Chapter VIII.

A number of times during the following year, and finally on the

anniversary of the Sands tragedy, Bob carried the Exchange to the verge of

panic, only to turn the market and save “the Street” in the end. His

profits were fabulous. Already his fortune was estimated to be between two

and three hundred millions, one of the largest in the world. His name had

become one of terror wherever stocks were dealt in. Wall Street had come

to regard his every deal, from the moment that he began operations, as

inevitably successful. Now and again he would jump into the market when

some of the plunging cliques had a bear raid under way, and would put them

to rout by buying everything in sight and bidding up prices until it

looked as though he intended to do as extraordinary work on the up-side as

he was wont to do on the down. At such times he was the idol of the

Exchange, which worships the man who puts prices up as it hates him who

pulls them down. Once when war news flashed over the wires from Washington

and rumour had the Cabinet members, Senators, and Congressmen selling the

market short on advance information, when the “Standard Oil” banks had put

up money rates to 150 per cent, and a crash seemed inevitable, Bob

suddenly smashed the loan market by offering to lend one hundred millions

at four per cent.; and by buying and bidding up prices at the same time,

he put the whole Washington crowd and its New York accomplices to

disastrous rout and caused them to lose millions. He continued his

operations with increasing violence and increasing profits up to the

fourth anniversary of the tragedy. On the intervening anniversary I had

been compelled by self-interest and fear that he would really pull down

the entire Wall Street structure, to rush in and fairly drag him off. But

with his growing madness my influence was waning. Each raid it was with

greater difficulty that I got his ear.

Finally, on the fourth anniversary, in a panic that seemed to be running

into something more terrible than any previous, he savagely refused to

accede to my appeal, telling me that he would not stop, even if Randolph

& Randolph were doomed to go down in the crash. It had become known on the

floor that I was the only one who could do anything with him in his

frenzies, and my pleading with him in the lobby was watched by the members

of the Exchange with triple eyed suspense. When it was clear from his

emphatic gestures and raised voice—for he was in a reckless mood from

drink and madness and took no pains to disguise his intentions—that I

could not prevail upon him, there was a frantic rush for the poles to

throw over stocks in advance of him. Suddenly, after I had turned from him

in despair, there flashed into my mind an idea. The situation was

desperate. I was dealing with a madman, and I decided that I was justified

in making this last try. I rushed back to him. “Bob, good-bye,” I

whispered in his ear, “good-bye. In ten minutes you will get word that Jim

Randolph has cut his throat!” He stopped as though I had plunged a knife

into him, struck his forehead a resounding blow, and into his wild brown

eyes came a sickening look of fear.

“Stop, Jim, for God’s sake, don’t say that to me. My cup is full now.

Don’t tell me I am to have that crime on my soul.” He thought a moment.

“I don’t know whether you mean it, Jim, but I can take no chances, not for

all the money in the world, not even for revenge. Wait here, Jim.” He

yelled for his brokers, and several rushed to him from different parts of

the room. He sent them back into the crowd while he dashed for the

Amalgamated-pole. The day was saved.

Presently he came back to me. “Jim, I must have a talk with you. Come over

to my office.” When we got there he turned the key and stood in front of

me. His great eyes looked full into mine. In college days, gazing into

their brown depths, by some magic I seemed to see the heroes and heroines

of always happy-ending tales, as the child sees enchanted creatures far

back in the burning Yule log flames. But there were no joyous beings in

the haunted depths of Bob’s eyes that day.

