. I can
+begin to see daylight in spots, where it looks like a remedy and a real
+one. I can't see how you will work it; but I think I do get a hint, and it
+holds me tightly.
+
+That story ought to be issued in a cheap (25�) edition in paper, and every
+man in American ought to read it. The third part is yet to come; but, if I
+mistake not, it will make us all say "Hurrah!" In this form the facts go
+home. They were too abstract before. Now they live and palpitate.
+Sincerely yours,
+
+[Illegible: H. W. Majorson]
+
+
+
+
+Dowagiac, Mich., Dec 26, 1906.
+
+Mr. T. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir--
+
+I have just finished reading your second installment of "Friday the 13th."
+It is one of the greatest stories I ever read. Your previous articles are
+good, but this is a wonder. I believe you are sincere and cannot help
+admiring your wonderful courage + grit in going up against big odds. I
+have no axe to grind with you, simply think that no matter how big you may
+be you like to know that what you write is appreciated by the majority of
+good american citizens. So Here's to you Mr Lawson + I back you to
+eventually win. Smash 'em good.
+
+Yours Truly
+A. J. Hill.
+
+
+
+
+Grinnell, Iowa, Nov. 3 1906
+
+Thomas Lawson
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+What did "Bob" hear when he picked up the receiver. Impossible to wait one
+month to find out.
+
+Yours truly,
+A. W. Talbott
+
+
+
+
+103 Stedman Street
+Brookline Mass.
+
+Dear Mr. Lawson:--
+
+I have hit just read the first instalment of your serial "Friday the
+13th."
+
+I was so interested, aroused and stirred, I felt I must express to you
+some of the appreciation I feel for the work you have done and are doing.
+
+The army of those who suffer is so great the human spoilers so strong;
+that one's heart goes out in gratitude to a champion who comes around and
+able willing to do better for the oppressed.
+
+Would it be an intrusion to extend sympathy to one bereft of the beautiful
+gift of loving companionship? I hope that it is sincerely felt.
+
+Many admire and rejoice in your work--may it go forward bringing the
+knowledge which is power to ever increasing numbers of American people.
+
+Most Sincerely
+Marion E. Major
+
+December 14th, 1906
+
+
+
+
+L. GUY DENNETT
+ATTORNEY AT LAW
+48 TREMONT ST., BOSTON
+TELEPHONE CONNECTION
+
+Nov. 21/06
+
+Thomas W. Lawson Esq.
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+I take it for granted that you want to know how the "Public" is going to
+take to your latest writing "fiction" and how are you to know unless your
+unknown friends write you?
+
+I have read every thing you have ever written because I believe in you and
+admire the work you have done and are doing and allow me to say that I
+finaly believe that you will one day be recognized as one of the greatest
+story writers of the age. The first section of "Friday the Thirteenth" has
+convinced me that you will be a sure winner.
+
+Yours very truly,
+L. Guy Dennett
+
+
+
+Angola Tulare Co. Cal.
+Dec. 29, 1906
+
+W. T. Lawson,
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+I wanted to thank you for the first number of "Friday the 13th", but did
+not know your address. "Everybody's" contains some letters written you to
+Boston so hope this may reach its destination.
+
+I live in the wildest of the wooley west + such a god send as in
+"Everybody's" (sent me by a sister in Oakland Cal.) + containing the first
+number of your story, words inadequately suffices. Friday the 13th made an
+impression on me which I could not easily shake off if I would. I was so
+sorry it ended where it did that I wanted to cry out + could hardly wait
+for the Jan. number. Yesterday I bought one in Hanford Cal. rode 30 miles
+north to get it. I live a mile from the recently filled in basin of old
+Tulare Lake. The snowfall on the mountains argue that our part of the Wild
++ Wooley may soon be a fishing station instead of an alfalfa ranch.
+
+Perhaps you don't understand how much your story is appreciated.
+
+You are Bob Brownley, _I know_. Can you really _feel_ what you write as
+you make us do? Your characters appeal to me so that I live with them,
+every nerve alert to the straining point (but with pleasure). You are
+certianly the idol of the American people. I've heard you discussed by
+rich + poor, monopolist + antimonopolist during the publication of
+"Frenzied Finance" + the worst a monopolist could say was that you were as
+bad as the Standard Oil, but wanted to get even. "What is that but a
+virtue," exclaimed I. "Couldn't he have made millions by staying in, but
+_he_ recognized his past failings and exposed [them] S.O. to uphold a
+nation. May honor attend him. Isn't that being a man and a gentleman?"
+
+People read "Frenzied Finance" to a man + would loan the magazine one to
+another so those who felt the 15� impossible could get the good of your
+revelations.
+
+I'm glad you believe in sentiment--the heart-lasting sentiment (instead of
+dollars and desire) which I feared was becoming a thing of the past; There
+are still splendid men in America. God bless them.
+
+O happy New Year may the weight of your pen sway millions. Amen.
+
+Respectfully,
+Louise D. Tennent
+
+See 14 Kings
+
+Angola P.O.
+Ca.
+
+
+
+
+Spokane, Wash.,
+December 28. 1906.
+
+Mr. Thomas W. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+I have lived nine years in Anaconda, Montana, and therefore become
+somewhat familiar with amalgamated copper, etc. I want to say I have
+followed your writings with lively interest and have sworn by all the
+statements you have made. It is, therefore, with the greatest regret that
+I am compelled to state that my faith in you has been shattered.
+
+When you state in your story of "Friday the 13th" that the heroine walked
+in to an office in New York in the middle of July with a feather turban on
+her head I simply cannot swallow it. That a lady of refinement and good
+taste with $30,000 in the bank, and anxious to make a good appearance,
+should walk into an office in New York with a winter hat taxes my
+credulity to the breaking point. However, be that as it may, I want to say
+that you have made a big fight against great odds and that I admire your
+pluck and genius, and I hope you will keep right on fighting for the
+right.
+
+By the way, I might as well admit that it was my wife by the way is a
+superior woman who called my attention to the turban when I was reading
+your story aloud to her. I am,
+
+Very truly yours,
+John Ortson
+
+
+
+
+O'Fallon, Ill. Nov. 22nd, 1906
+
+Thos W. Lawson
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+It has afforded me great pleasure to just have finished your first
+installment to "Friday the 13th," as have also your previous writings,
+from which I learned a great deal,--although from a financial standpoint,
+following what I thought to be your advice, I am several thousand dollars
+looser,--and I take this means of contributing my mite of encouragement,
+firmly believing that your work is doing a great good, and trusting that
+success on the lines you have mapped out, will be your reward.
+
+Very respectfully, Wm. A. Staney.
+
+(I'm awaiting your next installment)
+
+
+
+
+Dear sir:
+
+I have only had the pleasure of meeting you once--in your private car,
+with Thayer, when you were returning from your western trip--but I hope
+you will not consider me presuming if I take a moment of your valuable
+time to thank you for your masterpiece just begun in Everybody's.
+
+Such magic has not flowed from a pen for many a year.
+
+Yours Truly
+John O Powers
+
+206 North 34th Street
+Philadelphia
+
+
+
+
+Des Moines, Iowa, 11/20, 1906
+
+Mr. Thos. Lawson
+Boston.
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+I like your story "Friday the Thirteenth." For the information and added
+knowledge your previous writing has given me I thank you.
+
+--"for the crow that is in him and the spurs that are on him to back up
+the crow with." You certainly are a game and competant old fighter.
+
+Sincerely, with best wishes
+[Illegible signature: A. S. Goodman]
+
+
+
+
+St. Paul, Minn.,
+November 26, 1906.
+
+Mr. Thomas W. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+I wish to congratulate you on the good story you wrote in Everybody's
+Magazine this month. It is the beat story I ever read and the best I ever
+saw published in any magazine.
+
+I am well posted on the "Brokers" business and enjoyed your story very
+much. I hope you will continue to write them. I know they are taken more
+from real life than immagination. I am sure they will be appreciated as
+much as "Frenzied Finance". I have taken the liberty to send a good word
+to Ridgway's.
+
+With best wishes, I remain
+Tours respectfully,
+
+Western Union Telegraph Co.
+R.A. Kelly
+
+
+
+
+Los Angeles, Calif.,
+December 11, 1906.
+
+Mr. Thomas W. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+My dear Sir:
+
+It was indeed a pleasure to read your novel in this month's Everybody's.
+Being an old trader myself, I have appreciated every word of it and look
+forward for the continuation with much interest.
+
+I just want to say this too--that anyone who says that you cannot write
+anything else but "Street" gossip had better cover his "shorts".
+
+Wishing you all kinds of success, and with congratulations on your
+splendid work, I am
+
+Very sincerely,
+
+Nancy Brown
+214 Citizens Nat'l Bank Bldg.
+
+
+
+
+Washington, D.C.,
+December 1, 1906.
+
+Thos. W. Lawson, Esq.,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+I have just read with very great pleasure and edification the first
+installment of your excellent story "Friday the 13th". It is so far a
+masterpiece.
+
+Congratulating you. I remain
+Very truly,
+M. H. Ramaze
+
+
+
+
+Cleburn, Texas, Dec 3 1906
+
+Mr. Thos. W. Lawson
+Boston
+
+Dear Sirs:
+
+I have just your first installment of "Friday 13th." It is OK + if the
+balance of the story is as good (+ I have no doubts on that score) you are
+"It" when it comes to writting fiction as well as tricking the Insurance
+Thief + Standard Oil Grafters.
+
+Wishing you success
+I am yours very truly
+S. F. Welch
+
+
+
+
+Rumford Falls, Maine,
+November 20, 1906.
+
+Mr. Tom Lewson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+I have read all your writings in Everybody's, including the first
+installment of your story in the December number, and I must say that I am
+more than pleased with it. As a writer of fiction you are sure to make
+another big hit.
+
+Yours truly,
+W. I. White.
+
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes
+
+
+
+[1] "26 Broadway" is the Wall Street figure of speech for "Standard Oil,"
+which has its home there.
+
+[2] Those who seek to depress the price of a stock are known as bears, and
+those who oppose them by trying to raise the price are bulls.
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Friday, the Thirteenth, by Thomas W. Lawson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Friday, the Thirteenth
+
+Author: Thomas W. Lawson
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2004 [EBook #12345]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRIDAY, THE THIRTEENTH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "I saw there something missing from her great blue eyes.
+I looked; gasped"]
+
+
+
+
+Friday, the Thirteenth
+
+A Novel by
+
+Thomas W. Lawson
+
+Frontispiece in colour by Sigismond de Ivanowski
+
+1907
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1906, 1907.
+Copyright, 1907.
+Published, February, 1907
+
+
+
+
+To Her
+
+I Dedicate This Book
+
+All That Is Good In This Little Waif, Which Is Very
+Dear To Me, I Know A Just God Will Place To
+Her Credit. All That Is Mean And Low And
+Human Could Never Have Been Birthed
+Had She Been Nigh To Guide An
+Ever Wayward Pen.
+
+_The Author._
+
+_The Nest, Dreamwold,
+August, 1906._
+
+
+
+
+Friday, the Thirteenth
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+
+
+"Friday, the 13th; I thought as much. If Bob has started, there will be
+hell, but I will see what I can do."
+
+The sound of my voice, as I dropped the receiver, seemed to part the mists
+of five years and usher me into the world of Then as though it had never
+passed on.
+
+I had been sitting in my office, letting the tape slide through my fingers
+while its every yard spelled "panic" in a constantly rising voice, when
+they told me that Brownley on the floor of the Exchange wanted me at the
+'phone, and "quick." Brownley was our junior partner and floor man. He
+talked with a rush. Stock Exchange floor men in panics never let their
+speech hobble.
+
+"Mr. Randolph, it's sizzling over here, and it's getting hotter every
+second. It's Bob--that is evident to all. If he keeps up this pace for
+twenty minutes longer, the sulphur will overflow 'the Street' and get
+into the banks and into the country, and no man can tell how much
+territory will be burned over by to-morrow. The boys have begged me to ask
+you to throw yourself into the breach and stay him. They agree you are the
+only hope now."
+
+"Are you sure, Fred, that this is Bob's work?" I asked. "Have you seen
+him?"
+
+"Yes, I have just come from his office, and glad I was to get out. He's on
+the war-path, Mr. Randolph--uglier than I ever saw him. The last time he
+broke loose was child's play to his mood to-day. Mother sent me word this
+morning that she saw last night the spell was coming. He had been up to
+see her and sisters, and mother thought from his tone he was about to
+disappear again. When she told me of his mood, and I remembered the day, I
+was afraid he might seek his vent here. Also I heard of his being about
+town till long after midnight. The minute I opened his office door this
+morning he flew at me like a panther. I told him I had only dropped in on
+my rounds for an order, as they were running off right smart, and I didn't
+know but he might like to pick up some bargains. 'Bargains!' he roared,
+'don't you know the day? Don't you know it is Friday, the 13th? Go back
+to that hell-pit and sell, sell, sell.' 'Sell what and how much?' I asked.
+'Anything, everything. Give the thieves every share they will take, and
+when they won't take any more, ram as much again down their crops until
+they spit up all they have been buying for the last three months!' Going
+out I met Jim Holliday and Frank Swan rushing in. They are evidently
+executing Bob's orders, and have been pouring Anti-People's out for an
+hour. They will be on the floor again in a few minutes, so I thought it
+safer to call you before I started to sell. Mr. Randolph, they cannot take
+much more of anything in here, and if I begin to throw stocks over, it
+will bring the gavel inside of ten minutes; and that will be to announce a
+dozen failures. It's yet twenty minutes to one and God only knows what
+will happen before three. It's up to you, Mr. Randolph, to do something,
+and unless I am on a bad slant, you haven't many minutes to lose."
+
+It was then I dropped the receiver with "I thought as much!" As I had been
+fingering the tape, watching five and ten millions crumbling from price
+values every few minutes, I was sure this was the work of Bob Brownley.
+No one else in Wall Street had the power, the nerve, and the devilish
+cruelty to rip things as they had been ripped during the last twenty
+minutes. The night before I had passed Bob in the theatre lobby. I gave
+him close scrutiny and saw the look of which I of all men best knew the
+meaning. The big brown eyes were set on space; the outer corners of the
+handsome mouth were drawn hard and tense as though weighted. As I had my
+wife with me it was impossible to follow him, but when I got home I called
+up his house and his clubs, intending to ask, him to run up and smoke a
+cigar with me, but could locate him nowhere. I tried again in the morning
+without success, but when just before noon the tape began to jump and
+flash and snarl, I remembered Bob's ugly mood, and all it portended.
+
+Fred Brownley was Bob's youngest brother, twelve years his junior. He had
+been with Randolph & Randolph from the day he left college, and for over a
+year had been our most trusted Stock Exchange man. Bob Brownley, when
+himself, was as fond of his "baby brother," as he called him, as his
+beautiful Southern mother was of both; but when the devil had possession
+of Bob--and his option during the past five years had been exercised many
+a time--mother and brother had to take their place with all the rest of
+the world, for then Bob knew no kindred, no friends. All the wide world
+was to him during those periods a jungle peopled with savage animals and
+reptiles to hunt and fight and tear and kill.
+
+It is hardly necessary for me to explain who Randolph & Randolph are. For
+more than sixty years the name has spoken for itself in every part of the
+world where dollar-making machines are installed. No railroad is financed,
+no great "industrial" projected, without by force of habit, hat-in-handing
+a by-your-leave of Randolph & Randolph, and every nation when entering the
+market for loans, knows that the favour of the foremost American bankers
+is something which must be reckoned with. I pride myself that at
+forty-two, at the end of the ten years I have had the helm of Randolph &
+Randolph, I have done nothing to mar the great name my father and uncle
+created, but something to add to its sterling reputation for honest
+dealing, fearless, old-fashioned methods, and all-round integrity.
+Bradstreet's and other mercantile agencies say, in reporting Randolph &
+Randolph, "Worth fifty millions and upward, credit unlimited." I can take
+but small praise for this, for the report was about the same the day I
+left college and came to the office to "learn the business." But, as the
+survivor of my great father and uncle, I can say, my Maker as my witness,
+that Randolph & Randolph have never loaned a dollar of their millions at
+over legal rates, 6 per cent, per annum; have never added to their hoard
+by any but fair, square business methods; and that blight of blights,
+frenzied finance, has yet to find a lodging-place beneath the old
+black-and-gold sign that father and uncle nailed up with their own hands
+over the entrance.
+
+Nineteen years ago I was graduated from Harvard. My classmate and chum,
+Bob Brownley, of Richmond, Va., was graduated with me. He was class poet,
+I, yard marshal. We had been four years together at St. Paul's previous to
+entering Harvard. No girl and lover were fonder than we of each other.
+
+My people had money, and to spare, and with it a hard-headed, Northern
+horse-sense. The Brownleys were poor as church mice, but they had the
+brilliant, virile blood of the old Southern oligarchy and the romantic,
+"salaam-to-no-one" Dixie-land pride of before-the-war days, when Southern
+prodigality and hospitality were found wherever women were fair and men's
+mirrors in the bottom of their julep-glasses.
+
+Bob's father, one of the big, white pillars of Southern aristocracy, had
+gone through Congress and the Senate of his country to the tune of "Spend
+and not spare," which left his widow and three younger daughters and a
+small son dependent upon Bob, his eldest.
+
+Many a warm summer's afternoon, as Bob and I paddled down the Charles, and
+often on a cold, crispy night as we sat in my shooting-box on the Cape Cod
+shore, had we matched up for our future. I was to have the inside run of
+the great banking business of Randolph & Randolph, and Bob was eventually
+to represent my father's firm on the floor of the Stock Exchange. "I'd die
+in an office," Bob used to say, "and the floor of the Stock Exchange is
+just the chimney-place to roast my hoe-cake in." So when our college days
+were over my able had saddled Bob's youth with the heavy responsibilities
+of husbanding and directing his family's slim finances that he took to
+business as a swallow to the air. We entered the office of Randolph &
+Randolph on the same day, and on its anniversary, a year later, my father
+summoned us into his office for a sort of tally-up talk. Neither of us
+quite knew what was coming, and we thrilled with pleasure when he said:
+
+"Jim, you and Bob have fairly outdone my expectations. I have had my eye
+on both of you and I want you to know that the kind of industry and
+business intelligence you have shown here would have won you recognition
+in any banking-house on 'the Street.' I want you both in the firm--Jim to
+learn his way round so he can step into my shoes; you, Bob, to take one of
+the firm's seats on the Stock Exchange."
+
+Bob's face went red and then pale with happiness as he reached for my
+father's hand.
+
+"I'm very grateful to you sir, far more so than any words can say, but I
+want to talk this proposition of yours over with Jim here first. He knows
+me better than any one else in the world and I've some ideas I'd like to
+thrash out with him."
+
+"Speak up here, Bob," said my father.
+
+"Well, sir, I should feel much better if I could go over there into the
+swirl and smash it out for myself. You see if I could win out alone and
+pay back the seat price, and then make a pile for myself, if you felt
+later like giving me another chance to come into the firm, then I should
+not be laying myself open to the charge of being a mere pensioner on your
+friendship. You know what I mean, sir, and won't think I am filled with
+any low-down pride, but if you will let me have the price of a Stock
+Exchange seat on my note, and will give me the chance, when I get the hang
+of the ropes, to handle some of the firm's orders, I shall be just as much
+beholden to you and Jim, sir, and shall feel a lot better myself."
+
+I knew what Bob meant; so did father, and we were glad enough to do what
+he asked, father insisting on making the seat price in the form of a
+present, after explaining to us that a foundation Stock Exchange rule
+prohibited an applicant from borrowing the seat price. Four years after
+Bob Brownley entered the Stock Exchange he had paid back the forty
+thousand, with interest, and not only had a snug fifty thousand to his
+credit on Randolph & Randolph's books, but was sending home six thousand a
+year while living up to, as he jokingly put it, "an honest man's notch." I
+may say in passing, that a Wall Street man's notch would make twice six
+thousand yearly earnings cast an uncertain shadow at Christmas time. Bob
+was the favourite of the Exchange, as he had been the pet at school and at
+college, and had his hands full of business three hundred days in the
+year. Besides Randolph & Randolph's choicest commissions, he had the
+confidential orders of two of the heavy plunging cliques.
+
+I had just passed my thirty-second birthday when my kind old dad suddenly
+died. For the previous six years I had been getting ready for such an
+event; that is, I had grown accustomed to hearing my father say: "Jim,
+don't let any grass grow in getting the hang of every branch of our
+business, so that when anything happens to me there will be no disturbance
+in 'the Street' in regard to Randolph & Randolph's affairs. I want to let
+the world know as soon as possible that after I am gone our business will
+run as it always has. So I will work you into my directorships in those
+companies where we have interests and gradually put you into my different
+trusteeships."
+
+Thus at father's death there was not a ripple in our affairs and none of
+the stocks known as "The Randolph's" fluttered a point because of that, to
+the financial world, momentous event. I inherited all of father's fortune
+other than four millions, which he divided up among relatives and
+charities, and took command of a business that gave me an income of two
+millions and a half a year.
+
+Once more I begged Bob to come into the firm.
+
+"Not yet, Jim," he replied. "I've got my seat and about a hundred thousand
+capital, and I want to feel that I'm free to kick my heels until I have
+raked together an even million all of my own making; then I'll settle down
+with you, old man, and hold my handle of the plough, and if some good girl
+happens along about that time--well, then it will be 'An ivy-covered
+little cot' for mine."
+
+He laughed, and I laughed too. Bob was looked upon by all his friends as a
+bad case of woman-shy. No woman, young or old, who had in any way crossed
+Bob's orbit but had felt that fascination, delicious to all women, in the
+presence of:
+
+    A soul by honour schooled,
+    A heart by passion ruled--
+
+but he never seemed to see it. As my wife--for I had been three years
+married and had two little Randolphs to show that both Katherine Blair and
+I knew what marriage was for--never tired of saying, "Poor Bob! He's
+woman-blind, and it looks as though he would never get his sight in that
+direction."
+
+"Then again, Jim," he continued in a tone of great seriousness, "there's a
+little secret I have never let even you into. The truth is I am not safe
+yet--not safe to speak for the old house of Randolph & Randolph. Yes, you
+may laugh--you who are, and always have been, as staunch and steady as the
+old bronze John Harvard in the yard, you who know Monday mornings just
+what you are going to do Saturday nights and all the days and nights in
+between, and who always do it. Jim, I have found since I have been over on
+the floor that the Southern gambling blood that made my grandfather, on
+one of his trips back from New York, though he had more land and slaves
+than he could use, stake his land and slaves--yes, and grandmother's
+too--on a card-game, and--lose, and change the whole face of the Brownley
+destiny--those same gambling microbes are in my blood, and when they begin
+to claw and gnaw I want to do something; and, Jim"--and the big brown eyes
+suddenly shot sparks--"if those microbes ever get unleashed, there'll be
+mischief to pay on the floor--sure there will!"
+
+Bob's handsome head was thrown back; his thin nostrils dilated as though
+there was in them the breath of conflict. The lips were drawn across the
+white teeth with just part enough to show their edges, and in the depths
+of the eyes was a dark-red blaze that somehow gave the impression one gets
+in looking down some long avenue of black at the instant a locomotive
+headlight rounds a curve at night.
+
+Twice before, way back in our college days, I had had a peep at this
+gambling tempter of Bob's. Once in a poker game in our rooms, when a crowd
+of New York classmates tried to run him out of a hand by the sheer weight
+of coin. And again at the Pequot House at New London on the eve of a
+varsity boat-race, when a Yale crowd shook a big wad of money and taunts
+at Bob until with a yell he left his usually well-leaded feet and
+frightened me, whose allowance was dollars to Bob's cents, at the sum
+total of the bet-cards he signed before he cleared the room of Yale money
+and came to with a white face streaming with cold perspiration. These
+events had passed out of my memory as the ordinary student breaks that any
+hot-blooded youth is liable to make in like circumstances. As I looked at
+Bob that day, while he tried to tell me that the business of Randolph &
+Randolph would not be safe in his keeping, I had to admit to myself that I
+was puzzled. I had regarded my old college chum not only as the best
+mentally harnessed man I had ever met, but I knew him as the soul of
+honour, that honour of the old story-books, and I could not credit his
+being tempted to jeopardise unfairly the rights or property of another.
+But it was habit with me to let Bob have his way, and I did not press him
+to come into our firm as a full partner.
+
+Five years later, during which time affairs, business and social, had been
+slipping along as well as either Bob or I could have asked, I was
+preparing for another sit-down to show my chum that the time had now come
+for him to help me in earnest, when a queer thing happened--one of those
+unaccountable incidents that God sometimes sees fit to drop across the
+life-paths of His children, paths heretofore as straight and
+far-ahead-visible as highways along which one has never to look twice to
+see where he is travelling; one of those events that, looked at
+retrospectively, are beyond all human understanding.
+
+It was a beautiful July Saturday noon and Bob and I had just "packed up"
+for the day preparatory to joining Mrs. Randolph on my yacht for a run
+down to our place at Newport. As we stepped out of his office one of the
+clerks announced that a lady had come in and had particularly asked to see
+Mr. Brownley.
+
+"Who the deuce can she be, coming in at this time on Saturday, just when
+all alive men are in a rush to shake the heat and dirt of business for
+food and the good air of all outdoors?" growled Bob. Then he said, "Show
+her in."
+
+Another minute and he had his answer.
+
+A lady entered.
+
+"Mr. Brownley?" She waited an instant to make sure he was the Virginian.
+
+Bob bowed.
+
+"I am Beulah Sands, of Sands Landing, Virginia. Your people know our
+people, Mr. Brownley, probably well enough for you to place me."
+
+"Of the Judge Lee Sands's?" asked Bob, as he held out his hand.
+
+"I am Judge Lee Sands's oldest daughter," said the sweetest voice I had
+ever heard, one of those mellow, rippling voices that start the
+imagination on a chase for a mocking-bird, only to bring it up at the pool
+beneath the brook-fall in quest of the harp of moss and watercresses that
+sends a bubbling cadence into its eddies and swirls. Perhaps it was the
+Southern accent that nibbled off the corners and edges of certain words
+and languidly let others mist themselves together, that gave it its
+luscious penetration--however that may be, it was the most
+no-yesterday-no-tomorrow voice I had ever heard. Before I grew fully
+conscious of the exquisite beauty of the girl, this voice of hers spelled
+its way into my brain like the breath of some bewitching Oriental essence.
+Nature, environment, the security of a perfect marriage have ever
+combined to constitute me loyal to my chosen one, yet as I stood silent,
+like one dumb, absorbing the details of the loveliness of this young
+stranger who had so suddenly swept into my office, it came over me that
+here was a woman intended to enlighten men who could not understand that
+shaft which in all ages has without warning pierced men's hearts and
+souls--love at first sight. Had there not been Katherine Blair, wife and
+mother--Katherine Blair Randolph, who filled my love-world as the noonday
+August sun fills the old-fashioned well with nestling warmth and restful
+shade--after this interval, looking back at the past, I dare ask the
+question--who knows but that I too might have drifted from the secure
+anchorage of my slow Yankee blood and floated into the deep waters?
