Chapter IV.

The following week Bob returned to the office. He had not changed, and yet

he had changed greatly. Rest had apparently done much for him. His colour

was good, his step elastic as of old, and his head was thrown back as if

he were buckled up for the fray and wanted all to know it. Yet there was

something in the eye, in the setness of the jaw, in the hair-trigger calm,

yet fiercely savage grip in which he closed his strong hands on the arms

of his chair, that told me more plainly than words that this was not the

optimistic, soft-hearted Bob Brownley I had known and loved. I could not

help feeling that if I had been a leader of the Russian terrorists, and

this man who now sat before me had come to my ken when I was selecting

bomb-throwers, I should have seized upon him of all men as the one to

stalk the Czar or his marked minions. Surely the iron that had entered

Bob’s soul a week before had affected his whole being. I think Beulah

Sands had some such thoughts. For I saw a shadow of perplexity cross her

broad, low forehead after her first meeting with him, a shadow that had

not been there before.

For days after Bob’s return I saw little of him. I think Beulah Sands saw

less. During Stock Exchange hours he spent most of his time on the floor,

but he executed few of our orders. He merely looked them over and handed

them out to his assistants. As far as I could learn, he spent much of his

time there yesterdaying through hope’s graveyards, a not uncommon pastime

for active Exchange members whose first through specials have been

open-switched by the “System” towerman. So strong had become this habit of

going about from pole to pole with bent head and a far-off gaze that his

fellow members began to humour and respect it. They all knew that Bob had

gone up against the Sugar panic hard. No one knew how hard, but all

guessed from his changed appearance and habits that it must have been a

bone-smashing blow. Nothing so quickly and so deeply stirs a Stock

Exchange man’s feelings for his brother member as to know that “They” have

ditched his El Dorado flyer—that is, if he has been a good the books

showed no change in Beulah Sands’s account. There was the poor little

$30,000 balance; no other entries. One afternoon Beulah Sands had asked

for a meeting between Bob and myself in her office. She could hardly have

asked Bob to come without me, but I knew it was Bob she wanted to see, and

I felt that the best thing I could do for them was to leave them alone. So

I made some excuse for a moment’s delay at my desk, telling Bob to go on

into her office, and promising to follow shortly. He went in, leaving the

door partly open. I think that from the moment he entered the room both of

them utterly forgot my existence. From her desk Beulah could not see me,

and Bob sat so that his back was half toward me. “I dislike to trouble you

about my account,” I heard her begin in a voice a trifle uneven, “but as I

must go back to Father Christmas week, I wanted to get your advice as to

the advisability of writing him that, though there is still a chance for

doing wonders, I do not think we shall be able to save him. Of course I

won’t put it in just that blunt way, but it seems to me I should begin to

prepare him for the blow. I have not talked over any more plunging with

you, Mr. Brownley, since the unlucky one in Sugar, and——”

“Miss Sands, I understand what you mean,” Bob broke in, “and I should

apologise for not having consulted with you about your business affairs.

The fact is, I have not been quite clear as to the best thing to do. I

hope you don’t think I have forgotten. Never for a moment since I took

charge of your affairs have I forgotten my promise to see that they were

kept active. Truly I have been trying to think out some successful plunge,

but—but”—there was a hoarseness in his voice—“I have not had my old

confidence in myself since that day in Sugar when I killed your hopes and

destroyed the chance of saving your father—no, I have not had that

confidence a man must have in himself to win at this game.”

There was a silence, and then I heard an indescribable fluttering rush

that told as plainly as sight could have done that a woman had answered

her heart’s call. Looking up involuntarily, I saw a sight that for a long

moment held my eyes as if I had been fascinated. It was Bob bowed forward

with his face hidden in his hands and beside him, on her knees, Beulah

Sands, her arms about his neck, his head drawn down to her bosom. “Bob,

Bob,” she said chokingly, “I cannot stand it any longer. My heart is

breaking for you. You were so happy when I came into your life, and the

happiness is changed to misery and despair, and all for me, a stranger. At

first I thought of nothing but father and how to save him, but since that

day when those men struck at your heart, I have been filled with, oh! such

a longing to tell you, to tell you, Bob——”

“What? Beulah, what? For the love of God, don’t stop; tell me, Beulah,

tell me.” He had not lifted his head. It was buried on her breast, his

arms closed around her. She bent her head and laid her beautiful, soft

cheek, down which the tears were now streaming, against his brown hair.

