Chapter 16

His head was aching horribly and at every throb of his pulse a pain tore through him. He rang for his messenger.

"Tell Mr. Giddings I want to see him--you!" he said, his teeth clenched and his eyes blazing--he looked insane.

Giddings came. His conscience was clear--he had never liked Dumont, owed him nothing, yet had stood by him until further fidelity would have ruined himself, would not have saved Dumont, or prevented the Herron-Cassell raiders from getting control. Now that he could afford to look at his revenge-books he was deeply resenting the insults and indignities heaped upon him in the past five years. But he was unable to gloat, was moved to pity, at sight of the physical and mental wreck in that chair which he had always seen occupied by the most robust of despots.

"Well," said Dumont in a dull, far-away voice, without looking at him. "What's happened?"

Giddings cast about for a smooth beginning but could find none. "They did us up--that's all," he said funereally.

Dumont lifted himself into a momentary semblance of his old look and manner. "You lie, damn you!" he shouted, his mouth raw and ragged as a hungry tiger's.

Giddings began to cringe, remembered the changed conditions, bounded to his feet.

"I'll tolerate such language from no man!" he exclaimed. "I wish you good morning, sir!" And he was on his way to the door.

"Come back!" commanded Dumont. And Giddings, the habit of implicit obedience to that voice still strong upon him, hesitated and half turned.

Dumont was more impressed with the truth of the cataclysm by Giddings' revolt than by the newspaper head-lines or by Giddings' words. And from somewhere in the depths of his reserve-self he summoned the last of his coolness and self-control. "Beg pardon, Giddings," said he. "You see I'm not well."

Giddings returned--he had taken orders all his life, he had submitted to this master slavishly; the concession of an apology mollified him and flattered him in spite of himself.

"Oh, don't mention it," he said, seating himself again. "As I was saying, the raid was a success. I did the best I could. Some called our loans and some demanded more collateral. And while I was fighting front and rear and both sides, bang came that lie about your condition. The market broke. All I could do was sell, sell, sell, to try to meet or protect our loans."

Giddings heard a sound that made him glance at Dumont. His head had fallen forward and he was snoring. Giddings looked long and pityingly.

"A sure enough dead one," he muttered, unconsciously using the slang of the Street which he habitually avoided. And he went away, closing the door behind him.

After half an hour Dumont roused himself--out of a stupor into a half-delirious dream.

"Must get cash," he mumbled, "and look after the time loans." He lifted his head and pushed back his hair from his hot forehead. "I'll stamp on those curs yet!"

He took another drink--his hands were so unsteady that he had to use both of them in lifting it to his lips. He put the flask in his pocket instead of returning it to the drawer. No one spoke to him, all pretended not to see him as he passed through the offices on his way to the elevator. With glassy unseeing eyes he fumbled at the dash-board and side of the hansom; with a groan like a rheumatic old man's he lifted his heavy body up into the seat, dropped back and fell asleep. A crowd of clerks and messengers, newsboys and peddlers gathered and gaped, awed as they looked at the man who had been for five years one of the heroes of the Street, and thought of his dazzling catastrophe.

"What's the matter?" inquired a new-comer, apparently a tourist, edging his way into the outskirts of the crowd.

"That's Dumont, the head of the Woolens Trust," the curb-broker he addressed replied in a low tone. "He was raided yesterday--woke up in the morning worth a hundred millions, went to bed worth--perhaps five, maybe nothing at all."

At this exaggeration of the height and depth of the disaster, awe and sympathy became intense in that cluster of faces. A hundred millions to nothing at all, or at most a beggarly five millions--what a dizzy precipice! Great indeed must be he who could fall so far. The driver peered through the trap, wondering why his distinguished fare endured this vulgar scrutiny. He saw that Dumont was asleep, thrust down a hand and shook him. "Where to, sir?" he asked, as Dumont straightened himself.

"To the National Industrial Bank, you fool," snapped Dumont. "How many times must I tell you?"

"Thank you, sir," said the driver--without sarcasm, thinking steadfastly of his pay--and drove swiftly away.