+
+Beauty, the cynic's scoff, is in the eye of the beholder, or in an angle
+of vision--mere product of lime-light, point of view, desire--but Beulah
+Sands's was beauty beyond cavil, superior to all analysis, as definite as
+the evening star against the twilight sky. In height medium, girlish, but
+with a figure maturely modelled, charmingly full and rounded, yet by very
+perfection of proportion escaping suggestion of "plumpness." The head,
+surrounded and crowned with a wealth of dark golden hair, rested on a neck
+that would have seemed short had its slender column sprung less graciously
+from the lovely lines of the breast and shoulders beneath. It was on the
+face, however, and finally on the eyes that one's glances inevitably
+lingered--the face rose-tinted, with dimples in either of the full cheeks,
+entering laughing protest against the sad droop that brought slightly down
+the corners of a mouth too large perhaps for beauty, if the coral curve of
+the lips had been less exquisitely perfect. The straight, thin-nostriled
+nose, the broad forehead, the square, full jaw almost as low at the points
+where they come beneath the ears as at the chin, suggested dignity and
+high resolve coupled with a power of purpose, rare in woman. The
+combination of forehead, jaw, and nose was seldom seen. Had it been
+possessed by a man it would surely have driven him to the tented field for
+his profession. But the greatest glory of Beulah Sands was her
+eyes--large, full, very gray, very blue, vivid with all the glamour of her
+personality, full of smiles and tears and spirituality and passion; one
+instant, frankly innocent, they illuminated the face of a blonde Madonna;
+the next, seen through the extraordinary, long, jet-black eye-lashes
+underneath the finely pencilled black brows, they caressed, coquetted,
+allured. I afterward found much of this girl's purely physical fascination
+lay in this strange blending of English fairness with Andalusian tints,
+though the abiding quality of her charm was surely in an exaltation of
+spirit of which she might make the dullest conscious. As she stood looking
+at Bob in my office that long-ago noon, gracefully at ease in a suit of
+gray, with a gray-feathered turban on her head, and tiny lace bands at
+neck and wrist, she was very exquisite, exceedingly dainty, and, though
+Southerner of Southerners, very unlike the typical brunette girl who comes
+out of Dixie land.
+
+This girl who came into our office that July Saturday, just in time to
+interfere with the outing Bob Brownley and I had laid out, and who was
+destined to divert my chum's heretofore smooth-flowing river of existence
+and turn it into an alternation of roaring rushes and deadly calms, was
+truly the most exquisite creature one could conceive of, I know my
+thought must have been Bob's too, for his eyes were riveted on her face.
+She dropped the black lashes like a veil as she went on:
+
+"Mr. Brownley, I have just come from Sands Landing. I am very anxious to
+talk with you on a business matter. I have brought a letter to you from my
+father. If you have other engagements I can wait until Monday, although,"
+and the black veiling lashes lifted, showing the half-laughing,
+half-pathetic eyes, "I wanted much to lay my business before you at the
+earliest minute possible."
+
+There was a faint touch of appeal in the charming voice as she spoke that
+was irresistible, and we were both willing to forget we had lunch waiting
+us on the _Tribesman_.
+
+"Step into my office, Miss Sands, and all my time is yours," said Bob, as
+he opened the door between his office and mine. After I had sent a note to
+my wife, saying we might be delayed for an hour or two, I settled down to
+wait for Bob in the general office, and it was a long wait. Thirty minutes
+went into an hour and an hour into two before Bob and Miss Sands came out.
+After he had put her in a cab for her hotel, he said in a tone curiously
+intent: "Jim, I have got to talk with you, got to get some of your good
+advice. Suppose we hustle along to the yacht and after lunch you tell Kate
+we have some business to go over. I don't want to keep that girl waiting
+any longer than possible for an answer I cannot give until I get your
+ideas." After lunch, on the bow end of the upper deck Bob relieved
+himself. Relieved is the word, for from the minute he had put Miss Sands
+into the carriage until then, it was evident even to my wife that his
+thoughts were anywhere but upon our outing.
+
+"Jim," he began in a voice that shook in spite of his efforts to make it
+sound calm, "there is no disguising the fact that I am mightily worked up
+about this matter, and I want to do everything possible for this girl. No
+need of my telling you how sacred we have got to keep what she has just
+let me into. You'll see as I go along that it is sacred, and I know you
+will look at it as I do. Miss Sands must be helped out of her trouble.
+
+"Judge Lee Sands, her father, is the head of the old Sands family of
+Virginia. The Virginia Sands don't take off their bonnets to another
+family in this country, or elsewhere, for that matter, for anything that
+really counts. They have had brains, learning, money, and fixed position
+since Virginia was first settled. They are the best people of our State.
+It is a cross-road saying in Virginia that a Sands of Sands Landing can go
+to the bench, the United States Senate, the House, or the governor's chair
+for the starting, and nearly all of the men folks have held one or all of
+these honours for generations. The present judge has held them all. I
+don't know him personally, although my people and his have been thick from
+away back. Sands Landing on the James is some fifty miles above our home.
+The judge, Beulah Sands's father, is close on to seventy, and I have heard
+mother and father say is a stalwart, a Virginia stalwart. Being rich--that
+is, what we Virginians call rich, a million or so--he has been very active
+in affairs, and I knew before his daughter told me, that he was the
+trustee for about all the best estates in our part of the country. It
+seems from what she tells, that of late he has been very active in
+developing our coal-mines and railroads, and that particularly he took a
+prominent hand in the Seaboard Air Line. You know the road, for your
+father was a director, and I think the house has been prominent in its
+banking affairs. Now, Jim, this poor girl, who, it seems, has recently
+been acting as the judge's secretary, has just learned that that coup of
+Reinhart and his crowd has completely ruined her father. The decline has
+swamped his own fortune, and, what is worse, a million to a million and a
+half of his trust funds as well, and the old judge--well, you and I can
+understand his position. Yet I do not know that you just can, either, for
+you do not quite understand our Virginia life and the kind of revered
+position a man like Judge Sands occupies. You would have to know that to
+understand fully his present purgatory and the terrible position of this
+daughter, for it seems that since he began to get into deep water he has
+been relying upon her for courage and ideas. From our talk I gather she
+has a wonderful store of up-to-date business notions, and I am convinced
+from what she lays out that the judge's affairs are hopeless, and, Jim,
+when that old man goes down it will be a smash that will shake our State
+in more ways than one.
+
+"Up to now the girl has stood up to the blow like a man and has been able
+to steady the judge until he presents an exterior that holds down
+suspicion as to his real financial condition, although she says Reinhart
+and his Baltimore lawyer, from the ruthless way they put on the screws to
+shake out his holdings in the Air Line, must have a line on it that the
+judge is overboard. The old gentleman can keep things going for six months
+longer without jeopardising any of the remaining trust funds, of which he
+has some two millions, and while his wife, who is an invalid, knows the
+judge is in some trouble, she does not suspect his real position. His
+daughter says that when the blow came, that day of the panic, when
+Reinhart jammed the stock out of sight and scuttled her father's bankers
+and partners in the road, the Wilsons of Baltimore, she had a frightful
+struggle to keep her father from going insane. She told me that for three
+days and nights she kept him locked in their rooms at their hotel in
+Baltimore, to prevent him from hunting Reinhart and his lawyer Rettybone
+and killing them both, but that at last she got him calmed down and
+together they have been planning.
+
+"Jim, it was tough to sit there and listen to the schemes to recoup that
+this old gentleman and this girl, for she is only twenty-one, have tried
+to hatch up. The tears actually rolled down my cheeks as I listened; I
+couldn't help it; you couldn't either, Jim. But at last out of all the
+plans considered, they found only one that had a tint of hope in it, and
+the serious mention of even that one, Jim, in any but present
+circumstances, would make you think we were dealing with lunatics. But the
+girl has succeeded in making me think it worth trying. Yes, Jim, she has,
+and I have told her so, and I hope to God that that hard-headed
+horse-sense of yours will not make you sit down on it."
+
+Bob Brownley had got to his feet; he was slipping the shackles of that
+fiery, romantic, Southern passion that years in college and Wall Street
+had taught him to keep prisoner. His eyes were flashing sparks. His
+nostrils vibrated like a deer buck's in the autumn woods. He faced me with
+his hands clinched.
+
+"Jim Randolph," he went on, "as I listened to that girl's story of the
+terrible cruelty and devilish treachery practised by the human hyenas you
+and I associate with, human hyenas who, when in search of dirty
+dollars--the only thing they know anything about--put to shame the real
+beasts of the wilds--when I listened, I tell you that I felt it would not
+give me a twinge of conscience to put a ball through that slick scoundrel
+Reinhart. Yes, and that hired cur of his, too, who prostitutes a good
+family name and position, and an inherited ability the Almighty intended
+for more honest uses than the trapping of victims on whose purses his
+gutter-born master has set lecherous eyes. And, Jim, as I listened, a
+troop of old friends invaded my memory--friends whom I have not seen since
+before I went to Harvard, friends with whom I spent many a happy hour in
+my old Virginia home, friends born of my imagination, stalwart, rugged
+crusaders, who carried the sword and the cross and the banner inscribed
+'For Honour and for God.' Old friends who would troop into my boyhood and
+trumpet, 'Bob, don't forget, when you're a man, that the goal is honour,
+and the code: Do unto your neighbour as you would have your neighbour do
+unto you. Don't forget that millions is the crest of the groundlings.'
+And, Jim, I thought my friends looked at me with reproachful eyes, as
+they said, 'You are well on the road, Bob Brownley, and in time your heart
+and soul will bear the hall-mark of the snaky S on the two upright bars,
+and you will be but a frenzied fellow in the Dirty Dollar army.' Jim, Jim
+Randolph, as I listened to that agonising tale of the changing of that
+girl's heaven to hell, I did not see that halo you and I have thought
+surrounded the sign of Randolph & Randolph. I did not see it, Jim, but I
+did see myself, and I didn't feel proud of the picture. My God, Jim, is it
+possible you and I have joined the nobility of Dirty Dollars? Is it
+possible we are leaving trails along our life's path like that Reinhart
+left through the home of these Virginians, such trails as this girl has
+shown me?"
+
+Bob had worked himself into a state of frenzy. I had never seen him so
+excited as when he stood in front of me and almost shouted this fierce
+self-denunciation.
+
+"For heaven's sake, Bob, pull yourself together," I urged. "The captain on
+the bridge there is staring at you wild-eyed, and Katherine will be up
+here to see what has happened. Now, be a good fellow, and let us talk
+this thing over in a sensible way. At the gait you are going we can do
+nothing to help out your friends. Besides, what is there for you and me to
+take ourselves to task for? We are no wreckers and none of our dollars is
+stained with Frenzied Finance. My father, as you know, despised Reinhart
+and his sort as much as we do. Be yourself. What does this girl want you
+to do? If it is anything in reason, call it done, for you know there is
+nothing I won't do for you at the asking."
+
+Bob's hysteria oozed. He dropped on the rail-seat at my side.
+
+"I know it, Jim, I know it, and you must forgive me. The fact, is, Beulah
+Sands's story has aroused a lot of thoughts I have been a-sticking down
+cellar late years, for, to tell the truth, I have some nasty twinges of
+conscience every now and then when I get to thinking of this dollar game
+of ours."
+
+I saw that the impulsive blood was fast cooling, and that it would only be
+a question of minutes until Bob would be his clearheaded self.
+
+"Now, what is it she wants you to do?" I persisted. "Is it a case of
+money, of our trying to tide her father over?"
+
+"Nothing of that kind, Jim. You don't know the proud Virginia blood.
+Neither that girl nor her father would accept money help from any one.
+They would go to smash and the grave first."
+
+He paused and then continued impressively:
+
+"This is how she puts it. She and her father have raked together her
+different legacies and turned them into cash, a matter of sixty thousand
+dollars, and she got him to consent to let her come up here to see if
+during the next six months she might not, in a few desperate plunges in
+the market, run it up to enough to at least regain the trust funds. Yes, I
+know it is a wild idea. I told her so at the beginning, but there was no
+need; she knew it, for she is not only bright, but she has the best idea
+of business I ever knew a woman to have. But it is their only chance, Jim,
+and while I listened to her argument I came around to her way of
+thinking."
+
+"But how did she happen to come to you with this extraordinary scheme?" I
+interrupted.
+
+"It's this way--her father, who knew Randolph & Randolph through your
+father's handling of the Seaboard's affairs, learned of my connection
+with the house, and gave her a letter, asking me to do what I could to
+help his daughter carry out her plans. She wants to get a position with
+us, if possible, in some sort of capacity, secretary, confidential clerk,
+or, as she puts it, any sort of place that will justify her being in the
+office. She tells me she is good at shorthand, on the machine, or at
+correspondence, also that she has been a contributor to the magazines. If
+this can be arranged, she says she will on her own responsibility select
+the time and the stock, and hurl the last of the Sands fortune at the
+market, and, Jim, she is game. The blow seems to have turned this child
+into a wonderfully nervy creature, and, old man, I am beginning to have a
+feeling that perhaps the cards may come so she will win the judge out. You
+and I know where less than sixty thousand has been run up to millions more
+than once, and that, too, without the aid she will have, for I'll surely
+do all I can to help her steer this last chance into spongy places."
+
+Bob in his enthusiasm had completely lost sight of the fact that he was
+indorsing a project that but a moment previously he had pronounced insane,
+and with a start I realised what this sudden transformation betokened.
+Inevitably, if the project he outlined were carried out, Bob and the
+beautiful Southern girl would be thrown into close association with each
+other, and further acquaintance could only deepen the startling influence
+Beulah Sands had already won over my ordinarily sane and cool-headed
+comrade. As I looked at my friend, burning with an ardour as unaccustomed
+as it was impulsive, I felt a tug at my heartstrings at thought of the
+sudden cross-roading of his life's highway. But I, too, was filled with
+the glamour of this girl's wondrous beauty, and her terrible predicament
+appealed to me almost as strongly as it had to Bob. So, although I knew it
+would be fatal to any chance of his weighing the matter by common sense, I
+burst out:
+
+"Bob, I don't blame you for falling in with the girl's plans. If I were in
+your shoes, I should too."
+
+Tears came to Bob's eyes as he grabbed my hand and said:
+
+"Jim, how can I ever repay you for all the good things you have done for
+me--how can I!"
+
+It was no time to give way to emotional outbursts, and while Bob was
+getting his grip on himself, I went on:
+
+"Come along down to earth now, Bob; let us look at this thing squarely.
+You and I, with our position in the market, can do lots of things to help
+run that sixty thousand to higher figures, but six months is a short time
+and a million or two a world of money."
+
+"She knows that," he said, "and the time is much shorter and the road to
+go much longer than you figure," he replied. "This girl is as
+high-tensioned as the E string on a Stradivarius, and she declares she
+will have no charity tips or unusual favours from us or any one else. But
+let us not talk about that now or we'll get discouraged. Let's do as she
+says and trust to God for the outcome. Are you willing, Jim, to take her
+into the office as a sort of confidential secretary? If you will, I'll
+take charge of her account, and together we will do all that two men can
+for her and her father."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+
+
+The following week saw Miss Sands, of Virginia, private secretary to the
+head of Randolph & Randolph, established in a little office between mine
+and Bob's. She had not been there a day before we knew she was a worker.
+She spent the hours going over reports and analysing financial statements,
+showing a sagacity extraordinary in so young a person. She explained her
+knowledge of figures by the hand-work she had done for the judge, all of
+whose accounts she had kept. Bob and I saw that she was bent on smothering
+her memory in that antidote for all ills of heart and soul--work. Her
+office life was simplicity itself. She spoke to no one except Bob, save in
+connection with such business matters of the firm's as I might send her by
+one of the clerks to attend to. To the others in the banking-house she was
+just an unconventional young literary woman whose high social connections
+had gained her this opportunity of getting at the secrets of finance,
+from actual experience, for use in forthcoming novels. It had got abroad
+that she was the writer of great distinction who, under a _nom de plume_,
+had recently made quite a dent in the world's literary shell--a suggestion
+that I rightly guessed was one of Bob's delicate ways of smoothing out her
+path. I had tried in every way to make things easy for her, but it was
+impossible for me to draw her out in talk, and finally I gave it up. Had
+it not been that every time I passed her office door I was compelled by
+the fascination which I had first felt, and which, instead of diminishing,
+had increased with her reticence, to look in at the quiet figure with the
+downcast eyes, working away at her desk as though her life depended on
+never missing a second, I should not have known she was in the building.
+My wife, at my suggestion, had tried to induce her to visit us; in fact,
+after I let her into just enough of Beulah Sands's story so that she could
+see things on a true slant, she had decided to try to bring her to our
+house to live. But though the girl was sweetly gentle in her appreciation
+of Kate's thoughtful attentions, in her simple way she made us both feel
+that our efforts would be for naught, that her position must be the same
+as that of any other clerk in the office. We both finally left her to
+herself. Bob explained to me, some three weeks after she came to the
+office, that she received no visitors at her home, a hotel on a quiet
+uptown street, and that even he had never had permission to call upon her
+there.
+
+But from the day she came to occupy her desk in our office, Bob was a
+changed man, whether for better or for worse neither Kate nor I could
+decide. His old bounding elasticity was gone, and with it his rollicking
+laugh. He was now a man where before he had been a boy, a man with a
+burden. Even if I had not heard Beulah Sands's story, I should have
+guessed that Bob was staggering under a strange load. While before, from
+the close of the Stock Exchange until its opening the next morning, he
+was, as Kate was fond of putting it, always ready to fill in for anything
+from chaperon to nurse, always open for any lark we planned, from a
+Bohemian dinner to the opera, now weeks went by without our seeing him at
+our house. In the office it used to be a saying that outside gong-strikes,
+Bob Brownley did not know he was in the stock business. Formerly every
+clerk knew when Bob came or went, for it was with a rush, a shout, a
+laugh, and a bang of doors; and on the floor of the Stock Exchange no man
+played so many pranks, or filled his orders with so much jolly good-nature
+and hilarious boisterousness. But from the day the Virginian girl crossed
+his path, Bob Brownley was a man who was thinking, thinking, thinking all
+the time. It was only with an effort that he would keep his eyes on
+whomever he was talking with long enough to take in what was said, and if
+the saying occupied much time it would be apparent to the talker that Bob
+was off in the clouds. All his friends and associates remarked the change,
+but I alone, except perhaps Kate, had any idea of the cause. I knew that
+two million dollars and the coming New Year were hurdling like kangaroos
+over Bob's mental rails and ditches, though I did not know it from
+anything he told me, for after that talk on the upper deck of the
+_Tribesman_ he had shut up like a clam.
+
+He did not exactly shun me, but showed me in many ways that he had entered
+into a new world, in which he desired to be alone. That Beulah Sands's
+plight had roused into intense activity all the latent romance of my
+friend's nature, did not surprise me. I foresaw from the first that Bob
+would fall head over heels in love with this beautiful, sorrow-laden girl,
+and it was soon obvious that the long-delayed shaft had planted its point
+in the innermost depths of his being. His was more than love; a fervid
+idolatry now had possession of his soul, mind, and body. Yet its outward
+manifestations were the opposite of what one would have looked for in this
+gay and optimistic Southerner. It was rather priest-like worship, a calm
+imperturbability that nothing seemed to distract or upset, at least in the
+presence of the goddess who was its object. Every morning he would pass
+through my office headed straight for the little room she occupied as if
+it were his one objective point of the day, but once he heard his own
+"Good morning, Miss Sands," he seemed to round to, and while in her
+presence was the Bob Brownley of old. He would be in and out all day on
+any and every pretext, always entering with an undisguised eagerness,
+leaving with a slow, dreamy reluctance. That he never saw her outside the
+office, I am sure, for she said good-night to him when he or she left for
+the day with the same don't-come-with-me dignity that she exhibited to
+all the rest of us. I had not attempted to say a word to Bob about his
+feeling for Beulah Sands, nor had he ever brought up the subject to me. On
+the contrary, he studiously avoided it.
+
+Three months of the six had now passed, and with each day I thought I
+noted an increasing anxiety in Bob. He had opened a special account for
+Miss Sands on the books of the house in his name as agent, with a credit
+of sixty thousand dollars, and we both watched it with a painful tenseness
+of scrutiny. It had grown by uneven jerks, until the balance on October
+1st was almost four hundred thousand dollars. On some of the trades Bob
+had consulted me, and on others, two in particular where he closed up
+after a few days' operations with nearly two hundred thousand dollars
+profit, I did not even know what the trading was based on until the stocks
+had been sold. Then he said:
+
+"Jim, that little lady from Virginia can give us a big handicap and play
+us to a standstill at our own game. She told me to buy all the Burlington
+and Sugar her account would stand, and did not even ask for my opinion. In
+both cases I thought the operations were more the result of a wakeful
+night and an I-must-do-something decision than anything else, and I
+tackled both with a shiver; but when she told me to sell them out at a
+time I thought they looked like going higher and the next day they
+slumped, I could not help thinking about the destiny that shapes our
+ends."
+
+On my part I tried to help. On one occasion, without consulting her, I put
+her account in on a sure thing underwriting, wherein she stood to make a
+profit of a quarter of a million, but when Bob told her what I had done,
+she insisted with great dignity that her name be withdrawn. After that
+neither of us dared help her to any short cuts. Bob was deeply impressed
+by her principles, and, commenting on them, said: "Jim, if all Wall Street
+had a code similar to Beulah Sands's to hew to in their gambles, ours
+would be a fairer and more manly game, and many of the multi-millionaires
+would be clerking, while a lot of the hand-to-mouth traders would come
+downtown in a new auto every day in the week. She does not believe in
+stock-gambling. She has worked it out that every dollar one man makes,
+another loses; that the one who makes gives nothing in return for what he
+gets away with; and that the other fellow's loss makes him and his as
+miserable as would robbery to the same amount. Yet she realises that she
+must get back those millions stolen from her father and is willing to
+smother her conscience to attempt it, provided she takes no unfair
+advantage of the other players. The other day she said to me, 'I have
+decided, because of my duty to my father, to put away my prejudice against
+gambling, but no duty to him or to any one can justify me in playing with
+marked cards.' Jim, there is food for reflection for you and me, don't you
+think so?"
+
+I did not argue it with him, for, after that Saturday's outburst, I had
+made up my mind to avoid stirring Bob up unnecessarily. Also, I had to
+admit to myself that the things he had then said had raised some
+uncomfortable thoughts in me, thoughts that made me glance less
+confidently now and then at the old sign of Randolph & Randolph and at the
+big ledger which showed that I, an ordinary citizen of a free country, was
+the absolute possessor of more money than a hundred thousand of my fellow
+beings together could accumulate in a lifetime, although each one had
+worked harder, longer, more conscientiously, and with perhaps more ability
+than I.
+
+As to how Beulah Sands's code had affected my friend, I was ignorant. For
+the first time in our association I was completely in the dark as to what
+he was doing stockwise. Up to that Saturday I was the first to whom he
+would rush for congratulations when he struck it rich over others on the
+exchange, and he invariably sought me for consolation when the boys
+"upper-cut him hard," as he would put it. Now he never said a word about
+his trading. I saw that his account with the house was inactive, that his
+balance was about the same as before Miss Sands's advent, and I came to
+the conclusion that he was resting on his oars and giving his undivided
+attention to her account and the execution of his commissions. His
+handling of the business of the house showed no change. He still was the
+best broker on the floor. However, knowing Bob as I did, I could not get
+it out of my mind that his brain was running like a mill-race in search of
+some successful solution to the tremendous problem that must be solved in
+the next three months.
+
+Shortly after the October 1st statements had been sent out, Bob dropped
+in on Kate and me one night. After she had retired and we had lit our
+cigars in the library he said:
+
+"Jim, I want some of that old-fashioned advice of yours. Sugar is selling
+at 110, and it is worth it; in fact it is cheap. The stock is well
+distributed among investors, not much of it floating round 'the Street.' A
+good, big buying movement, well handled, would jump it to 175 and keep it
+there. Am I sound?"
+
+I agreed with him.
+
+"All right. Now what reason is there for a good, big, stiff uplift? That
+tariff bill is up at Washington. If it goes through, Sugar will be cheaper
+at 175 than at 110."
+
+Again I agreed.
+
+"'Standard Oil' and the Sugar people know whether it is going through, for
+they control the Senate and the House and can induce the President to be
+good. What do you say to that?"
+
+"O.K.," I answered.
+
+"No question about it, is there?"
+
+"Not the slightest."
+
+"Right again. When 26 Broadway[1] gives the secret order to the
+Washington boss and he passes it out to the grafters, there will be a
+quiet accumulation of the stock, won't there?"
+
+"You've got that right, Bob."
+
+"And the man who first knows when Washington begins to take on Sugar is
+the man who should load up quick and rush it up to a high level. If he
+does it quickly, the stockholders, who now have it, will get a juicy slice
+of the ripening melon, a slice that otherwise would go to those greedy
+hypocrites at Washington, who are always publicly proclaiming that they
+are there to serve their fellow countrymen, but who never tire of
+expressing themselves to their brokers as not being in politics for their
+health."
+
+"So far, good reasoning," I commented.
+
+"Jim, the man who first knows when the Senators and Congressmen and
+members of the Cabinet begin to buy Sugar, is the man who can kill four
+birds with one stone: Win back a part of Judge Sands's stolen fortune;
+increase his own pile against the first of January, when, if the little
+Virginian lady is short a few hundred thousand of the necessary amount,
+he could, if he found a way to induce her to accept it, supply the
+deficiency; fatten up a good friend's bank account a million or so, and do
+a right good turn for the stockholders who are about to be, for the
+hundredth time, bled out of profit rightfully theirs."
+
+Bob was afire with enthusiasm, the first I had seen him show for three
+months. Seeing that I had followed him without objection so far, he
+continued:
+
+"Well, Jim, I know the Washington buying has begun. All I know I have dug
+out for myself and am free to use it any way I choose. I have gone over
+the deal with Beulah Sands, and we have decided to plunge. She has a
+balance of about four hundred thousand dollars, and I'm going to spread it
+thin. I am going to buy her 20,000 shares and to take on 10,000 for
+myself. If you went in for 20,000 more, it would give me a wide sea to
+sail in. I know you never speculate, Jim, for the house, but I thought you
+might in this case go in personally."
+
+"Don't say anything more, Bob," I replied. "This time the rule goes by the
+board. But I will do better: I'll put up a million and you can go as high
+as 70,000 for me. That will give you a buying power of 100,000, and I
+want you to use my last 50,000 shares as a lifter."
