Chapter 17

"Cannot -- send -- report -- till -- several -- chemical -- anal -- anal -- "

"Yes -- analyses -- I -- get -- you -- are -- complete -- is -- that -- it."

"Yes." Clark breathed a sigh of relief. His brow was wet.

"When -- will -- that -- be -- Wimp -- asks."

"Three -- days."

"Wimp -- says -- hurry -- up -- things -- shaky -- here -- expect -- attack -- by -- bears -- have tried -- to -- place -- rails -- elsewhere -- but -- not -- successful. Wimp -- says -- good night."

Clark's eyes sparkled with anger and he hammered the key. There were other things he wanted to say--and must say. But for all his repeated calls there was only silence, till in an interval, while he rubbed his throbbing fingers, the receiver began to tilt.

"Wimp -- says -- good night --" it announced with metallic finality.

He got up and stood staring at the thing for a moment, his face heavy with anger, the group in Wimperley's office vividly before him. He could see the cold features of Birch, sharpened by the tenseness of the hour into a visage bloodless and inflexible, with thin tight lips and narrow expressionless eyes. He could see Stoughton, red with discomfort and resentment; Riggs' excited and anxious little face, and Wimperley himself, cast with a new severity; all supremely conscious of that which probably must be faced on the morrow. And what about Marsham? Tottering was now their faith in the essential future of the works and the great cycle of their operations. The wire had transmitted their decisions, but over its yellow filament had also trickled their apprehension. With a touch of cynicism he recalled the congratulatory messages--the very first it had carried.

He went out on the terrace again, seeking the black bulk of the rail mill in the medley of structures down at the works. Presently he found and scrutinized it. Somewhere in its gloom lurked an error, or else in the great furnaces that shouldered nakedly into the moonlit air. With a sudden sense of fatigue, he turned to his bedroom.

"At any rate the chief constable is with me," he soliloquized sardonically, "and that's something."

In five minutes he was sleeping profoundly.

XXI.--THE CRASH

Around the neck of every great industrial undertaking is hung a chain of unlovely parasites, who fatten on the interruptions to its progress and the fluctuations in its success. These men create nothing--contribute nothing. Playing on the fears and hopes and untempered weakness of the public, they reap where they do not sow and feed the speculative appetite of millions. To them it is negligible whether good men go down or honest effort is rewarded. Predatory by nature and unscrupulous in action, they prey upon their fellows, and, like the wolf, are strangers to mercy and compassion. Their wealth is not an asset to the world, because it represents nothing they have originated, but only that which they have filched from others less shrewd and unscrupulous. They do not hesitate to magnify the false or to bring to ruin what they find most profitably assailable. They have respect for neither genius nor labor, but juggle with the efforts of both in a fierce game for gold.

As the gong struck on the Philadelphia Exchange next morning, a well known operator associated with Marsham's firm threw five thousand shares of Consolidated on the market. It was taken at forty-eight, a loss of two points, and in that first transaction the value of the entire enterprise shrank by half a million.

A moment later, Wimperley knew of it and sent for Birch, but Birch, who had been just as speedily informed, was already on his way. He came in, a little paler than usual. On his heels arrived Stoughton and Riggs.

They were in the padded seclusion of the president's inner office, while two blocks away swelled a storm, whose echoes only reached them in the sharp staccato of the ticker in the corner as it vomited a strip of white paper. Wimperley stood there, the strip slipping between his fingers, while selling orders began to pour in to Philadelphia, and the price of Consolidated crumbled like dust. He could visualize the scene on the floor of the Exchange, the frenzy of men smitten with sudden fear, and the deliberate cold-blooded action of others who lent their weight to this downfall. Marsham was very busy. Greater grew the flood, with sales of so great quantities of stock that they perceived the market was going boldly short. Then came an avalanche of small holdings, till the ticker announced that it had fallen behind the record of transactions and that Consolidated was now offered at thirty-five with no bidders. This was three-quarters of an hour after the Exchange opened.