Theretofore, whenever he had gone to the National Industrial Bank he had been received as one king is received by another. Either eager and obsequious high officers of King Melville had escorted him directly to the presence, or King Melville, because he had a caller who could not be summarily dismissed, had come out apologetically to conduct King Dumont to another audience chamber. That day the third assistant cashier greeted him with politeness carefully graded to the due of a man merely moderately rich and not a factor in the game of high finance.

"Be seated, Mr. Dumont," he said, pointing to a chair just inside the railing--a seat not unworthy of a man of rank in the plutocratic hierarchy, but a man of far from high rank. "I'll see whether Mr. Melville's disengaged."

Dumont dropped into the chair and his heavy head was almost immediately resting upon his shirt-bosom. The third assistant cashier returned, roused him somewhat impatiently. "Mr. Melville's engaged," said he. "But Mr. Cowles will see you." Mr. Cowles was the third vice-president.

Dumont rose. The blood flushed into his face and his body shook from head to foot. "Tell Melville to go to hell," he jerked out, the haze clearing for a moment from his piercing, wicked eyes. And he stalked through the gateway in the railing. He turned. "Tell him I'll tear him down and grind him into the gutter within six months."

In the hansom again, he reflected or tried to reflect. But the lofty buildings seemed to cast a black shadow on his mind, and the roar and rush of the tremendous tide of traffic through that deep canon set his thoughts to whirling like drink-maddened bacchanals dancing round a punch-bowl. "That woman!" he exclaimed suddenly. "What asses they make of us men! And all these vultures--I'm not carrion yet. But THEY soon will be!" And he laughed and his thoughts began their crazy spin again.

A newsboy came, waving an extra in at the open doors of the hansom. "Dumont's downfall!" he yelled in his shrill, childish voice. "All about the big smash!"

Dumont snatched a paper and flung a copper at the boy.

"Gimme a tip on Woolens, Mr. Dumont," said the boy, with an impudent grin, balancing himself for flight. "How's Mrs. Fanshaw?"

The newspapers had made his face as familiar as the details of his private life. He shrank and quivered. He pushed up the trap. "Home!" he said, forgetting that the hansom and driver were not his own.

"All right, Mr. Dumont!" replied the driver. Dumont shrank again and sat cowering in the corner--the very calling him by his name, now a synonym for failure, disgrace, ridicule and contempt, seemed a subtile insult.

With roaring brain and twitching, dizzy eyes he read at the newspaper's account of his overthrow. And gradually there formed in his mind a coherent notion of how it had come to pass, of its extent; of why he found himself lying in the depths, the victim of humiliations so frightful that they penetrated even to him, stupefied and crazed with drink and fever though he was. His courage, his self-command were burnt up by the brandy. His body had at last revolted, was having its terrible revenge upon the mind that had so long misused it in every kind of indulgence.

"I'm done for--done for," he repeated audibly again and again, at each repetition looking round mentally for a fact or a hope that would deny this assertion--but he cast about in vain. "Yes, I'm done for." And flinging away the newspaper he settled back and ceased to try to think of his affairs. After a while tears rolled from under his blue eyelids, dropped haltingly down his cheeks, spread out upon his lips, tasted salt in his half-open mouth.

The hansom stopped before his brick and marble palace. The butler hurried out and helped him alight--not yet thirty-seven, he felt as if he were a dying old man. "Pay the cabby," he said and groped his way into the house and to the elevator and mechanically ran himself up to his floor. His valet was in his dressing-room. He waved him away. "Get out! And don't disturb me till I ring."

"The doctor--" began Mallow.

"Do as I tell you!"

When he was alone he poured out brandy and gulped it down a drink that might have eaten the lining straight out of a stomach less powerful than his. He went from door to door, locking them all. Then he seated himself in a lounging-chair before the long mirror. He stared toward the image of himself but was so dim-eyed that he could see nothing but spinning black disks. "Life's not such a good game even when a man's winning," he said aloud. "A rotten bad game when he's losing."

His head wabbled to fall forward but he roused himself. "Wife gone--" The tears flooded his eyes--tears of pity for himself, an injured and abandoned husband. "Wife gone," he repeated. "Friends gone--" He laughed sardonically. "No, never had friends, thank God, or I shouldn't have lasted this long. No such thing as friends--a man gets what he can pay for. Grip gone--luck gone! What's the use?"

