Part 8

Weddell, Hopkins & Co. held 14,000 shares of Iowa Midland stock, and on the next day Rock received their proxies. Coming from so well-known, so notoriously anti-Greener a house, they served as credentials to him, and he was able to convince many doubting Thomases. He secured proxies from practically all the anti-Greener stock held in the city, as well as in Philadelphia and Boston.

His day-long absences from the office aroused no suspicions there, since everybody thought he was working in the interest of Brown & Greener, including Messrs. Brown & Greener. All told, the proxies he had secured from Mr. Greener’s friends and from his foes amounted to 61,830 shares. It was really a remarkable performance. He felt very proud of it. As to consequences, he had carefully weighed them. He was working for Frederick Rock. He was bound to succeed, on whichever side the coin came down.

Mr. Greener called him into the private office.

“Mr. Rock, how about those Iowa Midland proxies?”

“I have them safe,” answered the clerk, a bit defiantly.

“How many?”

Rock pulled out a piece of paper, though he knew the figures by heart. He said, in a tone he endeavored to make nonchalant: “I have exactly 61,830 shares.”

“What? What?” The Napoleon’s voice overflowed with astonishment.

Rock looked straight into Greener’s shifty brown eyes. “I said,” he repeated, “that I had proxies for 61,830 shares.”

Mr. Greener remembered himself. “I congratulate you, Mr. Rock, on keeping your word. You will find I keep mine equally well,” he said in his normal squeak.

“We may as well have an understanding now as any other time, Mr. Greener.” Rock’s eyes did not leave the sallow face of the great railroad wrecker. He knew he had crossed the Rubicon. He was fighting for his future, for the prosperity of his dreams. And he was fighting a giant of giants. All this the clerk thought; and the thought braced him wonderfully. He became self-possessed, discriminating—a Napoleonic bud about to burst into full bloom.

“What do you mean?” squeaked Mr. Greener, naïvely.

Mr. Brown entered. He was just in time to hear the clerk say: “You have, all told, 110,000 shares of Iowa Midland. President Willetts and his crowd control about the same amount.”

“Yes,” said the sallow-faced little man. His forehead was moist—barely moist—with perspiration, but his face was expressionless. His eyes were less furtive; that was all. He was looking intently now at the young clerk, for he understood.

“Well, some of the proxies stand in the name of Frederick Rock or John F. Greener, but the greater part in my name alone. I can vote the entire lot as I please. And whichever side I vote for will have an absolute majority. Mr. Greener, I have the naming of the directors, and therefore of the president of the Iowa Midland. And you can’t prevent me; and you can’t touch me; and you can’t do a d—d thing to me!” he ended, defiantly. It was nearly all superfluous, inartistic. But, youth—a defect one overcomes with time!

“You infernal scoundrel!” shouted Mr. Brown. He had a short, thick neck, and anger made his face dangerously purple.

“I secured most of the proxies,” continued Rock, in a tone that savored slightly of self-defence, “by assuring Weddell, Hopkins & Co. and their friends that I would vote against Mr. Greener.” He paused.

“Go ahead, Mr. Rock,” squeaked Mr. Greener; “don’t be afraid to talk.” The pale little man with the black beard and the high forehead not only had a great genius for finance, but possessed wonderful nerve. His squeak was an inconsistency; but it served to make him human.

“You offered me $10,000 cash and $2,000 a year.”

“Yes,” admitted Mr. Greener, meekly. “How much do you want?” His look became furtive again. A great weight had been removed from his mind. Rock perceived it and became even more courageous.

“Weddell, Hopkins & Co. and their friends want me to vote the Willetts ticket, Mr. Willetts having promised to make important reforms. My reward is to be the position of assistant secretary, with headquarters in New York, at a salary of $5,000 a year, to say nothing of the backing of Weddell, Hopkins & Co.”

“I’ll do as much and give you $20,000 in cash,” said Mr. Greener, quietly.

“No. I want to join the New York Stock Exchange. I want you to buy me a seat and I want you to give me some of your business. And I want you to lend me $50,000 on my note.”

“Yes?”

“Mr. Greener, you know what I can do; and I know what the absolute control of the Iowa Midland means to you, and what the consolidation with Keokuk & Northern or the lease of the one by the other would do for both of them—and for you. And I want to be your broker. I’ll serve you faithfully, Mr. Greener.”