Stoughton and the others sat quite motionless. The thing was too big for them to grasp at once, but they had a dull sense that the foundation stones of their great pyramid were shifting, that the gigantic structures at St. Marys were dissolving into something phantom-like and tenuous. At this juncture a message was brought in from Clark.

Hear market is very weak. Please buy five thousand for me by way of support.

Wimperley read and handed it silently to Riggs. The little man swallowed a lump in his throat. "By God!" he said unsteadily, "but he's got sand, no doubt about it."

"What's that?" Stoughton demanded dully, and, reaching out, glanced at the telegram. "Why throw Robert Fisher to the wolves? They're doing well enough as it is," he grunted, and relapsed into a brooding silence.

Then began to arrive inquiries from country banks and cancellations from country subscribers. Wimperley read them out as they came in, and, well informed though he was of the wide distribution of Consolidated stock, experienced a slow amazement at the broad range of his followers. Their messages were indignant, despairing, threatening and pathetic. He began to wonder why he had accepted a responsibility which was now for the first time unveiled in such startling proportions. Yesterday the Consolidated was a name to conjure with. To-day it was an epitome of human fear and desperation.

Ten seconds before the noon gong struck on the Exchange, a frantic broker lifted a bull like voice above the uproar.

"Sell five thousand consol at thirty-two, thirty-two!" He bellowed it out raucously. The selling order had been flashed from Toronto.

"Taken at thirty-two," snapped Marsham's operator, who had opened the perilous game that morning, and, smiling, jotted a note on his cuff. He had made just eighty thousand dollars on that one transaction. The market strengthened a little in the afternoon on short covering, the matter of investment being thrown to the winds. Consolidated was now a gambling counter, and the closing quotation stood at thirty-five. Former values had shrunk by some eight millions. Gone was that laborious upbuilding into which Clark and the rest had thrown their very souls; overcast were the efforts of seven years. It was, to most people, a question of what might be made of what was left. The works remained, but, the public concluded, the iron and steel section, the heart of the thing, was unsound. Such is the communicable essence of fear.

At ten minutes after three the directors met to face a situation which was, in all truth, serious enough. Philadelphia banks, smarting from loans made on Consolidated stock, had declined further credit. The first payment of a million dollars for steel rails was indefinitely deferred. Creditors, galvanized by the events of the day, poured in ceaseless demands that their accounts be liquidated, but moneys due the Consolidated for pulp had been realized and diverted into the building of railways and the construction of the rail mill. Birch, his face very grave, ran over all this in a level monotone of a voice, while the rest wearily admitted its truth, and in the middle of the rehearsal a message was brought in from Clark.

Greatly regret events of to-day but am unshakenly confident for the future, given sufficient time to remedy defect in rails which should not take long. Chemical analyses show too high carbon and this can be rectified. Now awaiting remittance for payroll.

Wimperley read it without a trace of accentuation, while Stoughton got up and stared, as once before, at the sky line of Philadelphia.

"Well," drawled Birch dryly, "we've heard from our prophet."

"He's got more confidence in our future than we have in his past," put in Riggs.

Stoughton turned, "What about the payroll?"

"If you have a million or so to spare, we'll send it up. There's more to be met than the payroll." The voice was a trifle insulting, but Stoughton did not notice it, and Birch went on. "There's just one thing we can do, if we can't get money to run."

"Well?" jerked out Riggs, "say it."

"Shut down."

Wimperley's long fingers were drumming the table. He did not fancy himself as the president of a great company in whose works not a wheel was turning.

"I'd like to find some other way out of it. There's going to be hell to pay here, but--"

"Perhaps the ingenious gentleman at St. Marys could help out," said Birch acidly.

At that came a little silence and there appeared the vision of Clark in his office, with his achievements dissolving before his eyes.

"Robert Fisher is no financier," struck in Stoughton wearily.

Wimperley smiled in spite of himself. "Perhaps not, but he mesmerized us into that office. There's only one thing I can see--issue debentures secured by first mortgage."