+
+I had never speculated in a share of stock since I entered the firm of
+Randolph & Randolph, and on general, special, and every other principle
+was opposed to stock gambling, but I saw how Bob had worked it out, and
+that to make the deal sure it was necessary for him to have a good reserve
+buying power to fall back on if, after he got started, the "System"
+masters, whose game he was butting in to and whose plans he might upset
+should try to shake down the price to drive him out of their preserves.
+Bob knew how I looked at his proposed deal and ordinarily would not have
+allowed me to have the short end of it, but so changed had he become in
+his anxiety to make that money for the Virginians that he grabbed at my
+acceptance.
+
+"Thank you, Jim," he said fervently, and he continued: "Of course, I see
+what's going through your head, but I'll accept the favour, for the deal
+is bound to be successful. I know your reason for coming in is just to
+help out, and that you won't feel badly because your last 50,000 shares
+will be used more as a guarantee for the deal's success than for profit.
+And Miss Sands could not object to the part you play, as she did at the
+underwriting, for you will get a big profit anyway."
+
+Next day Sugar was lively on the Exchange. Bob bought all in sight and
+handled the buying in a masterly way. When the closing gong struck, Beulah
+Sands had 20,000 shares, which averaged her 115; Bob and I had 30,000 at
+an average of 125, and the stock had closed 132 bid and in big demand.
+Miss Sands's 20,000 showed $340,000 profit, while our 30,000 showed
+$210,000 at the closing price. All the houses with Washington wires were
+wildly scrambling for Sugar as soon as it began to jump. And it certainly
+looked as though the shares were good for the figures set for them by Bob,
+$175, at which price the Sands's profits would be $1,200,000. Bob was
+beside himself with joy. He dined with Kate and me, and as I watched him
+my heart almost stopped beating at the thought--"if anything should happen
+to upset his plans!" His happiness was pathetic to witness. He was like a
+child. He threw away all the reserve of the past three months and laughed
+and was grave by turns. After dinner, as we sat in the library over our
+coffee, he leaned over to my wife and said:
+
+"Katherine Randolph, you and Jim don't know what misery I have been in for
+three months, and now--will to-morrow never come, so I may get into the
+whirl and clean up this deal and send that girl back to her father with
+the money! I wanted her to telegraph the judge that things looked like she
+would win out and bring back the relief, but she would not hear of it. She
+is a marvellous woman. She has not turned a hair to-day. I don't think her
+pulse is up an eighth to-night. She has not sent home a word of
+encouragement since she has been here, more than to tell her father she is
+doing well with her stories. It seems they both agreed that the only way
+to work the thing out was 'whole hog or none,' and that she was to say
+nothing until she could herself bring the word 'saved' or 'lost.' I don't
+know but she is right. She says if she should raise her father's hopes,
+and then be compelled to dash them, the effect would be fatal."
+
+Bob rushed the talk along, flitting from one point to another, but
+invariably returning to Beulah Sands and to-morrow and its saving
+profits. Finally, he got to a pitch where it seemed as though he must take
+off the lid, and before Kate or I realised what was coming he placed
+himself in front of us and said:
+
+"Jim, Kate, I cannot go into to-morrow without telling you something that
+neither of you suspect. I must tell some one, now that everything is
+coming out right and that Beulah is to be saved; and whom can I tell but
+you, who have been everything to me?--I love Beulah Sands, surely, deeply,
+with every bit of me. I worship her, I tell you, and to-morrow, to-morrow
+if this deal comes out as it must come, and I can put $1,500,000 into her
+hands and send her home to her father, then, then, I will tell her I love
+her, and Jim, Kate, if she'll marry me, good-bye, good-bye to this hell of
+dollar-hunting, good-bye to such misery as I have been in for three
+months, and home, a Virginia home, for Beulah and me." He sank into a
+chair and tears rolled down his cheeks Poor, poor Bob, strong as a lion in
+adversity, hysterical as a woman with victory in sight.
+
+The next day Sugar opened with a wild rush: "25,000 shares from 140 to
+152." That is the way it came on the tape, which meant that the crowd
+around the Sugar-pole was a mob and that the transactions were so heavy,
+quick, and tangled that no one could tell to a certainty just what the
+first or opening price was; but after the first lull, after the gong,
+there were officially reported transactions aggregating 25,000 shares and
+at prices varying from 140 to 152. I was over on the floor to see the
+scramble, for it was noised about long before ten o'clock that Sugar would
+open wild, and then, too, I wanted to be handy if Bob should need any
+quick advice.
+
+A minute before the gong struck, there were three hundred men jammed
+around the Sugar-pole; men with set, determined faces; men with their
+coats buttoned tight and shoulders thrown back for the rush to which, by
+comparison, that of a football team is child's play. Every man in that
+crowd was a picked man, picked for what was coming. Each felt that upon
+his individual powers to keep a clear head, to shout loudest, to forget
+nothing, to keep his feet, and to stay as near the centre of the crowd as
+possible, depended his "floor honour," perhaps his fortune, or, what was
+more to him, his client's fortune. Nearly every man of them was a college
+graduate who had won his spurs at athletics or a seasoned floor man whose
+training had been even more severe than that of the college campus. When
+it is known before the opening of the Exchange that there are to be
+"things doing" in a certain stock, it is the rule to send only the picked
+floor men into the crowd. There may be a fortune to make or to lose in a
+minute or a sliver of a minute. For instance, the man who that morning was
+able to snatch the first 5,000 shares sold at 140 could have resold them a
+few minutes afterward at 152 and secured $60,000 profit. And the man who
+was sent into the crowd by his client to sell 5,000 shares at the
+"opening" and who got but 140, when the price would be 152 by the time he
+reported to his customer, was a man to be pitied. Again, the trader who
+the night before had decided that Sugar had gone up too fast, and who had
+"shorted" (that is, sold what he did not have, with the intention of
+repurchasing at a lower price than he sold it for) 5,000 shares at 140 and
+who, finding himself in that surging mob with Sugar selling at 152, could
+only get out by taking a loss of $60,000, or by taking another chance of
+later paying 162--such a trader was also to be pitied.
+
+No one who scanned the crowd that morning would have believed that the
+calm, set face on that erect Indian figure, occupying the very centre of
+that horde of gamblers who were only awaiting the ringing clang of the
+gong to hurl themselves like madmen at each other, was the hysterical man
+who the night before was wildly praying for this moment. Nearly every man
+in that crowd was calm, but Bob Brownley was the calmest of them all. It's
+the Exchange code that at any cost of heart or nerve-tear a man must
+retain good form until the gong strikes. Then, that he must be as near the
+uncaged tiger as human mind and body can be made. Only I realised what
+volcano raged inside my chum's bosom. If any other man of the crowd had
+known, Bob's chances of success would have been on par with a Canadian
+canoeist short-cutting Niagara for Buffalo. Nine-tenths of the Stock
+Exchange game is not letting your left brain-lobe know what race your
+right is in until the winning numbers and the also-rans are on the board.
+If one of those three hundred chain-lightning thinkers or any of their
+ten thousand alert associates knew in advance the intentions of a fellow
+broker, the word would sweep through that crowd with the sureness of
+uncorked ether, and the other two hundred and ninty nine, at gong-strike,
+would be at each others' throats for his vitals, and before he knew the
+game had started would have his bones picked to a vulture-finish
+cleanness. Suddenly, as I watched the scene, there rang through the great
+hall the first sharp stroke of the gong. There were no echoes heard that
+morning. The metallic voice was yet shaping its command to "at 'em, you
+fiends" when from three hundred throats burst the wild sound of the Stock
+Exchange yell. No other sound in any of the open or hidden places of all
+nature duplicates the yell of a great Stock Exchange at an exciting
+opening. It not only fills and refills space, for the volume is terrific,
+but it has an individuality all its own, coming from the incisive
+"take-mine-I've-got yours," from the aggressive, almost arrogant
+"you-can't-you-won't-have-your-way," the confident "by-heaven-I-will"
+individual notes that enter into the whole, as they blend with the shrill
+scream of triumph and the die-away note of disappointment, when the floor
+men realise their success or their failure. I picked Bob's magnificently
+resonant voice from the mass--"40 for any part of 10,000 Sugar." It was
+this daring bid that struck terror to the bears and filled the bulls[2]
+with a frenzy of encouragement. Again it rang out--"45 for any part of
+25,000"; and a third time--"50 for any part of 50,000."
+
+The great crowd was surging all over the room. Hats were smashed and coats
+were being stripped from their owners' backs as though made of paper, and
+now and then a particularly frantic buyer or seller would be borne to the
+floor by the impetus of those who sought to fill his bid or grab his
+offer. Through all the wild whirl, straight and erect and commanding was
+the form of Bob, his face cold and expressionless as an iceberg. In five
+minutes the human mass had worked back to the Sugar-pole and there was the
+inevitable lull while its members "verified."
+
+I could see by the few entries Bob was making on his pad that he had been
+compelled to buy but little. This meant that his campaign was working
+smoothly, that he was driving the market up by merely bidding, and that
+he had the greater part of my 50,000 yet unbought, which inturn meant he
+could continue to push up the price, or in the event of his opponents'
+attempting to run it down, he would be under the market with big
+supporting orders.
+
+Suddenly the lull was broken. Bob's voice rang out again--"153 for any
+part of 10,000 Sugar." Again the gamblers closed in and for another five
+minutes the opening scene was duplicated, with only a shade less
+fierceness. After ten minutes' mad trading a mighty burst of sound told
+that Sugar was 160 bid. Then Bob worked his way out of the crowd, and
+passing by me fairly hissed, "By heaven, Jim, I've got them cinched!"
+
+I went back to the office. In a few minutes Bob without a word strode
+through my office and into the little room occupied by Beulah Sands. He
+closed the door behind him, a thing that he had never done before. It was
+only a minute till he opened it and called to me. In his eyes was a
+strange look, a look that came from the blending of two mighty passions,
+one joy, the other I could not make out, unless it was that soft one,
+which suppressed love, emerging from terrible uncertainty, generates in
+deep natures and which usually finds vent in tears. Beulah Sands was a
+study. Her heart was evidently swaying and tugging with the news Bob had
+brought her. She must have seen the nearness of release from the torture
+that had been filling her soul during the past three months, and yet such
+was the remarkable self-control of the woman, such her noble courage, that
+she refused to show any outward sign of her feelings. She was the
+reserved, dignified girl I had ever seen her. "Jim, Miss Sands and I
+thought it best that we should have a little match up at this stage of our
+deal," Bob began. "I want to know if you both agree with me on adhering to
+the original plans to close out at 175. I never felt surer of my ground
+than in this deal. The stock is 163 on the tape right now." He glanced at
+the white paper ribbon whose every foot on certain days spells Heaven or
+Hell to countless mortals, as it rolled out of the ticker in the corner of
+the office. "Yes, there she goes again--33/4, 4, 41/4 and 1,200 at a half.
+There is a tremendous demand from all quarters. Washington's buying is
+unlimited; the commission-houses are tumbling over one another to get
+aboard and the shorts are scared to a paralysed muteness. They don't know
+whether to jump in and cover or to stand their present hands, but they
+have no pluck to fight the rise, that is certain. The news bureaus have
+just published the story that I am buying for Randolph & Randolph, and
+they for the insiders; that the new tariff is as good as passed; and that
+at the directors' meeting to-morrow the Sugar dividend will be increased,
+and that it is agreed on all sides she won't stop going until she crosses
+200. I've been obliged to take on only 18,000 of your 50,000, and at
+present prices there is over two hundred thousand profit in them. I think
+I could go back there and in thirty minutes have it to 180. Then if I
+rested on it until about one o'clock and threw myself at it for real
+fireworks up to the close, I could, under cover of them, let slip about
+half our purchases, and to-morrow open her with a whirl and let go the
+balance. If I'm in luck I'll average 180-185 for the whole bunch, but I'll
+be satisfied if I get an average of 175, which would allow me to sell it
+on a dropping scale to 160."
+
+I agreed that his campaign was perfect, and Beulah Sands said in her
+usual quiet way, "It is entirely in your hands, Mr. Brownley. I don't see
+how any advice from us can help."
+
+Bob went back to the Exchange and I into my office. Bob had been right
+again. In ten minutes the tape began to scream Sugar. With enormous
+transactions it ran up in fifteen minutes to 188, in three more it dropped
+to 181, and then steadily mounted to 1851/2, dulled up, and was healthy
+steady. Presently Bob was back and we sat down again.
+
+"I've bought 20,000 more for you, Jim, on that bulge. I've 38,000 in all
+of the last 50,000, which leaves me 12,000 reserve. The average is 'way
+under 75, and there must be $400,000 for you in it now and a strong
+$1,400,000 in Miss Sands's 20,000, and $1,800,000 in our 30,000. They say
+it's bad business to count chickens in the shell, but ours are tapping so
+hard to get out I can't help doing it this once. I'm going to keep away
+from the floor for an hour or so, then I will go over and wind it up
+and--good God, Beulah--Miss Sands--are you ill?"
+
+The girl's face was ashen gray and she seemed to be gasping for breath. I
+rushed for some water while Bob seized both her hands, but in an instant
+the blood came to her cheeks with a rush and she said, "I was dizzy for a
+moment. It must have been the thought of taking $1,800,000 back to father
+that upset me. With that amount father could make good all the trust
+funds, and have back enough of his own fortune to make us seem, after what
+we have been going through, richer than we were before. Pardon me, Mr.
+Randolph, won't you, when I say--God bless you and every one whom you hold
+dear, God bless you? What could I or my father have done but for you and
+Mr. Brownley?"
+
+She turned her big eyes full upon Bob, filled with a light such as can
+come only to a woman's eyes, only to a woman before whom, as she stands on
+the brink of hell, suddenly looms her heaven.
+
+Sharp and shrill rang Bob's Exchange telephone. The ring seemed shriller;
+it certainly was longer than usual. Bob jumped for the receiver.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+
+
+The following week Bob returned to the office. He had not changed, and yet
+he had changed greatly. Rest had apparently done much for him. His colour
+was good, his step elastic as of old, and his head was thrown back as if
+he were buckled up for the fray and wanted all to know it. Yet there was
+something in the eye, in the setness of the jaw, in the hair-trigger calm,
+yet fiercely savage grip in which he closed his strong hands on the arms
+of his chair, that told me more plainly than words that this was not the
+optimistic, soft-hearted Bob Brownley I had known and loved. I could not
+help feeling that if I had been a leader of the Russian terrorists, and
+this man who now sat before me had come to my ken when I was selecting
+bomb-throwers, I should have seized upon him of all men as the one to
+stalk the Czar or his marked minions. Surely the iron that had entered
+Bob's soul a week before had affected his whole being. I think Beulah
+Sands had some such thoughts. For I saw a shadow of perplexity cross her
+broad, low forehead after her first meeting with him, a shadow that had
+not been there before.
+
+For days after Bob's return I saw little of him. I think Beulah Sands saw
+less. During Stock Exchange hours he spent most of his time on the floor,
+but he executed few of our orders. He merely looked them over and handed
+them out to his assistants. As far as I could learn, he spent much of his
+time there yesterdaying through hope's graveyards, a not uncommon pastime
+for active Exchange members whose first through specials have been
+open-switched by the "System" towerman. So strong had become this habit of
+going about from pole to pole with bent head and a far-off gaze that his
+fellow members began to humour and respect it. They all knew that Bob had
+gone up against the Sugar panic hard. No one knew how hard, but all
+guessed from his changed appearance and habits that it must have been a
+bone-smashing blow. Nothing so quickly and so deeply stirs a Stock
+Exchange man's feelings for his brother member as to know that "They" have
+ditched his El Dorado flyer--that is, if he has been a good the books
+showed no change in Beulah Sands's account. There was the poor little
+$30,000 balance; no other entries. One afternoon Beulah Sands had asked
+for a meeting between Bob and myself in her office. She could hardly have
+asked Bob to come without me, but I knew it was Bob she wanted to see, and
+I felt that the best thing I could do for them was to leave them alone. So
+I made some excuse for a moment's delay at my desk, telling Bob to go on
+into her office, and promising to follow shortly. He went in, leaving the
+door partly open. I think that from the moment he entered the room both of
+them utterly forgot my existence. From her desk Beulah could not see me,
+and Bob sat so that his back was half toward me. "I dislike to trouble you
+about my account," I heard her begin in a voice a trifle uneven, "but as I
+must go back to Father Christmas week, I wanted to get your advice as to
+the advisability of writing him that, though there is still a chance for
+doing wonders, I do not think we shall be able to save him. Of course I
+won't put it in just that blunt way, but it seems to me I should begin to
+prepare him for the blow. I have not talked over any more plunging with
+you, Mr. Brownley, since the unlucky one in Sugar, and----"
+
+"Miss Sands, I understand what you mean," Bob broke in, "and I should
+apologise for not having consulted with you about your business affairs.
+The fact is, I have not been quite clear as to the best thing to do. I
+hope you don't think I have forgotten. Never for a moment since I took
+charge of your affairs have I forgotten my promise to see that they were
+kept active. Truly I have been trying to think out some successful plunge,
+but--but"--there was a hoarseness in his voice--"I have not had my old
+confidence in myself since that day in Sugar when I killed your hopes and
+destroyed the chance of saving your father--no, I have not had that
+confidence a man must have in himself to win at this game."
+
+There was a silence, and then I heard an indescribable fluttering rush
+that told as plainly as sight could have done that a woman had answered
+her heart's call. Looking up involuntarily, I saw a sight that for a long
+moment held my eyes as if I had been fascinated. It was Bob bowed forward
+with his face hidden in his hands and beside him, on her knees, Beulah
+Sands, her arms about his neck, his head drawn down to her bosom. "Bob,
+Bob," she said chokingly, "I cannot stand it any longer. My heart is
+breaking for you. You were so happy when I came into your life, and the
+happiness is changed to misery and despair, and all for me, a stranger. At
+first I thought of nothing but father and how to save him, but since that
+day when those men struck at your heart, I have been filled with, oh! such
+a longing to tell you, to tell you, Bob----"
+
+"What? Beulah, what? For the love of God, don't stop; tell me, Beulah,
+tell me." He had not lifted his head. It was buried on her breast, his
+arms closed around her. She bent her head and laid her beautiful, soft
+cheek, down which the tears were now streaming, against his brown hair.
+"Bob, forgive me, but I love you, love you, Bob, as only a woman can love
+who has never known love before, never known anything but stern duty. Bob,
+night after night when all have left I have crept into your office and sat
+in your chair. I have laid my head on your desk and cried and cried until
+it seemed as though I could not live till morning without hearing you say
+that you loved me, and that you did not mind the ruin I had brought into
+your life. I have patted the back of your chair where your dear head had
+rested. I have covered the arms of your chair, that your strong, brave
+hands had gripped, with kisses. Night after night I have knelt at your
+desk and prayed to God to shield you, to protect you from all harm, to
+brush away the black cloud I brought into your life. I have asked Him to
+do with me, yes, with my father and mother, anything, anything if only He
+would bring back to you the happiness I had stolen. Bob, I have suffered,
+suffered, as only a woman can suffer."
+
+She was sobbing as though her heart would break, sobbing wildly,
+convulsively, like the little child who in the night comes to its mother's
+bed to tell of the black goblins that have been pursuing it. Long before
+she had finished speaking--and it took only a few heart-beats for that
+rush of words--I had broken the power of the fascination that held me, had
+turned away my eyes, and tried not to listen. For fear of breaking the
+spell, I did not dare cross the room to close Beulah's door or to reach
+the outer door of my office, which was nearer hers than it was to my desk.
+I waited--through a silence, broken only by Beulah's weeping, that seemed
+hour-long. Then in Bob's voice came one low sob of joy:
+
+"Beulah, Beulah, my Beulah!"
+
+I realised that he had risen. I rose too, thinking that now I could close
+the door. But again I saw a picture that transfixed me. Bob had taken
+Beulah by both shoulders and he held her off and looked into her eyes long
+and beseechingly. Never before nor since have I seen upon human face that
+glorious joy which the old masters sought to get into the faces of their
+worshippers who, kneeling before Christ, tried to send to Him, through
+their eyes, their soul's gratitude and love. I stood as one enthralled.
+Slowly and as reverently as the living lover touches the brow of his dead
+wife, Bob bent his head and kissed her forehead. Again and again he drew
+her to him and implanted upon her brow and eyes and lips his kisses. I
+could not stand the scene any longer. I started to the corridor-door, and
+then, as though for the first time either had known I was within hearing,
+they turned and stared at me. At last Bob gave a long deep sigh, then one
+of those reluctant laughs of happiness yet wet with sobs.
+
+"Well, Jim, dear old Jim, where did you come from? Like all
+eavesdroppers, you have heard no good of yourself. Own up, Jim, you did
+not hear a word good or bad about yourself, for it is just coming back to
+me that we have been selfish, that we have left you entirely out of our
+business conference."
+
+We all laughed, and Beulah Sands, with her face a bloom of burning
+blushes, said: "Mr. Randolph, we have not settled what it is best to do
+about father's affairs."
+
+After a little we did begin to talk business, and finally agreed that
+Beulah should write her father, wording her letter as carefully as
+possible, to avoid all direct statements, but showing him that she had
+made but little headway on the work she had come North to accomplish. Bob
+was a changed being now; so, too, was Beulah Sands. Both discussed their
+hopes and fears with a frankness in strange contrast to their former
+manner. But there was one point on which Bob showed he was holding back. I
+finally put it to him bluntly: "Bob, are you working out anything that
+looks like real relief for Miss Sands and her father?"
+
+"I don't know how to answer you, Jim. I can only say I have some ideas,
+radical ones perhaps, but--well, I am thinking along certain lines."
+
+I saw he was not yet willing to take us into his confidence. We parted,
+Bob going along in the cab with Miss Sands.
+
+Two days afterward she sent for us both as soon as we got to the office.
+
+"I have this telegram from father--it makes me uneasy: 'Mailed to-day
+important letter. Answer as soon as you receive.'"
+
+The following afternoon the letter came. It showed Judge Sands in a very
+nervous, uneasy state. He said he had been living a life of daily terror,
+as some of his friends, for whose estates he was trustee, had been
+receiving anonymous letters, advising them to look into the judge's trust
+affairs; that the Reinhart crowd had been using renewed pressure to make
+him let go all his Seaboard stock, which they wanted to secure at the low
+prices to which they had depressed it, in order that they might reorganise
+and carry out the scheme they had been so long planning. Judge Sands went
+on to say that the day he was compelled to sell his Seaboard stock he
+would have to make public an announcement of his condition, as there
+could be no sale without the court's consent. His closing was:
+
+   "My dear daughter, no one knows better than I the almost hopelessness
+   of expecting any relief from your operations. But so hopeless have I
+   become of late, so much am I reliant upon you, my dear child, and
+   eternal hope so springs in all of us when confronted with great
+   necessities, that I have hoped and still hope that you are to be the
+   saviour of your family; that you, only a frail child, are through God's
+   marvellous workings to be the one to save the honour of that name we
+   both love more than life; the one to keep the wolf of poverty from that
+   door through which so far has come nothing but the sunshine of
+   prosperity and happiness; the one, my dear Beulah, who is to save your
+   old father from a dishonoured grave. Dear child, forgive me for placing
+   upon your weak shoulders the additional burden of knowing I am now
+   helpless and compelled to rely absolutely upon you. After you have read
+   my letter, if there is no hope, I command you to tell me so at once,
+   for although I am now financially and almost mentally helpless, I am
+   still a Sands, and there has never yet been one of the name who shirked
+   his duty, however stern and painful it might be."
+
+When I handed the letter back to Miss Sands, she said:
+
+"Mr. Randolph, let me tell you and Mr. Brownley a little about my father
+and our home, that you may see our situation as it is. My father is one of
+the noblest men that ever lived. I am not the only one who says that--if
+you were to ask the people of our State to name the one man who had done
+most for the State as a State, most for her progressive betterment, most
+for her people high and low, white and black, they would answer, 'Judge
+Lee Sands.' He has been, and is, the idol of our people. After he was
+graduated from Harvard, he entered the law office of my grandfather,
+Senator Robert Lee Sands. Before he was thirty he was in Congress and was
+even then reputed the greatest orator of our State, where orators are so
+plentiful. He married my mother, his second cousin, Julia Lee, of
+Richmond, at twenty-five, and from then until the attack of that ruthless
+money-shark, led a life such as a true man would map out for himself if
+his Maker granted him the privilege. You would have to visit at our home
+to appreciate my father's character and to understand how terrible this
+sorrow is to him. Every morning of his life he spends an hour after
+breakfast with my dear mother, who is a cripple from hip disease. He takes
+her in his arms and brings her down from her room to the library as if she
+were a child. He then reads to her--and he knows good books as well as he
+knows his friends. After he takes mother back to her room, he gives an
+hour to our people, the blacks of the plantation and his white tenants
+throughout the county. He is a father to them all. He settles all their
+troubles, big and little. Then for hours he and I go over his business
+affairs. Every afternoon from four to five he devotes to his estates and
+the men and women for whom he acts as trustee. He has often said to me:
+'We have a clear million of money and property, and that is all any man
+should have in America. It is all he is entitled to under our form of
+government. Any more than that an honest man should in one way or another
+return to the people from whom he has taken it. I never want my family to
+have more than a million dollars.' When he went into the Seaboard affair,
+he explained to me that it was to assist the Wilsons--they were old
+friends, and he has acted as their solicitor for years--in building up the
+South. He discussed with me the right and advisability of putting in the
+trust funds. He said he considered it his duty to employ them as he did
+his own in enterprises that would aid the whole people of the South,
+instead of sending them to the North to be used in Wall Street as belting
+for the 'System' grinder. These fortunes were made in the South by men who
+loved their section of the country more than they did wealth, and why
+should they not be employed to benefit that part of the country which
+their makers and owners loved? I remember vividly how perplexed he was
+when, at the beginning, the Wilsons would show him that the investments
+were returning unusually large profits.
+
+"'It is not right, Beulah,' he said to me one morning after receiving a
+letter from Baltimore to the effect that Seaboard stock and bonds had
+advanced until his investment showed over fifty per cent, profit, 'it is
+not right for us to make this money. No man in America should make over
+legal rates of interest and a fair profit on an investment, that is, an
+investment of capital pure and simple, particularly in a transportation
+company, where every dollar of profit comes from the people who patronise
+the lines. I have worked it out on every side, and it is not right; it
+would not be legal if the people, who make the laws for their own
+betterment, understood their affairs as they should.'