He dozed off, presently to start into acute, shuddering consciousness. At the far end of the room, stirring, slowly oozing from under the divan was a--a Thing! He could not define its shape, but he knew that it was vast, that it was scaly, with many short fat legs tipped with claws; that its color was green, that its purpose was hideous, gleaming in craft from large, square, green-yellow eyes. He wiped the sticky sweat from his brow. "It's only the brandy," he said loudly, and the Thing faded, vanished. He drew a deep breath of relief.

He went to a case of drawers and stood before it, supporting himself by the handles of the second drawer. "Yes," he reflected, "the revolver's in that drawer." He released the handles and staggered back to his chair. "I'm crazy," he muttered, "crazy as a loon. I ought to ring for the doctor."

In a moment he was up again, but instead of going toward the bell he went to the drawers and opened the second one. In a compartment lay a pearl-handled, self-cocking revolver. He put his hand on it, shivered, drew his hand away--the steel and the pearl were cold. He closed the drawer with a quick push, opened it again slowly, took up the revolver, staggered over to his desk and laid it there. His face was chalk-white in spots and his eyes were stiff in their sockets. He rested his aching, burning, reeling head on his hands and stared at the revolver.

"But," he said aloud, as if contemptuously dismissing a suggestion, "why should I shoot myself? I can smash 'em all--to powder--grind 'em into the dirt."

He took up the revolver. "What'd be the use of smashing 'em?" he said wearily. He felt tired and sick, horribly sick.

He laid it down. "I'd better be careful," he thought. "I'm not in my right mind. I might--"

He took it in his hand and went to the mirror and put the muzzle against his temple. He laughed crazily. "A little pressure on that trigger and--bang! I'd be in kingdom come and shouldn't give a damn for anybody." He caught sight of his eyes in the mirror and hastily dropped his arm to his side. "No, I'd never shoot myself in the temple. The heart'd be better. Just here"--and he pressed the muzzle into the soft material of his coat--"if I touched the trigger--"

And his finger did touch the trigger. Pains shot through his chest like cracks radiating in glass when a stone strikes it. He looked at his face--white, with wild eyes, with lips blue and ajar, the sweat streaming from his forehead.

"What have I done?" he shrieked, mad with the dread of death. "I must call for help." He turned toward the door, plunged forward, fell unconscious, the revolver flung half-way across the room.

When he came to his senses he was in his bed--comfortable, weak, lazy. With a slight effort he caught the thread of events. He turned his eyes and saw a nurse, seated at the head of his bed, reading. "Am I going to die?" he asked--his voice was thin and came in faint gusts.

"Certainly not," replied the nurse, putting down her book and standing over him, her face showing genuine reassurance and cheerfulness.

"You'll be well very soon. But you must lie quiet and not talk."

"Was it a bad wound?"

"The fever was the worst. The bullet glanced round just under the surface."

"It was an accident," he said, after a moment's thought. "I suppose everybody is saying I tried to kill myself."

"'Everybody' doesn't know anything about it. Almost nobody knows. Even the servants don't know. Your secretary sent them away, broke in and found you."

He closed his eyes and slept.

When he awoke again he felt that a long time had passed, that he was much better, that he was hungry. "Nurse!" he called.

The woman at the head of the bed rose and laid a cool hand upon his forehead. "How good that feels," he mumbled gratefully. "What nice hands you have, nurse," and he lifted his glance to her face. He stared wonderingly, confusedly. "I thought I was awake and almost well," he murmured. "And instead, I'm out of my head."

"Can I do anything for you?" It certainly was HER voice.

"Is it you, Pauline?" he asked, as if he feared a negative answer.

"Yes--John."

A long silence, then he said: "Why did you come?"

"The doctor wrote me that--wrote me the truth."

"But haven't you heard? Haven't you seen the papers? Don't they say I'm ruined?"

"Yes, John."

He lay silent for several minutes. Then he asked hesitatingly: "And--when--do you--go back--West?"

"I have come to stay," she replied. Neither in her voice nor in her face was there a hint of what those five words meant to her.