"Who'll take 'em? We used up all our arguments long ago. Philadelphia doesn't want a mortgage on Robert Fisher, and what about the Pennsylvania farmer?"

"What about him?" asked Wimperley pettishly.

"As I know him, he's a bad loser--he works too hard for it. This is a case of new money from outside, and I for one don't feel like doing any traveling."

"In other words we've demonstrated that whether or not by any fault of ours, we've made a mess of it," said Stoughton with utter candor.

"Something remarkably like it."

"And when Clark told us, months ago, that he wouldn't draw any salary, and that a lot of others were only drawing half salary to help out till the rail mill got going, we should have made provision for possible mistakes, and seen as well that we were getting in over our ears."

"But Clark believed all he told us," piped Riggs with a flash of loyalty.

"Of course he did, and he still does, and because he is still only twenty years ahead of his time he's all the more dangerous."

"Let's get back to this payroll," blurted Stoughton who was getting more and more uncomfortable.

"Fishing's pretty good up there, let him fish for it." The voice of Birch was like ice. He was one of those who by nature are fitted for cold and ruthless action in time of stress. Most of his money had been made across the dissecting table of enterprises, and not at their birth. He was a financial surgeon, but no midwife, and had only been magnetized into his past support by the hypnotic personality of Clark. He was grimly mindful that Marsham, after waiting for years for his opening, had got more than even. Birch's cold mind now wondered for the first time whether, after all, the cut throat game he had once loved to play was worth the candle. Here was American credit and effort massacred by American ruthlessness and revenge. Marsham had pounced upon a weak point in the Consolidated's armor and pierced deep into the body corporate. He had struck to kill.

"And would you shut down the pulp mill--market's good now?" persisted Stoughton.

"I'd rivet the whole thing tight. The railway never paid,--at least directly--that we could reckon. It's costing more to ship pulp on our own boats than the rate at which we could ship by contract--and if they are not going to bring back coke, why run them? Gentlemen, this means a smash--an interval of anxiety, discomfort, loss of prestige, and--"

"Go on, Elisha--" barked Riggs. "Oh, please go on!"

"Prestige--and later reconstruction. In the meantime, we don't spend a cent on running anything, and find out exactly what we owe. Then comes new money, and," he added cynically, "a new bunch of directors."

"And who will arrange that?" Riggs demanded abruptly.

"One Robert Fisher Clark--if he has not lost all his power of magnetism."

"Aren't you guessing a little too fast?"

"No, it's quite possible. His argument will be that we didn't back him to the necessary limit--that another million would have done it--and," concluded Birch reflectively, "that may be perfectly true. But God knows we did what we could. What's this one?" He glanced at Wimperley, who was reading a telegram just brought in.

Waiting your remittance for payroll, necessary that this be provided to-day, otherwise I anticipate serious disturbance here. It is advisable that I do not come to Philadelphia just yet as my leaving here would be wrongly interpreted.

R.F.C.

There fell a moment's silence, instantly recognized by all four as the precursor of grave events. Birch had spoken the thought that lurked in all their minds. To continue running meant another payroll to be met.

It now appeared suicidal to have stretched their resources to the limit of their credit, but not one of them had remotely dreamed that a few thousand tons of steel rails were to drag the whole structure to toppling destruction. Birch, as usual, first pulled himself together.

"It's put up or shut up, and we've got to tell Clark right now."

Little Riggs sighed despondently. This meeting would soon be over and the decision made, after which he would have to face a totally unexpected set of conditions and a circle of friends and investors who would regard him with close and uncomfortable interest.

"Well, I suppose it's shut up!" he hazarded unsteadily.

Birch looked inquiringly at the other two, who nodded without speaking, then began to write. The rest did not even glance at each other, but found absorption in walls and windows and the big map of poignant memory, while the long, waxen fingers moved inexorably on.

"What about this?"

