CHAPTER XV

THE STARTING OF AN AVALANCHE

However important a campaign may be, however long it may have been in the making, the hours which prove really to be decisive are likely to be few. The dramatic situation in the lard market was the outcome of months of thorough planning, of ingenious preparation, of well-concealed manipulation; but once the actual fighting began, and the whole commercial world gathered around to see, it lasted but three days and a little way into the fourth, that is, from Monday morning to an hour before noon on Thursday.

Measured by the volume of trading done, Monday was the heaviest day of the four. Sponley’s operators on the floor, Stewart and Ray, began selling when the big bell gave the signal at half-past nine, and until it rang again, at half-past one, there was no cessation. The Bear was explicit in his instructions, and acting on these, Stewart and Ray took a furious pace. They sold actual lard, wholly imaginary lard, grotesque prophecies of lard, which by no possibility could be realized; and little Mr. Keyes, of Keyes and Sievert, and tall Mr. Jones, of Ball, Snyder, and Jones, bought it all, while the Old Man, as they called Pickering, strolled about their offices with an utterly irresponsible air, and smoked Wheeling stogies.

It was a great round they fought that day; but it is not so well remembered as those that succeeded it, because at half-past one the relative position of the combatants was just what it had been four hours earlier. With all the tremendous pounding given and taken that morning, nothing happened. Neither had faltered for an instant, and there was not the slightest foundation for a guess as to where the advantage lay. But to one who could know what was in the minds of the two men, it would be evident that Pickering had rather the better of the situation, for at closing time he was just where he expected to be--he was not disappointed. But Melville Sponley had not counted on an inconclusive day. The reinforcements he had looked for so confidently had failed to come up.

Sponley spent the morning in his office, but he had lieutenants wherever they could possibly be of service, and he knew that the first unfavorable rumor that should be set afloat regarding Bagsbury’s bank would reach him instantly. But all the reports he received were negative. The clerk he had posted at the stock exchange called him up two or three times, but only to say that no Bagsbury stock had been offered for sale, and from Curtin at the bank there came not a word. When he had given Curtin his instructions the day before, he had been aware that it was hardly likely that the rumor of the bank’s difficulties would spread fast enough to develop a run on the bank before closing time on Monday; but he had counted confidently on its reaching the provision pit in time to have a decisive effect. The run, he calculated, would begin on Tuesday morning. But all Monday afternoon he heard never a whisper, and by evening he began to wonder if he had not made a serious mistake.

Immediately after dinner he decided to learn what he could from Mr. Cartwright; but he hesitated whether he should call on him or telephone him. Mr. Cartwright, he knew, was as yet unreconciled to the telephone, and regarded a message over it much as many people regard a postal card, and yet the other course seemed still more inadvisable. If Sponley had called in person, he would, you remember, have found John Bagsbury there; but as it happened the telephone bell in Mr. Cartwright’s library rang only about six feet from the place where John was sitting. Mr. Cartwright answered it impatiently.

“Oh, good evening, Mr. Sponley,” John heard him say. “Yes, we sold all our stock this afternoon--Yes, a very fair price--He was a young man whose name escapes me at this moment--Yes, thank you very much--Good evening.”

And John, with some difficulty, kept a perfectly straight face. At the other end of the ’phone Sponley turned away with an exclamation of disgust.

“What is it?” Harriet asked.

“I’d rather deal with three rascals than with one fool,” he said shortly, “and that Cartwright’s an infernal fool.”

The first notable event at the bank Tuesday morning was the early arrival of Pickering. He walked without ceremony into John’s office, seated himself near an open window, and at once proceeded to light a fresh black stogy from the stump of the one he had been smoking.

“I have to smoke these as soon as things begin to get interesting,” he explained. “I find cigars too tame. I hope the smell doesn’t bother you.”

“Not a bit,” said John. “It would take more than that. I don’t bother easily.”