“Jim, you gave me an awful scare,” he said brokenly. “Don’t ever do it

again. I have little left to live for. To be sure I have some feeling for

mother, Fred, and sisters. But for you I have a love second only to that I

should have felt for Beulah had I been allowed to have her. The thought,

Jim, that I had wrecked your life, with all you have to live for, would

have been the last straw. My life is purgatory. Beulah is only an

ever-present curse to me—a ghost that rends my heart and soul, one minute

with a blind frenzy to revenge her wrongs, the next with an icy remorse

that I have not already done so. If I did not have her, perhaps in time I

could forget; perhaps I might lay out some scheme to help poor devils

whose poverty makes life unendurable, and with the millions I have taken

from that main shaft of hell I might do things that would at least bring

quiet to my soul; but it is impossible with the living corpse of Beulah

Sands before me every minute and that devil machinery whirling in my brain

all the time the song, ‘Revenge her and her father, revenge yourself.’ It

is impossible to give it up, Jim. I must have revenge. I must stop this

machinery that is smashing up more American hearts and souls each year

than all the rest of earth’s grinders combined. Every day I delay I become

more fiendish in my desires. Jim, don’t think I do not know that I have

literally turned into a fiend. Whenever of late I see myself in the

mirror, I shudder. When I think of what I was when your father stood us up

in his office and started us in this heart-shrivelling, soul-callousing

business, and what I am now, I cannot keep the madness down except with

rum. You know what it means for me to say this, me who started with all

the pride of a Brownley; but it is so, Jim. The other night I went home

with my soul frozen with thoughts of the past and with my brain ablaze

with rum, intending to end it all. I got out my revolver, and woke Beulah,

but as I said, ‘Bob is going to kill Beulah and himself,’ she laughed that

sweet child’s laugh and clapping her hands said, ‘Bob is so good to play

with Beulah,’ and then I thought of that devil Reinhart and the other

fiends of the ‘System’ being left to continue their work unhindered and I

could not do it. I must have revenge; I must smash that heart-crushing

machinery. Then I can go, and take Beulah with me. Now, Jim, let us have

it clearly understood once and for all.”

Remorse and softness were past; he was the Indian again. “I am going to

wreck that hell-annex some day, and that some day will be the next time I

start in. Don’t argue with me, don’t misunderstand me. To-day you stopped

me. I don’t know whether you meant what you threatened; I don’t care now.

It is just as well that I stopped, for the ‘System’s’ machine will be

there whenever I start in again. It loses nothing of its fiendishness,

none of its destructive powers by grinding, but, on the contrary, as you

know, it increases its speed every day it runs. Now, Jim Randolph, I want

to tell you that you must get yours and the house’s affairs in such shape

that you won’t be hurt when I go into that human rat-pit the next time,

for when I come from it the New York Stock Exchange and the ‘System’ will

have had their spines unjointed. Yes, and I’ll have their hearts out, too.

Neither will ever again be able to take from the American people their

savings and their manhood and womanhood and give them in exchange

unadulterated torment. I am going to be fair with you, Jim; this is the

last time I will discuss the subject. After this you must take your chance

with the rest of those who have to do with the cursed business. When I

strike again, none will be spared. I will wreck ‘the Street’, and the

innocent will go down with the guilty, if they have any stocks on hand at

that time.

“My power, Jim, is unlimited; nothing can stay it. I am not going to

explain any further. You have seen me work. You must know that my power is

greater than the ‘System’s,’ and you and I and ‘the Street’ have always

known that the ‘System’ is more powerful than the Government, more

powerful than are the courts, legislatures, Congress, and the President of

the United States combined, that it absolutely controls the foundation on

which they rest—the money of the nation. But my power is greater, a

thousand, yes, a million times greater than theirs. Jim, they say that I

have made more money than any man in the world. They say that I have five

hundred millions of dollars, but the fools don’t keep track of my

movements. They only know that I have pulled five hundred millions from my

open whirls, the ones they have had an opportunity to keep tab on. But I

tell you that I have made even more in my secret deals than the amount

they have seen me take. I have had my agents with my capital in every

deal, every steal the ‘System’ has rigged up. The world has been throwing

up its hands in horror because Carnegie, the blacksmith of Pittsburgh,

pulled off three hundred millions of swag in the Steel hold-up—yes,

swag, Jim. Don’t scowl as though you wanted to read me a lecture on the

coarseness of my language. I have learned to call this game of ours by its

right name. It is not business enterprise with earned profits as results,

but pulled-off tricks with bags of loot—black-jack swag—for their end.