“Bob, forgive me, but I love you, love you, Bob, as only a woman can love

who has never known love before, never known anything but stern duty. Bob,

night after night when all have left I have crept into your office and sat

in your chair. I have laid my head on your desk and cried and cried until

it seemed as though I could not live till morning without hearing you say

that you loved me, and that you did not mind the ruin I had brought into

your life. I have patted the back of your chair where your dear head had

rested. I have covered the arms of your chair, that your strong, brave

hands had gripped, with kisses. Night after night I have knelt at your

desk and prayed to God to shield you, to protect you from all harm, to

brush away the black cloud I brought into your life. I have asked Him to

do with me, yes, with my father and mother, anything, anything if only He

would bring back to you the happiness I had stolen. Bob, I have suffered,

suffered, as only a woman can suffer.”

She was sobbing as though her heart would break, sobbing wildly,

convulsively, like the little child who in the night comes to its mother’s

bed to tell of the black goblins that have been pursuing it. Long before

she had finished speaking—and it took only a few heart-beats for that

rush of words—I had broken the power of the fascination that held me, had

turned away my eyes, and tried not to listen. For fear of breaking the

spell, I did not dare cross the room to close Beulah’s door or to reach

the outer door of my office, which was nearer hers than it was to my desk.

I waited—through a silence, broken only by Beulah’s weeping, that seemed

hour-long. Then in Bob’s voice came one low sob of joy:

“Beulah, Beulah, my Beulah!”

I realised that he had risen. I rose too, thinking that now I could close

the door. But again I saw a picture that transfixed me. Bob had taken

Beulah by both shoulders and he held her off and looked into her eyes long

and beseechingly. Never before nor since have I seen upon human face that

glorious joy which the old masters sought to get into the faces of their

worshippers who, kneeling before Christ, tried to send to Him, through

their eyes, their soul’s gratitude and love. I stood as one enthralled.

Slowly and as reverently as the living lover touches the brow of his dead

wife, Bob bent his head and kissed her forehead. Again and again he drew

her to him and implanted upon her brow and eyes and lips his kisses. I

could not stand the scene any longer. I started to the corridor-door, and

then, as though for the first time either had known I was within hearing,

they turned and stared at me. At last Bob gave a long deep sigh, then one

of those reluctant laughs of happiness yet wet with sobs.

“Well, Jim, dear old Jim, where did you come from? Like all

eavesdroppers, you have heard no good of yourself. Own up, Jim, you did

not hear a word good or bad about yourself, for it is just coming back to

me that we have been selfish, that we have left you entirely out of our

business conference.”

We all laughed, and Beulah Sands, with her face a bloom of burning

blushes, said: “Mr. Randolph, we have not settled what it is best to do

about father’s affairs.”

After a little we did begin to talk business, and finally agreed that

Beulah should write her father, wording her letter as carefully as

possible, to avoid all direct statements, but showing him that she had

made but little headway on the work she had come North to accomplish. Bob

was a changed being now; so, too, was Beulah Sands. Both discussed their

hopes and fears with a frankness in strange contrast to their former

manner. But there was one point on which Bob showed he was holding back. I

finally put it to him bluntly: “Bob, are you working out anything that

looks like real relief for Miss Sands and her father?”

“I don’t know how to answer you, Jim. I can only say I have some ideas,

radical ones perhaps, but—well, I am thinking along certain lines.”

I saw he was not yet willing to take us into his confidence. We parted,

Bob going along in the cab with Miss Sands.

Two days afterward she sent for us both as soon as we got to the office.

“I have this telegram from father—it makes me uneasy: ‘Mailed to-day

important letter. Answer as soon as you receive.’”