“I don’t believe you do,” Pickering’s voice came from a cloud of pungent smoke. “You don’t look worried to-day; but unless I’ve missed my guess, you’ve had to take a lot in these last days that would have worried most men.”

“Is that a guess?” John asked quickly.

“Nothing else,” said Pickering. “I haven’t heard any talk. Only I know that the story in the Sunday paper of your having made me that loan must have thrown some of your directors into fits, and I thought they might have tried to pass ’em on to you.”

John could not help smiling over his recollection of the spectacle Cartwright and Meredith had presented Sunday morning, but he said:--

“They’ve taken it very well, upon the whole. Whatever they may think of the wisdom of making the loan, they seem perfectly willing to let me run the thing through, now that I’m in it.”

“That’s not to be wondered at,” said Pickering. “You have a way about you that would convince most men that you can mind your own business better than they can mind it for you.

“I came around this morning,” he went on, without waiting for the Banker’s meagre word of thanks, “because I need some more money.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred thousand.”

No man can spend his life working toward and in the high offices of a bank, as John had done, without losing a good deal of his original fighting instinct, or if he can, he is a dangerous banker; the lifelong responsibility for other people’s money makes caution a sort of second nature. But not even a banker, until he is totally unfit for the business, loses all his red corpuscles. John Bagsbury had been betrayed, had been challenged to fight, had been threatened with certain defeat if he would dare to fight; and being a man, and a profoundly angry man, he was eager for Sponley’s complete overthrow. He would have liked to say to Pickering, “Go ahead and smash him, and I’ll see you through.”

But if Pickering had guessed the existence of this feeling, and had counted it a circumstance in his favor, he had a mistaken notion of his man. John Bagsbury might feel the impulse, but the Banker would make or deny the loan.

“I want to know just what property you’ve got,” said John.

Pickering took a slip of paper from his pocket. “I thought you would,” he said. “Here’s a schedule of it.”

John laid the paper on his desk, and for some time pored over it in silence. “I don’t want any more lard,” he said at length; “I’ve got enough now to last quite a while. And I don’t want to go into the soap business, either; yet I don’t see that I have much choice if I make the loan. All your convertible securities are pledged already.”

Still he studied the schedule earnestly, and Pickering was silent. At last the Banker said,--

“If you will give me a judgment note for it, I’ll let you have the money.”

Pickering reddened. “I’m not bankrupt,” he said, “nor going to be. I’d rather give a man a check signed in blank than a judgment note. It’s as bad as a death-warrant, with everything filled in but the date.”

“Of course,” said John, “it puts you entirely in my hands. If you’re afraid of me, you’d better not take the loan. That’s the only security I’ll take.”

Pickering relighted his stogy and gazed meditatively out of the window. “All right,” he said at length, with a dry laugh, “give me the blank and I’ll sign it. I guess I’m about as safe in your hands as I am in my own.”

While he was making out the note there came a knock at the door. “Mr. Dawson is here to see you, Mr. Bagsbury,” said the cashier.

“Come in, Mr. Dawson,” said John, rising. “You know Mr. Pickering?”

Under his heavy white brows Dawson’s eyes twinkled. “You are giving us plenty to think about these days, Mr. Pickering.”

He seated himself heavily, mopped his red face with a redder handkerchief, and ran his hand through his thick white hair. Dawson had accumulated plenty of treasure on earth; but I think that all unconsciously he had been laying up a greater treasure in heaven, if a life of courage and honesty and the wisest optimism counts for anything, and the long file of men his kindly help saved from financial ruin and worse are to be permitted to testify. There was no sentimentality about him: he was hard-handed as an old sailor; but many a practical man of business to-day can hardly speak of him dry-eyed.

“You are making a great fight,” he went on, still addressing Pickering, “and I half believe you stand a chance to win.”

The other men laughed. “I’m more hopeful,” said Pickering. “I fully expect to win. The Bear took his pounding badly yesterday, and to-day I’m making him sweat to protect his margins.”

