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.