“Rock,” squeaked Mr. Greener, “shake hands. I understand just how you feel about this. I’ll buy you a seat and I’ll give you all the business I can, and I’ll lend you $100,000 without any note. I think I know you now. The seat you shall have just as soon as it can be bought. My interests shall be your interests in the future.”

“I’ve made all the necessary arrangements. I can buy the seat at a moment’s notice,” said Rock, calmly, though his heart was beating wildly for sheer joy of victory. “It will cost $23,000.”

“Tell Mr. Simpson to make out my personal check for $25,000,” piped the Napoleon of the Street, almost cordially.

“Th-thank you very much, Mr. Greener,” stammered the bold clerk. “The proxies——”

“Oh, that’s all right,” interrupted Mr. John F. Greener. “You’ll go to Des Moines with us. You’re one of us now. I’ve long wanted a man like you. But, Rock, nowadays, young men are either gamblers or fools,” he added, with a final plaintive squeak.

A week later Mr. Greener was elected president of the Iowa Midland Railway Company and Mr. Rock was elected a member of the New York Stock Exchange.

THE LOST OPPORTUNITY

For many years Daniel Dittenhoeffer had desired the ruin of John F. Greener. “Dutch Dan,” as the Street called Dittenhoeffer was a burly man with very blonde hair, a very red nose and a very loud voice. Greener was a sallow, swarthy bit of a man, with black hair and a squeaky voice. He had furtive brown eyes and a very high forehead; while Dittenhoeffer had frank blue eyes and the pugnacious chin and thick neck of a prize fighter. Both were members of the New York Stock Exchange but Greener was never seen on the “floor” after one of his victims lifted him bodily by the collar and dropped him fifteen feet into a coal cellar on Exchange Place. He would plan the wrecks of railroad systems as a measure preliminary to their absorption, just as a boa constrictor crushes its victims into pulp the more easily to swallow them. But the practice, unchecked for years, had made him nervous and soul-fidgetty.

Dan spent his days from 10 to 3 on the Stock Exchange and his nights from 10 to 3 at the roulette tables or before a faro lay-out. Restless as the quivering sea and suffering from chronic insomnia, he had perforce to satisfy his constitutional craving for powerful stimulants, but as he hated delirium tremens he gave himself ceaselessly big doses of the wine of gambling—it does as much for the nerves as the very best whiskey. He would buy or sell 50,000 shares of a stock and he would bet $50,000 on the turn of a card. On an occasion he offered to wager a fortune that he could guess which of two flies that had alit on a table would be the first to fly away. Greener found, in the Stock Exchange, the means to a desired end. Despite innumerable bits of stock jobbing, he had no exalted opinion, in his heart of hearts, of stock operations. But Dittenhoeffer thought the stock market was the court of last resort, whither financiers should go, when they were in the right, to get their deserts; and when they were in the wrong to overcome their deserts by the brute force of dollars. It was natural that in their operations in the market the two men should be as dissimilar as they were in their physical and temperamental characteristics—Machiavelli and Richard Cœur-de-Lion.

Nobody knew exactly how the enmity between Greener and Dittenhoeffer began. The “Little Napoleon of Railroading” had felt toward Dutch Dan a certain passive hostility for interference with sundry stock market deals. But Dan hated Greener madly, probably for the same reason that a hawk may have for hating a snake: the instinctive antipathy of the utterly dissimilar.