"'Under existing conditions and the impossibility of making immediate financial arrangements for current needs directors decide best to close down all work of every kind at once, giving notice that this will be only temporary. You will report here as soon as in your judgment you can wisely come down.' Is that all right?"

Stoughton bit at his thumbnail and nodded. "I suppose so--and there'll be hell to pay in St. Marys, eh, Wimperley? Our friend the chief constable will be working over time. Remember the beggar? The damn fool was right too."

"Yes, it's all right," said Wimperley, "and now I suppose there'll be writs and injunctions enough to fill the tailrace. We'd better get out and arrange some support for the market. Birch, you compound a comforting statement for the papers. We adjourn till tomorrow at nine-thirty."

They did adjourn, but lingered for an hour digging into the past seven years. It was a talk such as one might expect under the circumstances. Charged with an apprehension but thinly veiled by manner and speech, events took on for them no perspective. They were too close at hand. All this was so intimately their own and Clark's responsibility that every other consideration became instantly submerged, and it was a matter of living for the day, if not for the hour. Had any one at this time told Wimperley or Stoughton that for a pace or two they had merely fallen out of step in the march of progress, and that however depressing might be the present aspect of affairs it did not really affect the preordained outcome, they would have flouted the thought. It is not given to many men to place themselves correctly in the general scheme of the world, and to fairly estimate their own contribution. Thus it was that Wimperley and his associates read on the screen of the present only the word "failure," and were conscious chiefly of a certain self contempt for the arduous part they had played. At the last moment success had been snatched from their grasp.

Stoughton walked slowly home. He was thinking of Manson, the pessimist, who had been right. And such is the interlinking chain of life. Manson, at this moment, was sitting in his office, while his mind harked aimlessly back to the first time he had met the men from Philadelphia. He stared at a telegram that trembled between his thick fingers. His broad face was gray and ghastly. He had been here motionless for some time, when a gentle knock sounded at the door and his wife came timidly in. One glance at his face, and her arms were round his neck.

"What is it, Peter?" she quavered.

He did not look up but held the message so that she might read it.

Sold you out to-day on stop loss order at thirty-two margin being exhausted. Farthing.

She read it wonderingly. "What does it mean; who is Farthing?"

"My Toronto broker--or at least he was," said Manson heavily.

"But I don't understand, dear."

"Ho, I didn't suppose you would; it means I lose my hundred thousand, that's all."

"Had you a hundred thousand?" she whispered.

"Very, very nearly, and now I haven't anything,--that is, I didn't make a cent."

She drew a long breath. "Peter, tell me just how we stand."

"Exactly where we did the day a man named Clark came to St. Marys," he said dully, "with not a cent more."

There followed a little silence, and the tears began to roll down her cheeks. He put his arm round her, and perceived, with astonishment, that they were tears of happiness.

"Peter dear," she said very softly, "you don't know how glad I am that it's all over."

"You mean the hundred thousand!" He stared at her blankly.

"Yes, just that. I know you won't understand, but things have never been the same for me since you began to try and make it. You were different--everything was different."

"But if I had made it you would have been glad."

"Perhaps--I don't know. I'm rather afraid of a hundred thousand dollars," she began to smile a little through her tears, "but now I feel ten years younger. Is that what 'stop loss' means--you don't actually lose anything?"

"Nothing more than I have sent him in this case."

"And you didn't send him my money--not that it's much."

"Good God, Mary, no!"

"Peter," she began gently, "you weren't happy all the time--I could tell that. You were trying to do something you weren't made for--I could see that too. You are very strong--but it isn't that kind of strength. People like us can't do that kind of thing--we feel too much. We haven't got much, but it represents a lot and our lives are in it, and this hundred thousand dollars wouldn't have been that kind of money, would it?"

"No, I suppose not." Manson felt the tumult in his breast subsiding.

"I know you did it for me and the children, but we don't want you to speculate for us. We just want you--as we used to have you. We have enough of everything else, and we'll all be very happy again. Oh, my dear, big, faithful husband." She slipped into his arms and put her head on his great shoulder.