+
+"He was always writing to the Wilsons to conduct the affairs of the
+Seaboard so that there would be remaining each year only profits enough
+to keep the road up and the wharves in good condition and to pay the
+annual interest and a fair dividend. And when the Wilsons came to our
+house to lay before him the offer of Reinhart and his fellow plunderers to
+pay enormous profits for the control of the Seaboard, he was indignant and
+argued with them that the offer was an insult to honest men. It was he who
+advised the trusteeship control of the Seaboard stock to prevent Reinhart
+from securing control. I sat in the library when he talked to the elder
+Wilson and the directors.
+
+"He appealed directly to John Wilson to make an effort to stop the growing
+tendency to use the people as pawns to enslave themselves and their
+children. He said some man of undoubted probity, standing, and wealth,
+someone whom the people trusted, must start the fight against these New
+York fiends, whose only thought is to roll up wealth. And he told John
+Wilson he was the man, since he had great wealth, honestly got by his
+father and grandfather; no one would accuse him of being a hypocrite,
+seeking notoriety, and his standing in the financial world was so old and
+solid that it would have to listen to him. I remember-how emphatically
+father said: 'I tell you, John, _even the discussion_ of such a
+proposition as that scoundrel Reinhart makes is degrading to an American's
+honour.' He said it didn't make the least difference if Reinhart counted
+his millions by the score, and was director in thirty or forty great
+institutions, and gave a fortune every year for charity and to the
+church--that he was a blackleg just the same. And so is any man, he said,
+who dares to say he will take the stock of a transportation company, which
+represents a certain amount of money invested, and double or multiply it
+by five and ten, simply because he can compel the people to pay exorbitant
+fares and freight-rates and so get profits on this fraudulently increased
+capital.
+
+"It was the decision arrived at by father and the Wilsons at this meeting,
+a decision to refuse in any circumstances to allow our Southern people to
+be bled by the Wall Street 'System,' that started Reinhart and his
+dollar-fiends on the war-path. You can see from what I tell you of my
+father the terrible condition he is in now. At night, when I get to
+thinking of him, hoping against hope, with no one to help him, no one with
+whom he can talk over his affairs, when I think of his nobleness in
+devoting his time to mother and by sheer will-power concealing from her
+his awful suffering, it nearly drives me mad."
+
+"Miss Sands, why will you not let me lend you the money necessary to tide
+your father over for a while?" I asked.
+
+"You are so good, Mr. Randolph, but you don't quite understand my father
+in spite of what I have said. He would not relieve his suffering at the
+expense of another, not if it were a hundred times more acute. You cannot
+understand the old-fashioned, deep-rooted pride of the Sands."
+
+"But can you not, at least temporarily, disguise from him just how you
+have arranged the relief?"
+
+Her big blue eyes stared at me in bewilderment.
+
+"Mr. Randolph, I could not deceive father. I could not tell him a lie even
+to save his life. It would be impossible. My father abhors a lie. He
+believes a man or woman who would lie the lowest of the low things on
+earth. When I go back to my father he will say, 'Tell me what you have
+done.' I can just see him now, standing between the big white pillars at
+the end of the driveway. I can hear him say calmly, 'Beulah, my daughter,
+welcome. Your mother is waiting for you in her room. Do not lose a moment
+getting to her.' Afterward he'll take me over the plantation to show me
+all the familiar things, and not one word will he allow me to say about
+our affairs until dinner is over, until the neighbours have left, for no
+Sands returns from long absence without a fitting home welcome. When I
+have said good night to mother and sister and he has drawn up my rocker in
+front of his big chair in the library alcove and I've lighted his cigar
+for him, he will look me in the eye and say, 'Daughter, tell me all you
+have done.' I would no more think of holding anything back than I would of
+stabbing him to the heart. No, Mr. Randolph, there is no possibility of
+relief except in fairly using that $30,000, and fairly winning back what
+Wall Street has stolen from father. Even that will cause both of us many
+twinges of conscience, and anything more is impossible. If this cannot be
+done, father must, all of us must, pay the penalty of Reinhart's ruthless
+act."
+
+Bob had listened, but made no comment until she was through; then he said,
+"It looks to me as though the market is shaping up so that we may be able
+to do something soon." It was evident to both of us that he had some plan
+in mind.
+
+Later we learned that that night Beulah wrote her father a long letter,
+telling him what she had done; that she had made almost two millions
+profit from her operations, that they had been lost, and that the outlook
+was not reassuring. She begged him to prepare himself for the final
+calamity; promising that if there were no change for the better by
+December 1st, she would come home to be with him when the blow fell. She
+begged him to prepare to meet it like a Sands, and assured him that if
+worse came to worst she would earn enough to keep poverty away. Judge
+Sands would receive this letter the second day following, Friday, the 13th
+day of November. My God! how well I know the date. It is seared into my
+brain as though with a white-hot iron.
+
+After our talk with Beulah Sands I begged Bob to dine with me and go over
+matters at length to see if we could not find a way out to relief.
+
+"No, Jim, I have work to do to-night, worn that won't wait. That Tariff
+Bill was buttoned up to-day, and it has just been announced that the
+Sugar directors have declared a big extra stock dividend. Things have come
+out just about as I told you they would, and the stock is climbing to-day.
+They say it will touch 200 to-morrow and 'the Street' is predicting 250
+for it in ten days. Barry Conant has been a steady buyer all day and the
+news bureaus announced that Camemeyer and the 'Standard Oil' are twenty
+millions winners. They say the Washington gamblers, the Congressmen,
+Senators, and Cabinet members with their heelers and lobbyists have made a
+killing. About every one seems to have fattened up, Jim, but you and me
+and Beulah Sands and the public. The public gets the axe both ways as
+usual. They have been shaken out of their stock, and they will be
+compelled to pay millions more each year for their sugar than they would
+if this law had not been made for their benefit. Jim, there is no
+disguising the fact that the American people are as helpless in the hands
+of these thugs of the 'System' as though they lived in the realm of the
+Sultan, where a few cutthroat brigands are licensed to rob and oppress to
+their heart's content. Jim Randolph, you know this game of finance. You
+know how it is worked and the men who work it. Tell me if there is any
+consideration due Wall Street and its heart-and-soul butchers at the hands
+of honest men."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Bob. What are you driving at?"
+
+"Never mind what I am driving at. I ask you whether, if an honest man knew
+how to beat Wall Street at its own game, he should hesitate to beat
+it--hesitate because of anything connected with conscience or morals? You
+saw what Barry Conant was able to do to us that day simply by standing on
+the floor of the Stock Exchange and outstaying me in opening and closing
+his mouth. You saw he was able to sell Sugar to a point so low that I was
+obliged to let go of our 150,000 shares at eight to ten million dollars
+less than we could have got for them if we could have held them until
+to-day. Because of this trick his clients, the 'System,' instead of us,
+make five to seven millions."
+
+"I don't follow you, Bob. I know that Barry Conant was able to do this
+because he had more money behind him than you."
+
+"You think so, do you, Jim? That is the way it looks to you, but I tell
+you money had nothing to do with it. Nothing had to do with it but the
+fiendish system of fraud and trickery upon which the whole stock-gambling
+structure is reared. Nothing entered into the whole business but the
+trickery of stock-gambling as conducted to-day. It was only a question,
+Jim, of a man's opening and closing his mouth and spitting out words. From
+the minute Barry Conant came into that crowd until he left and we were
+ruined, he showed no money, no anything that I did not show. From the very
+nature of the business he could not. He simply said 'Sold' oftener and
+longer than I said 'Buy.' He may have had money back of him, or he may
+only have had nerve. God Almighty is the only one who can tell, for when
+Conant was through he was able to buy back at 90 the 50,000 shares he sold
+me at 175, the 50,000 that broke my back. Jim, if I had known as much that
+day as I do now I would have stood in that crowd and bought all the stock
+he sold at 180 and I would have stood there buying until hell froze over
+or he quit; then I would have made him rebuy it at 280 or 2,080, and I
+would have broken him and all his Camemeyer and 'Standard Oil' backers;
+broken them to their last crime-covered dollar."
+
+"Bob, what are you talking about? It is all Chinese to me. I cannot get
+head or tail of what you are driving at."
+
+"I know you can't, Jim, neither could Wall Street if it were listening to
+me. But you will, and Wall Street will too, before many days go by. Now I
+must be off. I have work to do."
+
+He put on his hat and left me trying to puzzle out just what he meant.
+
+Next day the Sugar bulls had the centre of the Stock Exchange stage. All
+day long they tossed Sugar from one to another as though each thousand
+shares had been a wisp of hay instead of $200,000--for soon after the
+opening it soared to 200. The "System's" cohorts were in absolute control,
+with Barry Conant never a minute away from the Sugar-pole, always on the
+alert to steer the course of prices when they threatened to run away on
+the up or the down side. It was evident to the expert readers of the tape
+that the "System" was currying its steed for an exceptionally brilliant
+run. Ike Bloomstein, the Average Fiend, who for forty years had kept close
+track of every movement on the floor, and who would bet anything, from his
+Fifth Avenue mansion to his overripe boardroom straw hat, that all stocks
+and movements were as strictly subject to the law of averages as are the
+tides to the moon and sun, remarked to Joe Barnes, the loan expert:
+
+"'Cam' unt de Keroseners are pudding up egstra dop rails to dot wool-pen
+deh haf ben pilding since deh took Pop Prownlee and deh Rantolphs into
+gamp. Unless my topesheet goes pack on me, for deh first dime in forty
+years dere vill pe a record clip pefore a veek from to-tay."
+
+"I am with you there, Ike," answered Joe. "If Barry Conant's knife-edged
+teeth ever spelt a killin', they do to-day. I just got orders from
+somewhere to drop call money from four to two and a half per cent., and
+they have given me ten millions to drop it with and the order is to favour
+Sugar as 'collat.' Some one is anxious to make it easy for the bleaters to
+get the coin to buy all the Sugar they want. Ike, you and I might make
+turkey money for Thanksgiving if we only knew whether Barry and his bunch
+were going to shoot her up thirty or forty points before they turned the
+bag upside down, or whether they will bury them from 200 to 150. What do
+you think?"
+
+"I gant make out, aldo I haf vatched dem sharp all day. Dey certainly haf
+deh lambs lined up right now for any vey dey vont to twist id. I nefer see
+a petter market for a deluge. From Barry's movements all day I should say
+dey vould keep hoistin' her until apout noon to-morrow, unt dat deh might
+get her up to two-tirty or even to deh two-fifty. Put dere are von or two
+topes on deh sheet vhat run deh uder vay. First der is dey fact you gant
+run out, dat dere is alreaty on deh Sugar vagon deh piggest load of chuicy
+suckers dat efer game in from deh suppurbs. Sharley Pates says if any von
+hat tapped his Vashington vire er any utter Capitol vire dis veek he vould
+haf tought dere vas a Senate, House, unt Kabinet roll-gall on. Deh topes
+say 'Cam' vill nefer led dat fat punch off grafters slite out mit real
+money if he gan help id unt deh game iss endirely in his hands."
+
+"I agree with you, Ike. If I had the steering of this killing I don't
+think I would take any chance of tempting them to dump and grab the
+profits by carrying it much over 200. But you can't tell what 'Cam' and
+those four-eyed dentists at 26 Broadway will do."
+
+"Yes, put der iss anudder t'ing, Cho, dat makes me sit up unt plink about
+her goin' ofer two hundred. To-morrow's Friday der t'irteenth."
+
+"Of course, Ike, that is something to be reckoned with, and every man on
+the floor and in the Street as well has his eye on it. Friday, the 13th,
+would break the best bull market ever under way. You and I know that, Ike,
+and the dope shows it too, but you have got to stack this up against it on
+this trip: no man on the floor knows what Friday the 13th, means better
+than Barry Conant. He has worked it to the queen's taste many a time. Why,
+Barry would not eat to-day for fear the food would get stuck in his
+windpipe. He's never left the pole for a minute; but suppose, Ike, Barry
+has tipped off 'Cam' that all the boys will let go their fliers, and most
+of them will take one on the short side over to-night for a superstition
+drop at the opening; and suppose 'Cam' has told him to take them all into
+camp and give her a rafter-scraper at the opening, where would old Friday,
+13th, land on to-morrow's dope-sheets? Bring up the average, wouldn't it,
+for five years to come? I tell you, Ike, she's too deep for me this run,
+and I'm goin' to let her alone and pay for the turkey out of loan
+commissions or stick to plain workday food."
+
+"Zame here, Cho. Say, Cho, haf you noticed Pop Prownlee to-tay? He has
+frozen to deh fringe off dat Sugar crowd ess t'ough some von hat nipped
+'is scarf-pin unt he vos layin' for him ass he game out. He hasn't made a
+trade to-tay unt yet he sticks like a stamp-tax. I ben keeping my eyes on
+him for I t'ought he hat someding up his sleeve dat might raise tust ven
+he tropt id. I dink Parry has hat deh same itear. He never loses sight of
+him, yet Pop hasn't made a trade to-tay, unt here id iss twenty minutes of
+der glose unt dere iss Parry in deh centre again whooping her up ofer two
+hundred unt four."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+
+
+Thursday, November 12th, was a memorable day in Wall Street. As the gong
+pealed its the-game's-closed-till-another-day, the myriad of tortured
+souls that are supposed to haunt the treacherous bogs and quicksands of
+the great Exchange, where lie their earthly hopes, must have prayed with
+renewed earnestness for its destruction before the morrow. Never had the
+Stock Exchange folded its tents with surer confidence of continuing its
+victorious march. Sugar advanced with record-breaking total sales to
+2071/2 and in the final half-hour carried the whole list of stocks up
+with it. In that time some of the railroads jumped ten points. Sugar
+closed at the very top amid great excitement, with Barry Conant taking all
+offered. During the last thirty minutes it had become evident to all that
+the boardroom traders and plungers, together with many of the
+semi-professional gamblers, who operated through commission houses, were
+selling out their long stock and going short over the opening of the Wall
+Street hoodoo-day, Friday, the thirteenth of the month. But it was also
+evident, with the heavy selling at the close and the stiffness of the
+price, which had never wavered as block after block was thrown on the
+market, that some powerful interest as well had taken cognisance of the
+fact that the morrow was hoodoo-day. At the close, most of the sellers,
+had they been granted another five minutes, would have repurchased, even
+at a loss, what they had sold, for it looked as though they had sold
+themselves into a trap. Their anxiety was intensified by the publication,
+a few minutes later, of this item:
+
+   "Barry Conant in coming from the Sugar crowd after the close remarked
+   to a fellow broker, 'By three o'clock to-morrow, Friday, the 13th, will
+   have a new meaning to Wall Street.' This was interpreted as pointing to
+   a terrific jump in Sugar to-morrow."
+
+"The Street" knew that the news bureau that sent out this item was
+friendly to Barry Conant and the "System," and that it would print nothing
+displeasing to them. Therefore, this must be, a foreword of the coming
+harvest of the bulls and the slaughter of the bears.
+
+Others than Ike Bloomstein remarked upon the fact that Bob Brownley had
+hung close to the Sugar-pole all day, but when the close had come and gone
+without his having anything to do with the Sugar skyrockets, he dropped
+out of his fellow-brokers' minds. Wall Street has no use for any but the
+"doer." The poet and the mooner would be no more secure from interruption
+in the centre of the Sahara than in Wall Street between ten and three
+o'clock. Some sage has said that the human mind, like the well-bucket, can
+carry only its fill. The Wall Street mind always has its fill of budding
+dollars. In consequence, there is never room for those other interests
+that enter the normal mind.
+
+Friday, the 13th of November, drifted over Manhattan Island in a drear
+drizzle of marrow-chilling haze, which just missed being rain--one of
+those New York days that give a hesitating suicide renewed courage to cut
+the mortal coil. By ten o'clock it had settled down on the Stock Exchange
+and its surrounding infernos with a clamminess that damped the spirits of
+the most rampant bulls. No class in the world is so susceptible to
+atmospheric conditions as stock-gamblers. Many a stout-hearted one has
+been known to postpone the inauguration of a long-planned coup merely
+because the air filled his blood with the dank chill of superstition.
+Because of the expected Sugar pyrotechnics, Stock Exchange members had
+gathered early; the brokers' offices were crowded to overflowing before
+ten; the morning papers, not only in New York but in Boston, Philadelphia,
+and other centres, were filled with stories of the big rise that was to
+take place in Sugar. The knowing ones saw the ear-marks of the "System's"
+press-agent in these stories; and they knew that this industrious
+institution had not sat up the night before because of insomnia. All the
+signs pointed to a killing, and a terrific one--pointed so plainly that
+the bears and Sugar shorts found no hope in the atmosphere or the date.
+
+Bob had not been near the office the afternoon before, and as he had not
+come in by five minutes to ten I decided to go over to the Exchange and
+see if he were going to mix up in the baiting of the Sugar bears. I had no
+specific reasons for thinking he was interested except his recent queer
+actions, particularly his hanging to the Sugar-pole, yet doing nothing,
+the day before. But it is one of the best-established traditions of
+stock-gambledom that when an operator has been bitten by a rabid
+stock he is invariably attracted to it every time afterward that it
+shows signs of frothing. More than all, I had one of those strong
+nowhere-born-nowhere-cradled intuitions common to those living in the
+stock-gambling world, which made me feel the creepy shadow of coming
+events.
+
+As on that day a few weeks before, the crowd was at the Sugar-pole, but
+its alignment was different. There in the centre were Barry Conant and his
+trusted lieutenants, but no opposing rival. None of those hundreds of
+brokers showed that desperate resolve to do or die that is born of a
+necessity. They were there to buy or sell, but not to put up a life or
+death, on-me-depends-the-result fight. Those who were long of stock could
+easily be distinguished by their expressions of joy from the shorts, who
+had seen the handwriting on the wall and were filled with uncertainty,
+fear, terror. The demeanour of Barry Conant and his lieutenants expressed
+confidence: they were going to do what they were there to do. They showed
+by their tight-buttoned coats, and squared shoulders that they expected
+lots of rush, push, and haul work, but apparently they anticipated no
+last-ditch fighting. The gong pealed and the crowd of brokers sprang at
+one another, but only for blood, not flesh, bone, heart, and soul; just
+blood. The first price on Sugar was 211 for 3,000 shares. Someone sold it
+in a block. Barry Conant bought it. It did not require three eyes to see
+that the seller was one of his lieutenants. This meant what is known as a
+"wash" sale, a fictitious one arranged in advance between two brokers to
+establish the basis for the trades that are to follow--one of those minor
+frauds of stock-gambling by which the public is deceived and the traders
+and plungers are handicapped with loaded dice. In principle, it is a
+device older than stock exchanges themselves, and is put to use elsewhere
+than on the floor. For instance, four genuine buyers want a particular
+animal worth $200 at a horse auction. Its owner's pal starts the bidding
+at $400, and the four, not being up in horse values, are thereby induced
+to reach for it at between $400 to $500. But human nature, whether at
+horse sales or at stock-gambling, loves to be "hinky-dinked" as much as
+the moth loves to play tag with the candle flame. In five minutes Sugar
+was selling at 221, and the frantic shorts were grabbing for it as though
+there never was to be another share put on sale, while Barry Conant and
+his lieutenants were most industriously pushing it just beyond their
+reaching finger-tips, either by buying it as fast as it was offered by
+genuine sellers or by taking what their own pals threw in the air.
+
+I was not surprised to see Bob's tall form wedged in the crowd about
+two-thirds of the way from the centre. Every other active floor member was
+there too. Even Ike Bloomstein and Joe Barnes, who seldom went into the
+big crowds, were on hand, perhaps to catch a flier for their Thanksgiving
+turkey money, perhaps to get as near the killing as possible. Bob was not
+trading, although, as on the day before, he never took his eye off Barry
+Conant. I said to myself, "He is trying to fathom Barry Conant's
+movements," but for what purpose puzzled me. The hands of the big clock on
+the wall showed that trading had been thirty minutes under way and still
+Barry Conant was pushing up the price. His voice had just rung out "25 for
+any part of 5,000" when, like an echo, sounded through the hall, "Sold."
+It was Bob. He had worked his way to the centre of the crowd and stood in
+front of Barry Conant. He was not the Bob who had taken Barry Conant's
+gaff that afternoon a few weeks before. I never saw him cooler, calmer,
+more self-possessed. He was the incarnation of confident power. A cold,
+cynical smile played around the corners of his mouth as he looked down
+upon his opponent.
+
+The effect upon Barry Conant was different from that of Bob's last bid on
+the day when Beulah Sands's hopes went skyward in dust. It did not rouse
+him to the wild, furious desire for the onslaught that he showed then, but
+seemed to quicken his alert, prolific mind to exercise all its cunning. I
+think that in that one moment Barry Conant recalled his suspicions of the
+day before, when he had wondered what Bob's presence in the crowd meant,
+and that he saw again the picture of Bob on the day when he himself had
+ditched Bob's treasure-train. He hesitated for just the fraction of a
+second, while he waved with lightning-like rapidity a set of finger
+signals to his lieutenants. Then he squared himself for the encounter. "25
+for 5,000," Cold, cold as the voice of a condemning judge rang Bob's
+"Sold." "25 for 5,000." "Sold." "25 for 5,000." "Sold." Their eyes were
+fixed upon each other, in Barry's a defiant glare, in Bob's mingled pity
+and contempt. The rest of the brokers hushed their own bids and offers
+until it could have truthfully been said that the floor of the Stock
+Exchange was quiet, an almost unheard-of thing in like circumstances.
+Again Barry Conant's voice, "25 for 5,000." "Sold." "25 for 5,000."
+"Sold." Barry Conant had met his master. Whether it was that for the first
+time in all his wonderful career he realised that the "System" was to meet
+its Nemesis, or what the cause, none could tell, perhaps not even Barry
+Conant himself, but some emotion caused his olive face for an instant to
+turn pale, and gave his voice a tell-tale quiver. Once more pealed forth
+"25 for 5,000." That Bob saw the pallor, that he caught the quiver, was
+evident to all, for the instant his "Sold" rang out, he followed it with
+"5,000 at 24, 23, 22, 20." Neither Barry Conant nor any of his lieutenants
+got in a "Take it"; although whether they wanted to or not was an open
+question until Bob allowed his voice to dwell just a pendulum swing of
+time on the 20. It was as if he were tantalising them into sticking by
+their guns. By the time he paused, Barry Conant's nerve was back, for his
+piercing "Take it" had linked to it "20 for any part of 10,000." The bid
+was yet on his lips when Bob's deep voice rang out "Sold." "Any part of
+25,000 at 19, 18, 15, 10." Hell was now loose. Back and forth, up against
+the rail, around the room and back and around again, the crowd surged for
+fifteen of the wildest, craziest minutes in the history of the New York
+Stock Exchange, a history replete with records of wild and crazy scenes.
+
+At last from sheer exhaustion there came a ten minutes' lull, which was
+used in comparing trades. At the beginning of the respite Sugar was
+selling at 155, for in that quarter-hour of madness it had broken from 210
+to 155, but when the ten minutes had elapsed, the stock had worked back to
+167. Barry Conant had again taken the centre of the crowd after hastily
+scanning the brief notes handed him by messenger-boys and giving orders to
+his lieutenants. He had evidently received reinforcements in the form of
+renewed orders from his principals. Many of the faces that fringed the
+inner circle of that crowd were frightful to look upon, some white as
+though just lifted from hospital pillows, others red to the verge of
+apoplexy--all strained as though awaiting the coming of the jury with a
+life or death verdict. They all knew that Bob had sold more than a hundred
+thousand shares of Sugar upon which the profits must be more than four
+million dollars. Would he resume selling or was he through? Was it short
+stock, which must be bought back, or long stock; and if long, whose stock?
+Were the insiders selling out on one another, or were they all selling
+together, and under cover of Barry Conant's movements were Camemeyer and
+"Standard Oil" emptying their bag preparatory to the slaughter of the
+Washington contingent? All these questions were rushing through the heads
+of that crowd of brokers like steam through a boiler, now hot, now cold,
+but always at high pressure, for upon the correctness of the answers
+depended the fortune of many who breathlessly awaited the renewal or the
+suspension of the contest. Even Barry Conant's usually impassive face wore
+a tinge of anxiety.
+
+Indeed, Bob's was the only one in the centre of that throng that showed no
+sign of what was going on behind it. The same cynical smile that had been
+there since the opening still played around the corners of his mouth as he
+squared himself in front of his opponent. All knew now that he was not
+through. Barry Conant had evidently decided to force the fighting,
+although more cautiously than before. "67 for a thousand." One of his
+lieutenants bid 67 for 500, another 67 for 300, and as Bob had not yet
+shown his intention of meeting their bids, 67 for different amounts was
+heard all over the crowd. Bob might have been tossing a mental coin to
+decide the advisability of buying back what he had sold; he might have
+been adding up the bids as they were made. He said nothing for a fraction
+of a minute, which to those tortured men must have seemed like an age.
+Then with a wave of his hand, as though delivering a benediction, he swept
+the circle with a cold-blooded, "Sold the lots. 5,600 in all."
+
+"Sixty-seven for a thousand"--again Barry Conant's bid. "Sold." "67 for
+5,000." "Sold." "66 for a thousand." "Sold." The drop from five thousand
+to one thousand and a dollar a share in Barry Conant's bids was the
+mortally wounded but still game general's "Sound the retreat." Bob heard
+it. "Any part of 10,000 at 65, 64, 62, 60." The din was now as fierce as
+before. The entire crowd, all but Barry Conant and his lieutenants, seemed
+to have concluded that Bob's renewal of attack meant that his was the
+winning side, and those who had been hanging on to their stock, hoping
+against hope, and those who were short and had been undecided whether to
+cover or to hold on and sell more for greater profits, vied with one
+another in a frantic effort to sell. All could now feel the coming panic.
+All could see that it was to be a bad one, as the least informed on the
+floor knew that there was a tremendous amount of Sugar stock in the hands
+of Washington novices at speculation and of others who had bought it at
+high prices. Sugar was now dropping two, three, five dollars a share
+between trades, and the panic was spreading to the other poles, as is
+always the case, for when there are sudden large losses in one stock, the
+losers must throw over the other stocks they hold to meet this loss, and
+thus the whole structure tumbles like a house of cards. Sugar had just
+crossed 110 when the loud bang of the president's gavel resounded through
+the room. Instantly there was a silence as of death. All knew the meaning
+of the sound, the most ominous ever heard in a stock exchange, calling for
+the temporary suspension of business while the president announces the
+failure of some member or house.
+
+    Perkins, Blanchard & Company
+
+    Announce that They Cannot Meet Their Obligations
+
+This statement that one of the oldest houses had been swamped in the crash
+Bob had started caused further frantic selling, and, as though every
+member had employed the lull to refill his lungs, a howl arose that pealed
+and wailed to the dome.
+
+I watched Bob closely; in fact, it was impossible for me to take my eyes
+off him; he seemed absolutely unmindful of the agonised shrieks about him,
+for the frenzied brokers were no longer crying their bids or offers, but
+screaming them. He still continued relentlessly to hammer Sugar, offering
+it in thousand and tens of thousand lots.