He closed his eyes again. Presently a tear slid from under each lid and stood in the deep, wasted hollows of his eye-sockets.

XXVI.

A DESPERATE RALLY.

When he awoke again he felt that he should get well rapidly. He was weak, but it seemed the weakness of hunger rather than of illness. His head was clear, his nerves tranquil; his mind was as hungry for action as his body was for food.

"As soon as I've had something to eat," he said to himself, "I'll be better than for years. I needed this." And straightway he began to take hold of the outside world.

"Are you there, Pauline?" he asked, after perhaps half an hour during which his mind had swiftly swept the whole surface of his affairs.

The nurse rose from the lounge across the foot of the bed. "Your wife was worn out, Mr. Dumont," she began. "She has--"

"What day is it?" he interrupted.

"Thursday."

"Of the month, I mean."

"The seventeenth," she answered, smiling in anticipation of his astonishment.

But he said without change of expression,

"Then I've been ill three weeks and three days. Tell Mr. Culver I wish to see him at once."

"But the doctor--"

"Damn the doctor," replied Dumont, good-naturedly. "Don't irritate me by opposing. I shan't talk with Culver a minute by the clock. What I say will put my mind at rest. Then I'll eat something and sleep for a day at least."

The nurse hesitated, but his eyes fairly forced her out of the room to fetch Culver. "Now remember, Mr. Dumont--less than a minute," she said. "I'll come back in just sixty seconds."

"Come in forty," he replied. When she had closed the door he said to Culver: "What are the quotations on Woolens?"

"Preferred twenty-eight; Common seven," answered Culver. "They've been about steady for two weeks."

"Good. And what's Great Lakes and Gulf?"

Culver showed his surprise. "I'll have to consult the paper," he said. "You never asked me for that quotation before. I'd no idea you'd want it." He went to the next room and immediately returned. "G. L. and G. one hundred and two."

Dumont smiled with a satisfied expression.

"Now--go down-town--what time is it?"

"Eight o'clock."

"Morning?"

"Yes, sir, morning."

"Go down-town at once and set expert accountants--get Evarts and Schuman--set them at work on my personal accounts with the Woolens Company. Tell everybody I'm expected to die, and know it, and am getting facts for making my will. And stay down-town yourself all day--find out everything you can about National Woolens and that raiding crowd and about Great Lakes and Gulf. The better you succeed in this mission the better it'll be for you. Thank you, by the way, for keeping my accident quiet. Find out how the Fanning-Smiths are carrying National Woolens. Find out--"

The door opened and the plain, clean figure of the nurse appeared. "The minute's up," she said.

"One second more, please. Close the door." When she had obeyed he went on: "See Tavistock--you know you must be careful not to let any one at his office know that you're connected with me. See him--ask him--no, telephone Tavistock to come at once--and you find out all you can independently--especially about the Fanning-Smiths and Great Lakes and Gulf."

"Very well," said Culver.

"A great deal depends on your success," continued Dumont--"a great deal for me, a great deal--a VERY great deal for you."

His look met Culver's and each seemed satisfied with what he saw. Then Culver went, saying to himself: "What makes him think the Fanning-Smiths were mixed up in the raid? And what on earth has G. L. and G. got to do with it? Gad, he's a WONDER!" The longer Culver lived in intimacy with Dumont the greater became to him the mystery of his combination of bigness and littleness, audacity and caution, devil and man. "It gets me," he often reflected, "how a man can plot to rob millions of people in one hour and in the next plan endowments for hospitals and colleges; despise public opinion one minute and the next be courting it like an actor. But that's the way with all these big fellows. And I'll know how to do it when I get to be one of 'em."

As the nurse reentered Dumont's bedroom he called out, lively as a boy: "SOMETHING to eat! ANYthing to eat! EVERYthing to eat!"

The nurse at first flatly refused to admit Tavistock. But at half-past nine he entered, tall, lean, lithe, sharp of face, shrewd of eye, rakish of mustache; by Dumont's direction he closed and locked the door. "Why!" he exclaimed, "you don't look much of a sick man. You're thin, but your color's not bad and your eyes are clear. And down-town they have you dying."