The following afternoon the letter came. It showed Judge Sands in a very

nervous, uneasy state. He said he had been living a life of daily terror,

as some of his friends, for whose estates he was trustee, had been

receiving anonymous letters, advising them to look into the judge’s trust

affairs; that the Reinhart crowd had been using renewed pressure to make

him let go all his Seaboard stock, which they wanted to secure at the low

prices to which they had depressed it, in order that they might reorganise

and carry out the scheme they had been so long planning. Judge Sands went

on to say that the day he was compelled to sell his Seaboard stock he

would have to make public an announcement of his condition, as there

could be no sale without the court’s consent. His closing was:

“My dear daughter, no one knows better than I the almost hopelessness

of expecting any relief from your operations. But so hopeless have I

become of late, so much am I reliant upon you, my dear child, and

eternal hope so springs in all of us when confronted with great

necessities, that I have hoped and still hope that you are to be the

saviour of your family; that you, only a frail child, are through God’s

marvellous workings to be the one to save the honour of that name we

both love more than life; the one to keep the wolf of poverty from that

door through which so far has come nothing but the sunshine of

prosperity and happiness; the one, my dear Beulah, who is to save your

old father from a dishonoured grave. Dear child, forgive me for placing

upon your weak shoulders the additional burden of knowing I am now

helpless and compelled to rely absolutely upon you. After you have read

my letter, if there is no hope, I command you to tell me so at once,

for although I am now financially and almost mentally helpless, I am

still a Sands, and there has never yet been one of the name who shirked

his duty, however stern and painful it might be.”

When I handed the letter back to Miss Sands, she said:

“Mr. Randolph, let me tell you and Mr. Brownley a little about my father

and our home, that you may see our situation as it is. My father is one of

the noblest men that ever lived. I am not the only one who says that—if

you were to ask the people of our State to name the one man who had done

most for the State as a State, most for her progressive betterment, most

for her people high and low, white and black, they would answer, ‘Judge

Lee Sands.’ He has been, and is, the idol of our people. After he was

graduated from Harvard, he entered the law office of my grandfather,

Senator Robert Lee Sands. Before he was thirty he was in Congress and was

even then reputed the greatest orator of our State, where orators are so

plentiful. He married my mother, his second cousin, Julia Lee, of

Richmond, at twenty-five, and from then until the attack of that ruthless

money-shark, led a life such as a true man would map out for himself if

his Maker granted him the privilege. You would have to visit at our home

to appreciate my father’s character and to understand how terrible this

sorrow is to him. Every morning of his life he spends an hour after

breakfast with my dear mother, who is a cripple from hip disease. He takes

her in his arms and brings her down from her room to the library as if she

were a child. He then reads to her—and he knows good books as well as he

knows his friends. After he takes mother back to her room, he gives an

hour to our people, the blacks of the plantation and his white tenants

throughout the county. He is a father to them all. He settles all their

troubles, big and little. Then for hours he and I go over his business

affairs. Every afternoon from four to five he devotes to his estates and

the men and women for whom he acts as trustee. He has often said to me:

‘We have a clear million of money and property, and that is all any man

should have in America. It is all he is entitled to under our form of

government. Any more than that an honest man should in one way or another

return to the people from whom he has taken it. I never want my family to

have more than a million dollars.’ When he went into the Seaboard affair,

he explained to me that it was to assist the Wilsons—they were old

friends, and he has acted as their solicitor for years—in building up the

South. He discussed with me the right and advisability of putting in the

trust funds. He said he considered it his duty to employ them as he did

his own in enterprises that would aid the whole people of the South,

instead of sending them to the North to be used in Wall Street as belting

for the ‘System’ grinder. These fortunes were made in the South by men who

loved their section of the country more than they did wealth, and why

should they not be employed to benefit that part of the country which

their makers and owners loved? I remember vividly how perplexed he was

when, at the beginning, the Wilsons would show him that the investments

were returning unusually large profits.

“‘It is not right, Beulah,’ he said to me one morning after receiving a

letter from Baltimore to the effect that Seaboard stock and bonds had

advanced until his investment showed over fifty per cent, profit, ‘it is

not right for us to make this money. No man in America should make over

legal rates of interest and a fair profit on an investment, that is, an

investment of capital pure and simple, particularly in a transportation

company, where every dollar of profit comes from the people who patronise

the lines. I have worked it out on every side, and it is not right; it

would not be legal if the people, who make the laws for their own

betterment, understood their affairs as they should.’

