The Spenders Part 44

"They needn't wait another day for me," Percival told him later. "The family treasure is about all in now, except ma's amethyst earrings, and the hair watch-chain Grandpa c.u.mmings had. Of course I'm holding what I promised for Burman. But that rise can't hold off much longer, and the only thing I'll do, from now on, is to hock a few blocks of the stock I bought outright, and buy on margins, so's to get bigger action."

"My! My! you jest do fairly dazzle me," exclaimed the old man, delightedly. "Oh, I guess your pa wouldn't be at all proud of you if he could see it. I tell you, this family's all right while you keep hearty."

"Well, I'm not pus.h.i.+ng my chest out any," said the young man, with becoming modesty, "but I don't mind telling you it will be the biggest thing ever pulled off down there by any one man."

"That's the true Western spirit," declared Uncle Peter, beside himself with enthusiasm. "We do things big when we bother with 'em at all. We ain't afraid of any pikers like Shepler, with his little two and five thousand lots. Oh! I can jest hear 'em callin' you hard names down in that Wall Street--Napoleon of Finance and Copper King and all like that--in about thirty days!"

He accepted Percival's invitation that afternoon to go down into the Street with him. They stopped for a moment in the visitors' gallery of the Stock Exchange and looked down into the mob of writhing, dishevelled, shouting brokers. In and out, the throng swirled upon itself, while above its muddy depths surged a froth of hands in frenzied gesticulation. The frantic movement and din of shrieks disturbed Uncle Peter.

"Faro is such a lot quieter game," was his comment; "so much more ca'm and restful. What a pity, now, 'tain't as Christian!"

Then they made the rounds of the brokers' offices in New, Broad, and Wall Streets.

They reached the office of Fouts, in the, latter street, just as the Exchange had closed. In the outer trading-room groups of men were still about the tickers, rather excitedly discussing the last quotations.

Percival made his way toward one of them with a dim notion that he might be concerned. He was relieved when he saw Gordon Blythe, suave and smiling, in the midst of the group, still regarding the tape he held in his hands. Blythe, too, had plunged in copper. He had been one of the few as sanguine as Percival--and Blythe's manner now rea.s.sured him. Copper had obviously not gone wrong.

"Ah, Blythe, how did we close? Mr. Blythe, my grandfather, Mr. Bines."

Blythe was the model of easy, indolent, happy middle-age. His tall hat, frock coat with a carnation in the lapel, the precise crease of his trousers, the spickness of his patent-leathers and his graceful confidence of manner, proclaimed his mind to be free from all but the pleasant things of life. He greeted Uncle Peter airily.

"Come down to see how we do it, eh, Mr. Bines? It's vastly engrossing, on my word. Here's copper just closed at 93, after opening strong this morning at 105. I hardly fancied, you know, it could fall off so many of those wretched little points. Rumours that the Consolidated has made large sales of the stuff in London at sixteen, I believe. One never can be quite aware of what really governs these absurd fluctuations."

Percival was staring at Blythe in unconcealed amazement. He turned, leaving Uncle Peter still chatting with him, and sought Fouts in the inner office. When he came out ten minutes later Uncle Peter was waiting for him alone.

"Your friend Mr. Blythe is a clever sort of man, jolly and light-hearted as a boy."

"Let's go out and have a drink, before we go up-town."

In the _cafe_ of the Savarin, to which he led Uncle Peter, they saw Blythe again. He was seated at one of the tables with a younger man.

Uncle Peter and Percival sat down at a table near by.

Blythe was having trouble about his wine.

"Now, George," he was saying, "give us a real _lively_ pint of wine.

You see, yourself, that cork isn't fresh; show it to Frank there, and look at the wine itself--come now, George! Hardly a bubble in it! Tell Frank I'll leave it to him, by Gad! if this bottle is right."

The waiter left with the rejected wine, and they heard Blythe resume to his companion, with the relish of a connoisseur:

"It's simply a matter of genius, old chap--you understand?--to tell good wine--that is really to discriminate finely. If a chap's not born with the gift he's an a.s.s to think he can acquire it. Sometime you've a setter pup that looks fit--head good, nose all right--all the markings--but you try him out and you know in half an hour he'll never do in the world. Then it's better to take him out back of the barn and shoot him, by Gad! Rather than have his strain corrupt the rest of the kennel. He can't acquire the gift, and no more can a chap acquire this gift. Ah! I was right, was I, George? Look how different that cork is."

He sipped the bubbling amber wine with cautious and exacting appreciation. As the waiter would have refilled the gla.s.ses, Blythe stopped him.

"Now, George, let me tell you something. You're serving at this moment the only gentleman's drink. Do it right, George. Listen! Never refill a gentleman's gla.s.s until it's quite empty. Do you know why? Think, George! You pour fresh wine into stale wine and what have you?--neither. I've taught you something, George. Never fill a gla.s.s till it's empty."

"It beats me," said Uncle Peter, when Blythe and his companion had gone, "how easy them rich codgers get along. That fellow must 'a' made a study of wines, and nothing worse ever bothers him than a waiter fillin' his gla.s.s wrong."

"You'll be beat more," answered Percival, "when I tell you this slump in copper has just ruined him--wiped out every cent he had. He'd just taken it off the ticker when we found him in Fouts's place there. He's lost a million and a half, every cent he had in the world, and he has a wife and two grown daughters."