“I got away with three hundred millions when Steel slumped from 105 to 50

and from 50 to 8, and no one knew I’d made a dollar. You and ‘the Street’

read every morning last year the ‘guesses’ as to who could be rounding up

the hundreds of millions on the slump. The papers and the market letters

one morning said it was ‘Standard Oil’; the next, that it was Morgan; then

it was Frick, Schwab, Gates, and so on down through the list. Of course,

none of them denied; it is capital to all these knights of the road to be

making millions in the minds of the world, even though they never get any

of the money. Dick Turpin and Jonathan Wild never were fonder of having

the daring hold-ups that other highwaymen perpetrated laid to their doors,

than are these modern bandits of being credited with ruthless deeds that

they did not commit. But Jim, ’twas I, ’twas I who sold Pennsylvania

every morning for a year, while the selling was explained by the press as

‘Cassatt cutting down Gould’s telegraph poles. Gould and old man

Rockefeller selling Pennsylvania to get even.’ Jim Randolph, I have to-day

a billion dollars, not the Rockefeller or Carnegie kind, but a real

billion. If I had no other power but the power to call to-morrow for that

billion in cash, it would be sufficient to lay in waste the financial

world before to-morrow night. You are welcome, Jim, to any part of that

billion, and the more you take the happier you will make me, but when I

strike in again, don’t attempt to stay me, for it will do no good.”

Shortly after this talk Bob left for Europe with Beulah. A great German

expert on brain disorders had held out hope that a six month’s treatment

at his sanitarium in Berlin might aid in restoring her mind. They returned

the following August. The trip had been fruitless. It was plain to me that

Bob was the same hopelessly desperate man as when he left, more hopeless,

more desperate if anything than when he warned me of his determination.

When he left for Europe “the Street” breathed more freely, and as time

went by and there was no sign of his confidence-disturbing influence in

the market, the “System” began to bring out its deferred deals. Times were

ripe for setting up the most wildly inflated stock lamb-shearing traps. It

had been advertised throughout the world that Tom Reinhart, now a

two-hundred-time millionaire, was to consolidate his and many other

enterprises into one gigantic trust with twelve billions of capital. His

Union and Southern Pacific Railroads, his coal and Southern lines,

together with his steamship company and lead, iron, and copper mines, were

to be merged with the steel, traction, gas, and other enterprises he owned

jointly with “Standard Oil.” Some of the railroads owned by Rockefeller

and his pals, in which Reinhart had no part, were to go in too, and with

these was to unite that mother hog of them all, “Standard Oil” itself. The

trust was to be an enormous holding company, the like of which had until

then not even been dreamed of by the most daring stock manipulators. The

“System’s” banks, as well as trust and insurance companies throughout the

country, had for a long time been getting into shape by concentrating the

money of the country for this monster trust. It was newspaper and news

bureau gossip that Reinhart and his crowd had bought millions of shares of

the different stocks involved in the deal, and it was common knowledge

that upon its successful completion Reinhart’s fortune would be in the

neighbourhood of a billion. On October 1st the certificate of the

Anti-People’s Trust, $12,000,000,000 capital, 120,000,000 shares, were

listed upon the New York, London, and Boston Stock Exchanges, and the

German and French Bourses, and trading in them started off fast and

furious at 106. The claim that one billion of the twelve billions capital

had been set aside to be used in protecting and manipulating the stock in

the market, had been so widely advertised that even the most daring

plunger did not think of selling it short.

It was evident to all in the stock-gambling world that this was to be the

“System’s” grand coup, that at its completion the masses would be rudely

awakened to a realisation that their savings were invested in the combined

American industries at vastly inflated values, that the few had all the

real money, and that any attempt upon the people’s part to regulate and

control the new system of robbery, would be fraught with unparalleled

disaster—not to the “System,” but to the people.

Since Bob’s return from Europe I had seen him but a few times. Up to

October 1st he had not been near the Stock Exchange or “the Street.”