Scores of men had tried to “bust” Greener, but Greener had grown the richer by their efforts, the growth of his fortune being proportionate to the contraction of theirs. Sam Sharpe had come from Arizona with $12,000,000 avowedly to show the effete East how to crush “financial skunks of the Greener class.” And the financial skunk learned no new lesson, though the privilege of imagining he was giving one cost Sharpe a half-million a month for nearly one year. Then, after Sharpe had learned more of the game—and of Greener—he joined hands with Dittenhoeffer and together they attacked Greener. They were skilful stock operators, very rich and utterly without financial fear. And they loathed Greener. In a more gorgeous age they would have cut the Little Napoleon to pieces and passed his roasted heart on a platter around the festive board. In the colorless XIX century they were fain to content themselves with endeavoring to despoil him of his tear-stained millions; to do which they united their own smile-wreathed millions—some seven or eight of them—and opened fire. Their combined fortune was divided into ten projectiles and one after another hurled at the little man with the squeaky voice and the high forehead. The little man dodged the first and the second and the third, but the fourth broke his leg and the fifth knocked the wind out of him. The Street cheered and showed its confidence in the artillerists by going short of the Greener stocks. But just before the sixth shot Greener called to his assistance old Wilbur Wise, the man with the skin-flinty heart and thirty millions in cash. A protecting rampart, man-high, of government bonds was raised about the prostrate Napoleon and the financial cannoneers ceased firing precious projectiles. The new fortifications were impregnable and they knew it; so they contented themselves with gathering up their own shot and a small railroad or two dropped by Greener in his haste to seek shelter. Then Sharpe went to England to win the Derby and Dittenhoeffer went to Long Branch to amuse himself playing a no-limit faro game that cost him on an average $10,000 a night for a month.

There was a period of peace in Wall Street following the last encounter between the diminutive Napoleon and Dutch Dan. But after a few months the fight resumed. Greener was desirous of “bulling” his stocks generally and his pet, Federal Telegraph Company, particularly. Just to show there was no need to hurry the “bull” or upward movement Dan sold the stock “short” every time Greener tried to advance the price. Four times did Greener try and four times Dittenhoeffer sold him a few thousand shares—just enough to check the advance. Up to a certain point a manipulator of stocks is successful. His manipulation may comprise many ingenious and complex actions and devices, but the elemental fact in bull manipulation is to buy more than the other fellow can or wishes to sell. Greener was willing to buy, but Dan was even more willing to sell.

Greener really was in desperate straits. He was committed to many important enterprises. To carry them out he needed cash and the banks, fearful of stock market possibilities, were loath to lend him enough. Besides which, there was the desire on the part of the banks’ directors to pick up fine bargains should their refusal to lend Greener money force him to throw overboard the greater part of his load. Greener had despoiled innumerable widows and orphans in his railroad wrecking schemes. The money lenders should avenge the widows and orphans. It was a good deed. There was not a doubt of it in their minds.

Federal Telegraph, in which Greener’s commitments were heaviest, had been slowly sinking. Successful in other quarters of the market, Dutch Dan decided to “whack the everlasting daylights out of Fed. Tel.” He went about it calmly, just as he played roulette—selling it methodically, ceaselessly, depressingly. And the price wilted. Greener, unsuccessful in other quarters of the Street, decided it was time to do something to save himself. He needed only $5,000,000. At a pinch $3,000,000 might do; or, for the moment, even $2,500,000. But he must have the money at once. Delay meant danger and danger meant Dittenhoeffer and Dittenhoeffer might mean death.

Of a sudden, rising from nowhere, fathered by no one, the rumor whirled about the Street that Greener was in difficulties. Financial ghouls ran to the banks and interviewed the presidents. They asked no questions in order to get no lies. They simply said, as though they knew: “Greener is on his uppers.”

The bank presidents smiled, indulgently, almost pityingly: “Oh, you’ve just heard it, have you? We’ve known it for six weeks!”

Back to the Stock Exchange rushed the ghouls to sell the Greener stocks—not Federal Telegraph which was really a good property, but his reorganized roads, whose renascence was so recent that they had not grown into full strength. Down went prices and up went the whisper: “Dittenhoeffer’s got Greener at last!”

A thousand brokers rushed to find their dear friend Dan to congratulate him—Napoleon’s conqueror, the hero of the hour, the future dispenser of liberal commissions, but dear Dan could not be found. He was not on the “floor” of the Exchange nor at his office.

Some one had sought Dittenhoeffer before the brokers thought of congratulating him—some one who was the greatest gambler of all, greater even than Dutch Dan—a little man with furtive brown eyes and a squeaky voice; also a wonderful forehead: Mr. John F. Greener.

“Mr. Dittenhoeffer, I sent for you to ask you a question,” he squeaked, calmly. He stood beside a garrulous ticker.

“Certainly, Mr. Greener.” And Dittenhoeffer instantly had a vision of humble requests to “let up.” And he almost formulated the very words of a withering refusal.

“Would you execute an order from me?”