“He was always writing to the Wilsons to conduct the affairs of the

Seaboard so that there would be remaining each year only profits enough

to keep the road up and the wharves in good condition and to pay the

annual interest and a fair dividend. And when the Wilsons came to our

house to lay before him the offer of Reinhart and his fellow plunderers to

pay enormous profits for the control of the Seaboard, he was indignant and

argued with them that the offer was an insult to honest men. It was he who

advised the trusteeship control of the Seaboard stock to prevent Reinhart

from securing control. I sat in the library when he talked to the elder

Wilson and the directors.

“He appealed directly to John Wilson to make an effort to stop the growing

tendency to use the people as pawns to enslave themselves and their

children. He said some man of undoubted probity, standing, and wealth,

someone whom the people trusted, must start the fight against these New

York fiends, whose only thought is to roll up wealth. And he told John

Wilson he was the man, since he had great wealth, honestly got by his

father and grandfather; no one would accuse him of being a hypocrite,

seeking notoriety, and his standing in the financial world was so old and

solid that it would have to listen to him. I remember-how emphatically

father said: ‘I tell you, John, _even the discussion_ of such a

proposition as that scoundrel Reinhart makes is degrading to an American’s

honour.’ He said it didn’t make the least difference if Reinhart counted

his millions by the score, and was director in thirty or forty great

institutions, and gave a fortune every year for charity and to the

church—that he was a blackleg just the same. And so is any man, he said,

who dares to say he will take the stock of a transportation company, which

represents a certain amount of money invested, and double or multiply it

by five and ten, simply because he can compel the people to pay exorbitant

fares and freight-rates and so get profits on this fraudulently increased

capital.

“It was the decision arrived at by father and the Wilsons at this meeting,

a decision to refuse in any circumstances to allow our Southern people to

be bled by the Wall Street ‘System,’ that started Reinhart and his

dollar-fiends on the war-path. You can see from what I tell you of my

father the terrible condition he is in now. At night, when I get to

thinking of him, hoping against hope, with no one to help him, no one with

whom he can talk over his affairs, when I think of his nobleness in

devoting his time to mother and by sheer will-power concealing from her

his awful suffering, it nearly drives me mad.”

“Miss Sands, why will you not let me lend you the money necessary to tide

your father over for a while?” I asked.

“You are so good, Mr. Randolph, but you don’t quite understand my father

in spite of what I have said. He would not relieve his suffering at the

expense of another, not if it were a hundred times more acute. You cannot

understand the old-fashioned, deep-rooted pride of the Sands.”

“But can you not, at least temporarily, disguise from him just how you

have arranged the relief?”

Her big blue eyes stared at me in bewilderment.

“Mr. Randolph, I could not deceive father. I could not tell him a lie even

to save his life. It would be impossible. My father abhors a lie. He

believes a man or woman who would lie the lowest of the low things on

earth. When I go back to my father he will say, ‘Tell me what you have

done.’ I can just see him now, standing between the big white pillars at

the end of the driveway. I can hear him say calmly, ‘Beulah, my daughter,

welcome. Your mother is waiting for you in her room. Do not lose a moment

getting to her.’ Afterward he’ll take me over the plantation to show me

all the familiar things, and not one word will he allow me to say about

our affairs until dinner is over, until the neighbours have left, for no

Sands returns from long absence without a fitting home welcome. When I

have said good night to mother and sister and he has drawn up my rocker in

front of his big chair in the library alcove and I’ve lighted his cigar

for him, he will look me in the eye and say, ‘Daughter, tell me all you

have done.’ I would no more think of holding anything back than I would of

stabbing him to the heart. No, Mr. Randolph, there is no possibility of

relief except in fairly using that $30,000, and fairly winning back what

Wall Street has stolen from father. Even that will cause both of us many

twinges of conscience, and anything more is impossible. If this cannot be

done, father must, all of us must, pay the penalty of Reinhart’s ruthless

act.”

Bob had listened, but made no comment until she was through; then he said,

“It looks to me as though the market is shaping up so that we may be able

to do something soon.” It was evident to both of us that he had some plan

in mind.

Later we learned that that night Beulah wrote her father a long letter,

telling him what she had done; that she had made almost two millions

profit from her operations, that they had been lost, and that the outlook

was not reassuring. She begged him to prepare himself for the final

calamity; promising that if there were no change for the better by

December 1st, she would come home to be with him when the blow fell. She

begged him to prepare to meet it like a Sands, and assured him that if

worse came to worst she would earn enough to keep poverty away. Judge

Sands would receive this letter the second day following, Friday, the 13th

day of November. My God! how well I know the date. It is seared into my

brain as though with a white-hot iron.