“I’m not trying to discourage you,” Dawson answered; “but until Sponley is actually busted, and his accounts are closed out, the chances are always in his favor. He makes an effort to play square; but he plays to win, and I don’t believe he ever went into a game of this kind without an extra ace about him somewhere.”

“He’d better get it out of his sleeve pretty quick, then,” said the soap-maker.

“He will,” retorted Dawson. “He’ll bear watching--by both of you.

“You’ve been making Mr. Pickering another loan, I take it,” he went on, addressing John Bagsbury.

Both men nodded.

“In a way, you’re playing right into his hand. He’s making a deliberate attack on the bank. He’ll stop at nothing, and the knowledge of this second loan makes his case stronger. The moral effect on the depositors will be bad. You can bet they’ll know about it before night.”

Pickering rose, “Are you still willing to let me have it, Mr. Bagsbury?”

“Yes,” said John, curtly. “I told you you could have it. The loan’s good and the security’s good. I’ll chance it on the effect.”

“I guess I’d have done the same thing myself,” said Dawson, after the speculator had left the office; “still I can’t be sure it isn’t a mistake. I must go on--just dropped in to see if you were in any trouble. Good-by.”

A little later Curtin telephoned over to Sponley the news of the second loan to Pickering and of Dawson’s visit to the bank. There had been, he added, no unusual drain on the bank, nothing in the least resembling the beginning of a run.

As he left the telephone box, he saw that John Bagsbury’s eye was on him; he avoided it, then with a poor affectation of coolness sought it again and, being unsuccessful, walked hastily to his desk. He knew John thought him a cur; but he wondered whether the president suspected anything else.

The blow was a heavy one to Sponley, heavier than all the hammering Pickering was giving him, and he took it hard. The reënforcement of his enemy was bad enough, but it was not the worst. He could measure it. Dawson’s visit was a mystery. How much or how little it might mean he could not even guess, but the thought that this tremendous old fighter might take a hand troubled him seriously. And his ingenious plotting to start a run on the bank had evidently failed. Somewhere or other, he had made a bad miscalculation.

For the last hour or two of the trading that day Sponley’s plight was desperate. Pickering was indeed making him sweat; but the Bear’s nerve was not shaken, and he fought furiously. Twice he was within two minutes of being sold out; but both times he was able, though barely, to put up his margins. When the closing bell rang, and he was safe for another twenty hours, he went to the nearest café and drank enough whiskey to make his attendant stare at him; and then with steady hands and lips, and the old purposeful look in his eye, he went out and drove straight home.

“Shall you want the carriage again this afternoon, sir?” asked the coachman, when they reached the house.

“I think in about an hour.”

Still the man hesitated, holding the impatient horses which had started to move off toward the stable. He had worked for Sponley for fifteen years, and he felt a profound admiration for him. He knew that something troubled his employer, and he was halting on the brink of taking a liberty.

“Well,” said Sponley, “what is it?”

“I beg your pardon, sir; I hope nothing has gone wrong.”

“Nothing,” Sponley spoke shortly. It annoyed him to think that he was showing the effect of the pounding he had taken that day. He turned to go into the house, then stopped and called after the man:--

“Wait a minute. Haven’t you got what money you’ve saved in Bagsbury’s bank?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I guess you’ll do well to take it out first thing to-morrow morning. I don’t know that they’re going to fail, but you’d better be on the safe side.”

He dismissed the man with a nod and went in to the telephone. He called up the Herald building and asked for Mr. Hauxton. “Can you come out to my house at once, on a matter of some importance?” he asked. “It’s not the sort of thing I want to discuss over the ’phone.”

The financial man on the _Herald_ is an important person, unused to being telephoned for in that summary way; but to this request of Sponley’s he replied with alacrity.

The Bear greeted him with impressive cordiality.