+
+Again and again the gavel fell, and again and again an announcement of
+failure was followed by blood-curdling howls. When Sugar struck 80--not
+180, but plain 80--it seemed that the last day of stock speculation was
+at hand. Announcements were being made every few minutes of the failure of
+this bank, the closing of the doors of that trust company. Where would it
+end? What power could stop this Niagara of molten dollars? Suddenly above
+the tumult rose Bob Brownley's voice. He must have been standing on his
+tiptoes. His hands were raised aloft. He seemed to tower a head above the
+mob. His voice was still clear and unimpaired by the terrible strain of
+the past two hours. To that mob it must have sounded like the trumpet of
+the delivering angel. "80 for any part of 25,000 Sugar." Instantly Sugar
+was hurled at him from all sides of the crowd. He was the only buyer of
+moment who had appeared since Sugar broke 125. Barry Conant and his
+lieutenants had disappeared like snowflakes at the opening of the door of
+the firebox of a locomotive speeding through the storm. In a few seconds
+Bob had been sold all the 25,000 he had bid for. Again his voice rang out:
+"80 for 25,000." The sellers momentarily halted. He got only a few
+thousands of his twenty-five. "85 for 25,000." A few thousands more. "90
+for 25,000." Still fewer thousands. His bidding was beginning to tell on
+the mob. A cry ran through the room into the crowds around the other
+poles--"Brownley has turned!"--and taking renewed courage at the report,
+the bulls rallied their forces and began to bid for the different stocks,
+which a moment before it had seemed that no one wanted at any price.
+
+In a chip of a minute the whole scene changed; there was almost as wild a
+panic on the up side as there had been on the down. Bob Brownley continued
+buying Sugar until he had pushed it above 150. He then went about tallying
+up his trades. At the end of ten minutes' calculation he returned to the
+centre and bought 11,000 shares more; coming out, his eye caught mine.
+
+"Jim, have you been here long?"
+
+"An eternity. I was here at the opening and I pray God never to put me
+through another two hours like the past two. It seems a hideous dream, a
+nightmare. Bob, in the name of God what have you been doing?"
+
+He gave me a wild, awful look of exultation. Sublime triumph shone in
+those blazing brown orbs, triumph such as I had never seen in the eyes of
+man.
+
+"Jim Randolph, I have been giving Wall Street and its hell 'System' a
+dose of its own poison, a good full-measure dose. They planned by
+harvesting a fresh crop of human hearts and souls on the bull side to give
+Friday the 13th a new meaning. Tradition says Friday the 13th is bear
+Saints' day. I believe in maintaining old traditions, so I harvested their
+hearts instead. I will tell you about it some time, Jim, but now I must
+see Beulah Sands. Jim Randolph, I've saved her and her father. I've made
+them a round three millions and a strong seven millions for myself."
+
+He almost yelled it as he rushed away and left me dazed, stupefied. A
+moment, and I came to. Something urged me to follow him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+
+
+As I passed through my office a few minutes later I heard Bob's voice in
+Beulah Sands's office. It was raised in passionate eloquence.
+
+"Yes, Beulah, I have done it single-handed. I have crucified Camemeyer,
+'Standard Oil,' and the 'System' that spiked me to the cross a few weeks
+ago. You have three millions, and I have seven. Now there is nothing more
+but for you to go home to your father, and then come back to me. Back to
+me, Beulah, back to me to be my wife!"
+
+He stopped. There was no sound. I waited; then, frightened, I stepped to
+the door of Beulah Sands's office. Bob was standing just inside the
+threshold, where he had halted to give her the glad tidings. She had risen
+from her desk and was looking at him with an agonised stare. He seemed to
+be transfixed by her look, the wild ecstasy of the outburst of love yet
+mirrored in his eyes. She was just saying as I reached the door:
+
+"Bob, in mercy's name tell me you got this money fairly, honourably."
+
+Bob must have realised for the first time what he had done. He did not
+speak. He only stared into her eyes. She was now at his side.
+
+"Bob, you are unnerved," she said; "you have been through a terrible
+ordeal. For an hour I have been reading in the bulletins of the banks and
+trust companies that have failed, of the banking-houses that have been
+ruined. I have been reading that you did it; that you have made
+millions--and I knew it was for me, for father, but in the midst of my
+joy, my gratitude, my love--for, oh, Bob, I love you," she interrupted
+herself passionately; "it seems as though I love you beyond the capacity
+of a human heart to love. I think that for the right to be yours for one
+single moment of this life I would smilingly endure all the pains and
+miseries of eternal torture. Yes, Bob, for the right to have you call me
+yours for only while I heard the word, I would do anything, Bob, anything
+that was honourable."
+
+She had drawn his head down close to her face, and her great blue eyes
+searched his as though they would go to his very soul. She was a child in
+her simple appeal for him to allow her to see his heart, to see that there
+was nothing black there.
+
+As she gazed, her beautiful hands played through his hair as do a mother's
+through that of the child she is soothing in sickness.
+
+"Bob, speak to me, speak to me," she begged, "tell me there was no
+dishonour in the getting of those millions. Tell me no one was made to
+suffer as my father and I have suffered. Tell me that the suicides and the
+convicts, the daughters dragged to shame and the mothers driven to the
+madhouse as a result of this panic, cannot be charged to anything unfair
+or dishonourable that you have done. Bob, oh, Bob, answer! Answer no, or
+my heart will break; or if, Bob, you have made a mistake, if you have done
+that which in your great desire to aid me and my father seemed
+justifiable, but which you now see was wrong, tell it to me, Bob dear, and
+together we will try to undo it. We will try to find a way to atone. We
+will give the millions to the last, last penny to those upon whom you have
+brought misery. Father's loss will not matter. Together we will go to him
+and tell him what we have done, what we have lived through, tell him of
+our mistake, and in our agony he will forget his own. For such a horror
+has my father of anything dishonourable that he will embrace his misery as
+happiness when he knows that his teachings have enabled his daughter to
+undo this great wrong. And then, Bob, we will be married, and you and I
+and father and mother will be together, and be, oh, so happy, and we will
+begin all over again."
+
+"Beulah, stop; in the name of God, in the name of your love for me, don't
+say another word. There is a limit to the capacity of a man to suffer,
+even if he be a great, strong brute like myself, and, Beulah, I have
+reached that limit. The day has been a hard one."
+
+His voice softened and became as a tired child's.
+
+"I must go out into the hustle of the street, into the din and sound, and
+get down my nerves and get back my head. Then I shall be able to think
+clear and true, and I will come back to you, and together we will see if I
+have done anything that makes me unfit to touch the cheek and the hands
+and the lips of the best and most beautiful woman God ever put upon earth.
+Beulah, you know I would not deceive you to save my body from the fires
+of this world, and my soul from the torture of the damned, and I promise
+you that if I find that I have done wrong, what you call wrong, what your
+father would call wrong, I will do what you say to atone."
+
+He took her head between his hands, gently, reverently, and touching his
+lips to her glorious golden hair, he went away.
+
+Beulah Sands turned to me. "Please, Mr. Randolph, go with him. He is
+soul-dazed. One can never tell what a heart sorely perplexed will prompt
+its owner to do. Often in the night when I have got myself into a fever
+from thinking of my father's situation, I have had awful temptations. The
+agents of the devil seek the wretched when none of those they love are by.
+I have often thought some of the blackest tragedies of the earth might
+have been averted if there had been a true friend to stand at the wrung
+one's elbow at the fatal minute of decision and point to the sun behind,
+just when the black ahead grew unendurable. Please follow Mr. Brownley
+that you may be ready, should his awakening to what he has done become
+unbearable. Tell him the dreaded morrows are never as terrible actually as
+they seem in anticipation."
+
+I overtook Bob just outside the office. I did not speak to him, for I
+realised that he was in no mood for company. I dropped in behind,
+determined that I would not lose sight of him. It was almost one o'clock.
+Wall Street was at its meridian of frenzy, every one on a wild rush. The
+day's doing had packed the always-crowded money lane. The newsboys were
+shouting afternoon editions. "Terrible panic in Wall Street. One man
+against millions. Robert Brownley broke 'the Street.' Made twenty millions
+in an hour. Banks failed. Wreck and ruin everywhere. President Snow of
+Asterfield National a suicide." Bob gave no sign of hearing. He strode
+with a slow, measured gait, his head erect, his eyes staring ahead at
+space, a man thinking, thinking, thinking for his salvation. Many hurrying
+men looked at him, some with an expression of unutterable hatred, as
+though they wanted to attack him. Then again there were those who called
+him by name with a laugh of joy; and some turned to watch him in
+curiosity. It was easy to pick the wounded from those who shared in his
+victory, and from those who knew the frenzied finance buzz-saw only by its
+buzz. Bob saw none. Where could he be going? He came to the head of the
+street of coin and crime and crossed Broadway. His path was blocked by the
+fence surrounding old Trinity's churchyard. Grasping the pickets in either
+hand he stared at the crumbling headstones of those guardsmen of Mammon
+who once walked the earth and fought their heart battles, as he was
+walking and fighting, but who now knew no ten o'clock, no three, who
+looked upon the stock-gamblers and dollar-trailers as they looked upon the
+worms that honeycombed their headstones' bases. What thoughts went through
+Bob Brownley's mind only his Maker knew. For minutes he stood motionless,
+then he walked on down Broadway. He went into the Battery. The benches
+were crowded with that jetsam and flotsam of humanity that New York's
+mighty sewers throw in armies upon her inland beaches at every sunrise:
+Here a sodden brute sleeping off a prolonged debauch, there a lad whose
+frankness of face and homespun clothes and bewildered eyes spelt, "from
+the farm and mother's watchful love." On another bench an Italian woman
+who had a half-dozen future dollar kings and social queens about her, and
+whose clothes told of the immigrant ship just into port. Bob Brownley
+apparently saw none. But suddenly he stopped. Upon a bench sat a
+sweet-faced mother holding a sleeping babe in her arms, while a
+curly-pated boy nestled his head in her lap and slept through the magic
+lanes and fairy woods of dreamland. The woman's face was one of those that
+blend the confidence of girlhood with the uncertainty of womanhood. 'Twas
+a pretty face, which had been plainly tagged by its Maker for a
+light-hearted trip through this world, but it had been seared by the iron
+of the city.
+
+"Mr. Brownley--" She started to rise.
+
+He gently pushed her back with a "hush," unwilling to rob the sleepers of
+their heaven.
+
+"What are you doing here, Mrs.----?" He halted.
+
+"Mrs. Chase. Mr. Brownley, when I went away from Randolph & Randolph's
+office I married John Chase; you may remember him as delivery clerk. I had
+such a happy home and my husband was so good; I did not have to typewrite
+any longer. These are our two children."
+
+"What are you doing here?"
+
+The tears sprang to her eyes; she dropped them, but did not answer.
+
+"Don't mind me, woman. I, too, have hidden hells I don't want the world to
+see. Don't mind me; tell me your story. It may do you good; it may do me
+good; yes, it may do me good."
+
+I had dropped into a seat a few feet away. Both were too much occupied
+with their own thoughts to notice me or any one else. I could not overhear
+their conversation, but long afterward, when I mentioned our old
+stenographer, Bessie Brown, to Bob, he told me of the incident at the
+Battery. Her husband, after their marriage, had become infected with the
+stock-gambling microbe, the microbe that gnaws into its victim's mind and
+heart day and night, while ever fiercer grows the "get rich, get rich"
+fever. He had plunged with their savings and had drawn a blank. He had
+lost his position in disgrace and had landed in the bucket-shop, the
+sub-cellar pit of the big Stock Exchange hell. From there a week before he
+had been sent to prison for theft, and that morning she had been turned
+into the street by her landlord. I saw Bob take from his pocket his
+memorandum-book, write something upon a leaf, tear it out and hand it to
+the woman, touch his hat, and before she could stop him, stride away. I
+saw her look at the paper, clap her hands to her forehead, look at the
+paper again and at the retreating form of Bob Brownley. Then I saw her,
+yes, there in the old Battery Park, in the drizzling rain and under the
+eyes of all, drop upon her knees in prayer. How long she prayed I do not
+know. I only know that as I followed Bob I looked back and the woman was
+still upon her knees. I thought at the time how queer and unnatural the
+whole thing seemed. Later, I learned to know that nothing is queer and
+unnatural in the world of human suffering; that great human suffering
+turns all that is queer and unnatural into commonplace. Next day Bessie
+Brown came to our office to see Bob. Not being able to get at him she
+asked for me.
+
+"Mr. Randolph, tell me, please, what shall I do with this paper?" she
+said. "I met Mr. Brownley in the Battery yesterday. He saw I was in
+distress and he gave me this, but I cannot believe he meant it," and she
+showed me an order on Randolph & Randolph for a thousand dollars. I cashed
+her check and she went away.
+
+From the Battery Bob sought the wharves, the Bowery, Five Points, the
+hothouses of the under-worldlings of America. He seemed bent on picking
+out the haunts of misery in the misery-infested metropolis of the new
+world. For two hours he tramped and I followed. A number of times I
+thought to speak to him and try to win him from his mood, but I refrained.
+I could see there was a soul battle waging and I realised that upon its
+outcome might depend Bob's salvation. Some seek the quiet of the woods,
+the soothing rustle of the leaves, the peaceful ripple of the brook when
+battling for their soul, but Bob's woods appeared to be the shadowy places
+of misery, his rustling leaves the hoarse din of the multitude, and his
+brook's ripple the tears and tales of the man-damned of the great city,
+for he stopped and conversed with many human derelicts that he met on his
+course. The hand of the clock on Trinity's steeple pointed to four as we
+again approached the office of Randolph & Randolph. Bob was now moving
+with a long, hurried stride, as though consumed with a fever of desire to
+get to Beulah Sands. For the last fifteen minutes I had with difficulty
+kept him in sight. Had he arrived at a decision, and if so, what was it? I
+asked myself over and over again as I plowed through the crowds.
+
+Bob went straight to Beulah Sands's office, I to mine. I had been there
+but a moment when I heard deep, guttural groans. I listened. The sound
+came louder than before. It came from Beulah Sands's office. With a bound
+I was at the open door. My God, the sight that met my gaze! It haunts me
+even now when years have dulled its vividness. The beautiful, quiet, gray
+figure that had grown to be such a familiar picture to Bob and me of late,
+sat at the flat desk in the centre of the room. She faced the door. Her
+elbows rested on the desk; in her hand was an afternoon paper that she had
+evidently been reading when Bob entered. God knows how long she had been
+reading it before he came. Bob was kneeling at the side of her chair, his
+hands clasped and uplifted in an agony of appeal that was supplemented by
+the awful groans. His face showed unspeakable terror and entreaty; the
+eyes were bursting from their sockets and were riveted on hers as those of
+a man in a dungeon might be fixed upon an approaching spectre of one whom
+he had murdered. His chest rose and fell, as though trying to burst some
+unseen bonds that were crushing out his life. With every breath would come
+the awful groan that had first brought me to him. Beulah Sands had half
+turned her face until her eyes gazed into Bob's with a sweet, childish
+perplexity. I looked at her, surprised that one whom I had always seen so
+intelligently masterful should be passive in the face of such anguish.
+Then, horror of horrors! I saw that there was something missing from her
+great blue eyes. I looked; gasped. Could it possibly be? With a bound I
+was at her side. I gazed again into those eyes which that morning had been
+all that was intelligent, all that was godlike, all that was human. Their
+soul, their life was gone. Beulah Sands was a dead woman; not dead in
+body, but in soul; the magic spark had fled. She was but an empty shell--a
+woman of living flesh and blood; but the citadel of life was empty, the
+mind was gone. What had been a woman was but a child. I passed my hand
+across my now damp forehead. I closed my eyes and opened them again. Bob's
+figure, with clasped, uplifted hands, and bursting eyes, was still there.
+There still resounded through the room the awful guttural groans. Beulah
+Sands smiled, the smile of an infant in the cradle. She took one beautiful
+hand from the paper and passed it over Bob's bronzed cheek, just as the
+infant touches its mother's face with its chubby fingers. In my horror I
+almost expected to hear the purling of a babe. My eyes in their perplexity
+must have wandered from her face, for I suddenly became aware of a great
+black head-line spread across the top of the paper that she had been
+reading:
+
+   "FRIDAY, THE 13TH."
+
+And beneath in one of the columns:
+
+   "TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN VIRGINIA"
+
+   "THE MOST PROMINENT CITIZEN OF THE STATE, EX-UNITED STATES SENATOR AND
+   EX-GOVERNOR, JUDGE LEE SANDS OF SANDS LANDING, WHILE TEMPORARILY INSANE
+   FROM THE LOSS OF HIS FORTUNE AND MILLIONS OF THE FUNDS FOR WHICH HE WAS
+   TRUSTEE, CUT THE THROAT OF HIS INVALID WIFE, HIS DAUGHTER'S, AND THEN
+   HIS OWN. ALL THREE DIED INSTANTLY."
+
+In another column:
+
+   "ROBERT BROWNLEY CREATES THE MOST DISASTROUS PANIC IN THE HISTORY OF
+   WALL STREET AND SPREADS WRECK AND RUIN THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY."
+
+A hideous picture seared its every light and shade on my mind, through my
+heart, into all my soul. A frenzied-finance harvest scene with its gory
+crop; in the centre one living-dead, part of the picture, yet the ghost
+left to haunt the painters, one of whom was already cowering before the
+black and bloody canvas.
+
+Well did the word-artist who wrote over the door of the madhouse, "Man can
+suffer only to the limit, then he shall know peace," understand the
+wondrous wisdom of his God. Beulah Sands had gone beyond her limit and was
+at peace.
+
+The awful groaning stopped and an ashen pallor spread over Bob Brownley's
+face. Before I could catch him he rolled backward upon the floor as dead.
+Bob Brownley, too, had gone beyond his limit. I bent over him and lifted
+his head, while the sweet woman-child knelt and covered his face with
+kisses, calling in a voice like that of a tiny girl speaking to her doll,
+"Bob, my Bob, wake up, wake up; your Beulah wants you." As I placed my
+hand upon Bob's heart and felt its beats grow stronger, as I listened to
+Beulah Sands's childish voice, joyously confident, as it called upon the
+one thing left of her old world, some of my terror passed. In its place
+came a great mellowing sense of God's marvellous wisdom. I thought
+gratefully of my mother's always ready argument that the law of all laws,
+of God and nature, is that of compensation. I had allowed Bob's head to
+sink until it rested in Beulah's lap, and from his calm and steady
+breathing I could see that he had safely passed a crisis, that at least he
+was not in the clutches of death, as I had at first feared.
+
+Bob slept. Beulah Sands ceased her calling and with a smile raised her
+fingers to her lips and softly said, "Hush, my Bob's asleep." Together we
+held vigil over our sleeping lover and friend, she with the happiness of a
+child who had no fear of the awakening, I with a silent terror of what
+should come next. I had seen one mind wafted to the unknown that day. Was
+it to have a companion to cheer and solace it on its far journey to the
+great beyond? How long we waited Bob's awakening I could not tell. The
+clock's hands said an hour; it seemed to me an age. At last his
+magnificent physique, his unpoisoned blood and splendid brain pulled him
+through to his new world of mind and heart torture. His eyelids lifted. He
+looked at me, then at Beulah Sands, with eyes so sad, so awful in their
+perplexed mournfulness, that I almost wished they had never opened, or had
+opened to let me see the childlike look that now shone from the girl's.
+His gaze finally rested on her and his lips murmured "Beulah."
+
+"There, Bob, I thought you would know it was time to wake up." She bent
+over and kissed him on the eyes again and again with the loving ardour a
+child bestows upon its pets.
+
+He slowly rose to his feet. I could see from his eyes and the shudder that
+went over him as he caught sight of the paper on the desk that he was
+himself; that memory of the happenings of the day had not fled in his
+sleep. He rose to his full height, his head went up, and his shoulders
+back, but only from habit and for an instant. Then he folded Beulah Sands
+to his breast and dropped his head upon her shoulder. He sobbed like a
+father with the corpse of his child.
+
+"Why, Bob, my Bob, is this the way you treat your Beulah when she's let
+you sleep so your beautiful eyes would be pretty for the wedding? Is this
+the way to act before this kind man who has come to take us to the church?
+Naughty, naughty Bob."
+
+I looked at her, at Bob, in horror. I was beginning to realise the
+absolute deadness of this woman. From the first look I had known that her
+mind had fled, but knowledge is not always realisation. She did not even
+know who I was. Her mind was dead to all but the man she loved, the man
+who through all those long days of her suffering she had silently
+worshiped. To all but him she was new-born.
+
+At the sound of "wedding," "church," Bob's head slowly rose from her
+shoulder. I saw his decision the instant I caught his eye; I realised the
+uselessness of opposing it, and, sick at heart and horrified, I listened
+as he said in a voice now calm and soothing as that of a father to his
+child, "Yes, Beulah, my darling, I have slept too long. Bob has been
+naughty, but we will make up for lost time. Get your hat and cloak and
+we'll hurry to the church or we will be late."
+
+With a laugh of joy she followed him to the closet where hung the little
+gray turban and the pretty gray jacket. He took them from their peg and
+gave them to her.
+
+"Not a word, Jim," he bade me. "In the name of God and all our friendship,
+not a word. Beulah Sands will be my wife as soon as I can find a minister
+to marry us. It is best, best. It is right. It is as God would have it, or
+I am not capable of knowing right from wrong. Anyway, it is what will be.
+She has no father, no mother, no sister, no one to protect and shield her.
+The 'System' has robbed her of all in life, even of herself, of
+everything, Jim, but me. I must try to win her back for herself, or to
+make her new world a happy one--a happy one for her."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+
+
+An old gambler, whose life had been spent listening to the rattle of the
+drop-in-bound-out little roulette ball, was told by a fellow victim, as
+his last dollar went to the relentless tiger's maw, that the keeper's foot
+was upon an electric button which enabled him to make the ball drop where
+his stake was not. He simply said, "Thank God. I thought that prince of
+cheats, Fate, who all through life has had his foot on the button of my
+game, was the one who did the trick." Long suffering had driven the old
+gambler to the loser's bible, Philosophy! Cheated by man's device, he knew
+he had some chance of getting even; but Fate he could not combat.
+
+Bob Brownley had thought himself in hard luck when his eyes opened to the
+fact that he had been robbed by means of dice loaded by man, but when Fate
+pressed the button he saw that his man-made hell was but a feeble
+imitation, and--was satisfied, as whoever knows the game of life is
+satisfied, because--he must be. Bob's strong head bowed, his iron will
+bent, and meekly his soul murmured, "Thy will be done."
+
+That night he married Beulah Sands. The minister who united the grown-up
+man and the woman who was as a new-born babe saw nothing extraordinary in
+the match. He murmured to me, who acted as best man to the groom, maid of
+honour to the bride, and father and mother to both, "We see strange
+sights, we ministers of the great city, Mr. Randolph. The sweet little
+lady appears to be a trifle scared." My explanation that she and Mr.
+Brownley were the only survivors of the awful tragedies of the day was
+sufficient. He was satisfied when he got no other response to his
+question, "Do you take this man to be your wedded husband?" than a sweet
+childish smile as she snuggled closer to Bob.
+
+Bob and his bride went South to his mother and sisters the next day. He
+left to me the settlement of his trades. He instructed me to set aside
+$3,000,000 profits for Beulah Sands-Brownley, and insisted that I pay from
+the balance the notes he had given me a few weeks before. There remained
+something over $5,000,000 for himself.
+
+The leading Wall Street paper, in its preachment on the panic, wound up
+with:
+
+   "Wall Street has lived through many black Fridays. Some of them have
+   been thirteenth-of-the-month Fridays, but no Friday yet marked from the
+   calendar, no Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday yet
+   garnered to the storehouse of the past was ever more jubilantly
+   welcomed by his Satanic Majesty than yesterday. We pray heaven no
+   coming day may be ordained to go against yesterday's record for
+   tigerish cruelty and awful destruction. It is rumoured that Mr.
+   Brownley of Randolph & Randolph, either for himself or his clients
+   cleared twenty-five millions of profit. We believe that this estimate
+   is low. The losses coming through Robert Brownley's terrible onslaught
+   must have run over five hundred millions. Wall Street and the country
+   will do well to take the moral of yesterday's market to their heart. It
+   is this: The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few Americans is
+   a menace to our financial structure. It is the unanimous opinion of
+   'the Street' that Robert Brownley could never have succeeded in
+   battering down the price of Sugar in the very teeth of the Camemeyer
+   and Standard Oil support as he did yesterday, without a cash backing of
+   from fifty to one hundred millions. If a vast aggregation of money
+   owners deliberately place themselves behind an onslaught such as was so
+   successfully made yesterday, why can that slaughter not be repeated at
+   any time, on any stock, and against the support of any backing?"
+
+When I read this and listened to talk along the same lines, I was puzzled.
+I could not for the life of me see where Bob Brownley could have got five
+to ten millions' backing for such a raid, much less fifty to a hundred.
+Yet I was forced to confess that he must have had some tremendous backing;
+else how could he have done what I had seen him do?
+
+Bob left his wife at his mother's house while he went to Sands Landing to
+the funeral. After the old judge and his victims had been laid away and
+the relatives had gathered in the library of the great white Sands
+mansion, he explained their kinswoman's condition and told them that she
+was his wife. He insisted upon paying all Judge Sands's debts, over
+$500,000 of which was owed to members of the Sands family for whom he had
+been trustee. Before he went back to his mother's, Bob had turned a great
+calamity into an occasion for something near rejoicing. Judge Sands and
+his family were very dear to the people of the section, but his misfortune
+had threatened such wide-spread ruin that the unlooked-for recovery of a
+million and a half was a godsend that made for happiness.
+
+Two days after the funeral Bob's dearest hope fled. He had ordered all
+things at the Sands plantation put in their every-day condition. Beulah
+Sands's uncles, aunts, and cousins had arranged to welcome her and to try
+by every means in their power to coax back her lost mind. They assured Bob
+that, barring the absence of Beulah's father, mother, and sister, there
+would not be a memory-recaller missing. Bob and his wife landed from the
+river packet at the foot of the driveway, which led straight from the
+landing to the vine-covered, white-pillared portico. Bob's agony must have
+been awful when his wife clapped her hands in childish joy as she
+exclaimed, "Oh, Bob, what a pretty place!" She gave no sign that she had
+ever seen the great entrance, through which she had come and gone from her
+babyhood. Bob took her to the library, to her mother's room, to her own,
+to the nursery where were the dolls and toys of her childhood, but there
+came no sign of recognition, nothing but childish pleasure. She looked at
+her aunts and uncles and the cousins with whom she had spent her life,
+bewildered at finding so many strangers in the otherwise quiet place. As a
+last hope, they led in her old black foster-mother, who had nursed her in
+babyhood, who was the companion of her childhood and the pet of her
+womanhood. There was not a dry eye in the library when she met the old
+mammy's outburst of joy with the puzzled gaze of the child who does not
+understand. The grief of the old negress was pitiful as she realised that
+she was a stranger to her "honey bird." The child seemed perplexed at her
+grief. It was plain to all that the Sands home meant nothing to the last
+of the judge's family.