“Certainly, Mr. Greener. I’ll execute anybody’s orders. I’m a broker.”

“Very well. Sell 50,000 shares of Federal Telegraph Company for me.”

“What price?” jotting down the figures, from force of habit, his mind being paralyzed.

“The best you can get. The stock,” glancing at the tape, “is 91.”

“Very well.”

The two men looked at one another—Dutch Dan half menacingly, Greener, calmly, steadily, his furtive eyes almost truthful.

“Good-morning,” said Dittenhoeffer at length and the little man’s high-browed head nodded dismissingly.

Dittenhoeffer hastened back to the Exchange. At the entrance he met his partner, Smith—the “Co.” of D. Dittenhoeffer & Co.

“Bill, I’ve just got an order from Greener to sell 50,000 shares of Federal Telegraph.”

“Wh-what?” gasped Smith.

“Greener sent for me, asked me whether I’d accept an order from him, I said yes, and he told me to sell 50,000 shares of Telegraph, and I’m——”

“You’ve got him, Dan. You’ve got him,” exultantly.

“I’m going to cover my 20,000 shares with the first half of the order and sell the rest the best I can.”

“Man alive, this is your chance! Don’t you see you’ve got him? Smilie of the Eastern National Bank tells me there isn’t a bank in the city will lend Greener money, and he needs it badly to pay the last $10,000,000 to the Indian Pacific bondholders. He’s bit off more than he can chew, damn ‘im!”

“Well, Bill, we’ll treat Mr. Greener as we do any other customer,” said Dittenhoeffer.

“But—” began Smith, with undisguised consternation; he was an honest man, when away from the Street.

“Oh, I’ll get him yet. This won’t save him. I’ll get him yet,” with a confident smile.

It would have been very easy for him to take advantage of Greener’s order to make a fortune. He was short 20,000 shares which he had put out at an average price of 93. He could have taken Greener’s block of 50,000 shares and hurled it bodily at the market. Not even a gilt-edge stock could withstand the impact of such a fearful blow, and the price of Federal Telegraph doubtless would have broken 15 points or more, and he could easily have taken in his shorts at 75 or possibly even at 70–-which would have meant a profit of a half-million of dollars—and a loss of a much needed million to his arch-foe, Greener. And if he allowed his partner to whisper in strict confidence to some friend how Dan was selling out a big line of Telegraph for Greener the “Room” would have gone wild and everybody would have hastened to sell and the decline would have gone so much further as to cripple the little Napoleon possibly beyond all hope of recovery. Had Greener made the most colossal mistake of his life in giving the order to his enemy?

Dan went to the Federal Telegraph post where a score of madmen were shouting at the top of their voices the prices they were willing to pay or to accept for varying amounts of the stock. He gave to twenty brokers orders to sell 1,000 shares each at the best obtainable price and he himself, through another man took an equal amount. On the next day he in person sold 20,000 shares and on the third day the last 10,000 shares of Greener’s order. This selling, the Street thought, was for his own account. It was all short stock; that is, his colleagues thought he was selling stock he didn’t own, trusting later on to buy it back cheaply. Such selling never has the depressing effect of “long” stock because it is obvious that the short seller must sooner or later buy the stock in, insuring a future demand, which should exert a lifting influence on prices; for

“_He who sells what isn’t his’n Must buy it back or go to pris’n._”

And Dittenhoeffer was able to get an average of $86 per share for Greener’s 50,000 shares of Federal Telegraph Company stock, for the Street agreed, with many headshakings, that Dan was becoming too reckless and Greener was a slippery little cuss and the short interest must be simply enormous and the danger of a bad “squeeze” exceedingly great. Wherefore, they forebore to “whack” Telegraph. Indeed, many shrewd traders saw, in the seeming weakness of the stock, a trap of the wily little Napoleon and they “fooled” him by astutely buying Federal Telegraph!

With the $4,300,000 which he received from the sale of the big block of stock, Greener overcame his other troubles and carried out all his plans. It was a daring stroke, to trust to a stock broker’s professional honor. It made him the owner of a great railroad system. Dutch Dan’s attacks later did absolutely no harm. Greener had made an opportunity and Dittenhoeffer had lost one.