"Shoo! you don't say! And I'd have sworn he didn't care a row of pins whether copper went up or down. He was a lot more worried about that champagne. Well, well! he certainly is a game loser. I got more respect fur him now. This town does produce thoroughbreds, you can't deny that."

"Uncle Peter, she's down to 93, and I've had to margin up a good bit. I didn't think it could get below 95 at the worst."

"Oh, I can't bother about them things. Just think of when she booms."

"I do--but say--do you think we better pinch our bets?"

Uncle Peter finished his gla.s.s of beer.

"Lord! don't ask _me_," he replied, with the unconcern of perfect trust. "Of course if you've lost your nerve, or if you think all these things you been tellin' me was jest some one foolin' you--"

"No, I know better than that, and I haven't lost my nerve. After all, it only means that the crowd is looking for a bigger rake-off."

"Your pa always kept _his_ nerve," said Uncle Peter. "I've known him to make big money by keepin' it when other men lost theirs. Of course he had genius fur it, and you're purty young yet--"

"I only thought of it for a minute. I didn't really mean it."

They read the next afternoon that Gordon Blythe had been found dead of asphyxiation in a little down-town hotel under circ.u.mstances that left no doubt of his suicide.

"That man wa'n't so game as we thought," said Uncle Peter. "He's left his family to starve. Now your pa was a game loser fur fair. Dan'l J.

would'a' called fur another deck."

"And copper's up two points to-day," said Percival, cheerfully. He had begun to be depressed with forebodings of disaster, and this slight recovery was cheering.

"By the way," he continued, "there may be another gas-jet blown out in a few days. That party, you know, our friend from Montana, has been selling Consolidated right and left. Where do you suppose she got any such tip as that? Well, I'm buying and she's selling, and we'll have that money back. She'll be wiped off the board when Consolidated soars."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

How the Chinook Came to Wall Street

The loss of much money is commonly a subject to be managed with brevity and aversion by one who sits down with the right reverence for sheets of clean paper. To bewail is painful. To affect lightness, on the other hand, would, in this age, savour of insincerity, if not of downright blasphemy. More than a bare recital of the wretched facts, therefore, is not seemly.

The Bines fortune disappeared much as a heavy fall of snow melts under the Chinook wind.

That phenomenon is not uninteresting. We may picture a far-reaching waste of snow, wind-furrowed until it resembles a billowy white sea frozen motionless. The wind blows half a gale and the air is full of fine ice-crystals that sting the face viciously. The sun, lying low on the southern horizon, seems a mere frozen globe, with l.u.s.trous pink crescents encircling it.

One day the wind backs and s.h.i.+fts. A change portends. Even the herds of half-frozen range cattle sense it by some subtle beast-knowledge. They are no longer afraid to lie down as they may have been for a week. The danger of freezing has pa.s.sed. The temperature has been at fifty degrees below zero. Now, suddenly it begins to rise. The air is scarcely in motion, but occasionally it descends as out of a blast-furnace from overhead. To the southeast is a ma.s.s of dull black clouds. Their face is unbroken. But the upper edges are ragged, torn by a wind not yet felt below. Two hours later its warmth comes. In ten minutes the mercury goes up thirty-five degrees. The wind comes at a thirty-mile velocity. It increases in strength and warmth, blowing with a mighty roar.

Twelve hours afterward the snow, three feet deep on a level, has melted. There are bald, brown hills everywhere to the horizon, and the plains are flooded with water. The Chinook has come and gone. In this manner suddenly went the Bines fortune.

April 30th, Consolidated Copper closed at 91. Two days later, May 2d, the same ill-fated stock closed at 5l--a drop of forty points. Roughly the decline meant the loss of a hundred million dollars to the fifteen thousand share-holders. From every city of importance in the country came tales more or less tragic of holdings wiped out, of ruined families, of defalcations and suicides. The losses in New York City alone were said to be fifty millions. A few large holders, reputed to enjoy inside information, were said to have put their stock aside and "sold short" in the knowledge of what was coming. Such tales are always popular in the Street.

Others not less popular had to do with the reasons for the slump. Many were plausible. A deal with the Rothschilds for control of the Spanish mines had fallen through. Or, again, the slaughter was due to the Shepler group of Federal Oil operators, who were bent on forcing some one to unload a great quant.i.ty of the stock so that they might absorb it. The immediate causes were less recondite. The Consolidated Company, so far from controlling the output, was suddenly shown to control actually less than fifty per cent of it. Its efforts to amend or repeal the hardy old law of Supply and Demand had simply met with the indifferent success that has marked all such efforts since the first attempted corner in stone hatchets, or mastodon tusks, or whatever it may have been. In the language of one of its newspaper critics, the "Trust" had been "founded on misconception and prompted along lines of self-destruction. Its fundamental principles were the restriction of product, the increase of price, and the throttling of compet.i.tion, a trinity that would wreck any combination, business, political, or social."

With this generalisation we have no concern. As to the copper situation, the comment was pat. It had been suddenly disclosed, not only that no combination could be made to include the European mines, but that the Consolidated Company had an unsold surplus of 150,000,000 pounds of copper; that it was producing 20,000,000 pounds a month more than could be sold, and that it had made large secret sales abroad at from two to three cents below the market price.