And Manson, holding her to him, felt new springs of emotion unseal themselves within him. The past few years had not been happy ones. As his profits grew, he was conscious of the spectre of anxiety at his elbow. It had been a simple thing to make a thousand and then ten and then twenty, till, as he marched ever faster toward the siren call, he perceived that he was no longer in his own country, but one in which the landmarks were all changed. Now, with the throb of his wife's heart against his own, he acknowledged defeat, but perhaps it was defeat of that which was not himself.

Presently the little woman stirred, brushed the tears from her cheeks, and, smiling, kissed him tenderly.

"I'm happier than I've been for years. Did you ever guess that people here thought you were a rich man?"

"No."

"Well, they did, at least some of them, Mrs. Dibbott for one."

"Then you can put Mrs. Dibbott right."

"Will what has happened at the works make much difference here?"

"Probably a good deal. I'm looking for trouble."

"Up at Ironville?" she said anxiously.

"But I'm good for it." He stretched his great arms, feeling strangely free and fit for his duty.

"What about Mr. Clark?"

At this Manson grew suddenly thoughtful. Caught up in his own anxiety, he had never considered Clark. The figure of the latter began to take on strange proportions. What, he wondered, had Clark lost? Within twenty hours of the time he maintained his unaltered belief, the bottom had dropped out. Or, he queried, had Clark merely said this to prevent him from throwing his stock on the market? He pondered over this, and decided that five thousand shares were negligible amongst millions. Then he felt his wife's inquiring glance.

"I'm sorry for Clark, but I guess he's wise enough to take care of himself."

"I hope so. I've only spoken to him once, but I like him."

She disappeared presently, leaving him busy with special instructions to the police--in case of disturbance. She did not worry about that, being chiefly conscious that a load was gone from her spirit. Singing softly to herself, she went out with gladness in her eyes, and halfway to Filmer's store encountered Mrs. Bowers. The latter looked pale and tired. Bowers, for the past twenty-four hours, had been a much tried man--and his wife reflected it.

"Good evening," said the latter, "you look very fresh. How do you manage it?"

Mrs. Manson, suddenly recalled to earth, smiled gently. "I'm rather happy to-day. I hope Mr. Bowers is not very anxious."

"It's no use saying he isn't, but he doesn't talk about it. How's your husband?"

"Splendid."

"Well, you're the only untroubled pair I've heard of to-day. My husband's in a frightful temper because he didn't sell our land six months ago. He says we'll never sell it now, but I'm just as glad. Is the whole thing going to break up?" Mrs. Bowers swung her parasol toward the rapids.

"I--I don't really know anything about it," said the little woman with a touch of nervousness from which she recovered instantly, then, smiling, "perhaps I'll come over to-morrow."

"Do, there's a heap to talk about, and smile like that just as long as you can--the town needs it."

She walked on, her mind very busy. Without question something excellent had happened to the Mansons--and in a time like this! Manson was said to be in the way of making a fortune, and now, she concluded, he had made it. There was no other explanation for an expression like his wife's when such grim rumors were abroad. A little later she told Mrs. Worden, and both the judge and Bowers heard of it, and next day the story reached a dozen houses in St. Marys. The constable, it was said, for all his pessimism, had been sharper than Clark himself.

But Manson was only a leaf picked up by the edge of the storm in which Clark sat, its unapproachable center. The telegram compiled by Birch and signed by Wimperley, as president, was on his desk, just as the secretary had laid it before he went silently out, unable to meet the mystifying glance of those gray eyes. Clark had never moved nor looked up, nor did he till half an hour later, when he dictated a notice to be posted throughout the works. "_All operations will temporarily cease this night at six o'clock. Employees will be notified when to apply for their wages, which will shortly be paid in full. The accounting staff will remain at duty._" His voice was level and absolutely expressionless. Then he went out, and, taking the broad trail to the rapids, seated himself a few minutes later in a well remembered place.