After our talk with Beulah Sands I begged Bob to dine with me and go over

matters at length to see if we could not find a way out to relief.

“No, Jim, I have work to do to-night, worn that won’t wait. That Tariff

Bill was buttoned up to-day, and it has just been announced that the

Sugar directors have declared a big extra stock dividend. Things have come

out just about as I told you they would, and the stock is climbing to-day.

They say it will touch 200 to-morrow and ‘the Street’ is predicting 250

for it in ten days. Barry Conant has been a steady buyer all day and the

news bureaus announced that Camemeyer and the ‘Standard Oil’ are twenty

millions winners. They say the Washington gamblers, the Congressmen,

Senators, and Cabinet members with their heelers and lobbyists have made a

killing. About every one seems to have fattened up, Jim, but you and me

and Beulah Sands and the public. The public gets the axe both ways as

usual. They have been shaken out of their stock, and they will be

compelled to pay millions more each year for their sugar than they would

if this law had not been made for their benefit. Jim, there is no

disguising the fact that the American people are as helpless in the hands

of these thugs of the ‘System’ as though they lived in the realm of the

Sultan, where a few cutthroat brigands are licensed to rob and oppress to

their heart’s content. Jim Randolph, you know this game of finance. You

know how it is worked and the men who work it. Tell me if there is any

consideration due Wall Street and its heart-and-soul butchers at the hands

of honest men.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Bob. What are you driving at?”

“Never mind what I am driving at. I ask you whether, if an honest man knew

how to beat Wall Street at its own game, he should hesitate to beat

it—hesitate because of anything connected with conscience or morals? You

saw what Barry Conant was able to do to us that day simply by standing on

the floor of the Stock Exchange and outstaying me in opening and closing

his mouth. You saw he was able to sell Sugar to a point so low that I was

obliged to let go of our 150,000 shares at eight to ten million dollars

less than we could have got for them if we could have held them until

to-day. Because of this trick his clients, the ‘System,’ instead of us,

make five to seven millions.”

“I don’t follow you, Bob. I know that Barry Conant was able to do this

because he had more money behind him than you.”

“You think so, do you, Jim? That is the way it looks to you, but I tell

you money had nothing to do with it. Nothing had to do with it but the

fiendish system of fraud and trickery upon which the whole stock-gambling

structure is reared. Nothing entered into the whole business but the

trickery of stock-gambling as conducted to-day. It was only a question,

Jim, of a man’s opening and closing his mouth and spitting out words. From

the minute Barry Conant came into that crowd until he left and we were

ruined, he showed no money, no anything that I did not show. From the very

nature of the business he could not. He simply said ‘Sold’ oftener and

longer than I said ‘Buy.’ He may have had money back of him, or he may

only have had nerve. God Almighty is the only one who can tell, for when

Conant was through he was able to buy back at 90 the 50,000 shares he sold

me at 175, the 50,000 that broke my back. Jim, if I had known as much that

day as I do now I would have stood in that crowd and bought all the stock

he sold at 180 and I would have stood there buying until hell froze over

or he quit; then I would have made him rebuy it at 280 or 2,080, and I

would have broken him and all his Camemeyer and ‘Standard Oil’ backers;

broken them to their last crime-covered dollar.”

“Bob, what are you talking about? It is all Chinese to me. I cannot get

head or tail of what you are driving at.”

“I know you can’t, Jim, neither could Wall Street if it were listening to

me. But you will, and Wall Street will too, before many days go by. Now I

must be off. I have work to do.”

He put on his hat and left me trying to puzzle out just what he meant.