“Have you heard anything to-day, Mr. Hauxton?” he asked when they were seated, “anything that leads you to think that Bagsbury’s bank is in trouble?”

The financial reporter mopped his bald spot, and then taking off his spectacles he wiped them nervously.

“Have you heard anything of that sort, Mr. Sponley?”

A man may attain to certain great eminences, may be a constitutional lawyer, or an archbishop, and still an easy prey to cozenage and false speaking, but he can never be the financial man on a great newspaper. Hauxton, peering wistfully through his powerful spectacle lenses, could see through the skin of the fair-seeming apple of truth, even to the very worm at the core. You would gain nothing by telling an ordinary cock-and-bull story to him; it would never go beyond his ears.

Yet, knowing all this, Sponley settled confidently to his task. He did not try to convince the reporter that the bank was really in a dangerous condition; he did not want him to believe that. And there was no question of Hauxton’s actually printing anything in the paper. Hauxton held his highly salaried position because he held the confidence of the big financial men about the city, and he held their confidence because they knew he could hold his tongue. Discretion was his stock in trade. But if Sponley could excite his curiosity sufficiently to set him to making inquiries here and there as to the truth or the bare existence of a rumor that the bank was in trouble, that was enough for the Bear. The rumor would exist by the time Hauxton had asked three men if there were a rumor; and inside of twenty-four hours it would prove itself true.

Sponley made very light of what little information he had, professed to discredit it utterly, and said finally that he should have paid no attention to it, or should have referred it straight to headquarters, except that his present operations in lard put him in an attitude of apparent hostility to the bank, and that he didn’t care to go there on such an errand. He could see that he was impressing Hauxton; by the time he finished, the tip of the reporter’s long pointed nose seemed fairly to twitch and to twinkle with excited curiosity.

“You’d better be very careful whom you ask about it,” said the Bear. “It’s easy enough to start people talking just that way. I’d go right to one of the officers of the bank first, if I were you.”

Hauxton laughed. “I don’t exactly relish the idea of asking Bagsbury if it’s true that his bank is likely to have to suspend. They say, you know, that he’s never lost his temper but twice, and that he didn’t quite kill his man either time. Once was when Drake went to him to get a loan for that skate Suburban Rapid Transit. He offered Bagsbury a commission, and at that Bagsbury got up, took him by the arm, marched him to the head of the stairs, and said he didn’t know whether to kick him down or not. Drake thought he meant to, though, and jumped halfway and rolled the rest. He was black and blue for two weeks. And the other time was when Smith tried to blackmail him. Bagsbury bent him backward over a table and nearly brained him. He got off alive, too; but I might not be so lucky.”

Sponley knew that Hauxton was speaking in jest, but he answered seriously:--

“Oh, Bagsbury can’t afford to lose his temper these days, and he’d treat you all right, anyway; but I think you’d get more out of one of the other officers. I think Curtin’s your man. He may refuse to talk, or he may lie to you, but he’s no good at concealing the facts.”

As soon as Hauxton took his leave, Sponley called up Curtin on the telephone. Just as Curtin answered the call, Harriet, who had heard Hauxton go out, entered the room, and Sponley was forced to give his instructions to the assistant cashier in her hearing.

“I just sent Hauxton of the _Herald_ over to see you. He’ll ask you if it’s true that the bank’s in trouble. You’ll deny it, of course. Deny it vigorously as you can. Do you understand?”

Then after a word of greeting to Harriet, he telephoned to Mr. Meredith.

“I was afraid you might be alarmed over the rumors that have been going about this afternoon concerning Bagsbury’s bank. I don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of. They may have some temporary difficulty, but they’re sure to come out all right. If any one speaks to you about it, you’ll be quite safe in denying that there’s any serious difficulty, and you’ll be doing Bagsbury a good turn. When people get to talking, it sometimes plays the very devil with a bank--Not at all. Good-by.”

You can see that Dawson was right about the extra ace.