Dumont laughed. Tavistock instantly recognized in laugh and look Dumont's battle expression. "Dying--yes. Dying to get at 'em. Tavistock, we'll kick those fellows out of Wall Street before the middle of next week. How much Great Lakes is there floating on the market?"

Tavistock looked puzzled. He had expected to talk National Woolens, and this man did not even speak of it, seemed absorbed in a stock in which Tavistock did not know he had any interest whatever. "G. L. and G.?" he said. "Not much--perhaps thirty thousand shares. It's been quiet for a long time. It's an investment stock, you know."

Dumont smiled peculiarly. "I want a list of the stock-holders--not all, only those holding more than a thousand shares."

"There aren't many big holders. Most of the stock's in small lots in the middle West."

"So much the better."

"I'm pretty sure I can get you a fairly accurate list."

Tavistock, Dumont's very private and personal broker, had many curious ways of reaching into the carefully guarded books and other business secrets of brokers and of the enterprises listed on the New York Stock Exchange. He and Dumont had long worked together in the speculative parts of Dumont's schemes. Dumont was the chief source of his rapidly growing fortune, though no one except Culver, not even Mrs. Tavistock, knew that they had business relations. Dumont moved through Tavistock secretly, and Tavistock in turn moved through other agents secretly. But for such precautions as these the great men of Wall Street would be playing with all the cards exposed for the very lambs to cock their ears at.

"I want it immediately," said Dumont. "Only the larger holders, you understand."

"Haste always costs. I'll have to get hold of a man who can get hold of some one high up in the Great Lakes dividend department."

"Pay what you must--ten--twenty thousand--more if necessary. But get it to-night!"

"I'll try."

"Then you'll get it."

He slept, with a break of fifteen minutes, until ten the next morning. Then Tavistock appeared with the list. "It was nearly midnight before my man could strike a bargain, so I didn't telephone you. The dividend clerk made a memory list. I had him verify it this morning as early as he could get at the books. He says at least a third of the road is held in small lots abroad. He's been in charge of the books for twenty years, and he says there have been more changes in the last two months than in all that time. He thinks somebody has sold a big block of the stock on the quiet."

Dumont smiled significantly. "I think I understand that," he said. He glanced at the list. "It's even shorter than I thought."

"You notice, one-third of the stock's tied up in the Wentworth estate," said Tavistock.

"Yes. And here's the name of Bowen's dividend clerk. Bowen is traveling in the far East. Probably he's left no orders about his Great Lakes--why should he when it's supposed to be as sound and steady as Government bonds? That means another fifty thousand shares out of the way for our purposes. Which of these names stand for the Fanning-Smiths?"

"I only recognize Scannell--James Fanning-Smith's private secretary. But there must be others, as he's down for only twenty-one thousand shares."

"Then he's the only one," said Dumont, "for the Fanning-Smiths have only twenty-one thousand shares at the present time. I know that positively."

"What!" Tavistock showed that he was astounded. "I knew James Fanning-Smith was an ass, but I never suspected him of such folly as that. So they are the ones that have been selling?"

"Yes--not only selling what they owned but also-- However, no matter. It's safe to say there are less than a hundred and fifty thousand shares for us to take care of. I want you to get me--right away--options for fifteen days on as many of these remaining big lots as possible. Make the best terms you can--anything up to one hundred and twenty-five--and offer five or even ten dollars a share forfeit for the option. Make bigger offers--fifteen--where it's necessary. Set your people to work at once. They've got the rest of to-day, all day to-morrow, all day Sunday. But I'd rather the whole thing were closed up by Saturday night. I'll be satisfied when you've got me control of a hundred thousand shares--that'll be the outside of safety."

"Yes, you're reasonably sure to win, if you can carry that and look after offerings of fifty thousand in the market. The options on the hundred thousand shares oughtn't to cost you much more than a million. The fifty thousand you'll have to buy in the market may cost you six or seven millions." Tavistock recited these figures carelessly. In reality he was watching Dumont shrewdly, for he had believed that the National Woolens raid had ruined him, had certainly put him out of the large Wall Street moves.

"In that small drawer, to the left, in the desk there," said Dumont, pointing. "Bring me the Inter-State National check-book, and pen and ink."