Shortly after the listing of the “People Be Damned,” as “the Street” had

dubbed the new trust, he began to show up at his office regularly. This

was the condition of affairs when Fred Brownley called me up on the

telephone, as I related at the beginning of my story, which I did not

realise I had been so long in telling.

My thoughts had been chasing each other with lightning-like rapidity back

over the last five years and the fifteen before them, and each thought

deepened the black mist over my present mental vision. In the midst of my

reflections my telephone rang again.

“Mr. Randolph, for Heaven’s sake have you done nothing yet?” It was Fred

Brownley’s voice. “Things are frightful here. Bob’s brokers are selling

stocks at five and ten thousand-lot clips. Barry Conant is leading

Reinhart’s forces. It is said he has the pool’s protection order in

Anti-People’s and that it is unlimited, but Bob has the Reinhart crowd

pretty badly scared. Swan has just finished giving Conant a hundred

thousand off the reel in 10,000 lots, and he told me a moment ago he was

going over to get Bob himself to face Barry Conant. They’re down twenty

points on the average, although they haven’t let Anti-People’s break an

eighth yet. They have it pegged at 106, but there is an ugly rumour just

in that Bob, under cover of a general attack, is unloading Anti-People’s

on to the Reinhart wing for Rogers and Rockefeller, and the rumour is

getting in its work. Even Barry Conant is growing a bit anxious. The

latest talk is that Reinhart is borrowing hundreds of millions on

Anti-People’s, and that his loans are being called in all directions. Do

you know Reinhart is at his place in Virginia and cannot get here before

to-morrow night? If Bob breaks through Anti-People’s peg, it will be the

worst crash yet.”

“All right, Fred,” I answered. “I will go over to Bob’s right now. I hate

to do it, but there is no other hope.”

I dropped the receiver and started for Bob’s office. As I went through his

counting-room one of the clerks said, “They have just broken Anti-People’s

to 90 on a bulletin that Tom Reinhart’s wife and only daughter have been

killed in an automobile accident at their place in Virginia. They first

had it that Reinhart himself was killed. That has been corrected, although

the latest word is that he is prostrated.”

I rapped on Bob’s private-office door. I felt the coming struggle as I

heard his hoarse bellow, “Come in.” He stood at the ticker, with the tape

in one hand, while with the other he held the telephone receiver to his

ear. My God, what a picture for a stage! His magnificent form was erect,

his feet were as firmly planted as if he were made of bronze, his

shoulders thrown back as if he were withstanding the rush of the Stock

Exchange hordes, his eyes afire with a sullen, smouldering blaze, his jaw

was set in a way that brought into terrible relief the new, hard lines of

desperation that had recently come into his face. His great chest was

rising and falling as though he were engaged in a physical struggle; his

perfect-fitting, heavy black Melton cutaway coat, thrown back from the

chest, and a low, turned-down, white collar formed the setting for a

throat and head that reminded one of a forest monarch at bay on the

mountain crag awaiting the coming of the hounds and hunters.

I hesitated at the threshold to catch my breath, as I took in the

terrific figure. Had Bob Brownley been an enemy of mine I should have

backed out in fear, and I do not confess to more than my fair share of

cowardice. Inwardly I thanked God that Bob was in his office instead of on

the floor of the Exchange. His whole appearance was frightful. He showed

in every line and lineament that he was a man who would hesitate at

nothing, even at killing, if he should find a human obstacle in his road

and his mind should suggest murder. He was the personification of the most

awful madness. Even when he caught sight of me, he hardly moved, although

my coming must have been a surprise.

“So it is you, Jim Randolph, is it? What brings _you_ here?” His voice was

hoarse, but it had a metallic ring that went to my marrow. Bob Brownley in

all the years of our friendship had never spoken to me except in kind and

loving regard. I looked at him, stunned. I must have shown how hurt I was.

But if he saw it, he gave no sign. His eyes, looking straight into mine,

changed no more than if he had been addressing his deadliest enemy.