PIKE’S PEAK OR BUST

He was only seventeen, fair-haired and rosy-cheeked, with girlish blue eyes, when he applied for the vacancy in the office of Tracy & Middleton, Bankers and Brokers. His name was Willis N. Hayward, and he was a proud boy, indeed, when he was selected out of twenty “applicants” to be telephone-clerk for the firm.

From 10 A.M. until 3 P.M. he stood by Tracy & Middleton’s private telephone on the floor of the Stock Exchange—the Board Room—receiving messages from the office—chiefly orders to buy or sell stocks for customers—and transmitting the same messages to the “Board member” of the firm, Mr. Middleton; also telephoning Mr. Middleton’s reports to the office. He spoke with a soft, refined voice, and his blue eyes beamed so ingenuously upon the other telephone-boys in the same row of booths, that they said they had a Sally in their alley, and they immediately nicknamed him Sally.

It was all very wonderful to young Hayward, who had been out of boarding-school but a few months—the excited rushing hither and thither of worried-looking men, the frantic waving of hands, the maniacal yelling of the brokers executing their orders about the various “posts,” and their sudden relapse into semi-sanity as they jotted down the price at which they had sold or bought stocks. It was not surprising that he should fail to understand just how they did business; but what most impressed him was the fact, vouched for by his colleagues, that these same clamoring, gesticulating brokers were actually supposed to make a great deal of money. He heard of “Sam” Sharpe’s $100,000 winnings in Suburban Trolley, and of “Parson” Black’s famous million-dollar _coup_ in Western Delaware—the little gray man even being pointed out to him in corroboration. But, then, he had also heard of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, and Jack the Giant Killer.

He learned the business, as nearly all boys must do in Wall Street, by absorption. If he asked questions he received replies, but no one volunteered any information for his guidance, and in self-defence he was forced to observe closely, to see how others did, and to remark what came of it. He heard nothing but _speculate! speculate!_ in one guise or another, many words for the same meaning. It was all buying or selling of stocks—a concentrated and almost visible hope of making much money in the twinkling of an eye. Nobody talked of anything else on the Exchange. Bosom friends met at the opening of business and did not say “Good-morning,” but plunged without preamble into the only subject on earth—speculation. And if one of them arrived late he inevitably inquired forthwith, “How’s the market?”—asked it eagerly, anxiously, as if fearful that the market had taken advantage of his absence to misconduct itself. The air was almost unbreathable for the innumerable “tips” to buy or sell securities and insecurities of all kinds. The brokers, the customers, the clerks, the Exchange door-keepers, all Wall Street read the morning papers, not to ascertain the news, but to pick such items as would, should, or might, have some effect on stock values. There was no god but the ticker, and the brokers were its prophets!

All about Sally were hundreds of men who looked as if they took their thoughts home with them and dined with them and slept with them and dreamed of them—the look had become settled, immutable. And it was not a pleasant look, about the eyes and lips. He saw everywhere the feverishness of the “game.” Insensibly the atmosphere of the place affected him, colored his thoughts, induced certain fancies. As he became more familiar with the technique of the business he grew to believe, like thousands of youthful or superficial observers, that stock-market movements were comparable only to the gyrations of the little ivory ball about the roulette-wheel. The innumerable tricks of the trade, the uses of inside misinformation, the _rationale_ of stock-market manipulation, were a sealed book to him. He heard only that his eighteen-year-old neighbor made $60 buying twenty shares of Blue Belt Line on Thursday and selling them on Saturday, 3⅜ points higher; or that Micky Welch, Stuart & Stern’s telephone-boy, had a “tip” from one of the big room traders which he bravely “played”—as you “play” horse or “play” the red or the black—and cleared $125 in less than a week; or that Watson, a “two-dollar” broker, made a “nice turn” selling Southern Shore. Or else he heard, punctuated with poignant oaths, how Charlie Miller, one of the New Street door-keepers, lost $230 buying Pennsylvania Central, after he accidentally overheard Archie Chase, who was “Sam” Sharpe’s principal broker, tell a friend that the “Old Man” said “Pa. Cent.” was due for a ten-point rise; instead of which there had been a seven-point decline. Always the boy heard about the apparently irresponsible “bulges” and “drops,” of the winnings of the men who happened to guess correctly, or of the losses of those who had failed to “call the turn.” Even the vernacular of the place savored of the technicalities of a gambling-house.