+
+Bob brought her back to New York and besought the aid of the medical
+experts of America and of the Old World to regain that which had been
+recalled by its Maker. The doctors were fascinated with this new phase of
+mind blight, for in some particulars Beulah's case was unlike any known
+instances, but none gave hope. All agreed that some wire connecting heart
+and brain had burned out when the cruel "System" threw on a voltage beyond
+the wire's capacity to transmit. All agreed that the woman-child wife
+would never grow older unless through some mental eruption beyond human
+power to produce. Some of the medical men pointed to one possibility, but
+that one was too terrible for Bob to entertain.
+
+The first anniversary of their marriage found Bob and his wife settled in
+their new Fifth Avenue mansion. He had bought and torn down two old
+houses between Forty-second and Forty-third Streets and had erected a
+palace, the inside of which was unique among all New York's unusual
+structures. The first and second floors were all that refined taste and
+unlimited expenditure of money could produce. Nothing on those splendid
+floors told of the strange things above. A sedate luxury pervaded the
+drawing-rooms, library, and dining-room. Bob said to me, in taking me
+through them, "Some day, Jim, Beulah may recover, may come back to me, and
+I want to have everything as she would wish, everything as she would have
+had it if the curse had never come." The third floor was Beulah's. A
+child's dainty bedroom; two nurses' rooms adjoining; a nursery, with a
+child's small schoolroom and a big playroom, with dolls and doll houses,
+child's toys of every description in abandon, as though their owner were
+in fact but a few years old. Across the hall were three offices, exact
+duplicates of mine, Bob's, and Beulah Sands's at Randolph & Randolph's.
+When I first saw them it was with difficulty that I brought myself to
+realise that I was not where the gruesome happenings of a year before had
+taken place. Bob had reproduced to the minutest details our down-town
+workshop. Standing in the door of Beulah Sands's office I faced the flat
+desk at which she had sat the afternoon when I first saw that hideous
+result of the work of the "System." I could almost see the little gray
+figure holding the afternoon paper. In horror my eyes sought the floor at
+the side of the chair in search of Bob's agonised face and uplifted hands.
+As I stood for the first time in the middle of Bob's handiwork, I seemed
+to hear again those awful groans.
+
+"Jim," Bob said, "I have a haunting idea that some day Beulah will wake
+and look around and think she has been but a few minutes asleep. If she
+should, she must have nothing to disabuse her mind until we break the news
+to her. I have instructed her nurses, one or the other of whom never loses
+sight of her night or day, to win her to the habit of spending her time at
+her old desk; I have told them always to be prepared for her awakening,
+and when it comes they are instantly to shut off the rest of the floor and
+house until I can get to her. Here comes Beulah now."
+
+Out of the nursery came a laughing, happy child-woman. In spite of her
+finely developed, womanly figure, which had lost nothing of its wonderful
+beauty, and the exquisite face and golden-brown hair and great blue eyes,
+which were as fascinating as on the day she first entered the offices of
+Randolph & Randolph; in spite of the close-fitting gray gown with dainty
+turned-over lace collar, I could hardly bring myself to believe that she
+was anything but a young child. With an eager look and a happy laugh she
+went to Bob and throwing her arms about his neck, covered his face with
+kisses.
+
+"Good Bob has come back to play with Beulah," she said, "She knew he
+would. They told Beulah Bob had gone away to the woods to gather pretty
+flowers. Beulah knew if Bob had gone to the woods he would have taken
+Beulah with him. Now Bob must play school with Beulah." She sat at her
+desk and opened her child's school-book. With mock severity she said,
+"Bob, c-a-t. What does it spell?" For half an hour Bob sat and played
+scholar and teacher by turns with all the patience of a fond father. With
+difficulty I kept back the tears the sad sight brought to my eyes.
+
+For the first year of Bob's marriage we saw but little of him at the
+office. The Exchange saw less. He had wandered in upon the floor two or
+three times, but did no business and seemed to take but little interest.
+
+"The Street" knew Bob had married the daughter of Judge Lee Sands, the
+victim of Tom Reinhart's cold-blooded Seaboard Air Line deal. Otherwise it
+knew nothing of the affair. His friends never met his wife. Occasionally
+they would pass the Brownley carriage on the avenue or in the park and,
+taking it for granted that the beautiful woman was Mrs. Brownley, they
+thought Bob a lucky fellow. It seemed quite natural that his wife should
+choose seclusion after the awful tragedy at her home in Virginia. But they
+could not understand why, with such cause for mourning, the exquisite
+figure beside Bob in the victoria should always be garbed in gray. After a
+while it was whispered that there was something wrong in Bob's household.
+Then his friends and acquaintances ceased to whisper or to think of his
+affairs. With all New York's bad points--and they are as plentiful as her
+church spires and charity bazaars--she has one offsetting virtue. If a
+dweller in her midst chooses to let New York alone, New York is willing to
+reciprocate. In her most crowded fashionable districts a person may come
+and go for a lifetime, and none in the block in which he dwells will know
+when his coming and going ceases. When a New Yorker reads in his newspaper
+of the man who lives next door to him, "murdered and his body discovered
+by the gas man" or the tax collector, the butcher or the baker, as the
+case may be, he never thinks he may have been remiss in his neighbourly
+duties. There is no such word as "neighbour" in the New York City
+dictionary. It may have been there once, but, if so, it was long
+ago used as a stake for the barbed-wire fence of exclusive
+keep-your-distance-we-keep-our-distance-until-we-know-youness. It is told
+of a minister from the rural districts, an old-fashioned American, who
+came to New York to take charge of a parish, that he started out to make
+his calls and was seized in the hall of what in civilisation would have
+been his next-door neighbour. He was rushed away to Bellevue for
+examination as to sanity. The verdict was: "Insane. Had no letter of
+introduction and was not in the set."
+
+Shortly after the first anniversary of his wedding Bob gave up his office
+with Randolph & Randolph and opened one for himself. He explained that he
+was giving up his commission business to devote all his time to personal
+trading. With the opening of his new office he again became the most
+active man on the floor. His trading was intermittent. For weeks he would
+not be seen at the Exchange or on "the Street." Then he would return and,
+after executing a series of brilliant trades, which were invariably
+successful, he would again disappear. He soon became known as the luckiest
+operator in Wall Street, and the beginning of his every new deal was the
+signal for his fast-growing following to tag on.
+
+From time to time I learned that Beulah Sands was making no real
+improvement, though in some details she had learned as a child learns. But
+there was no indication that she would ever regain her lost mind.
+
+Strange stories of Bob's doings began to seep into my office. For long
+periods he would disappear. Neither the nurses in charge of his wife, nor
+his brother, mother, and sisters, for whom he had purchased a mansion a
+few blocks above his own, would hear a word from him. Then he would
+return as suddenly as he had disappeared, and his wild eyes and haggard
+face would tell of a prolonged and desperate soul struggle. He drank often
+now, a habit he had never before indulged in.
+
+For ten days before the second anniversary of his marriage he had been
+missing. On the morning of the anniversary he appeared at the Exchange,
+wild-eyed and dare-devil reckless. The market had been advancing for weeks
+and was at a high level. Tom Reinhart and his branch of the "System" were
+working out a new fleecing of the public in Union and Northern Pacific. At
+the strike of the gong Bob took possession of the Union Pacific pole and
+in thirty minutes had precipitated a panic by his merciless selling. Our
+house was heavily interested in the Pacifics, although not in connection
+with Reinhart and his crowd. As soon as I got word that Bob was the cause
+of the slaughter, I rushed over to the Exchange and working my way into
+the crowd, I begged a word with him. He had broken both stocks over fifty
+points a share and the panic was raging through the room. He glared at me,
+but finally followed me out into the lobby. At first he would not heed my
+appeal, but finally he said, "Jim, it is too bad to let up. I had
+determined to rub this devilish institution off the map, but if it really
+is a case of injury to the house, it's my opportunity to do something for
+you who have done so much for me, so here goes." He threw himself into the
+Union Pacific crowd, first giving an order to a group of his brokers, who
+jumped for a number of other poles. Almost instantly the panic was stayed
+and stocks were bounding upward two to five points at a leap. Bob
+continued buying Union Pacific and his brokers other stocks in unlimited
+quantities. Nothing like such a quick turn of the market had been seen
+before. His power to absorb stocks seemed to be boundless. It was
+estimated that personally and through his brokers he bought over half a
+million shares before he joined me and left the Exchange.
+
+I looked at him in wonderment. "Bob, I cannot understand you," I said at
+last as we turned out of Broad Street into Wall. "It seems as if you work
+with magic. Everything you touch turns to gold."
+
+He wheeled on me. "Yes, Jim, you are right. Gold, heartless, soulless
+gold. But what is the dross good for? What is it good for to me? To-day I
+suppose I have made the biggest one-man killing in the history of 'the
+Street.' I must be an easy twenty-five millions richer in gold than I was
+this morning, and I had enough then to dam the East River and a good
+section of the North. But tell me, Jim, tell me, what can it buy in this
+world that I have not got? I had health and happiness, perfect health,
+pure happiness, when I did not have a thousand all told. Now I have fifty
+millions, and I know how to get fifty or five hundred and fifty more any
+time I care to take them, and I have only physical and mental hell. No
+beggar in all the world is so poor in happiness as I. Tell me, tell me,
+Jim, in the name of God, if there is one--for already the game of gold is
+robbing me of my faith in God--where can I buy a little, just a little
+happiness with all this cursed yellow dirt? What will it get me in the
+next world, Jim Randolph, what will it get me? If I had died when I was
+poor, I think you will agree with me that, if there is a heaven, I should
+have stood an even chance of getting there. Now on a day like to-day, when
+you see the results of my work, the results of my handling of unlimited
+gold, you must agree that if I were taken off I should stand more than an
+even show of landing in hell where the sulphur is thickest and the flames
+are hottest."
+
+We were at the entrance of Randolph & Randolph's office as he poured out
+this terrible torrent of bitterness. He glared at me as a dungeon prisoner
+might glare at his keeper for his answer to "Where can I find liberty?" I
+had no words to answer him. As I noted the awful changes his new life was
+making in every line of his face, the rigid hardness, the haunted, nervous
+look of desperation, which seemed a forerunner of madness, I could not
+see, either, where his millions brought any happiness. His hair, which
+once was smooth and orderly, hung over his forehead in an unparted mass of
+tangled curls, and here and there showed a streak of white. Bob Brownley
+was still handsome, even more fascinating than before the mercury entered
+his soul, but it was that wild, awful beauty of the caged lion, lashing
+himself into madness with memories of his lost freedom.
+
+"Jim," he went on, when he saw I could not answer, "I guess you don't know
+where I can swap the yellow mud for balm of Gilead. I won't bother you
+with my troubles any longer. I will go up-town and see the little girl
+whose happiness Tom Reinhart needed in his business. I will go up and show
+her the pictures in this week's _Collier's_ of the fine hospital for
+incurables that Reinhart has so generously and nobly built at a cost of
+two and a half millions! The little girl may think better of Reinhart when
+she knows that her father's money was put to such good use. Who knows but
+the great finance king may dedicate it as the 'Judge Lee Sands Home' and
+carve over the entrance a bas-relief of her father, mother, and sister
+with Hope, Faith, and Charity coming from the mouths of their hanging
+severed heads?"
+
+Bob Brownley laughed a horrible ringing laugh as he uttered these awful
+words. Then he beat his hand down on my shoulders as he said in a hoarse
+voice, "Jim, but for you I should have had crimps in that jackal
+philanthropist's soul by now and in the souls of his kind. But never mind.
+He will keep; he will surely keep until I get to him. Every day he lives
+he will be fitter for the crimping. Within the short two years since he
+finished grilling Judge Sands's soul, he has put himself in better form
+to appreciate his reward. I see by the press that at last his aristocratic
+wife has gold-cured Newport of its habit of dating back the name Reinhart
+to her scullionhood, and it has taken her into the high-instep circle. I
+read the other day of his daughter's marriage to some English nob, and of
+the discovery of the ancient Reinhart family tree and crest with the
+mailed hand and two-edged dirk and the vulture rampant, and the motto,
+'Who strikes in the back strikes often.'"
+
+He left me with his laugh still ringing in my ears. I shuddered as I
+passed under the old black-and-gold sign my uncle and my father had nailed
+over the office entrance in an age now dead, an age when Wall Street men
+talked of honour and gold, not gold and more gold.
+
+In telling my wife of the day's happenings I could not refrain from giving
+vent to the feelings that consumed me. "Kate, Bob will surely do something
+awful one of these days. I can see no hope for him. He grows more and more
+the madman as he broods over his horrible situation. The whole thing seems
+incredible to me. Never was a human being in such perpetual living
+purgatory--unlimited, absolute power on the one hand, unfathomable,
+never-cool-down hell on the other."
+
+"Jim, how does he do what he does? I cannot make out from anything I have
+read or you have told me, how he creates those panics and makes all that
+money."
+
+"No one has ever been able to figure it out," I answered. "I understand
+the stock business, but I cannot for the life of me see how he does it. He
+has none of the money powers in league with him, that's sure, for in the
+mood he has been in during the past two years it would be impossible for
+him to work with them, even if his salvation depended on it. The mention
+of any of the big 'System' men drives him to a fury. He has to-day made
+more money than any one man ever made in a day since the world began, and
+he had only commenced his work when he quit to please me. As I stand in
+the Exchange and watch him do it, it seems commonplace and simple.
+Afterward it is beyond my comprehension. At the gait he is going, the
+Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Gould fortunes combined will look tiny in
+comparison with the one he will have in a few years. It is beyond my power
+of figuring out, and it gives me a headache every time I try to see
+through it."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+
+
+A number of times during the following year, and finally on the
+anniversary of the Sands tragedy, Bob carried the Exchange to the verge of
+panic, only to turn the market and save "the Street" in the end. His
+profits were fabulous. Already his fortune was estimated to be between two
+and three hundred millions, one of the largest in the world. His name had
+become one of terror wherever stocks were dealt in. Wall Street had come
+to regard his every deal, from the moment that he began operations, as
+inevitably successful. Now and again he would jump into the market when
+some of the plunging cliques had a bear raid under way, and would put them
+to rout by buying everything in sight and bidding up prices until it
+looked as though he intended to do as extraordinary work on the up-side as
+he was wont to do on the down. At such times he was the idol of the
+Exchange, which worships the man who puts prices up as it hates him who
+pulls them down. Once when war news flashed over the wires from Washington
+and rumour had the Cabinet members, Senators, and Congressmen selling the
+market short on advance information, when the "Standard Oil" banks had put
+up money rates to 150 per cent, and a crash seemed inevitable, Bob
+suddenly smashed the loan market by offering to lend one hundred millions
+at four per cent.; and by buying and bidding up prices at the same time,
+he put the whole Washington crowd and its New York accomplices to
+disastrous rout and caused them to lose millions. He continued his
+operations with increasing violence and increasing profits up to the
+fourth anniversary of the tragedy. On the intervening anniversary I had
+been compelled by self-interest and fear that he would really pull down
+the entire Wall Street structure, to rush in and fairly drag him off. But
+with his growing madness my influence was waning. Each raid it was with
+greater difficulty that I got his ear.
+
+Finally, on the fourth anniversary, in a panic that seemed to be running
+into something more terrible than any previous, he savagely refused to
+accede to my appeal, telling me that he would not stop, even if Randolph
+& Randolph were doomed to go down in the crash. It had become known on the
+floor that I was the only one who could do anything with him in his
+frenzies, and my pleading with him in the lobby was watched by the members
+of the Exchange with triple eyed suspense. When it was clear from his
+emphatic gestures and raised voice--for he was in a reckless mood from
+drink and madness and took no pains to disguise his intentions--that I
+could not prevail upon him, there was a frantic rush for the poles to
+throw over stocks in advance of him. Suddenly, after I had turned from him
+in despair, there flashed into my mind an idea. The situation was
+desperate. I was dealing with a madman, and I decided that I was justified
+in making this last try. I rushed back to him. "Bob, good-bye," I
+whispered in his ear, "good-bye. In ten minutes you will get word that Jim
+Randolph has cut his throat!" He stopped as though I had plunged a knife
+into him, struck his forehead a resounding blow, and into his wild brown
+eyes came a sickening look of fear.
+
+"Stop, Jim, for God's sake, don't say that to me. My cup is full now.
+Don't tell me I am to have that crime on my soul." He thought a moment.
+"I don't know whether you mean it, Jim, but I can take no chances, not for
+all the money in the world, not even for revenge. Wait here, Jim." He
+yelled for his brokers, and several rushed to him from different parts of
+the room. He sent them back into the crowd while he dashed for the
+Amalgamated-pole. The day was saved.
+
+Presently he came back to me. "Jim, I must have a talk with you. Come over
+to my office." When we got there he turned the key and stood in front of
+me. His great eyes looked full into mine. In college days, gazing into
+their brown depths, by some magic I seemed to see the heroes and heroines
+of always happy-ending tales, as the child sees enchanted creatures far
+back in the burning Yule log flames. But there were no joyous beings in
+the haunted depths of Bob's eyes that day.
+
+"Jim, you gave me an awful scare," he said brokenly. "Don't ever do it
+again. I have little left to live for. To be sure I have some feeling for
+mother, Fred, and sisters. But for you I have a love second only to that I
+should have felt for Beulah had I been allowed to have her. The thought,
+Jim, that I had wrecked your life, with all you have to live for, would
+have been the last straw. My life is purgatory. Beulah is only an
+ever-present curse to me--a ghost that rends my heart and soul, one minute
+with a blind frenzy to revenge her wrongs, the next with an icy remorse
+that I have not already done so. If I did not have her, perhaps in time I
+could forget; perhaps I might lay out some scheme to help poor devils
+whose poverty makes life unendurable, and with the millions I have taken
+from that main shaft of hell I might do things that would at least bring
+quiet to my soul; but it is impossible with the living corpse of Beulah
+Sands before me every minute and that devil machinery whirling in my brain
+all the time the song, 'Revenge her and her father, revenge yourself.' It
+is impossible to give it up, Jim. I must have revenge. I must stop this
+machinery that is smashing up more American hearts and souls each year
+than all the rest of earth's grinders combined. Every day I delay I become
+more fiendish in my desires. Jim, don't think I do not know that I have
+literally turned into a fiend. Whenever of late I see myself in the
+mirror, I shudder. When I think of what I was when your father stood us up
+in his office and started us in this heart-shrivelling, soul-callousing
+business, and what I am now, I cannot keep the madness down except with
+rum. You know what it means for me to say this, me who started with all
+the pride of a Brownley; but it is so, Jim. The other night I went home
+with my soul frozen with thoughts of the past and with my brain ablaze
+with rum, intending to end it all. I got out my revolver, and woke Beulah,
+but as I said, 'Bob is going to kill Beulah and himself,' she laughed that
+sweet child's laugh and clapping her hands said, 'Bob is so good to play
+with Beulah,' and then I thought of that devil Reinhart and the other
+fiends of the 'System' being left to continue their work unhindered and I
+could not do it. I must have revenge; I must smash that heart-crushing
+machinery. Then I can go, and take Beulah with me. Now, Jim, let us have
+it clearly understood once and for all."
+
+Remorse and softness were past; he was the Indian again. "I am going to
+wreck that hell-annex some day, and that some day will be the next time I
+start in. Don't argue with me, don't misunderstand me. To-day you stopped
+me. I don't know whether you meant what you threatened; I don't care now.
+It is just as well that I stopped, for the 'System's' machine will be
+there whenever I start in again. It loses nothing of its fiendishness,
+none of its destructive powers by grinding, but, on the contrary, as you
+know, it increases its speed every day it runs. Now, Jim Randolph, I want
+to tell you that you must get yours and the house's affairs in such shape
+that you won't be hurt when I go into that human rat-pit the next time,
+for when I come from it the New York Stock Exchange and the 'System' will
+have had their spines unjointed. Yes, and I'll have their hearts out, too.
+Neither will ever again be able to take from the American people their
+savings and their manhood and womanhood and give them in exchange
+unadulterated torment. I am going to be fair with you, Jim; this is the
+last time I will discuss the subject. After this you must take your chance
+with the rest of those who have to do with the cursed business. When I
+strike again, none will be spared. I will wreck 'the Street', and the
+innocent will go down with the guilty, if they have any stocks on hand at
+that time.
+
+"My power, Jim, is unlimited; nothing can stay it. I am not going to
+explain any further. You have seen me work. You must know that my power is
+greater than the 'System's,' and you and I and 'the Street' have always
+known that the 'System' is more powerful than the Government, more
+powerful than are the courts, legislatures, Congress, and the President of
+the United States combined, that it absolutely controls the foundation on
+which they rest--the money of the nation. But my power is greater, a
+thousand, yes, a million times greater than theirs. Jim, they say that I
+have made more money than any man in the world. They say that I have five
+hundred millions of dollars, but the fools don't keep track of my
+movements. They only know that I have pulled five hundred millions from my
+open whirls, the ones they have had an opportunity to keep tab on. But I
+tell you that I have made even more in my secret deals than the amount
+they have seen me take. I have had my agents with my capital in every
+deal, every steal the 'System' has rigged up. The world has been throwing
+up its hands in horror because Carnegie, the blacksmith of Pittsburgh,
+pulled off three hundred millions of swag in the Steel hold-up--yes,
+swag, Jim. Don't scowl as though you wanted to read me a lecture on the
+coarseness of my language. I have learned to call this game of ours by its
+right name. It is not business enterprise with earned profits as results,
+but pulled-off tricks with bags of loot--black-jack swag--for their end.
+
+"I got away with three hundred millions when Steel slumped from 105 to 50
+and from 50 to 8, and no one knew I'd made a dollar. You and 'the Street'
+read every morning last year the 'guesses' as to who could be rounding up
+the hundreds of millions on the slump. The papers and the market letters
+one morning said it was 'Standard Oil'; the next, that it was Morgan; then
+it was Frick, Schwab, Gates, and so on down through the list. Of course,
+none of them denied; it is capital to all these knights of the road to be
+making millions in the minds of the world, even though they never get any
+of the money. Dick Turpin and Jonathan Wild never were fonder of having
+the daring hold-ups that other highwaymen perpetrated laid to their doors,
+than are these modern bandits of being credited with ruthless deeds that
+they did not commit. But Jim, 'twas I, 'twas I who sold Pennsylvania
+every morning for a year, while the selling was explained by the press as
+'Cassatt cutting down Gould's telegraph poles. Gould and old man
+Rockefeller selling Pennsylvania to get even.' Jim Randolph, I have to-day
+a billion dollars, not the Rockefeller or Carnegie kind, but a real
+billion. If I had no other power but the power to call to-morrow for that
+billion in cash, it would be sufficient to lay in waste the financial
+world before to-morrow night. You are welcome, Jim, to any part of that
+billion, and the more you take the happier you will make me, but when I
+strike in again, don't attempt to stay me, for it will do no good."
+
+Shortly after this talk Bob left for Europe with Beulah. A great German
+expert on brain disorders had held out hope that a six month's treatment
+at his sanitarium in Berlin might aid in restoring her mind. They returned
+the following August. The trip had been fruitless. It was plain to me that
+Bob was the same hopelessly desperate man as when he left, more hopeless,
+more desperate if anything than when he warned me of his determination.
+
+When he left for Europe "the Street" breathed more freely, and as time
+went by and there was no sign of his confidence-disturbing influence in
+the market, the "System" began to bring out its deferred deals. Times were
+ripe for setting up the most wildly inflated stock lamb-shearing traps. It
+had been advertised throughout the world that Tom Reinhart, now a
+two-hundred-time millionaire, was to consolidate his and many other
+enterprises into one gigantic trust with twelve billions of capital. His
+Union and Southern Pacific Railroads, his coal and Southern lines,
+together with his steamship company and lead, iron, and copper mines, were
+to be merged with the steel, traction, gas, and other enterprises he owned
+jointly with "Standard Oil." Some of the railroads owned by Rockefeller
+and his pals, in which Reinhart had no part, were to go in too, and with
+these was to unite that mother hog of them all, "Standard Oil" itself. The
+trust was to be an enormous holding company, the like of which had until
+then not even been dreamed of by the most daring stock manipulators. The
+"System's" banks, as well as trust and insurance companies throughout the
+country, had for a long time been getting into shape by concentrating the
+money of the country for this monster trust. It was newspaper and news
+bureau gossip that Reinhart and his crowd had bought millions of shares of
+the different stocks involved in the deal, and it was common knowledge
+that upon its successful completion Reinhart's fortune would be in the
+neighbourhood of a billion. On October 1st the certificate of the
+Anti-People's Trust, $12,000,000,000 capital, 120,000,000 shares, were
+listed upon the New York, London, and Boston Stock Exchanges, and the
+German and French Bourses, and trading in them started off fast and
+furious at 106. The claim that one billion of the twelve billions capital
+had been set aside to be used in protecting and manipulating the stock in
+the market, had been so widely advertised that even the most daring
+plunger did not think of selling it short.
+
+It was evident to all in the stock-gambling world that this was to be the
+"System's" grand coup, that at its completion the masses would be rudely
+awakened to a realisation that their savings were invested in the combined
+American industries at vastly inflated values, that the few had all the
+real money, and that any attempt upon the people's part to regulate and
+control the new system of robbery, would be fraught with unparalleled
+disaster--not to the "System," but to the people.
+
+Since Bob's return from Europe I had seen him but a few times. Up to
+October 1st he had not been near the Stock Exchange or "the Street."
+Shortly after the listing of the "People Be Damned," as "the Street" had
+dubbed the new trust, he began to show up at his office regularly. This
+was the condition of affairs when Fred Brownley called me up on the
+telephone, as I related at the beginning of my story, which I did not
+realise I had been so long in telling.
+
+My thoughts had been chasing each other with lightning-like rapidity back
+over the last five years and the fifteen before them, and each thought
+deepened the black mist over my present mental vision. In the midst of my
+reflections my telephone rang again.