Again his voice rang out, “What brings you here? Do you come to plead

again for that dastard Reinhart after the warning I gave you?”

I clenched both hands until I felt the nails cut the flesh of my palms. I

loved Bob Brownley. I would have done anything to make him happy, would

willingly have sacrificed my own life to protect his from himself or

others, but this madman, this wild brute, was no more Bob Brownley as I

had known him than the howling northeast gale of December is the gentle,

welcome zephyr of August; and I felt a resentment at his brutal speech

that I could hardly suppress. With a mighty effort I crushed it back,

trying to think of nothing but his awful misery and the Bob of our college

days.

I said in a firm voice, “Bob, is this the way to talk to me in your own

office?” At any time before, my words and tone would have touched his

all-generous Southern chivalry, but now he said harshly—“To hell with

sentiment. What——” He did not take his eyes from mine, but they told me

that he was listening to a voice in the receiver. Only for a second; then

he let loose a wild laugh, which must have penetrated to the outer office.

“Eighty and coming like a spring freshet,” he said into the mouthpiece,

“and the boys want to know if I won’t let up now that Reinhart is down?

Go back and smother them with all they will take down to 60. That’s my

answer. Tell them if Reinhart had ten more wives and daughters and they

were all killed, I’d rend his bastard trust to help him dull his sorrow.

Give the word at every pole that I will have Reinhart where he will curse

his luck that he was not in the automobile with the rest of his tribe——

“To hell with sentiment!” He was speaking to me again. “What do you want?

If you are here to beg for Reinhart and his pack of yellow curs, you’ve

got your answer. I wouldn’t let up on that fiendish hyena, not if his wife

and daughter and all the dead wives and daughters of every ‘System’ man

came back in their grave clothes and begged. I wouldn’t let up a share.” I

gasped in horror.

“When did those robbers of men and despoilers of women and children ever

let up because of death? When were they ever known to wait even till the

corpse stiffened to pluck out the hearts of the victims? It is my turn

now, and if I let up a hair may I, yes, and Beulah, too, be damned,

eternally damned.”

I could not stand it. If I stayed, I, too, should become mad. I reached

for the doorknob, but before I could swing the door open Bob was upon me

like a wolf. He grasped me by the shoulders and with the strength of a

madman hurled me half across the room. I sank into a chair.

“No, you don’t, Jim Randolph, no, you don’t. You came here for something

and, by heaven, you will tell me what it is! You know me; you are the only

human being who does. You know what I was, you see what I am. You know

what they did to me to make me what I am. You know, Jim Randolph, you know

whether I deserved it. You know whether in all my life up to the day those

dollar-frenzied hounds tore my soul, I had done any man, woman, or child a

wrong. You know whether I had, and now you are going to sneak off and

leave me as though I were a cur dog of the Reinhart-‘Standard Oil’ breed

gone mad!”

He was standing over me, a terrible yet a magnificent figure. As he hurled

these words at me, I was sure he had really lost his mind; that I was in

the presence of a man truly mad. But only for an instant; then my horror,

my anger turned to a great, crushing, all-consuming agony of pity for

Bob, and I dropped my head on my hands and wept. It is hard to admit it,

but it is true—I wept uncontrollably. In an instant the room was quiet

except for the sound of my own awful grief. I heard it, was ashamed of it,

but I could not stop. The telephone rang again and again, wildly, shrilly,

but there was no answer. The stillness became so oppressive that even my

own sobs quieted. I gasped as the lump in my throat choked me, then I

slowly raised my eyes.

Bob’s towering figure was in front of me. His head had fallen forward, and

his arms were folded across his breast. But that he stood erect I should

have thought him dead, so still was he. I jumped to my feet and looked

into his face, down which great tears were dropping silently. I touched

him on the shoulder.

“Bob, my dear old chum, Bob, forgive me. For God’s sake, forgive me for

intruding on your misery.”

I looked at him. I will never forget his face. No heartbroken woman’s

could have been sadder. He slowly raised his head, then staggered and

grasped the ticker-stand for support.