Next day the Sugar bulls had the centre of the Stock Exchange stage. All

day long they tossed Sugar from one to another as though each thousand

shares had been a wisp of hay instead of $200,000—for soon after the

opening it soared to 200. The “System’s” cohorts were in absolute control,

with Barry Conant never a minute away from the Sugar-pole, always on the

alert to steer the course of prices when they threatened to run away on

the up or the down side. It was evident to the expert readers of the tape

that the “System” was currying its steed for an exceptionally brilliant

run. Ike Bloomstein, the Average Fiend, who for forty years had kept close

track of every movement on the floor, and who would bet anything, from his

Fifth Avenue mansion to his overripe boardroom straw hat, that all stocks

and movements were as strictly subject to the law of averages as are the

tides to the moon and sun, remarked to Joe Barnes, the loan expert:

“‘Cam’ unt de Keroseners are pudding up egstra dop rails to dot wool-pen

deh haf ben pilding since deh took Pop Prownlee and deh Rantolphs into

gamp. Unless my topesheet goes pack on me, for deh first dime in forty

years dere vill pe a record clip pefore a veek from to-tay.”

“I am with you there, Ike,” answered Joe. “If Barry Conant’s knife-edged

teeth ever spelt a killin’, they do to-day. I just got orders from

somewhere to drop call money from four to two and a half per cent., and

they have given me ten millions to drop it with and the order is to favour

Sugar as ‘collat.’ Some one is anxious to make it easy for the bleaters to

get the coin to buy all the Sugar they want. Ike, you and I might make

turkey money for Thanksgiving if we only knew whether Barry and his bunch

were going to shoot her up thirty or forty points before they turned the

bag upside down, or whether they will bury them from 200 to 150. What do

you think?”

“I gant make out, aldo I haf vatched dem sharp all day. Dey certainly haf

deh lambs lined up right now for any vey dey vont to twist id. I nefer see

a petter market for a deluge. From Barry’s movements all day I should say

dey vould keep hoistin’ her until apout noon to-morrow, unt dat deh might

get her up to two-tirty or even to deh two-fifty. Put dere are von or two

topes on deh sheet vhat run deh uder vay. First der is dey fact you gant

run out, dat dere is alreaty on deh Sugar vagon deh piggest load of chuicy

suckers dat efer game in from deh suppurbs. Sharley Pates says if any von

hat tapped his Vashington vire er any utter Capitol vire dis veek he vould

haf tought dere vas a Senate, House, unt Kabinet roll-gall on. Deh topes

say ‘Cam’ vill nefer led dat fat punch off grafters slite out mit real

money if he gan help id unt deh game iss endirely in his hands.”

“I agree with you, Ike. If I had the steering of this killing I don’t

think I would take any chance of tempting them to dump and grab the

profits by carrying it much over 200. But you can’t tell what ‘Cam’ and

those four-eyed dentists at 26 Broadway will do.”

“Yes, put der iss anudder t’ing, Cho, dat makes me sit up unt plink about

her goin’ ofer two hundred. To-morrow’s Friday der t’irteenth.”

“Of course, Ike, that is something to be reckoned with, and every man on

the floor and in the Street as well has his eye on it. Friday, the 13th,

would break the best bull market ever under way. You and I know that, Ike,

and the dope shows it too, but you have got to stack this up against it on

this trip: no man on the floor knows what Friday the 13th, means better

than Barry Conant. He has worked it to the queen’s taste many a time. Why,

Barry would not eat to-day for fear the food would get stuck in his

windpipe. He’s never left the pole for a minute; but suppose, Ike, Barry

has tipped off ‘Cam’ that all the boys will let go their fliers, and most

of them will take one on the short side over to-night for a superstition

drop at the opening; and suppose ‘Cam’ has told him to take them all into

camp and give her a rafter-scraper at the opening, where would old Friday,

13th, land on to-morrow’s dope-sheets? Bring up the average, wouldn’t it,

for five years to come? I tell you, Ike, she’s too deep for me this run,

and I’m goin’ to let her alone and pay for the turkey out of loan

commissions or stick to plain workday food.”

“Zame here, Cho. Say, Cho, haf you noticed Pop Prownlee to-tay? He has

frozen to deh fringe off dat Sugar crowd ess t’ough some von hat nipped

‘is scarf-pin unt he vos layin’ for him ass he game out. He hasn’t made a

trade to-tay unt yet he sticks like a stamp-tax. I ben keeping my eyes on

him for I t’ought he hat someding up his sleeve dat might raise tust ven

he tropt id. I dink Parry has hat deh same itear. He never loses sight of

him, yet Pop hasn’t made a trade to-tay, unt here id iss twenty minutes of

der glose unt dere iss Parry in deh centre again whooping her up ofer two

hundred unt four.”