+
+"Mr. Randolph, for Heaven's sake have you done nothing yet?" It was Fred
+Brownley's voice. "Things are frightful here. Bob's brokers are selling
+stocks at five and ten thousand-lot clips. Barry Conant is leading
+Reinhart's forces. It is said he has the pool's protection order in
+Anti-People's and that it is unlimited, but Bob has the Reinhart crowd
+pretty badly scared. Swan has just finished giving Conant a hundred
+thousand off the reel in 10,000 lots, and he told me a moment ago he was
+going over to get Bob himself to face Barry Conant. They're down twenty
+points on the average, although they haven't let Anti-People's break an
+eighth yet. They have it pegged at 106, but there is an ugly rumour just
+in that Bob, under cover of a general attack, is unloading Anti-People's
+on to the Reinhart wing for Rogers and Rockefeller, and the rumour is
+getting in its work. Even Barry Conant is growing a bit anxious. The
+latest talk is that Reinhart is borrowing hundreds of millions on
+Anti-People's, and that his loans are being called in all directions. Do
+you know Reinhart is at his place in Virginia and cannot get here before
+to-morrow night? If Bob breaks through Anti-People's peg, it will be the
+worst crash yet."
+
+"All right, Fred," I answered. "I will go over to Bob's right now. I hate
+to do it, but there is no other hope."
+
+I dropped the receiver and started for Bob's office. As I went through his
+counting-room one of the clerks said, "They have just broken Anti-People's
+to 90 on a bulletin that Tom Reinhart's wife and only daughter have been
+killed in an automobile accident at their place in Virginia. They first
+had it that Reinhart himself was killed. That has been corrected, although
+the latest word is that he is prostrated."
+
+I rapped on Bob's private-office door. I felt the coming struggle as I
+heard his hoarse bellow, "Come in." He stood at the ticker, with the tape
+in one hand, while with the other he held the telephone receiver to his
+ear. My God, what a picture for a stage! His magnificent form was erect,
+his feet were as firmly planted as if he were made of bronze, his
+shoulders thrown back as if he were withstanding the rush of the Stock
+Exchange hordes, his eyes afire with a sullen, smouldering blaze, his jaw
+was set in a way that brought into terrible relief the new, hard lines of
+desperation that had recently come into his face. His great chest was
+rising and falling as though he were engaged in a physical struggle; his
+perfect-fitting, heavy black Melton cutaway coat, thrown back from the
+chest, and a low, turned-down, white collar formed the setting for a
+throat and head that reminded one of a forest monarch at bay on the
+mountain crag awaiting the coming of the hounds and hunters.
+
+I hesitated at the threshold to catch my breath, as I took in the
+terrific figure. Had Bob Brownley been an enemy of mine I should have
+backed out in fear, and I do not confess to more than my fair share of
+cowardice. Inwardly I thanked God that Bob was in his office instead of on
+the floor of the Exchange. His whole appearance was frightful. He showed
+in every line and lineament that he was a man who would hesitate at
+nothing, even at killing, if he should find a human obstacle in his road
+and his mind should suggest murder. He was the personification of the most
+awful madness. Even when he caught sight of me, he hardly moved, although
+my coming must have been a surprise.
+
+"So it is you, Jim Randolph, is it? What brings _you_ here?" His voice was
+hoarse, but it had a metallic ring that went to my marrow. Bob Brownley in
+all the years of our friendship had never spoken to me except in kind and
+loving regard. I looked at him, stunned. I must have shown how hurt I was.
+But if he saw it, he gave no sign. His eyes, looking straight into mine,
+changed no more than if he had been addressing his deadliest enemy.
+
+Again his voice rang out, "What brings you here? Do you come to plead
+again for that dastard Reinhart after the warning I gave you?"
+
+I clenched both hands until I felt the nails cut the flesh of my palms. I
+loved Bob Brownley. I would have done anything to make him happy, would
+willingly have sacrificed my own life to protect his from himself or
+others, but this madman, this wild brute, was no more Bob Brownley as I
+had known him than the howling northeast gale of December is the gentle,
+welcome zephyr of August; and I felt a resentment at his brutal speech
+that I could hardly suppress. With a mighty effort I crushed it back,
+trying to think of nothing but his awful misery and the Bob of our college
+days.
+
+I said in a firm voice, "Bob, is this the way to talk to me in your own
+office?" At any time before, my words and tone would have touched his
+all-generous Southern chivalry, but now he said harshly--"To hell with
+sentiment. What----" He did not take his eyes from mine, but they told me
+that he was listening to a voice in the receiver. Only for a second; then
+he let loose a wild laugh, which must have penetrated to the outer office.
+
+"Eighty and coming like a spring freshet," he said into the mouthpiece,
+"and the boys want to know if I won't let up now that Reinhart is down?
+Go back and smother them with all they will take down to 60. That's my
+answer. Tell them if Reinhart had ten more wives and daughters and they
+were all killed, I'd rend his bastard trust to help him dull his sorrow.
+Give the word at every pole that I will have Reinhart where he will curse
+his luck that he was not in the automobile with the rest of his tribe----
+
+"To hell with sentiment!" He was speaking to me again. "What do you want?
+If you are here to beg for Reinhart and his pack of yellow curs, you've
+got your answer. I wouldn't let up on that fiendish hyena, not if his wife
+and daughter and all the dead wives and daughters of every 'System' man
+came back in their grave clothes and begged. I wouldn't let up a share." I
+gasped in horror.
+
+"When did those robbers of men and despoilers of women and children ever
+let up because of death? When were they ever known to wait even till the
+corpse stiffened to pluck out the hearts of the victims? It is my turn
+now, and if I let up a hair may I, yes, and Beulah, too, be damned,
+eternally damned."
+
+I could not stand it. If I stayed, I, too, should become mad. I reached
+for the doorknob, but before I could swing the door open Bob was upon me
+like a wolf. He grasped me by the shoulders and with the strength of a
+madman hurled me half across the room. I sank into a chair.
+
+"No, you don't, Jim Randolph, no, you don't. You came here for something
+and, by heaven, you will tell me what it is! You know me; you are the only
+human being who does. You know what I was, you see what I am. You know
+what they did to me to make me what I am. You know, Jim Randolph, you know
+whether I deserved it. You know whether in all my life up to the day those
+dollar-frenzied hounds tore my soul, I had done any man, woman, or child a
+wrong. You know whether I had, and now you are going to sneak off and
+leave me as though I were a cur dog of the Reinhart-'Standard Oil' breed
+gone mad!"
+
+He was standing over me, a terrible yet a magnificent figure. As he hurled
+these words at me, I was sure he had really lost his mind; that I was in
+the presence of a man truly mad. But only for an instant; then my horror,
+my anger turned to a great, crushing, all-consuming agony of pity for
+Bob, and I dropped my head on my hands and wept. It is hard to admit it,
+but it is true--I wept uncontrollably. In an instant the room was quiet
+except for the sound of my own awful grief. I heard it, was ashamed of it,
+but I could not stop. The telephone rang again and again, wildly, shrilly,
+but there was no answer. The stillness became so oppressive that even my
+own sobs quieted. I gasped as the lump in my throat choked me, then I
+slowly raised my eyes.
+
+Bob's towering figure was in front of me. His head had fallen forward, and
+his arms were folded across his breast. But that he stood erect I should
+have thought him dead, so still was he. I jumped to my feet and looked
+into his face, down which great tears were dropping silently. I touched
+him on the shoulder.
+
+"Bob, my dear old chum, Bob, forgive me. For God's sake, forgive me for
+intruding on your misery."
+
+I looked at him. I will never forget his face. No heartbroken woman's
+could have been sadder. He slowly raised his head, then staggered and
+grasped the ticker-stand for support.
+
+"Don't, Jim, don't--don't ask me to forgive you. Oh, Jim, Jim, my old
+friend, forgive me for my madness; forget what I said to you, forget the
+brute you just saw and think of me as of old, when I would have plucked
+out my tongue if I had caught it saying a harsh word to the best and
+truest friend man ever had. Jim, forget it all. I was mad, I am mad, I
+have been mad for a long time, but it cannot last much longer. I know it
+can't, and, Jim, by all our past love, by the memories of the dear old
+days at St. Paul's and at Harvard, the dear old days of hope and
+happiness, when we planned for the future, try to think of me only as you
+knew me then, as you know that I should now be, but for the 'System's'
+curse."
+
+The clerks were pounding on the door; through the glass showed many forms.
+They had been gathering for minutes while Bob talked in his low, sad tone,
+a tone that no one could believe came from the same mouth that a few
+moments before had poured forth a flood of brutal heartlessness.
+
+Bob went to the door. The office was in an uproar. Twenty or thirty of
+Bob's brokers were there, aghast at not getting a reply to their calls.
+Many more were pouring in through the outer office. Bob looked at them
+coldly. "Well, what is the trouble? Is it possible we are down to a point
+where the Stock Exchange rushes over to a man's office when his wire
+happens to break down?"
+
+They saw his bluff. You cannot deceive Stock Exchange men, at least not
+the kind that Bob Brownley employed on panic days, but his coolness
+reassured them, and when they saw me it was odds-on that they guessed to a
+man why Bob had ignored his wires--guessed that I had been pleading for
+the life of "the Street."
+
+"Well, where do you stand?"
+
+Frank Swan answered for the crowd: "The panic is in full swing. She's a
+cellar-to-ridge-pole ripper. They're down 40 or over on an average.
+Anti-People's is down to 35, and still coming like sawdust over a broken
+dam. Barry Conant's house and a dozen other of Reinhart's have gone under.
+His banks and trust companies are going every minute. The whole Street
+will be overboard before the close. The governing committee has just
+called a meeting to see whether it will not be best to adjourn the
+Exchange over to-day and to-morrow."
+
+Bob listened as if he had been a master at the wheel in a gale, receiving
+reports from his mates.
+
+There was no trace now of the scene he had just been through. He was cool,
+masterful, like the seasoned sea-dog who knows that in spite of the
+ocean's rage and the wind's howl, the wheel will answer his hand and the
+craft its rudder. "Jim, come over to the Exchange." The crowd followed
+along. "We have but a minute and I want to have you say you forgive me,"
+he said to me. "I know, Jim, you understand it all, but I must tell you
+how sorrowful I am that in my madness I should have so forgotten my
+admiration, respect, and love for you, yes, and my gratitude to you, as to
+say what I did. I'll do the only thing I can to atone. I will stop this
+panic and undo as much as possible of my work; and now that I have wrecked
+Reinhart I am through with this game forever, yes, through forever."
+
+He pressed my hand in his strong, honest one and strode into the Exchange
+ahead of the crowd. All was chaos, although the trading had toned down to
+a sullen desperation. So many houses, banks, and trust companies had
+failed that no man knew whether the member he had traded with early in
+the day would on the morrow be solvent enough to carry out his trades. The
+man who had been "long" in the morning, and had sold out before the crash,
+and who thought he now had no interest in the panic, found himself with
+his stock again on hand, because of the failure of the one to whom he had
+sold, and the price cut in two. The man who was "short" and who a few
+minutes before had been eagerly counting his profits now knew that they
+had been turned to loss, because the man from whom he had borrowed his
+short stocks for delivery would be in no condition to repay for them, the
+next day, when they should be returned to him. The "short" man was
+himself, therefore, "long" stocks he had bought to cover his "short" sale.
+In depressing the price he had been working against his own pocket instead
+of against the bulls he had thought he was opposing. All was confusion and
+black despair. There is, indeed, no blacker place than the floor of the
+Stock Exchange after a panic cyclone has swept it, and is yet lingering in
+its corners, while the survivors of its fury do not know whether or not it
+will again gather force.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+
+
+The Governing Committee was holding a meeting in its room. Bob rushed in
+unceremoniously.
+
+"One word, gentlemen," he called. "I have more trades outstanding, both
+buys and sells, than any other member or house. Before deciding whether to
+adjourn in an attempt to save 'the Street', I ask your consideration of
+this proposition: If the Exchange will suspend operations for thirty
+minutes, and allow me to address the members on the floor, I will agree to
+buy stocks all around the room, until they have regained at least half
+their drop--all of it, if possible. I will buy until I have exhausted to
+the last hundred my fortune of a billion dollars. This should make an
+adjournment unnecessary. I know that this is a most extraordinary request,
+but you are confronted with a most extraordinary situation, the most
+remarkable in the history of the Stock Exchange. Already, if what they say
+on the floor is correct, over two hundred banks and trust companies
+throughout the country have gone under, and new failures are being
+announced every minute. Half the members of this and the Boston and
+Philadelphia Exchanges are insolvent and have closed their doors, or will
+close them before three o'clock, and the shrinkage in values so far
+reported runs over fifteen billions. Unless something is done before the
+close, there will be a similar panic in every Exchange and Bourse in
+Europe to-morrow."
+
+The committee instantly voted to lay the proposition before the full
+board. In another minute the president's gavel sounded, and the floor was
+still as a tomb. All eyes were fixed on the president. Every man in that
+great throng knew that upon the announcement they were about to hear,
+might depend, at least temporarily, the welfare, not only of Wall Street,
+but of the nation, perhaps even of the civilised world. The president
+spoke:
+
+"Members of the New York Stock Exchange:
+
+"The Governing Committee instructs me to say that Mr. Robert Brownley has
+asked that operations be suspended for thirty minutes, in order that he be
+allowed to address you. Mr. Brownley has agreed, if this request be
+granted, he will upon resumption of operations purchase a sufficient
+amount of stock to raise the average price of all active shares at least
+one-half their total drop--all of it, if possible. He agrees to buy to the
+limit of his fortune of a billion dollars. I now put Mr. Brownley's
+request to a vote. All those in favour of granting it will signify the
+same by saying 'Yes.'"
+
+A mighty roof-lifting "Yes" sounded through the room.
+
+"All those opposed, 'No.'"
+
+There was a deathly hush.
+
+"Mr. Brownley will please speak from this platform, and remember, in
+thirty minutes to the second, I will sound the gavel for the resumption of
+business."
+
+Bob Brownley strode to the place just vacated by the president. The crowd
+was growing larger every minute. The ticker was already hissing a tape
+biograph of this extraordinary situation in brokerage shops, hotels, and
+banks throughout the country, and in a few minutes the news of it would be
+in the capitals of Europe. Never before in history did man have such an
+audience--the whole civilised world. Already arose from Wall, Broad, and
+New Streets, which surround the Exchange, the hoarse bellow of the
+gathering hordes. Before the ticker should announce the resumption of
+business these would number hundreds of thousands, for the financial
+district for more than an hour had been a surging mob.
+
+For once at least the much-abused phrase, "He looked the part," could be
+used in all truthfulness. As Robert Brownley threw back his head and
+shoulders and faced that crowd of men, some of whom he had hurt, many of
+whom he had beggared, and all of whom he had tortured, he presented a
+picture such as a royal lion recently from the jungles and just freed from
+his cage might have made. Defiance, deference, contempt, and pity all
+blended in his mien, but over all was an I-am-the-one-you-are-the-many
+atmosphere of confidence that turned my spinal column into a mercury tube.
+He began to speak:
+
+"Men of Wall Street:
+
+"You have just witnessed a record-breaking slaughter. I have asked
+permission to talk to you for the purpose of showing you how any member of
+a great Stock Exchange may at any time do what I have done to-day. Weigh
+well what I am about to say to you. During the last quarter of a century
+there has grown up in this free and fair land of ours a system by which
+the few take from the many the results of their labours. The men who take
+have no more license, from God or man, to take, than have those from whom
+they filch. They are not endowed by God with superior wisdom, nor have
+they performed for their fellow-men any labour or given to them anything
+of value that entitles them to what they take. Their only license to
+plunder is their knowledge of the system of trickery and fraud that they
+themselves have created. No man can gainsay this, for on every side is the
+evidence. Men come into Wall Street at sunrise without dollars; before
+that same sun sets they depart with millions. So all-powerful has grown
+the system of oppression that single men take in a single lifetime all the
+savings of a million of their fellows. To-day the people, eighty millions
+strong, are slaving for the few, and their pay is their board and keep. I
+saw this robbery. I felt the robbers' scourge. I sought the secret. I
+found it here, here in this gambling-hell. I found that the stocks we
+bought and sold were mere gambling chips; that the man who had the
+biggest stack could beat his opponent off the board; that his opponent was
+the world, because all men directly or indirectly played the
+stock-gambling game. To win, it was but necessary to have unlimited chips.
+If chips were bought and sold, on equal terms, by all, no one could buy
+more than he could pay for, and the game, although still a gambling one,
+would be fair. A few master tricksters, dollar magicians, long ago seeing
+this condition, invented the system by which the people are ruthlessly
+plundered. The system they invented was simple, so simple that for a
+quarter of a century it has remained undiscovered by the world at
+large--and even by you, who profess to be experts. No man thought that a
+free people who had intended to allow all the equal use of every avenue
+for the attainment of wealth, and who intended to provide for the
+safeguarding of wealth after it was secured, could be such dolts as to
+allow themselves to be robbed of all their accumulated wealth by a device
+as simple as that by which children play at blindman's buff. The process
+was no more complex than that employed by the robber of old, who took the
+pebbles from the beach, marked them money, and with the money bought the
+labour of his fellows, and by the manipulation of that labour and by
+turning pebbles into money he took away from the labourer the money which
+he had paid them for the labour until all in the land were slaves of the
+moneymaker. These few tricksters said: We will arbitrarily manufacture
+these chips--stocks. After we have manufactured them, we will sell the
+world what the world can pay for, and then by the use of the unlimited
+supply we still have we will win away from the world what it has bought,
+and repeat the operation, until we have all the wealth, and the people are
+enslaved. To do this there was one thing besides the manufacturing of the
+chips--stocks--that was absolutely necessary--a gambling-hell, the working
+of whose machinery would place a selling value upon such chips; a hell
+where, after selling the chips, they could be won back. I saw that if
+these tricksters were to be routed and their 'System' was to be destroyed,
+it must be through the machinery of this Stock Exchange. I studied the
+machinery, and presently I marvelled that men could for so long have been
+asses.
+
+"From the very nature of stock-gambling it is necessary, absolutely
+necessary, that it be conducted under certain rules, unchangeable,
+unbreakable rules, to attempt to change or break which would destroy
+stock-gambling. The foundation rule, the rule absolutely necessary for the
+existence of stock-gambling is: Any member of the Stock Exchange can buy,
+or sell, between the opening and the closing of the Exchange as many
+shares of stock as he cares to. With this rule in force his buying and
+selling cannot be restricted to the amount he can take and pay for, or
+deliver and receive pay for, because there is not money enough in the
+world to pay for what under this same rule can be bought and sold in a
+single session. This is because there have been arbitrarily created by
+these few tricksters many times more stocks than there is money in
+existence. The amount of stock that any man can sell in one session of the
+Exchange is limited only by the amount that he can offer for sale, and he
+can offer any amount his tongue can utter; and he is not compelled and
+cannot be compelled to show his ability to deliver what he has offered for
+sale until after he has finished selling, which is the following day. You
+will ask as I did: Can this be possible? You will find the answer I
+found. It is so, and must continue to be so, or there will be no
+stock-gambling. Mark me, for this statement is weighted with the greatest
+import to you all. A member of this Exchange can sell as many shares of
+stock at one session as he cares to offer. If any attempt is made at the
+session he sells at to compel him either before or after he offers to sell
+to show his ability to deliver, away goes the stock-gambling structure,
+because from the very nature of the whole structure of stock-gambling the
+same shares are sold and resold many times in each session and the seller
+cannot know, much less show, that he can deliver until he first adjusts
+with the buyer and the buyer cannot adjust until after he has become such
+by buying. If a rule were made compelling a seller to show his
+responsibility before selling, every member would have every other member
+at his mercy and there could be no stock-gambling. When I had worked this
+out, I saw that while the few tricksters of the 'System' had a perfect
+device for taking from the people their wealth, I had discovered as
+perfect a means of taking away from the few the wealth they had secured
+from the many. With this knowledge came a conviction that my way was as
+honest as the 'System's,' in fact more honest than theirs. They took from
+the innocent, I took from the guilty what had already been dishonestly
+secured. I determined to put my discovery into practice.
+
+"I might never have done so but for that Sugar panic in which I was robbed
+of millions by the 'System' through Barry Conant. In that panic the
+'System,' with its unlimited resources, filched from the people by the
+arbitrary manufacture of stocks, and by their manipulation did to me what
+I afterward discovered I could do to them, without any resources other
+than my right to do business on the floor of this Exchange. You saw the
+outcome, in the second Sugar panic, of my first experiment. In a few
+minutes I cleared a profit of ten million dollars. I could have made it
+fifty millions, or one hundred and fifty, but I was not then on familiar
+terms with my new robber-robbing device, and I had yet a heart. To make
+this ten millions of money, all that was necessary for me to do was to
+sell more Sugar than Barry Conant could buy. This was easy, because Barry
+Conant, not knowing of my newly invented trick, could buy only what he
+could pay for on the morrow, or, at least, what he believed his clients
+could pay for; while I, not intending to deliver what I sold--unless by
+smashing the price to a point where I could compel those who had bought to
+resell to me at millions less than I sold at--could sell unlimited
+amounts--literally unlimited amounts. When Barry Conant had bought all
+that he thought he could pay for, he was obliged to beat a retreat in
+front of my offerings, and I was able to smash, and smash, until the price
+was so low that he could not by the use of what he had bought, as
+collateral, borrow sufficient to pay me for what I had sold him. Then he
+was compelled to turn about and sell what he had bought from me, and when
+I had rebought it, for ten millions less than I had sold it for, the trick
+had been turned. I had sold him 100,000 shares say at 220. He had sold
+them back to me say at 120, and he stood where he had stood at the
+beginning. He had none of the 100,000 shares. Both of us stood, so far as
+stock was concerned, where we had stood at the beginning, but as to
+profits and losses there was this difference: I had ten millions of
+dollars profits, while Barry Conant's clients, the 'System,' were ten
+millions losers--and all by a trick. The trick did not differ in
+principle from the one in constant practice by the 'System.' When the
+'System,' after manufacturing Sugar stock, sell 100,000 shares to the
+people for $10,000,000, they so manipulate the market by the use of the
+$10,000,000 that they have taken from the people as to scare them into
+selling the 100,000 shares back to them for $5,000,000. After they have
+bought they again manipulate the market until the people buy back for
+$10,000,000 what they sold for $5,000,000. The 'System' commits no legal
+crime. I committed no legal crime. I had not even infringed any rule of
+the Exchange, any more than had the 'System' when they performed their
+trick. Since my experimental panic I have repeatedly put the trick in
+operation, and each time I have taken millions, until to-day I have in my
+control, as absolutely as though I had honestly earned them, as the
+labourer earns his week's wages, or the farmer the price of his crops,
+over $1,000,000,000, or sufficient to keep enslaved the rest of their
+lives a million people.
+
+"What do you intelligent men think of this situation? You know, because
+you know the stock-gambling game, that the American people, with their
+boasted brains and courage, come year after year with their bags of gold,
+the result of their prosperous labours, and dump them, hundreds of
+millions, into this gambling-inferno of yours. You know that they are
+fools, these silly millions of people whom you term lambs and suckers. You
+chuckle as, year after year, having been sent away shorn, they return for
+new shearing. You marvel that the merchants, manufacturers, miners,
+lawyers, farmers, who have sufficient intelligence to gather such surplus
+legitimately, would bring it to our gambling-hell, where upon all sides is
+plain proof that we who conduct the gambling, and who produce nothing, are
+obliged to take from those who do produce, hundreds of millions each year
+for expenses, and hundreds of millions each year for profits--for you know
+that we have nothing to give them in return for what they bring to us. You
+know that every dollar of the billions lost in Wall Street means higher
+prices for steel rails, for lumber and cars, and that this means higher
+passenger and freight rates to the people. You know that when the
+manufacturer brings his wealth to Wall Street and is robbed of it, he
+will add something to the price of boots and shoes, cotton and woollen
+clothes, and other necessities that he makes and that he sells to the
+people. You know that when the copper, lead, tin, and iron miners part
+with their surplus to the 'System,' it means higher prices to the people
+for their copper pots and gutters, for the water that comes through lead
+pipes, for their tin dippers and wash boilers, and for their rents, and
+all those necessities into which machinery, lumber, and other raw and
+finished material enters. You know that every hundred millions dropped by
+real producers to the brigands of our world means lower wages or less of
+the necessities and luxuries for all the people, and especially for the
+farmer. You know that it is habit with us of Wall Street to gloat over the
+doctrine of the 'System,' which the people parrot among themselves, the
+doctrine that the people at large are not affected by our gambling,
+because they, the people, having no surplus to gamble with, never come
+into Wall Street. And yet, knowing all this, you never thought, with all
+your wisdom and cynicism, that right here in this institution, which you
+own and control, was the open sesame, for each or all of you, to those
+great chests of gold that your clients, the 'System,' have filled to
+bursting from the stores of the people. What, I ask, do you wise men think
+of the situation as you now see it?"
+
+There was an oppressive stillness on the floor. The great crowd, which now
+contained nearly all the members of the Exchange, listened with bulging
+eyes and open mouths to the revelations of their fellow member. From time
+to time, as Bob Brownley poured forth his shot and shell of deadly logic,
+from the vast mob that now surrounded the Exchange rose a hoarse bellow of
+impatience, for few in that dense throng outside could understand the
+silence of the gigantic human crusher, which between the hours of ten and
+three was never before known to miss a revolution except while its
+victims' hearts and souls were being removed from its gears and meshes.
+
+Bob Brownley paused and looked down into the faces of the breathless
+gamblers with a contempt that was superb. He went on:
+
+"Men of Wall Street, it is writ in the books of the ancients that every
+evil contains within itself a cure or a destroyer. I do not pretend that
+what I am revealing to you is to you a cure for this hideous evil, but I
+do say that what I am giving you is a destroyer for it, and that while it
+will be to the world a cure, it may leave you in a more fiery hell than
+the one of which you now feel the flames. I do not care if it does. When I
+am through, any member of the New York Stock Exchange who feels the iron
+in his soul can get instant revenge and unlimited wealth. You who are
+turning over in your minds the consideration that your great body can make
+new rules to render my discovery inoperative, are dealing with a shadow.
+There is no rule or device that can prevent its working. There are one
+thousand seats in the New York Stock Exchange. They are worth to-day
+$95,000 apiece, or $95,000,000 in all. Their value is due to the fact that
+this Exchange deals in between one and three million shares a day. Were
+any attempt made to prevent the operation of my invention, transactions
+would because of such attempt drop to five or ten thousand shares per day,
+or to such transactions as represent stock that will be actually delivered
+and actually paid for. To make my invention useless it must be made
+impossible to buy or sell the same share of stock more than once at one
+session, and short selling, which is now, as you know, the foundation of
+the modern stock-gambling structure, must likewise be made impossible. If
+this could be done the $95,000,000 worth of seats in the Exchange would be
+worth less than five millions, and, what is of far greater import to all
+the people, the financial world would be revolutionised. Men of Wall
+Street, do not fool yourselves. My invention is a sure destroyer of the
+greatest curse in the world, stock-gambling."