“Don’t, Jim, don’t—don’t ask me to forgive you. Oh, Jim, Jim, my old

friend, forgive me for my madness; forget what I said to you, forget the

brute you just saw and think of me as of old, when I would have plucked

out my tongue if I had caught it saying a harsh word to the best and

truest friend man ever had. Jim, forget it all. I was mad, I am mad, I

have been mad for a long time, but it cannot last much longer. I know it

can’t, and, Jim, by all our past love, by the memories of the dear old

days at St. Paul’s and at Harvard, the dear old days of hope and

happiness, when we planned for the future, try to think of me only as you

knew me then, as you know that I should now be, but for the ‘System’s’

curse.”

The clerks were pounding on the door; through the glass showed many forms.

They had been gathering for minutes while Bob talked in his low, sad tone,

a tone that no one could believe came from the same mouth that a few

moments before had poured forth a flood of brutal heartlessness.

Bob went to the door. The office was in an uproar. Twenty or thirty of

Bob’s brokers were there, aghast at not getting a reply to their calls.

Many more were pouring in through the outer office. Bob looked at them

coldly. “Well, what is the trouble? Is it possible we are down to a point

where the Stock Exchange rushes over to a man’s office when his wire

happens to break down?”

They saw his bluff. You cannot deceive Stock Exchange men, at least not

the kind that Bob Brownley employed on panic days, but his coolness

reassured them, and when they saw me it was odds-on that they guessed to a

man why Bob had ignored his wires—guessed that I had been pleading for

the life of “the Street.”

“Well, where do you stand?”

Frank Swan answered for the crowd: “The panic is in full swing. She’s a

cellar-to-ridge-pole ripper. They’re down 40 or over on an average.

Anti-People’s is down to 35, and still coming like sawdust over a broken

dam. Barry Conant’s house and a dozen other of Reinhart’s have gone under.

His banks and trust companies are going every minute. The whole Street

will be overboard before the close. The governing committee has just

called a meeting to see whether it will not be best to adjourn the

Exchange over to-day and to-morrow.”

Bob listened as if he had been a master at the wheel in a gale, receiving

reports from his mates.

There was no trace now of the scene he had just been through. He was cool,

masterful, like the seasoned sea-dog who knows that in spite of the

ocean’s rage and the wind’s howl, the wheel will answer his hand and the

craft its rudder. “Jim, come over to the Exchange.” The crowd followed

along. “We have but a minute and I want to have you say you forgive me,”

he said to me. “I know, Jim, you understand it all, but I must tell you

how sorrowful I am that in my madness I should have so forgotten my

admiration, respect, and love for you, yes, and my gratitude to you, as to

say what I did. I’ll do the only thing I can to atone. I will stop this

panic and undo as much as possible of my work; and now that I have wrecked

Reinhart I am through with this game forever, yes, through forever.”

He pressed my hand in his strong, honest one and strode into the Exchange

ahead of the crowd. All was chaos, although the trading had toned down to

a sullen desperation. So many houses, banks, and trust companies had

failed that no man knew whether the member he had traded with early in

the day would on the morrow be solvent enough to carry out his trades. The

man who had been “long” in the morning, and had sold out before the crash,

and who thought he now had no interest in the panic, found himself with

his stock again on hand, because of the failure of the one to whom he had

sold, and the price cut in two. The man who was “short” and who a few

minutes before had been eagerly counting his profits now knew that they

had been turned to loss, because the man from whom he had borrowed his

short stocks for delivery would be in no condition to repay for them, the

next day, when they should be returned to him. The “short” man was

himself, therefore, “long” stocks he had bought to cover his “short” sale.

In depressing the price he had been working against his own pocket instead

of against the bulls he had thought he was opposing. All was confusion and

black despair. There is, indeed, no blacker place than the floor of the

Stock Exchange after a panic cyclone has swept it, and is yet lingering in

its corners, while the survivors of its fury do not know whether or not it

will again gather force.