+
+A sullen growl rose from the gamblers. Robert Brownley glared down his
+defiance.
+
+"Let me show you the impossibility of preventing in the future anyone's
+doing what I have done to you so many times during the past five years.
+All the capital required to work my invention is nerve and desperation, or
+nerve without desperation. It is well known to you that there are at all
+times Exchange members who will commit any crime, barring perhaps murder,
+to gain millions. Your members have from time to time shown nerve or
+desperation enough to embezzle, raise certificates, give bogus checks,
+counterfeit stocks and bonds, and this for gain of less than millions, and
+when detection was probable. All these are criminal offences and their
+detection is sure to bring disgrace and State prison. Yet members of this
+Exchange desperate enough to take the chance, when confronted with loss of
+fortune and open bankruptcy, have always been found with nerve enough to
+attempt the crimes. I repeat that there are at all times Exchange members
+who will commit any crime, barring perhaps murder, to gain millions. That
+you may see that my successors will surely come from your midst from time
+to time during the future existence of the Exchange, I will enumerate the
+different classes of members who will follow in my footsteps:
+
+"First, the 'In Gold We Trust' schemer who is of the 'System' type, but
+who is outside the magic circle. A man of this class will reason: I know
+scores of men, who stand high on 'the Street' and in the social world, who
+have tens of millions that they have filched by 'System' tricks, if not by
+legal crimes. If I perform this trick of Brownley's, the trick of selling
+short until a panic is produced, I shall make millions and none will be
+the wiser. For all I know, many of the multi-millionaires whom I have seen
+produce panics and who were applauded by 'the Street' and the press for
+their ability and daring, and whose standing, business and social, is now
+the highest, were only doing this same thing, and having been successful,
+they have never been detected or suspected. But even suppose I fail, which
+can only be through some extraordinary accident happening while I am
+engaged in selling, I shall have committed no crime, and, in fact, shall
+have done no one any great moral wrong, for if I fail to carry out my
+contract to deliver the stock I have sold in trying to produce a panic,
+the men to whom I have sold will be no worse off for not receiving what
+they bought; in fact they will stand just where they stood before I
+attempted to bring on a panic.
+
+"Second, if an Exchange member for any reason should find himself
+overboard and should realise that he must publicly become bankrupt and
+lose all, he surely would be a fool not to attempt to produce a panic,
+when its production would enable him to recoup his losses and prevent his
+failure, and when if by accident he should fail in his attempt to produce
+a panic, the penalty would simply be his bankruptcy, which would have
+taken place in any event.
+
+"The third class is that large one that always will exist while there is
+stock-gambling, a class of honest, square-dealing-play-the-game-fair-Exchange
+men who would take no unfair advantage of their fellow-members until they
+become awakened to the knowledge that they are about to be ruined by their
+fellow-members' trickery.
+
+"Next, let us consider further whether it is possible for our Exchange to
+prevent my device from being worked, now that it is known to all. Suppose
+the Governing Committee was informed in advance that the attempt to work
+the trick was to be made. If, at any session, after gong-strike, the
+Governing Committee, or any Exchange authority, could for any reason
+compel a member to cease operating, even for the purpose of showing that
+his transactions were legitimate, the entire structure of stock-gambling
+would fall. Think it through: Suppose a man like Barry Conant or myself,
+or any active commission broker, begins the execution of a large order for
+a client, one, say, who has advance information of a receivership, a fire
+at a mine, the death of a President, a declaration of war, or any of the
+hundred and one items of information that must be acted upon instantly,
+where a delay of a minute would ruin the broker, or his house, or its
+clients. If the Governing Committee could thus call the broker to account,
+the professional bear or the schemer, who desired to prevent him from
+selling, would have but to pass the word to the president of the Exchange
+that the broker in question was about to work Brownley's discovery and he
+could be taken from the crowd and before he returned his place could be
+taken by others and he could be ruined.
+
+"Men of Wall Street, it is impossible to prevent the repetition of those
+acts by which in five years I have accumulated a billion dollars,
+impossible so long as a short sale or a repurchase and resale, is allowed.
+When short sales, and repurchases and resales, are made impossible, stock
+speculation will be dead. When stock speculation is dead, the people can
+no longer be robbed by the 'System.' In leaving you, the Exchange, and
+stock-gambling forever, as I shall when I leave this platform, I will say
+from the depth of a heart that has been broken, from the profoundity of a
+soul that has been withered by the 'System's' poison, with a full sense
+of my responsibility to my fellow-man and to my God, that I advise every
+one of you to do what I have done and to do it quickly, before the doing
+of it by others shall have made it impossible, before the doing of it by
+others shall have blown up the whole stock-gambling structure. In
+accepting my advice you can quiet your conscience, those of you who have
+any, with this argument: 'If I start, I am sure of success. If I succeed,
+no one will be the wiser. The millions I secure I will take from men who
+took them from others, and who would take mine. The more I and others
+take, the sooner will come the day when the stock-gambling structure will
+fall.'
+
+"The day on which the stock-gambling structure falls is the day for which
+all honest men and women should pray."
+
+Bob Brownley paused and let his eyes sweep his dumfounded audience. There
+was not a murmur. The crowd was speechless.
+
+Again his eyes swept the room. Then he slowly raised his right hand with
+fist clenched, as though about to deal a blow.
+
+"Men of Wall Street"--his voice was now deep and solemn--"to show that
+Robert Brownley knew what was fitting for the last day of his career, he
+has revealed to you the trick--and more.
+
+"Many of you are desperate. Many of you by to-morrow will be ruined. The
+time of all times for such to put my trick in practice is now. The victim
+of victims is ready for the experiment. I am he. I have a billion dollars.
+With this billion dollars I am able to buy ten million shares of the
+leading stocks and to pay for them, even though after I have bought they
+fall a hundred dollars a share. Here is your chance to prevent your ruin,
+your chance to retrieve your fortune, your chance to secure revenge upon
+me, the one who has robbed you."
+
+He paused only long enough for his astounding advice to connect with his
+listener's now keenly sensitive nerve centres; then deep and clear rang
+out, "Barry Conant." The wiry form of Bob's old antagonist leaped to the
+rostrum.
+
+"I authorise you to buy any part of ten million shares of the leading
+stocks at any price up to fifty points above the present market. There is
+my check-book signed in blank, and I authorise you to use it up to a
+billion dollars, and I agree to have in bank to-morrow sufficient funds to
+meet any checks you draw. You have failed to-day for seven millions, and,
+therefore, cannot trade, but I herewith announce that I will pay all the
+indebtedness of Barry Conant and his house. Therefore he is now in good
+standing." Bob had kept his eye on the great clock; as the last word
+passed his lips, the President's gavel descended.
+
+With a mighty rush the gamblers leaped for the different poles. Barry
+Conant with lightning rapidity gave his orders to twenty of his
+assistants, who, when Bob Brownley called for Conant, had gathered around
+their chief. In less than a minute the dollar-battle of the age was on, a
+battle such as no man had ever seen before. It required no supernatural
+wisdom for any man on the floor to see that Bob Brownley's seed had fallen
+in superheated soil, that his until now secret hellite was about to be
+tested. It needed no expert in the mystic art of deciphering the wall
+hieroglyphics of Old Hag Fate to see that the hands on the clock of the
+"System" were approaching twelve. It needed no ear trained to hear human
+heart and soul beats to detect the approaching sound of onrushing doom to
+the stock-gambling structure. The deafening roar of the brokers that had
+broken the stillness following Robert Brownley's fateful speech had
+awakened echoes that threatened to shake down the Exchange walls. The
+surging mob on the outside was roaring like a million hungry lions in an
+Arbestan run at slaughter time.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+
+
+The instant after the gong sounded Bob Brownley was alone on the floor at
+the foot of the president's desk. His form was swaying like a reed on the
+edge of the cyclone's path. I jumped to his side. His brother, who had
+during Bob's harangue been vainly endeavouring to beat his way through the
+crowd, was there first. "For God's sake, Bob, hear me. Word came from your
+house half an hour ago of the miracle: Beulah has awakened to her past.
+Her mind is clear; the nurses are frantic for you to come to her."
+
+He got no further. With a mad bellow and a bound, like a tortured bull
+that sees the arena walls go down, Bob rushed out through the nearest
+door, which, I thanked God, was a side one leading to the street where the
+crowd was thinnest. He cast a wild look around. His eyes lighted on an
+empty automobile whose chauffeur had deserted to the crowd. It was the
+work of a second to crank it; of another to jump into the front seat.
+Quick as had been his movement, I was behind him in the rear seat. With a
+bound the great machine leaped through the crowd.
+
+"In the name of Christ, Bob, be careful," I yelled, as he hurled the iron
+monster through the throng, scattering it to the right and left as the
+mower scatters the sheaves in the wheat fields. Some were crushed beneath
+its wheels. Bob Brownley heard not their screams, heard not the curses of
+those who escaped. He was on his feet, his body crouched low over the
+steering-wheel, which he grasped in his vise-like hands. His hatless head
+was thrust far out, as though it strove to get to Beulah Sands ahead of
+his body. His teeth were set, and as I had jumped into the machine I had
+noted that his eyes were those of a maniac, who saw sanity just ahead if
+he could but get to it in time. His ears were deaf not only to the howl of
+the terrified throng and the curses of the teamsters who frantically
+pulled their horses to the curb, but to my warnings as well. He swung the
+machine around the corner at New Street and into Wall as though it had
+been the broadest boulevard in the park. He took Wall Street at a bound I
+was sure would land us through the fence into Trinity's churchyard. But
+no. Again he turned the corner, throwing the Juggernaut on its outside
+wheels from Wall Street into Broadway as the crowds on the sidewalk held
+their breath in horror. I, too, was on my feet, but crouching as I hung to
+the sides. Thank God, that usually crowded thoroughfare was free from
+vehicles as far up as I could see, on beyond the Astor House. What could
+it mean? Was that divinity which 'tis said protects the drunkard and the
+idiot about to aid the mad rush of this love-frenzied creature to his
+long-lost but newly returned dear one? I heard the frantic clang of gongs,
+and as we shot by the World Building, I saw ahead of us two plunging
+automobiles filled with men. 'Twas from them the gong clamour sounded. As
+we drew nearer. I saw that these were the cars of the fire chiefs
+answering a call. I thanked God again and again as I yelled into Bob's
+ear, "For Beulah's sake, Bob, don't pass; if you do, we'll run into a
+blockade. If we keep in the rear they'll clear our way, and we may get to
+her alive." I do not know whether he heard, but he held the machine in the
+rear of the other cars and did not try to pass. Away we went on our mad
+rush through crowded Broadway. At Union Square we lost our way-clearers.
+As our automobile jumped across Fourteenth Street into Fourth Avenue, Bob
+must have opened her up to the last notch, for she seemed to leap through
+the air. We sent two wagons crashing across the sidewalks into the
+buildings. Cries of rage arose above the din of the machine, and seemed to
+follow in our wake. Bob was dead to all we passed. His entire being seemed
+set on what was ahead. I knew he was an expert in the handling of the
+automobile, for since his misfortune, automobiling with Beulah Sands had
+been his favourite pastime, but who could expect to carry that plunging,
+swaying car to Forty-second Street! Bob seemed to be performing the
+wondrous task. We shot from curb to curb and around and in front of
+vehicles and foot passengers as though the driver's eyes and hands were
+inspired.
+
+Across the square at last and on up Fourth Avenue to Twenty-sixth Street.
+Then a dizzying whirl into Madison. Was he going to keep to it until he
+got to Forty-second Street and try to make Fifth Avenue along that
+congested block with its crush of Grand Central passengers and lines upon
+lines of hacks and teams? No. His head must be clear. Again he threw the
+great machine around the corner and into Fortieth Street. For a part of
+the block our wheels rode the sidewalk, and I awaited the crash. It did
+not come. Surely the new world Bob was speeding to must be a kind one,
+else why should Hag Fate, who had been at the steer-wheel of his life-car
+during the last five years, carry him safely through what looked a dozen
+sure deaths? Without slacking speed a jot we swung around the corner of
+Fortieth into Fifth Avenue. The road was clear to Forty-second; there a
+dense jam of cars, teams, and carriages blocked the crossing. Bob must
+have seen the solid wall for I heard his low muttered curse. Nothing else
+to indicate that we were blocked with his goal in sight. He never touched
+the speed controller, but took the two blocks as though shot from a
+catapult. The two? No, one, and three-quarters of the next, for when
+within a score of yards of the black wall he jammed down the brakes, and
+the iron mass ground and shook as though it would rend itself to atoms,
+but it stopped with its dasher and front wheels wedged in between a car
+and a dray. It had not stopped when Bob was off and up the avenue like a
+hound on the end-in-sight trail. I was after him while the astonished
+bystanders stared in wonder. As we neared Bob's house I could see people
+on the stoop. I heard Bob's secretary shout, "Thank God, Mr. Brownley, you
+have come. She is in the office. I found her there, quiet and recovered.
+She did not ask a question. She said, 'Tell Mr. Brownley when he comes
+that I should like to see him.' Then she ordered me to get the afternoon
+paper. I handed it to her an hour ago. I think she believes herself in her
+old office. I shut off the floor as you instructed. I did not dare go to
+her for fear she would ask questions. I have"--but Bob was up the stairs
+two and three steps at a time.
+
+My breath was almost gone and it took me minutes to get to the second
+floor. My feet touched the top stair, when, O God! that sound! For five
+long years I had been trying to get it out of my ears, but now more
+guttural, more agonised than before, it broke upon my tortured senses. I
+did not need to seek its direction. With a bound I was at the threshold of
+Beulah Sands-Brownley's office. In that brief time the groans had
+stilled. For one instant I closed my eyes, for the very atmosphere of
+that hall moaned and groaned death. I opened them. Yes, I knew it. There
+at the desk was the beautiful gray-clad figure of five years ago. There
+the two arms resting on the desk. There the two beautiful hands holding
+the open paper, but the eyes, those marvellous gray-blue doors to an
+immortal soul--they were closed forever. The exquisitely beautiful face
+was cold and white and peaceful. Beulah Sands was dead. The hell-hounds of
+the "System" had overtaken its maimed and hunted victim; it had added her
+beautiful heart to the bags and barrels and hogsheads stored away in its
+big "business-is-business" safe-deposit vaults. My eyes in sick pity
+sought the form of my old schoolmate, my college chum, my partner, my
+friend, the man I loved. He was on his knees. His agonised face was turned
+to his wife. His clasped hands had been raised in an awful, heart-crushing
+prayer as his Maker touched the bell. Bob Brownley's great brown eyes were
+closed, his clasped hands had dropped against his wife's head, and in
+dropping had unloosed the glorious golden-brown waves until in fond
+abandon they had coiled around his arms and brow as though she for whom
+he had sacrificed all was shielding his beloved head from the chills and
+dark mists of the black river that laps the brink of the eternal rest. The
+"System" had skewered Robert Brownley's heart too. I staggered to his
+side. As I touched his now fast-icing brow my eyes fell upon the great
+black headlines spread across the top of the paper that Beulah Sands had
+been reading when the all-kind God had cut her bonds:
+
+   FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH
+
+And beneath in one column:
+
+   TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN VIRGINIA
+
+   THE RICHEST MAN IN THE STATE, THOMAS REINHART, MULTI-MILLIONAIRE, WHILE
+   TEMPORARILY INSANE FROM THE LOSS OF HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER, AND OF HIS
+   ENORMOUS FORTUNE, WHICH WAS SHATTERED IN TO-DAY'S AWFUL PANIC, CUT HIS
+   THROAT. HIS DEATH WAS INSTANTANEOUS.
+
+In another column:
+
+   ROBERT BROWNLEY CREATES THE MOST AWFUL PANIC IN HISTORY, AND SPREADS
+   WRECK AND RUIN THROUGHOUT THE CIVILISED WORLD.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Publisher's Note
+
+
+
+_The following are fac-similes of a few of the letters received by the
+author during the serial publication of "Friday, the Thirteenth."_
+
+
+
+
+RESIDENCE OF
+THE PAULIST FATHERS
+2158 PINE STREET
+
+San Francisco, CA
+21 October 1906
+
+
+My Dear Mr. Dawson
+
+Kindly allow one of your countless admirers to express his extreme
+gratification with the announcement that you will add fiction to your
+distinguished literary achievements. Your gifts as a writer are so
+wonderful and fascinating that I look forward eagerly to your work in this
+new field--and I pray God to prosper you in all good.
+
+Sincerely,
+John Marus Haudly
+
+
+
+
+70 Kirkland St., Cambridge
+Dec. 26, 1906.
+
+Mr. T. W. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+My Dear Sir: Allow me to congratulate you on your last move and on your
+story, "Friday, the Thirteenth".
+
+It is the best yet, not merely as a story but as an eye opener. I can
+begin to see daylight in spots, where it looks like a remedy and a real
+one. I can't see how you will work it; but I think I do get a hint, and it
+holds me tightly.
+
+That story ought to be issued in a cheap (25c) edition in paper, and every
+man in American ought to read it. The third part is yet to come; but, if I
+mistake not, it will make us all say "Hurrah!" In this form the facts go
+home. They were too abstract before. Now they live and palpitate.
+Sincerely yours,
+
+[Illegible: H. W. Majorson]
+
+
+
+
+Dowagiac, Mich., Dec 26, 1906.
+
+Mr. T. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir--
+
+I have just finished reading your second installment of "Friday the 13th."
+It is one of the greatest stories I ever read. Your previous articles are
+good, but this is a wonder. I believe you are sincere and cannot help
+admiring your wonderful courage + grit in going up against big odds. I
+have no axe to grind with you, simply think that no matter how big you may
+be you like to know that what you write is appreciated by the majority of
+good american citizens. So Here's to you Mr Lawson + I back you to
+eventually win. Smash 'em good.
+
+Yours Truly
+A. J. Hill.
+
+
+
+
+Grinnell, Iowa, Nov. 3 1906
+
+Thomas Lawson
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+What did "Bob" hear when he picked up the receiver. Impossible to wait one
+month to find out.
+
+Yours truly,
+A. W. Talbott
+
+
+
+
+103 Stedman Street
+Brookline Mass.
+
+Dear Mr. Lawson:--
+
+I have hit just read the first instalment of your serial "Friday the
+13th."
+
+I was so interested, aroused and stirred, I felt I must express to you
+some of the appreciation I feel for the work you have done and are doing.
+
+The army of those who suffer is so great the human spoilers so strong;
+that one's heart goes out in gratitude to a champion who comes around and
+able willing to do better for the oppressed.
+
+Would it be an intrusion to extend sympathy to one bereft of the beautiful
+gift of loving companionship? I hope that it is sincerely felt.
+
+Many admire and rejoice in your work--may it go forward bringing the
+knowledge which is power to ever increasing numbers of American people.
+
+Most Sincerely
+Marion E. Major
+
+December 14th, 1906
+
+
+
+
+L. GUY DENNETT
+ATTORNEY AT LAW
+48 TREMONT ST., BOSTON
+TELEPHONE CONNECTION
+
+Nov. 21/06
+
+Thomas W. Lawson Esq.
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+I take it for granted that you want to know how the "Public" is going to
+take to your latest writing "fiction" and how are you to know unless your
+unknown friends write you?
+
+I have read every thing you have ever written because I believe in you and
+admire the work you have done and are doing and allow me to say that I
+finaly believe that you will one day be recognized as one of the greatest
+story writers of the age. The first section of "Friday the Thirteenth" has
+convinced me that you will be a sure winner.
+
+Yours very truly,
+L. Guy Dennett
+
+
+
+Angola Tulare Co. Cal.
+Dec. 29, 1906
+
+W. T. Lawson,
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+I wanted to thank you for the first number of "Friday the 13th", but did
+not know your address. "Everybody's" contains some letters written you to
+Boston so hope this may reach its destination.
+
+I live in the wildest of the wooley west + such a god send as in
+"Everybody's" (sent me by a sister in Oakland Cal.) + containing the first
+number of your story, words inadequately suffices. Friday the 13th made an
+impression on me which I could not easily shake off if I would. I was so
+sorry it ended where it did that I wanted to cry out + could hardly wait
+for the Jan. number. Yesterday I bought one in Hanford Cal. rode 30 miles
+north to get it. I live a mile from the recently filled in basin of old
+Tulare Lake. The snowfall on the mountains argue that our part of the Wild
++ Wooley may soon be a fishing station instead of an alfalfa ranch.
+
+Perhaps you don't understand how much your story is appreciated.
+
+You are Bob Brownley, _I know_. Can you really _feel_ what you write as
+you make us do? Your characters appeal to me so that I live with them,
+every nerve alert to the straining point (but with pleasure). You are
+certianly the idol of the American people. I've heard you discussed by
+rich + poor, monopolist + antimonopolist during the publication of
+"Frenzied Finance" + the worst a monopolist could say was that you were as
+bad as the Standard Oil, but wanted to get even. "What is that but a
+virtue," exclaimed I. "Couldn't he have made millions by staying in, but
+_he_ recognized his past failings and exposed [them] S.O. to uphold a
+nation. May honor attend him. Isn't that being a man and a gentleman?"
+
+People read "Frenzied Finance" to a man + would loan the magazine one to
+another so those who felt the 15c impossible could get the good of your
+revelations.
+
+I'm glad you believe in sentiment--the heart-lasting sentiment (instead of
+dollars and desire) which I feared was becoming a thing of the past; There
+are still splendid men in America. God bless them.
+
+O happy New Year may the weight of your pen sway millions. Amen.
+
+Respectfully,
+Louise D. Tennent
+
+See 14 Kings
+
+Angola P.O.
+Ca.
+
+
+
+
+Spokane, Wash.,
+December 28. 1906.
+
+Mr. Thomas W. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+I have lived nine years in Anaconda, Montana, and therefore become
+somewhat familiar with amalgamated copper, etc. I want to say I have
+followed your writings with lively interest and have sworn by all the
+statements you have made. It is, therefore, with the greatest regret that
+I am compelled to state that my faith in you has been shattered.
+
+When you state in your story of "Friday the 13th" that the heroine walked
+in to an office in New York in the middle of July with a feather turban on
+her head I simply cannot swallow it. That a lady of refinement and good
+taste with $30,000 in the bank, and anxious to make a good appearance,
+should walk into an office in New York with a winter hat taxes my
+credulity to the breaking point. However, be that as it may, I want to say
+that you have made a big fight against great odds and that I admire your
+pluck and genius, and I hope you will keep right on fighting for the
+right.
+
+By the way, I might as well admit that it was my wife by the way is a
+superior woman who called my attention to the turban when I was reading
+your story aloud to her. I am,
+
+Very truly yours,
+John Ortson
+
+
+
+
+O'Fallon, Ill. Nov. 22nd, 1906
+
+Thos W. Lawson
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+It has afforded me great pleasure to just have finished your first
+installment to "Friday the 13th," as have also your previous writings,
+from which I learned a great deal,--although from a financial standpoint,
+following what I thought to be your advice, I am several thousand dollars
+looser,--and I take this means of contributing my mite of encouragement,
+firmly believing that your work is doing a great good, and trusting that
+success on the lines you have mapped out, will be your reward.
+
+Very respectfully, Wm. A. Staney.
+
+(I'm awaiting your next installment)
+
+
+
+
+Dear sir:
+
+I have only had the pleasure of meeting you once--in your private car,
+with Thayer, when you were returning from your western trip--but I hope
+you will not consider me presuming if I take a moment of your valuable
+time to thank you for your masterpiece just begun in Everybody's.
+
+Such magic has not flowed from a pen for many a year.
+
+Yours Truly
+John O Powers
+
+206 North 34th Street
+Philadelphia
+
+
+
+
+Des Moines, Iowa, 11/20, 1906
+
+Mr. Thos. Lawson
+Boston.
+
+Dear Sir,
+
+I like your story "Friday the Thirteenth." For the information and added
+knowledge your previous writing has given me I thank you.
+
+--"for the crow that is in him and the spurs that are on him to back up
+the crow with." You certainly are a game and competant old fighter.
+
+Sincerely, with best wishes
+[Illegible signature: A. S. Goodman]
+
+
+
+
+St. Paul, Minn.,
+November 26, 1906.
+
+Mr. Thomas W. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+I wish to congratulate you on the good story you wrote in Everybody's
+Magazine this month. It is the beat story I ever read and the best I ever
+saw published in any magazine.
+
+I am well posted on the "Brokers" business and enjoyed your story very
+much. I hope you will continue to write them. I know they are taken more
+from real life than immagination. I am sure they will be appreciated as
+much as "Frenzied Finance". I have taken the liberty to send a good word
+to Ridgway's.
+
+With best wishes, I remain
+Tours respectfully,
+
+Western Union Telegraph Co.
+R.A. Kelly
+
+
+
+
+Los Angeles, Calif.,
+December 11, 1906.
+
+Mr. Thomas W. Lawson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+My dear Sir:
+
+It was indeed a pleasure to read your novel in this month's Everybody's.
+Being an old trader myself, I have appreciated every word of it and look
+forward for the continuation with much interest.
+
+I just want to say this too--that anyone who says that you cannot write
+anything else but "Street" gossip had better cover his "shorts".
+
+Wishing you all kinds of success, and with congratulations on your
+splendid work, I am
+
+Very sincerely,
+
+Nancy Brown
+214 Citizens Nat'l Bank Bldg.
+
+
+
+
+Washington, D.C.,
+December 1, 1906.
+
+Thos. W. Lawson, Esq.,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+I have just read with very great pleasure and edification the first
+installment of your excellent story "Friday the 13th". It is so far a
+masterpiece.
+
+Congratulating you. I remain
+Very truly,
+M. H. Ramaze
+
+
+
+
+Cleburn, Texas, Dec 3 1906
+
+Mr. Thos. W. Lawson
+Boston
+
+Dear Sirs:
+
+I have just your first installment of "Friday 13th." It is OK + if the
+balance of the story is as good (+ I have no doubts on that score) you are
+"It" when it comes to writting fiction as well as tricking the Insurance
+Thief + Standard Oil Grafters.
+
+Wishing you success
+I am yours very truly
+S. F. Welch
+
+
+
+
+Rumford Falls, Maine,
+November 20, 1906.
+
+Mr. Tom Lewson,
+Boston, Mass.
+
+Dear Sir:
+
+I have read all your writings in Everybody's, including the first
+installment of your story in the December number, and I must say that I am
+more than pleased with it. As a writer of fiction you are sure to make
+another big hit.
+
+Yours truly,
+W. I. White.
+
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes
+
+
+
+[1] "26 Broadway" is the Wall Street figure of speech for "Standard Oil,"
+which has its home there.
+
+[2] Those who seek to depress the price of a stock are known as bears, and
+those who oppose them by trying to raise the price are bulls.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Friday, the Thirteenth, by Thomas W. Lawson
+
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